ers, he has enriched
the State during his life by the quantity of wealth over which that
claim extends, or has, in other words, rendered so much additional life
possible in the State, of which additional life he bequeaths the
immediate possibility to those whom he invests with his claim. Supposing
him to cancel the claim, he would distribute this possibility of life
among the nation at large.

41. We hitherto consider the Government itself as simply a conservative
power, taking charge of the wealth entrusted to it.

But a Government may be more or less than a conservative power. It may
be either an improving, or destructive one.

If it be an improving power, using all the wealth entrusted to it to the
best advantage, the nation is enriched in root and branch at once, and
the Government is enabled, for every order presented, to return a
quantity of wealth greater than the order was written for, according to
the fructification obtained in the interim. This ability may be either
concealed, in which case the currency does not completely represent the
wealth of the country, or it may be manifested by the continual payment
of the excess of value on each order, in which case there is
(irrespectively, observe, of collateral results afterwards to be
examined) a perpetual rise in the worth of the currency, that is to say,
a fall in the price of all articles represented by it.

42. But if the Government be destructive, or a consuming power, it
becomes unable to return the value received on the presentation of the
order.

This inability may either be concealed by meeting demands to the full,
until it issue in bankruptcy, or in some form of national debt;--or it
may be concealed during oscillatory movements between destructiveness
and productiveness, which result on the whole in stability;--or it may
be manifested by the consistent return of less than value received on
each presented order, in which case there is a consistent fall in the
worth of the currency, or rise in the price of the things represented by
it.

43. Now, if for this conception of a central Government, we substitute
that of a body of persons occupied in industrial pursuits, of whom each
adds in his private capacity to the common store, we at once obtain an
approximation to the actual condition of a civilized mercantile
community, from which approximation we might easily proceed into still
completer analysis. I purpose, however, to arrive at every result by t