Political Economy for the People

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 install 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.