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shall be enjoyed by man in every part of the globe.

Even that simplest of implements, a spade, is not the work of one man, but of some half-dozen distinct sets of workers. The lumberer furnishes the timber, the carpenter shapes it, the miner (perhaps hundreds of miles away) digs the ore, the iron-founder smelts it and beats the metal into shape, the nailer contributes the means of binding the iron to the wood, and the carrier conveys the materials or the articles to their destinations. During the time that it would take an isolated man to make a single spade (and if he could do it at all, it would be a very clumsy and imperfect specimen), one hundred men, by dividing their labour, would probably make one hundred thousand or more. But if such be the striking results of the division of labour in the production of so simple an article, imagine its marvellous potency in the case of a complex form of human industry. Let us take as an instance one of those magnificent steamers that act as movable bridges between New York and Liverpool. Here, instead of half-adozen sets of workers, the labour of building and equipping that steamer has been divided among, not scores, not hundreds, but thousands of distinct sets of producers. Such is the limitless variety of objects which the construction and outfit of this floating palace embrace, that there is hardly a section of human industry that has not been made available for, hardly a region of the globe which has not contributed to, and scarcely a science within human ken which has not been pressed into the

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service of, that glorious creation of man's brains, labour, and capital. It is to the division of labour that we chiefly owe this wonderful achievement. Without it, man's constructive power would hardly go beyond the canoe or the coracle.

It may be said that the world freely admits the advantages that flow from the division of labour, and that our advocacy is superfluous. We reply that it is not so. The principle of the division of labour is at present violated, and its benefits discarded by the fiscal ordinances of almost every civilised Government. Whenever the division of labour (whether assisted by other circumstances or not) produces an article more cheaply in one country than in others, the latter refuse to admit. such article; and thus ignore and reject the benefits conferred by the division of labour. If its quickening influence on the creation of wealth be "freely admitted," how is it that statesmen circumscribe its operation within the narrow limits of a single country, and forcibly repress its beneficial action by proscribing international division of labour? Let us briefly examine into this.

The amount of benefit derivable from the division of labour is in direct proportion to the magnitude of the area and the number of people over which its operations extend. The greater the diversity of the climate and soil, as well as of the aptitudes and personal peculiarities of the populations, the greater is the scope for the profitable operation of the division of labour. In isolated and thinly populated regions, in which families live far apart from each other, and the

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means of communication are scanty, each household provides for most of its own wants by its own labour; and we are reminded of those old primitive times when men "delved" and women

span." Under such conditions, no organisation for the division of labour can take place. Isolation of the region itself from the rest of the world, and isolation of the members of the community from each other, form a double obstacle.

It is obvious that the full development of the principle of division of labour can only be reached when there is no isolation, and when there is free and unrestricted intercourse and interchange between all men of all nations all the world over. Then does this great wealth-creating agent put forth its full power and efficacy. It has then the greatest possible diversity of elements to work upon, and these give it the greatest possible scope for its operations. Its completeness and perfection depend on its universality. Whatever is short of internationalthat is, universal-division of labour, cripples its action, and renders it partial, stunted, and proportionately feeble.

And yet what is the policy adopted in regard to it by almost every country in the world? A policy of commercial isolation directly opposed to the development of the division of labour. True that the latter principle is recognised and adopted by each country within the limits of its own territory, but, under the so-called protective system, it is ignored and scouted in its relations with the rest of the world. Instead of an international or universal, we have an intra-national or sectional

scheme of division of labour. Instead of that prolific agency for maximising the productiveness of human toil being allowed a full sweep over the entire industrial world, the surface of the globe is cut up into patches of territory, larger or smaller, each of which is commercially isolated from the rest, and none of which will allow free ingress to the cheap productions of the others. Thus the cheapness achieved by the division of labour in one country is counteracted and rendered unavailable to the rest by means of import duties, prohibitions, &c., enacted for the purpose of raising the cost or prohibiting the admission of cheap goods from foreign countries. Vainly indeed does the division of labour diminish the cost of production as long as statesmen proclaim that cheapness is an iniquity which has to be repressed by legislative enactments.

Under what mistaken notions statesmen adopt that view, we shall take another opportunity of inquiring; but meanwhile it must be clear to all that if the benefits which the division of labour confers are great and undeniable, it must be quite as great and undeniable an evil to counteract and nullify them. To intercept the beneficent operations of so powerful a factor in the creation of wealth as the division of labour, is an act as potent for evil as it would be to intercept the quickening action of the sun's rays on the soil, and,so to create artificial sterility. It is fortunate that statesmen have not the same power to effect the latter as they have to effect the former purpose, as otherwise, no doubt, some pretexts of State

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policy would be invented to justify both. To sum up, the division of labour promotes in an eminent degree the creation of wealth, but its operation is sadly checked and counteracted by the commercial isolation of one country from another.

A 2. FREE COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE is the second of those aids to wealth-creation which we propose to review. We have just seen that this freedom of commerce is an indispensable condition in order to ensure the full development, and reap the full benefits, of the division of labour. It largely increases the wealth of the world by securing the rich results of well-applied labour and capital, instead of the poor results of misapplied capital and labour, and by obtaining for the use of each habitable zone the peculiar products which the diversity of climate, soil, geological formations, &c., make special to other habitable zones. It enable, all men in all countries to devote themselves to that particular work for which they have special opportunities or aptitudes. This they are, at present, prevented from doing. Governments, at an enormous expense to the community, compel producers to take their labour and capital away from the work which they are doing better than foreigners can, and to apply the labour and capital. so diverted to work which foreigners can do better than they can. By this misdirection of power much of it is wasted. Instead of large results cheaply obtained, we have smaller results obtained at a greater cost. The wealth-creating power of the world is proportionately impaired. It loses the maximum productive force of labour and capital