their
"Applications to Social Philosophy," embodies the results of many
years of study, disputation and thought. It is built upon
foundations laid by Ricardo and Malthus, and has itself formed the
basis of all subsequent work in England. Throughout, it manifests a
belief in the possibility of great social improvement to be
achieved upon individualistic lines. It was begun late in 1845, and
superseded a contemplated work to be called "Ethnology." Mill's
extensive familiarity with the problems of political economy
enabled him to compose the work with rapidity unusual in his
production. Thus, before the end of 1847, the last sheet of the
manuscript was in the hands of the printer, and early in the
following year the treatise was published. Mill died at Avignon on
May 8, 1873.

_I.--The Production of Wealth_

In every department of human affairs, practice long precedes science.
The conception, accordingly, of political economy as a branch of science
is extremely modern; but the subject with which its inquiries are
conversant--wealth--has, in all ages, constituted one of the chief
practical interests of mankind. Everyone has a notion, sufficiently
correct for common purposes, of what is meant by "wealth." Money, being
the instrument of an important public and private purpose, is rightly
regarded as wealth; but everything else which serves any human purpose,
and which nature does not supply gratuitously, is wealth also. Wealth
may be defined as all useful or agreeable things which possess
exchangeable value.

The production of wealth--the extraction of the instruments of human
subsistence and enjoyment from the materials of the globe--is evidently
not an arbitrary thing. It has its necessary conditions.

The requisites of production are two--labour and appropriate natural
objects. Labour is either bodily or mental. Of the other requisite it is
to be remarked that the objects supplied by nature are, except in a few
unimportant cases, only instrumental to human wants after having
undergone some transformations by human exertion.

Nature does more, however, than supply materials; she also supplies
powers. Of natural powers, some are practically unlimited, others
limited in quantity, and much of the economy of society depends on the
limited quantity in which some of the most important natural agents
exist, and more particularly land. As soon as there is not