d, where the wages of field
labour are 6d. a-day, and Poland, where they are 3d., should be the
richest nations in the world, whereas they are notoriously the poorest.
The real measure of national wealth is to be found, not in the excess of
production above the consumption employed in it, but in the means of
comfortable livelihood which their industry affords to the _whole_ classes
of the community; and that is only to be attained where wealth is very
generally distributed.

The mere increase of national wealth is far from being, in every instance,
an addition either to national strength, national security, or national
happiness. On the contrary, it is often the greatest possible diminution
to the whole three. It is not the increase of wealth, but _its
distribution_, which is the great thing to be desired. It is on that that
the welfare and happiness of society depend. When wealth, whether in
capital or revenue, runs into a few hands--when landed property
accumulates in the persons of a knot of territorial magnates, and commerce
centres in the warehouse of a limited number of merchant princes, and
manufactures in the workshop of a small body of colossal companies or
individual master-employers, it is _absolutely certain_ that the great
bulk of the people will be in a state of degradation and distress. The
reason is, that these huge fortunes have been made by diminishing the cost
of production--that is, the wages of labour--to such an extent, as to have
enormously and unjustly increased the profits of the stock employed in
conducting it. Society, in such circumstances, is in the unstable
equilibrium: it rests on the colossal wealth, territorial or commercial,
of a few; but it has no hold on the affections or interests of the great
majority of the community. It is liable to be overturned by the first
shock of adverse fortune. Any serious external disaster, any considerable
internal suffering, may at once overturn the whole fabric of society, and
expose the wealth of the magnates only as a tempting plunder to the
cupidity and recklessness of the destitute classes of society. "There is
as much true philosophy as poetry," says Sismondi, "in the well-known
lines of Goldsmith--

'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay!
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade--
A breath may make them as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destr