GREAT BRITAIN FOR THE LAST FORTY YEARS.

THOUGH written, we doubt not, with good intentions, this little volume is only fitted to work evil. Its moderate price, its plain and popular style, and the peculiar opinions which it advocates, are likely to insure it as extensive a circulation as works of this class can attain amongst the operatives. It is well adapted to make them dissatisfied with their condition; whilst it points out no remedies, or no sufficient ones, for the evils they are subject to. Pursue Mr. HOPKINS' conclusions to their legitimate end, and not only are the whole burdens of society—taxes, tithes, &c.—borne by the working classes, but it would seem a law of nature that they must be so borne; unless a forcible change is effected in the social arrangement, either by the producers or on

their behalf. To expose the root of this fallacy, will involve a sufficient account of the work.

Rent, says Mr. HOPKINS in effect, originates from property in land, and is governed by no other law than the will of the land- lords. It does not arise from any return to the capital which the owner may have expended upon the soil, either to render it capable of production,—as by clearing, draining, fencing ; or by increasing its natural fertility,—as by the application of manure. Situation has nothing to do with rent ; neither is difference in the fertility of land an element. Its existence is to be attributed to the monopoly of the soil : there is no limit to its amount, but ig- norance on the part of landlords as to the extent of their power, or capability on the part of their tenants to pay. Rent is not, therefore, a necessary, but an arbitrary deduction from the amount which constitutes profits and wages : or rather, as the rate of' pro- fit is governed by the quantity of capital existing in the country, its pressure is altogether upon wages. Tithes, in Mr. IloexiNs. opinion, act in a similar way. Whatever may be their amount— in whatsoever form they may be levied—whether they be univer- sal or partial—they do not fall upon rent ; they are not mischie- vous as checking cultivation; they are a sheer deduction from the produce of agriculture, and by consequence from the fend which decides the amount of wages. Taxes act in a similar way. As profit depends upon the amount of capital, and requires a cer- tain percentage (governed by this amount) to insure its employ- ment, no taxes can permanently be levied upon capital. If ten per cent. be taken from the net profits of the capitalist, lie de- ducts the tax from the wages of' the workman. If it be attempted to throw taxes upon rent, the landlords have the power of raising rent by the aniount of the tax. Nor are these all the evils which, in Mr. HoexiNs' opinion, beset the operatives : the produce of industry being, in his view, not determined by the productive- ness of the field on which labour and capital are employed, but depending on the amount of rent which landlords arbitrarily choose to levy, every person whose labour is diverted from agri- culture, or primary productiveness, further diminishes the produce of the fund from which labour is paid. And as those persons who live upon rents, tithes, taxes, the higher class of profits, and the interest of money, chiefly employ secondary producers, their incomes not only directly take from wages by their actual amount, but they further divert labour from employments which create the means by which it is supported, and thus injure it doubly. During the last forty years, says Mr. HoexiNs, these most mischievous schemes have been most mischievously developed. Loans, by diminishing the amount of capital existing in the country,. had a tendency to raise profits, or rather dill raise them. The taxes necessary to pay the intProst, Eo far P.5 th'Sy fen upon capital, raised them still more. Such portions as were levied upon rent, were more than repaid by the rise of rents; whilst the increase of luxurious or secondary producers, consequent upon all thse proceedings, continually dinished the fund from which abour was paid, first by taking from its amount, secondly bY pre- venting its increa,e. During the war, therefore, the capitalists— those who lived upon profits and interest—fared well ; those who lived upon rents fared well ; those who lived upon taxes fared famously; but the situation of those who lived by labour became continually worse, unless when events—as in the cotton trade— were partially counteracted by peculiar circumstances. Peace terminated our monopoly of manufactured goods ; compelled us to

give more labour for gold, and all other commodities we imported, and thus lowered profits and wages in all trades dependent upon foreign commerce; whilst the return to the old standard, by rais- ing the real value of fixed money payments, rendered tithes, taxes, and rents more heavy than they were during the war. In the mean time, neither landlord nor parson lowered .their demands :

the tax-eater was nearly as great a cormorant as ever : the fund- holders, according to Mr. HOPKINS, swallow up more than suffices

to maintain all the persons dependent upon the cotton trade : and

in short, whilst all the deductions from the primary produce have very much increased—whilst the expenditure employing secondary producers has consequently increased—the circumstances which counteracted or diminished those evils exist no longer, and, in the most brilliant words Lord ALTHORP ever uttered, "Here we are!"

Profits.low ; wages low ; tithes, taxes, rent, and gold, high ; ab- solute ruin averted by a practical contempt of Mr. MALTHUS' doctrines, but even the effects which should flow from an increas- ing population neutralized, by people being employed in secondary instead of primary productions.

What is the remedy for this state of things? We know not. Mr. HOPKINS, like the crafty story-tellers of the East, breaks off in the middle of his tale, to render the conclusion of more value. The cure may perhaps be given in a future volume; but it is first necessary, says Mr. HOPKINS, to discover the disorder. Has he done so ? Has he not confounded effects with causes, symptoms with diseases ? Let us endeavour to see.

