IN our chapter on the Pure Science of Political Economy we found, it may be remembered, that the increase of wealth in general was to be measured by the number of revolutions of the wheel in a given time; and that to this end not one factor only but all the factors - Production, Consumption, the powers of Nature, and the powers of Man - must conspire and keep time and step together. And now we have to see that the same holds good with our Applied Science, where the nations in trade relations with each other have wheels of every variety and degree of disproportion or distortion; some being naturally rich on the productive side, but starved and shrivelled on the consumption side, or vice versa; others fruitful in human invention, but poor in the productive capacity of their lands or mines; others again worked to the limits of their productive capacity by wise political regulations; while others are ruined by intrusive politics clogging the wheel at this or that point of its course, and so on.

But of all these national wheels alike, what we have to observe is that although Consumption is the controlling factor, and the extent of the market, in consequence, the central fact regulating the pace of the other factors and of the wheel as a whole; still, for the greatest possible increase of wealth production, all the other constituent factors which we have enumerated mutt keep up to concert pitch, as it were - the powers of Nature, powers of Man, invention, organization, technical skill, division of labour, etc., - in the same way as if the will and brain power are to be most effective in the ordinary work of life the bodily powers as well must co-operate in the degree to which they are required. And from this it follows that however unevenly balanced a particular national wheel may be, nevertheless if the wheel is running more quickly, and wealth is being increased in consequence, all classes of the community must benefit, however disproportionately, whether it be landlords, capitalists, or wage-earners; while if the wheel running more slowly and the general wealth is decreasing, all classes alike must suffer; thus confirming the uniform experience of the world in all ages, namely that in what are called 'good times' all the sides and factors of industrial activity, and all the classes or persons engaged, tend to flourish together, whereas in 'bad times' all alike tend to be depressed together.

Now I am anxious to lay special emphasis on this point inasmuch as it is entirely opposed to the doctrine of the Orthodox Economy, one of whose cardinal principles, - deduced from its symbol of the rigid stick, - is that if any one of the economic classes into which a nation is divided gets more wealth, the others must get less; that profits, for example, can only rise if wages fall, or rent rise if wages and profits fall, or fall if they rise, and vice versa, and so on; - a quite necessary deduction, I admit, from the point of view of those who figure wealth as a given length of rod divided into several parts, but not so from the point of view which I am in this volume seeking to establish, namely that of a continuously running wheel, where it seems almost to be labouring a platitude to affirm that according to the speed of the running all its parts alike can and indeed must increase or decrease together. For if the increase of wealth depends on the amount of production and consumption in a given time, and this production and consumption are owned and enjoyed by individuals, it follows that the increase of wealth is measured by the rapidity with which it passes through the hands of these individuals, - the quickness of the 'turnover' in the case of the producers, and the quickness with which it comes and goes through the hands of those consuming it; and further as every man on the wheel is, as we have seen, at once a producer and a consumer, - a producer when at work and a consumer in his leisure hours, - it follows that when the speed of the wheel is increased all classes alike will enjoy more wealth, and when it is decreased all alike will enjoy less; or in other words, that the rents of landlords, the profits of capitalists, and the wages of workmen must all rise or fall together; and not, as the orthodox Economists have it, that if one or more of them rise the rest must fall, and vice versa.

I am of course speaking of the laws of distribution of Political Economy as such, whether of the pure or the applied science; but as in actual life the result is often in glaring contradiction to these laws, it is necessary that I should now trace these contradictions back to their source, if I am to make these laws, and especially the law above enunciated, fully satisfactory to my readers as the true and natural final laws of Political Economy.

But first let us enumerate some of the causes which are universally admitted to produce national economic prosperity or adversity, and which, at whatever point they begin to operate, are speedily carried around and propagated to every other part of the wheel. Wealth, for example, is lessened for all classes when the production side of the wheel is obstructed and slowed by bad harvests; or by the destruction of fixed capital - as of machinery by fire, or railways or bridges by war or floods; or of credits by rash speculations or the overproduction of unsaleable commodities; or by the destruction of a part of the working population by war or pestilence; and so on. It is lessened also for all classes if the obstruction first shows itself on the side of Consumption; as, for example, by the heavy taxation of consumable goods; by the extortion of the fruits of labour by rapacious despots or pashas, as in Turkey and in Oriental countries generally; by inadequate wages, as in regimes of slavery or serfdom, or their all-round reduction; or by disproportionate saving over large areas of population, induced by religious fanaticism, panic, the fear of change, or the want of provision for the future; or again by close monopolies pressing to the utmost their illegitimate economic power over wages and prices, and the like.