lation be
deteriorated by increase of its numbers, we have evidence of poverty in
its worst influence; and then, to determine whether the nation in its
total may still be justifiably esteemed rich, we must set or weigh, the
number of the poor against that of the rich.

To effect which piece of scale-work, it is of course necessary to
determine, first, who are poor and who are rich; nor this only, but also
how poor and how rich they are. Which will prove a curious
thermometrical investigation; for we shall have to do for gold and for
silver, what we have done for quicksilver;--determine, namely, their
freezing-point, their zero, their temperate and fever-heat points;
finally, their vaporescent point, at which riches, sometimes
explosively, as lately in America, "make to themselves wings:"--and
correspondently, the number of degrees _below_ zero at which poverty,
ceasing to brace with any wholesome cold, burns to the bone.[22]

57. For the performance of these operations, in the strictest sense
scientific, we will first look to the existing so-called "science" of
Political Economy; we will ask it to define for us the comparatively and
superlatively rich, and the comparatively and superlatively poor; and on
its own terms--if any terms it can pronounce--examine, in our prosperous
England, how many rich and how many poor people there are; and whether
the quantity and intensity of the poverty is indeed so overbalanced by
the quantity and intensity of wealth, that we may permit ourselves a
luxurious blindness to it, and call ourselves, complacently, a rich
country. And if we find no clear definition in the existing science, we
will endeavour for ourselves to fix the true degrees of the scale, and
to apply them.[23]

* * * * *

58. QUESTION THIRD. What is the quantity of the store in relation to the
Currency?

We have seen that the real worth of the currency, so far as dependent on
its relation to the magnitude of the store, may vary, within certain
limits, without affecting its worth in exchange. The diminution or
increase of the represented wealth may be unperceived, and the currency
may be taken either for more or less than it is truly worth. Usually it
is taken for much more; and its power in exchange, or credit-power, is
thus increased up to a given strain upon its relation to existing
wealth. This credit-power is of chief importance in the thoughts,
because most sharply present to the