provision, or having some rational prospect of being able, to support a wife and family in decency and comfort. From those hasty, and most numerous marriages, which bring together two people who are with difficulty able to support themselves, and are living from hand to mouth, the consequences to those individuals must be to rear a pauper family, and to struggle continually with want and wretchedness, without any of the comforts, and scarcely the necessaries of life; whilst the consequences to the community are, they bring into the market a surplus population, who must, as a matter of course, depress the rate of wages by increasing the supply to the labor market. It is necessary that all should understand that competition is, and can be the only means of regulating the value of every commodity, whether corn, or manufactured goods, or labor, or capital. The attempts to furnish substitutes for the universal application of that principle, are utterly artificial and must fail. All schemes for adjusting the price of commodities or the rate of wages, when pushed to their full extent, will be found either unavailing or requiring a monopoly, a system which the sense of the present day has entirely exploded. Mr. Morrison, in his chapter on Supply, Demand, and Competition, thus describes, with brevity and clearness, the mode in which competition gives the fair, and at the same time, the highest price for the marketable article, whilst doing justice to the buyer :

"When a number of individuals are competing against one another for the sale of some commodity, which they are desirous of disposing of, the market price to which their competition tends to bring the commodity, is that rate at which the whole of the commodity offered for sale, will absorb the whole of the funds, with which buyers are there and then able and willing to purchase it. However needy and eager the sellers may be, their competition will not reduce the price below this rate, unless temporarily and accidentally. For if a lower rate were established for a time, the whole of the commodity would be paid for only with a part of the funds, which by the supposition are seeking for investment in it, and the owner of the surplus funds would in their desire to obtain a share of the commodity, bid against the rest, and so raise the price. Of course, the case might be different if there were only one buyer, or if all the buyers should combine together, and strictly adhere to their combination. In either of these cases, the single buyer, or the combination of buyers, might

offer such a price as would enable them to command the whole of the commodity with a part of their funds; and the sellers might thus if less skilful than their customer, or more pressed to sell than he was anxious to buy, be forced to sell at a lower rate than the ordinary law of competition would produce. But as this cannot occur where the number of buyers, as well as of sellers of any commodity is great, and this is the case in all the important commercial dealings of large and civilized countries, the market price of commodities is in them determined by the natural law of competition.

"The market rate which competition in this way tends to establish, is the highest rate which it is from the nature of the case possible for the sellers to receive for the commodity, at the particular time and place. For at that rate as has been seen, all the funds applicable to the purchase of the commodity, will be exhausted in paying for the whole quantity of it which is for sale. If any higher price could be fixed by the prevention of competition, and the substitution of some other mode of regulating prices, all the funds would be exhausted in paying for a part of the commodity, and the possessors of the remainder would receive nothing at all. There would be no remedy for this, but either an increase of the funds, or a diminution of the quantity of the commodity, proportional to the supposed elevation of the rates. But if such an increase of that one, or diminution of the other were effected, competition would determine just the same elevation of the rate, without the necessity for any regulation at all. The market rate established by competition is therefore necessarily the highest rate, which the sellers could obtain under the circumstances by any mode of dealing."*

Every observation, every word in the passage here quoted, applies to labor. Rates arbitrarily fixed by Governments, (if Governments should be so unwise as to interfere,) or by combinations of the working class, if above that which competition fixes, must throw a greater or lesser number out of employment as the funds at the increased rate are insufficient to pay all. An ignorance of this great fundamental truth, that competition must regulate the prices of labor and commodities, independent of the fact, that on one side there may be ignorance and want, and on the other, intelligence and capital, is the cause of so much deep-rooted and mischievous prejudice, of so many fallacious and worthless, Page 14.

nay more, dangerous theories, that we cannot part from it without quoting a passage from Thiers' History of the French Revolution, descriptive of the ultimate futility of Government intervention, and the troublesome and ruinous devices that must be resorted to, every one step proving useless without another, the second without a third, and where the interference is to stop, impossible to say. The experiment was made under the most favorable circumstances, at a time when power was in the hands of those who legislated for the humbler classes, and as they professed, for them only; and who were ready to sacrifice any party or section of the community, no matter whether justly or unjustly, whether honestly or otherwise, for the benefit of the masses. The extraordinary issue of assignats, or billets de banque, charged on the confiscated estates of the church, and of the emigrés, to defray the expenses of the State, in connection with the fears of a counter revolution, or a restoration by foreign interference, had caused a terrible depreciation in this class of paper money. The endeavours of the government to make them pass at any thing like par were vain; and as the people were complaining that the necessaries of life could not be procured notwithstanding the fruitful harvest of the preceding year, with these assignats (which were a legal tender,) and that according to their notions the speculators and forestallers were the only cause of the difficulty, which was really owing to the worthlessness of the assignats, and the want of confidence and credit, the Directory affixed a maximum on the price of corn; the commune of Paris adding its notice regulations to the decrees of the convention had moreover regulated the distribution of bread at the bakers' shops. No one was allowed to go to them without safety tickets; on these tickets delivered by the Revolutionary Committee, was specified the quantity of bread which the bearers had a right to ask for, and this quantity was proportionate to the number of persons of which each family was composed; even the method of being served at the bakers shops was regulated. M. Thiers writes:

