Page:Manual of Political Economy.djvu/152

Rh origin of all the different kinds of property, and the rights connected therewith, without writing the history of each country; but although it does not pertain to political economy to discuss the origin of the laws of inheritance, or of land tenure, yet the production and distribution of wealth are most materially influenced by particular laws of inheritance, and by different systems of land-tenure: therefore, all such influences must be most carefully considered in a treatise on political economy.

It has been remarked that the principles which regulate the production of wealth have the character of physical laws. The distribution of wealth is much more liable to be controlled by the human will. As an instance, nature supplies the materials out of which all wealth must be created; and the kind and amount of the labour which must be bestowed upon the raw material when it is converted into some manufactured commodity depends upon the properties of the material. Again, the world has been so constituted, that every country possesses land of various degrees of fertility; from this circumstance we deduced that important law which was explained in the last book, and which affirms that the cost of agricultural produce has a tendency to increase as the demand for it advances. The production of wealth is, therefore, influenced by various physical conditions which are independent of human agency; but the distribution of wealth is, of course, entirely subject to human control. Men may regulate the distribution of wealth by any rules or principles of their own creation; and it is the purpose of political economy to explain the consequences which must follow from the rules which may be adopted, or from the principles which may be brought into action. It is, for instance, quite optional with men whether they allow custom or competition to regulate the distribution of wealth, but it is not optional with them to control the effects which follow when a particular custom has been adopted, or when competition has regulated a transaction. In England competition is far more active than in almost any other country, and therefore many of the practical conclusions of political economy must be somewhat modified before they are applied to other countries,