oy'd, can never be supplied.'"

The _Chrematists_ always represent an increase of national wealth as
necessarily flowing from an augmentation of the riches of the individuals
who compose it. But this is the greatest possible mistake. Great part of
the riches obtained by individuals in a state, so far from being an
addition to the national wealth, is an abstraction from it. The reason is,
that it is made at the expense of others in the same community; it is a
transference of riches from one hand to another, not an addition to their
total amount. Every one sees that the gains of the gamester, the
opera-dancer, the lawyer, are of this description; what they take is taken
from others in the same community. But the magnitude of the gains of
merchants and manufacturers blinds the world to the real nature of their
profits, which, in great part at least, are made at the expense of others
in the state. If the importing merchant makes extravagant gains, he indeed
is enriched; but how is he enriched? In part, at least, he is so, by
impoverishing such of his countrymen as purchase his goods at the
exorbitant price which constitute his profits. If the exporting merchant
or manufacturer drives a gainful trade, it is in part, without doubt,
derived from the industry of foreign nations to whom the export goods are
sold; but it is too often earned at the expense also of the workmen he
employs, who have been compelled by competition, or destitution, to sell
their labour to him at a rate barely sufficient for the support of
existence. We are not to flatter ourselves that the nation is becoming
rich, because the exporters of Irish grain, Paisley shawls, or Manchester
cotton goods, are making fortunes, when the labourers they employ are
earning from sixpence to eightpence a-day only. On the contrary, the
magnitude of the gains of the former is too often only a measure of the
destitution and degradation of the latter.

It is usually considered that it is a sufficient answer to this to
observe, that if riches are thus, from the direction which national
industry has taken, drawn to a distressing extent from one class of the
community to concentrate them in another, a corresponding benefit is
conferred upon other classes, by the increased expenditure which takes
place on the part of those, in whose hands the wealth has accumulated.
There can be no doubt that a certain compensation does take place in this
way; and it is the existence of that com