drawing some of the old men from a decaying trade, that the equilibrium is recovered. Such operations are difficult, dilatory, often personally ruinous, and disproportionately noisy to the public ear in the process of execution. But the true operation goes on as silently as the growth of light. The moneyed man stands equidistantly related to many different staple interests, - the silk trade, the cotton trade, the iron trade, the timber and grain trade. Rarely does he act upon any one of them by direct interpolation of new firms, or direct withdrawals of old ones. An effect of this extent is generally as much beyond his power as beyond his interest.

Not a man has been shifted from his station; possibly not a man has been intruded, yet power and virtue have been thrown into vast laboratories of trade, like shells into a city. But all has been accomplished in one night by the inaudible agency of the post-office, co-operating with the equally inaudible agencies of capital moving through banks and through national debts, funded or unfunded. Such is the perfection of our civilization. By the simple pressure of a finger upon the centre of so vast an organization, a breath of life is hurried along the tubes, a pulse is enlivened or depressed, a circulation is precipitated or checked, without those ponderous processes of change indispensable on the Continent, and which so injuriously disturb the smooth working of general business. Acknowledging, therefore, as a fact first exposed clearly by Ricardo, that enormous changes may be effected, and continually are effected, without noise or tumult, through the exquisite resources of artificial action, first made possible by the great social development of England; acknowledging by consequence that, for the purposes of competition, capital to any amount may be discharged with a velocity inappreciable to the Continent, upon a considerable variety of

creative industry, there is yet good reason to deny the possibility of that competition which is so generally relied on for the practical limitation of profits seeming to be in

excess.

Upon serious reflection, how can any rational man imagine that, as a matter of course, by increasing the manufacture of razors or of scissors, he could increase their sale? That sale is predetermined by the need; and though undoubtedly a very slight need may come to operate as a great need when the price is suddenly or much lowered, yet that is merely a transitional effect; the lower price is probably binomial price, and binomial price cannot last; by its very nature it is a force tending to a particular effect, viz. to equilibrate the supply with the demand, and, as soon as that tendency is accomplished, there it ceases.

The expression, however, of such a case may be designedly made equivocal. Let us, therefore, force the lurking notions in this sophistry to "show out" and expose themselves; by which means we shall know how to shape the reply.

Case a. The insinuation is sometimes this, That the rate of profits will be diminished; that there will be a difference of so much per cent on the manufacture of the given article; and that, by giving to the buyer the benefit of this difference, free competition will reduce profits through an extended sale. But in a large mass of cases no such agency is possible. A man buys an article of instant applicability to his own purposes the more readily and the more largely as it happens to be cheaper: silk handkerchiefs having fallen to half price, he will buy, perhaps, in threefold quantity; but he does not buy more steam-engines because the price is lowered. His demand for steam-engines is almost always predetermined by the circumstances of his situation. So far as he considers the

cost at all, it is much more the cost of working this engine than the cost upon its purchase. But there are many articles for which the market is absolutely and merely limited by a pre-existing system, to which those articles are attached as subordinate parts or members. How could we force the dials or faces of timepieces by artificial cheapness to sell more plentifully than the inner works or movements of such timepieces? Could the sale of wine-vaults be increased without increasing the sale of wine? Or the tools of shipwrights find an enlarged market whilst shipbuilding was stationary? The articles and the manufacturing interests are past counting which conform to the case here stated; viz. which are so interorganized with other articles or other interests, that apart from that relation, standing upon their own separate footing, — they cannot be diminished in price through any means or any motive depending upon the extension of sale. Offer to a town of 3000 inhabitants a stock of hearses, no cheapness will tempt that town into buying more than one. Offer a stock of yachts, the chief cost lies in manning, victualling, repairing; no diminution upon the mere price to a purchaser will tempt into the market any man whose rank, habits, and propensities had not already disposed him to such a purchase. So of professional costume for bishops, lawyers, students at Oxford, or the separate costume for Cantabs.

From cases of the same class, absolutely past counting, we must be sure that the conceit of competition, having any unconditional power answerably to contract or expand the market for commodities, is fitted only for a childish or inactive understanding. Universally all things which are sold may be thrown into three classes, first, a small class, in which the very least bias given favorably to the price will increase the sale; secondly, a much larger class, in which nothing short of a very strong bias will avail for

such an increase; thirdly, a class the largest, in which no bias whatever, from the very strongest impulse communicated to the price, can overcome the obstacles to an extended sale.

Case B. But under this delusive form of words lurks often quite another meaning: not the rate of profit is to be diminished by competition, but the separate dividends of each individual. It is not that profits are to fall from 16 to 12 per cent; no, the 16 per cent is to continue; but the ten thousand pounds annually disposable on such a 16 per cent will be otherwise distributed; forty capitalists will have crowded in, to average a gain of £250 for each, where previously twenty had averaged £500. This, however, is a change in many cases quite impracticable; in others, far from beneficial 43 to the public interests; and in any case, having no tendency at all to the diminution of price, consequently no possible tendency to an extension of the market. What puzzles the student is this: from Ricardo he has learned -that a change in profits will not produce any change in price. Such a change settles upon wages; in fact it has settled already upon wages. Any change in profits argues a foregone conclusion," presupposes a corresponding change already made in wages, before the change in profits could arise. And if, therefore, a violent or conventional reduction should take place originally in profits, he is at a loss to trace the consequences of what he has been taught to view as impossible. For Ricardo has taught him that a change cannot commence in profits; that function of industry is not liable to any original affection of change; any change must be derivative, must be secondary, which reaches profits. Yet how, if a sudden and violent reduction were made primarily upon individual profits as a desperate resource of competition? Conventionally and arbitrarily such a change might be made by a little faction

of sellers for the sake of underselling others, without any power on their part to meddle with wages. Out of a profit nominally 30 per cent, the piratical minority might agree to sacrifice a third; and sometimes the more easily, because on large establishments a considerable percentage is often made into a mere fund for replacement of costs that do not exist for petty establishments. For instance, the virtual obligation resting upon a great inn, to keep rooms, with fires burning and other accommodations, baths, servants, &c., always in readiness for summary calls, forms one of the titles under which such an inn charges a higher price for a dinner substantially the same in quality, than a petty inn exonerated from a similar obligation. As much as 10 per cent calculated on a mean proportional between the little inn and the great inn, may perhaps be sequestered for such extra replacements, before the great inn and little one could start fairly in competition. So that undoubtedly, there is room, there is an opening, for such a violent reduction of profits; and, à fortiori, there is room when there happen to be two funds for meeting that reduction-viz. the fund of replacement, (falsely called profits,) pressing exclusively on the one of two competitors; the fund of true profits, accidentally high for both. Yet, supposing such a case actually to occur, eventually it will not disturb any reasonings of Ricardo. After all it is no more than that case of competition so common in England before the era of railways, where two rival coach proprietors ran down the ladder of prices until at length the strife lay on the other side the equation—which of the two competitors should have the honor of giving the more costly dinner gratuitously to their passengers. I have myself travelled by coaches who were rapidly nearing the point at which their contest would be-not for payment to be received, but for payment to be given. How did all such struggles end?