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• Preface.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In the First Volume.
• Life In the Wilds.
• Chapter I.: What Have They Left Us?
• Chapter II.: What Is Wealth?
• Chapter III.: Earn Your Bread Before You Eat It.
• Chapter IV.: Hand-work and Head-work.
• Chapter V.: Heart-work.
• Chapter VI.: Many Hands Make Quick Work.
• Chapter VII.: Getting Up In the World.
• Chapter VIII.: A Bright Sunset.
• Chapter IX.: Signs of the Times.
• Hill and the Valley.
• Chapter I.: Every Man His Whim.
• Chapter II.: Much May Come of Little.
• Chapter III.: The Harm of a Whim.
• Chapter IV.: Prosperity.
• Chapter V.: How to Use Prosperity.
• Chapter VI.: Disasters.
• Chapter VII.: Discontents.
• Chapter VIII.: Uproar.
• Chapter IX.: All Quiet Again.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.
• Brooke and Brooke Farm.
• Chapter I.: Brooke and Its Politicians.
• Chapter II.: George Gray's Way of Living.
• Chapter III.: George Gray In the Way to Prosper.
• Chapter IV.: A Conversation Under the Limes.
• Chapter V.: Past, Present, and to Come.
• Chapter VI.: Sergeant Rayne's Story.
• Chapter VII.: Great Changes At Brooke.
• Chapter VIII.: Small Farming.
• Chapter IX.: Great Joy At Brooke.
• Chapter X.: What Joe Harper Saw Abroad.
• Chapter XI.: What Must Come At Last.
• Chapter XII.: Prosperity to Brooke!
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.

Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume.

We have not advanced to any new principles of the science of Political Economy in the present volume. We have only exemplified some of the principles laid down in our last volume by illustrations of certain truths respecting a few particular modes of accumulating and applying Capital. These truths may be arranged as follows:

Production being the great end in the employment of Labour and Capital, that application of both which secures the largest production is the best.

Large capitals well managed, produce in a larger proportion than small.

In its application to land, for instance, a large capital employs new powers of production, —as in the cultivation of wastes;

.... enables its owner to wait for ample but distant returns,—as in planting;

.... facilitates the division of labour;

............the succession of crops, or division of time;

............reproduction, by economizing the investment of fixed capital;

............the economy of convertible husbandry;

............the improvement of soils by manuring, irrigation, &c.;

............the improvement of implements of husbandry;

............the improvement of breeds of live stock.

Large capitals also provide

for the prevention of famine, by furnishing a variety of food; and for the regular supply of the market, by enabling capitalists to wait for their returns.

Large capitals are therefore preferable to an equal aggregate amount of small capitals, for two reasons; viz.

they occasion a large production in proportion; and they promote, by means peculiar to themselves, the general safety and convenience.

Capitals may, however, be too large. They are so when they become disproportioned to the managing power.

The interest of capitalists best determines the extent of capital; and any interference of the law is therefore unnecessary.

The interference of the law is injurious; as may be seen by the tendency of the law of Succession in France to divide properties too far, and of the law of Primogeniture in England to consolidate them too extensively.

The increase of agricultural capital provides a fund for the employment of manufacturing and commercial, as well as agricultural, labour.

The interests of the manufacturing and agricultural classes are therefore not opposed to each other, but closely allied.

LONDON:
printed by william clowes,
Stanford Street.