Such are the principles of exchangeable value which we perceive have their foundation in the innate desires and propensities of man. Let us now see their application to the three great sources of national wealth: the Rent of Land, the Wages of Labor, and the Profits of Capital - and first of Rent.

In the infancy of society, when population was thin, land, however productive, was, from its abundance, like air, light, or water, without exchangeable value, and was the common property of the little tribe or community which chanced to occupy it. In the progressive increase of population, according to the great law of all animated nature, it ultimately became private property, and, from its increased difficulty of attainment, together with its utility, it acquired exchangeable value, which gradually augmented until it yielded a rich return in rent. The sources and modes of this gradual advancement in value will be better understood by attending to the progress of society in its different stages of civilization.

In the first of these stages, according both to present observation and the annals of history, men lived in very small communities, which were banded together more by the social instinct than by the force of government or of laws; and their sustenance was derived from the wild game of the forest, or its spontaneous fruits, such as we now see in the North American Indians, in the savage inhabitants of Southern Africa, of Australia, or of New Zealand; and such were the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain, and other portions of the old world. Though each of these communities may have had its peculiarities, by reason of a diversity of physical circumstances, or from accidental circumstances, the aborigines of this continent, in their principal features, may be considered the type of all the rest.

The sole occupations of the Indian are hunting and war, which he pursues at intervals with indefatigable ardor; but, when not so excited, he passes his time in smoking, or in listless inactivity. His mental powers, concentrated on few objects, are little developed, but the qualities of his heart are in full vigor. Sometimes warm in his attachments, but still more implacable in his resentments, he is occasionally generous, but always vindictive and cruel. He discharges the rites of hospitality with scrupulous exactness, according to his notions, and he may even instal his guest into the place of the relative he has lost. He commonly shows a high sense of justice in his little dealings, but yet more by enforcing the laws of retaliation against others, and even by submitting himself in turn to its hardest decrees. He exhibits great courage in braving danger, and yet more in enduring pain when subjected to torture by his enemies; but when tempted by pleasure, he is incapable of self-command. He is thus by turns a hero, a sot, a glutton, and sometimes a polygamist. To his children he is over-indulgent; is respectful to age; but the women he treats as drudges and slaves, to which treatment, however, they submit rather with pride than a sense of degradation.

Though, in this stage of society, no individual had an exclusive right to any portion of the soil, except during his temporary occupation of it, yet the whole community claimed property in the large district which constituted their hunting-ground, and which had its boundaries assigned by rivers, mountains, and other physical marks. These claims were firmly maintained, and constituted the most frequent cause of war with neighboring tribes. They have always been recognized by the United States, and have been the foundation of many a treaty of cession by the Indians for large pecuniary considerations.

In this, the hunter state, the means of subsistence being wholly or principally dependent on the chase, are very precarious; and there are probably more instances of extreme suffering from the want of food among the sequestered tribes of Indians than are to be found in the densest districts of China. From the precariousness of subsistence among these tribes, together with the exterminating character of their wars, population increases slowly with them, and, occasionally, not at all. The same circumstances, but for the approach of the white race, might have postponed, to an indefinite period, the transition of the Indian race to a higher stage of social existence. The density of population of hunter tribes is commonly rated at one person to the square mile, or G40 acres; but that of the Indians within the United States has been more nearly one to 1000 acres.

Tribes, in this stage of civilization, living on the coast, or prolific lakes and rivers, sometimes derive their principal subsistence from fish. Such tribes have nearly the same characteristics as those who live by hunting, except, perhaps, that their supplies of food are less precarious. Here began the noble art of navigation, by which the rude canoe has, after a thousand improvements, grown to the floating fortress of one hundred guns, the magnificent merchant ship, and lastly, the steamer which flies over the water like a bird through the air.

The Pastoral state is generally regarded as the second stage of civilization. It probably originated in this way: when the population of a hunter tribe had continued to increase, notwithstanding its inherent obstacles, and it pressed more heavily on the means of subsistence, the sagacity of some individual, or other fortunate accident, first showed the practicability of taming and domesticating some of the wild animals of the forest, by which man would provide for himself a farther supply of food. The first instance would soon be followed by others, until the practice of breeding and rearing animals whose flesh, or milk, or skins afforded him sustenance or raiment, became the general occupation of all. In this way, the means of subsistence ceased to be precarious, and could support ten, or perhaps twenty times as many as the same district could support by hunting.

By some such process, man won from their original wildness the cow, the sheep, the goat, the hog; and of birds, that most useful species which supplies us with eggs and chickens, and which, from its excellence, is called "the fowl," ducks, and geese, to which America has added the turkey, furnishing man with food equally palatable and nourishing; and, to serve other useful purposes, the camel, the horse, the elephant, and the dog, which prefers the society of man to that of his own species, and which remains faithful to him when deserted by all other friends.

But every country is not adapted to the pastoral state. Some regions are not naturally productive of grass, or not in sufficient quantity; and man, in his social progress, must pass from the hunter state to the agricultural. Such must have been the destiny of the aborigines of North America, which is everywhere, except in the prairies of the West, covered with a dense forest. The Indians had accordingly made more advances towards the agricultural than the pastoral state, as they had succeeded in taming no bird or beast, but had their little patches of tobacco, maize, and cymlings.*

The nations and tribes of Western Asia, spoken of in the five books of Moses, were essentially pastoral. Abraham is mentioned as rich in "cattle, silver, and in gold;" and Lot, his rival in wealth and power, has "flocks, and herds, and tents;" and when the Egyptians were suffering from a drought, Joseph gave them bread in exchange for "horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses." So, when the laws against the invasion of property are stated, "oxen, asses, and sheep" hold a conspicuous place.

In the pastoral state, the character of the population undergoes a great change. From being warlike it has become pacific, though not unfit for war in defence of its rights, and sometimes even for conquest. With manners more humane and civilized, the mental powers are also farther developed by more frequent and varied exercise. Men now had leisure for the simpler manufactures, for which they had new materials and new incentives; and here, without doubt, wool was first spun and woven. Exchanges, which had been rare in the hunter state, where everything is consumed as soon as produced, naturally increased with the means. By the greater facility and more abundant supply of subsistence thus afforded, population gradually grew to ten or twenty times what it had been in the hunter state.

* The "squashes" of the Northern States.

But, soon or late, the members of a community would reach the level first of easy, then of difficult subsistence; when the increased demand for food would stimulate to new efforts for a further supply, which could be furnished only by agriculture. The land, indeed, had always made some small direct contribution of human aliment, but the quantity could be greatly multiplied, partly by breaking up and loosening the soil, and partly by ridding it of all noxious or useless plants, and limiting its products exclusively to those articles which afford sustenance to man.

Before the introduction of the useful arts, and especially that of making iron for axes, spades, ploughs, and other tools, the progress of agriculture would be slow. Without those efficient aids, the earth could be rid of its trees and shrubs only by the imperfect process of fire, and be turned up by still inferior substitutes for iron. But after a community had, by-means of its own invention, or the exchanges of commerce, acquired the use of this metal, population would obtain a new spring, and be gradually so augmented, that the square mile which had once afforded precarious subsistence to a single savage might, under favorable circumstances, afford an easier and better one to two or three hundred, or even more; for the highest degree of density of numbers which the soil can support has never yet been reached. The growing value of land, and of its annual returns, in this third and last stage of society, we will now proceed to consider.