The whole annual wealth of any country is divisible into four funds,—wages, profit, rent, impositions. The distribution of the three first is governed by natural laws; any direct or indirect in- terference, with which, though sometimes unavoidable, is always mischievous. The fourth fund, or impositions, being levied ac- cording to artificial laws, must always, whether they assume the shape of general or local taxation, or a fixed share of the produce, as tithes, take from some persons property which is their natural right, and involve great inconvenience and in their levy. Whether, by being levied only upon rent and interest, their evil effects should stop here—Whether they shall fall upon wages or 'malts, or both—or, still more mischievous, whether they shall even prevent the free employment of capital and labour—are circumstances dependent, first, upon the amount of the imposi- tions, second, upon the skill and honesty of those who impose them. In England, few general taxes press directly upon rent or the interest of money ; the bulk of our duties are levied on articles of consumption, on the raw materials of manufac- tures, or on manufactures themselves. Local taxation is for the most part confined to property. Tithes, when limited to the richer soils, are equivalent to a tax upon rent: their operation Upon inferior land is mischievous to every body,—they keep land out of cultivation, and thus prevent the landlord from getting a rant, they prevent the farmer from employing his capital, and dimi- nish his profits; they check the employment of the labourer and reduce his wages ; and they act most injuriously upon the whole public, by decreasing the supply of food and raising its price. Though not, therefore, going the whole length with Mr. 1ft:opium, that tithes and taxes are entirely abstracted from the fund which forms wages and profits, we believe they press very heavily upon that fund, and that their entire abolition would be of great relief to the producers.

Upon the laws which regulate the division of wages and profits, we in a great measure agree with this author. Our difibrence re- gards the amount of the fund to be divided, and the causes which govern the productiveness of industry. Though the subject has already been discussed in the Spectator, its full understanding is a matter of such great importance in a practical point of view, that we may be excused for again recurring to it. It will be seen, that the natural distribution of wealth—wages, profits, and rent— is the point at issue.

There is in England land of such fertility, that, in average years and with crack cultivation, it yields froua forty-five to fifty bushels an acre. In the same neighbourhood, there are farms which, with the same skill, the same capital, and the same labour, will not re- turn at the utmost more than fifteen or sixteen bushels. Apply these facts to a country : Suppose all the land under cultivation to be of the same degree of fertility, and that there are no deduc- tions for tithes, taxes, and rent : it is obvious that the fund to divide amongst the producers viJl be three times as great in one country as in the other. The first state of things might exist in the valley of the Missisippi, where, Mr. STUART tells US, there is much unclaimed land which yields (we presume he means, might be made to yield) fifty bushels an acre. Take up a colony of English agriculturists, and set them down in the back settlements of the Western States, and the produce to divide between them will be enormous. The second state—or worse than the second state—is found in England, where some of the land which is cultivated to raise sufficient food does not produce above ten or twelve bushels an acre. All! but, says Mr. HOPKINS, in America there is no property in land ; in Englantt there is. We answer, in AincriCa land is plentiful ; every man may procure as much as he pleases, subject to a small payment to the State; but this payment made, his property, or if' you please his monopoly, is as firmly guaranteed as here. In England, land cannot be procured with such facility ; but there are in England between six and seven millions of acres uncultivated, which, if their owners should not be willing to sell, they will be but too happy to allow any b,:dy to improve, for any reasonable period, at a small or a nominal rent, should indiviclua6- be found so foolish as to undertake the task. It is true, that tithe artificially diminishes the fertility of this laml by one tenth ; still, allowing what effect you please for its operation, it is clear that we are in no want of land, but of good land. Since this want cannot be directly supplied by miraculously adding to our terri- tory, or by rendering our wastes capable of rivalling the rich soils "of new countries, the course is to do it indirectly, by exchanging the results of labour expended on commodities for whose produc- tion we have natural advantages, against the results of labour em- ployed on a fertile soil. If the question were merely—why are profits low in England, and how can they be raised ?—we might stop here : but be the landowners bad or good, they ought not to be burdened with a false charge, nor their property be held up as the cause, of the pub- lic evils, when it is in reality the abuse of their power that is so. Rent is founded upon a law of nature : were the name abolished, the thing must still exist; and "if every rood of ground main- tained its man," and its man held it rent-free, the effects of rent would still operate as much as now. It is not rent that we should decry, but the monopoly-laws to raise rent. To make this clearer, it may be worth while practically to trace the rise of rents, and to exhibit their elements.