"It had therefore been absolutely necessary, in spite of the Girondins, who had given excellent reasons, deduced from the ordinary economy of things, to fix a maximum for grain. The greatest hardship for the lower classes is the want of bread. The crops were not deficient, but the farmers who would not confront the tumults of the markets, or sell their corn at the rate of the assignats, kept away with their goods. The little corn that did appear was quickly bought up by the communes and by individuals induced by fear to

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lay in stocks of provisions. The dearth was more severely felt in Paris than in any town in France, because the supply of that immense city was more difficult, because its markets were more tumultuous, and the farmers were more afraid to attend them. On the 3rd and 4th of May, the Convention could not help passing a decree, by which all farmers and corn-dealers were obliged to declare the quantity of corn in their possession; to thresh out what was still in ear; to carry it to the markets, and to the markets only; to sell it at a mean price fixed by each commune according to the prices which had prevailed between the 1st of January and the 1st of May. No person was allowed to lay in a supply for more than a month those who sold or bought at a price above the maximum, or who made false declarations, were to be punished with confiscation, and a fine of three hundred to one thousand francs. Domiciliary visits were ordered, to ascertain the truth. Lastly, a statement of all the declarations was to be sent by the municipalities to the minister of the interior, in order to furnish a general statistical survey of the supplies of France. Meanwhile the rise in the price of articles of consumption, which had led to the maximum, was general for all commodities of the first necessity. Butchers' meat, vegetables, fruit, groceries, candles, malt liquors, articles of clothing, and shoe leather, had all risen in price, in proportion as assignats had fallen and the populace were daily more and more bent on finding forestallers where there were only dealers who refused a money that had lost its value.

It was therefore requisite to do for commodities in general, what had been already done in regard to corn. A decree was issued which placed forestalling among the number of capital crimes. He was considered a forestaller who should withhold from circulation commodities of first necessity without placing them publicly on sale. The means of execution of such a decree were necessarily inquisitorial and vexatious. Every dealer was required to render a statement of the stock in his possession. These declarations were to be verified by means of domiciliary visits. Any fraud was, like the crime itself, to be punished with death. Commissioners appointed by the communes were authorized to inspect the invoices, and from these invoices to fix a price, which, while it left a moderate profit to the dealer, should not exceed the means of the people. If, however, added the decree, the high price of the invoices should render it impossible for the dealers to make any profit, the sale must nevertheless take place at such a price as the purchaser could afford. Thus in this decree, as in that which ordered a declaration respecting corn and a maximum,the legislature left to the communes the task of fixing the prices according to the state of things in each locality. It was soon led to generalize these measures still more, and in generalizing them more to render them more violent.

We have already seen how the discredit of the assignats and the increased price of commodities had led to the decree of the maximum, for the purpose of restoring the balance between merchandize and money. The first effect of this maximum had been most disastrous, and had occasioned the shutting up of a great number of shops. By establishing a tariff for articles of primary necessity, the

government had reached only those goods which had been delivered to the retail dealer and were ready to pass from the hands of the latter into those of the consumer. But the retailer who had bought them of the wholesale dealer before the maximum, and at a higher price than that of the new tariff suffered enormous losses, and complained bitterly. Even when he had bought after the maximum, the loss sustained by him was not the less. In fact, in the tariff of commodities called goods of primary necessity, they were not specified till wrought and ready to be consumed; and it was not till they had arrived at this latter state that their price was fixed But it was not said what price they should bear in their raw form, what price should be paid to the workmen who wrought them, to the carrier or navigator who transported them; consequently, the retailer who was obliged to sell to the consumer according to the tariff, and who could not treat with the workman, the manufacturer, the wholesale dealer, according to that same tariff, could not possibly continue so disadvantageous a trade. Most of the tradesmen shut up their shops or evaded the law by fraud. They sold only goods of the worst quality at the maximum, and reserved the best for those who came secretly to pay for them at their proper value— forced means leads to forced means, as we have elsewhere observed. In the first laws attention had been paid only to wrought goods. It was now necessary to consider the subject of the raw material, nay the idea of seizing the raw material, and the workman, for the account of the government, began to float in some minds. It is a formidable obligation that of doing violence to nature, and attempting to regulate all her movements. The commune and the convention were obliged to take new measures, each, according to its respective competence.

The commune of Paris obliged every dealer to declare the quantity of goods in hand, the orders which he had given to procure more, and the expectations which he had of their arrival. Every shopkeeper who had been in business for a year, and either relinquished it or suffered it to languish, was declared suspected, and imprisoned as such. To prevent the confusion and the accumulation arising from an anxiety to lay in a stock, the commune also decided that the consumer should apply only to the retailer, and the retailer to the wholesale dealer, and it fixed the quantities which each should be allowed to order. Thus, the retail grocer could not order more than twenty-five pounds of sugar at a time, of the wholesale dealer; and the tavern-keeper not more than twelve. It was the revolutionary committees that delivered the tickets for purchasing, and fixed the quantities. The commune did not confine itself to these regulations. As the throng about the doors of the bakers still continued the same, as there was still the same tumult there, and as many people were waiting part of the night to be served, it was decided at the suggestion of Chaumette, that those who had come last should be first served, but this regulation diminished neither the tumult nor eagerness of the customers....The convention urged to reform the law of the maximum, devised a new one which went back to the raw material. It required that a statement should be made out of the cost price of goods in 1790, on the spot where they were produced. To this