th his time and fortunes, and
perhaps encouraging in himself a love of ease, or some other desire
which he was not entitled to gratify. He would rather go to some new
country, where he might eat in rough independence the rewards of an
actual toil. What is really required, however, is not that men should
leave their own country, but enter upon such pursuits there as may
preserve an equal instead of an unequal distribution of industry
throughout the various fields in which there is something to be done
for the general advantage. Distribution should be less a favourite
department, and production more so. With more producers and fewer
distributers, the waste we have endeavoured to describe would be so
far saved, and there would be fewer miserable people on the earth.

Even amidst all the delusions which prevail upon the subject, it is
curious to observe that there is a strong current towards a
rectification of what is amiss. The interests of the individual, which
produce so much fallacy, after all bring a correction. The active,
original-minded tradesman, seeing that, with an ordinary share of the
entire business of his department, he can scarcely make bread and
butter, bethinks him of setting up a leviathan shop, in which he may
serve the whole town with mercery at a comparatively small profit to
himself, looking to large and frequent returns for his remuneration.
The public, with all its sentimentalisms, never fails to take the
article, quality being equal, at the lowest price, and accordingly the
leviathan dealer thrives, while nearly all the small dealers are
extirpated. Now this is a course of things which produces partial
inconveniences; but its general effect is good. It lessens the cost of
distribution for the consumer, and it decides many to take to new and
more hopeful courses, who otherwise might cling to a branch of
business that had become nearly sapless. Underselling generally has
the same results. When in a trade in which distribution usually costs
43 per cent., one man announces himself as willing to lessen this by
15 or 20 per cent., his conduct is apt to appear unbrotherly and
selfish to the rest; but the fact is, that for goods of any kind to
cost 43 per cent., in mere distribution, is a monstrosity; and he who
can in any measure lessen that cost, will be regarded by the community
as acting in the spirit of a just economy, and as deserving of their
gratitude. These may be considered as the rude struggles