In a new country, where good land is almost to be had for ask- ing, no rent, say the RICARDO school, is ever paid; and wages, profits, and interest, are very high. Let Nature, however, have been as bountiful as she may, she has not laid out the land in fields, nor fenced it, nor erected barns or stables or dwelling-houses. Ilefore cultivation can be carried on in the most profitable manner, capital must have been permanently expended on the soil. Prac- tically, the colonist does this himself; and no rent is said to be paid, because it appears to be profits. Let the first cultivator, however, get tired of farming: let a new settler arrive, who is not possessed by the demon of landed property, and whose capital is barely sufficient to cultivate, not to improve the waste : the old settler is uot unwilliug to let—the new one is willing to take— What is he to pay for the use of the improvements? If the capi-

tal has been judiciously expended, he will:pay somewhat more thaw the current rate of interest on the money laid out. Say 1,000/.

has been spent on the soil, with a market rate of interest at /2

per cent.: his rent would be perhaps 150/. per annum (in England a capitalist would jump at getting GO.). Should a doubt exist as

to the sum vested in permanent improvements, or as to the skill with which they have been invested, the difference in.the produce of the soils will be selected as the measure. " rfbw much more can I raise from this improved land, over that in a state of nature?" the new corner will ask. The answer will give the amount of rent. Surely an income of this kind is as well entitled to.protection from the State, as the profits derived from any machine. It is not to be considered so sacred as to be secured at the expenseof the people, but it is not to be wantonly confiscated. And this is the first. or principal element of rent. What is the next ?

Let us suppose population to have considerably increased, a town to have sprung up, and cultivation to have extended to twenty miles around it ; the fertility of the soil remaining as great as before. But all grain of equal goodness will sell in the town market at the same price. The farmer, however, who lives at the extreme end of cultivation, will have to part with a portion of his corn, or what comes to the same thing, the price of a portion, to carry it to town. If this cost be five bushels out of every hundred, the farmer nearest the town will be able to retain this five bushels as extra profit; and if he were to give up farming, a taker of the farm would as soon pay him what this extra profit amounted to, as as give 150/. only for the border land. The existence of this rent may be a cogent reason why the necessity of its payment should be reduced, if it were practicable, by so improving the roads that the furthest crop might be brought to market for the cost of three per cent., or, admitting foreign corn from the other side of the river, at one per cent. on the cost of transport,—let the near land- lord or the distant capitalist clamour how he may. Btt it is surely illogical to argue that the existence of this rent lessens the fund out of which wages and profits must be paid. These are the two first elements of rent,—situation, and a return to capital invested in permanently improving the soil. Without verbally quibbling about their cause, their measure will be the difference between the greater produce of each and that of the land which may be cultivated without payment. In process of titne, however, another element is introduced,which is rent in the co- nomic meaning of the term. It arises from the decreasing fertility of the soil.

We have assumed that all the land which supplied the market yielded fifty bushels an acre. In countries of any great extent, soils vary considerably in fertility ; and as population increased, the best would be insufficient to supply it with food. Taking our instances, for the sake of distinctness, by jumps instead of by the gradu,11 declensions of' nature, the new corners into the world or the country must be content to cultivate soils which only yielded forty bushels. There could not, however, be two prices in the market; and the cost of raising corn on the worst soil at the greatest distanee would determine the price to be paid for it. All lands more fertile, or better situated, would yield rents propor- tioned to the surplus produce that was drawn from them beyond the quantity of corn produced under the most unfavourable circum- stances: but the maximum of rent, in the economic looming of the term, would be ten bushels ; and the productiveness of in- dustry—the fund which produced wages and profits—would have fallen one fifth. As population increased, it might be necessary (were there corn-laws) to draw the supplies of food from laml yielding thirty, twenty, or even ten bushels an acre; and at each successive step, wages and profits would fall ; the fund out of which they were paid, naturally diminishing. Mr. HOPKINs may say, No: the landlords have created rent. But we cannot hesi- tate to say, Yes: beyond the belt of cultivation there is plenty of land to be had; there is, therefore, no monopoly. There is only a property in the best soils. But if this property were invaded, whom would it benefit General wages would not be raised; for as (all things being equal) there cannot be two prices for labour in the same market ; wages will be determined by what is paid on the least productive soils. General profits would not be raised; for these depend likewise on the net productiveness of industry. If the landlords were deprived of the property, and it were vested in the cultivator, he would not sell his corn cheaper in the market (indeed lie could not, though he might give it away); he would not pay higher wages, because the competition of those working on inferior soils would prevent him. What then would happen? He would put the surplus in his pocket, and be so mirth richer, whilst the landlord would be so much poorer. All this is a valid reason for placing a moderate tax wen rent, because a great part of it is created without care or cost or trouble on the part of the landlord. It is a valid reason for admitting supplies of food from the other side of the water, where they can be raised at one third of the cost. It is a valid reason why every man should set him- self to got rid of laws to uphold rent and scarcity, and lower profits and wages.. But it is no reason. for proposing that land should be as free as the sea, because, if every man could squat wherever he pleased, cultivatiou could not be carried on : nor is it any reason for broaching doctrines which will lead the ignorant to aim at a general scramble, or an equal division of goods. We have spoken, in the course of this notice, of the popular style of the writer. Here is a sr2ecimen,from his chapter on Profits. It may be useful at the preserit moment, when such erroneous no- tions en the subjeet axe slyeitimatically circulated.