and also subsistence, fuel, light, and clothing, for the seven months in which he has no constant work. To save this requires more steadiness and forethought than is found among the labouring class here, and they die not perhaps directly from starvation, but indirectly from the effects of extreme destitution, or of desperate intoxication induced by misery. The great number of well dressed people you see in the streets seems opposed to the conclusion that the mass of the population of Stockholm is in a declining state, and sunk in misery. But a population increases or diminishes as it is well or ill off and the statistical fact that the capital of the country does not breed up to its losses by death, but with all the accession of new inhabitants from the country has a deficit yearly in its population, proves that it is not in a flourishing condition. The number of well dressed people proves only that one class is well off; and if supported by the public, is by far too numerous for the well being of the country. The Swede also has a remarkable fondness for dress; and dresses well, converses well, dances well, has ease and elegance about him in stations in which in other countries people would be totally devoid of such accomplishments. This is the influence of a court in a small city. To appear well is their law of existence. I account in this way for the discrepancy of great poverty and distress, and a declining condition, established by statistical facts, amidst finery and apparent luxury of clothing in the streets of this city. THE CHAPTER III. EXERCISE OF INDUSTRY ABROAD IS PROPERTY. REASONS. EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. - ON THE CONTINENT. IN SWEDEN. BRITAIN THE ONLY EXCEPTION. -PROBABLE RESULTS.-M. CRUZENSTOLPE. - HIS TRIAL. -- AGITATION OF STOCKHOLM. TUMULTS. COUNT FERSEN'S MURDER IN 1810, CONNIVED AT. CHARLES XIII.'S CHARACTER. WAR BETWEEN THE FERIODICAL - June. IN the construction of society abroad, a principle scarcely known in our social arrangements has the most important influence on the moral and physical condition of the middle class. In our social structure, the only kinds of property acknowledged and protected by law, are land and the produce of industry; or what is termed real and personal property. Abroad there is a third species of property as fully established and protected by the laws and institutions of society as the other two. The exercise of industry is a property as well as its produce. It is not merely the table, the spade, the loaf of bread, or the money acquired by the making or dealing in these articles, that is property secured by law to the individual whose industry has produced them; but the exercise of this industry, as a carpenter, smith, baker, or mer chant, is also a property vested in particular individuals or classes of the community. The principle of this appropriation by a part of the community, of what we in our social state consider the common right of every individual to the free exercise of his own industry, has not been sufficiently examined by political economists. It is usually treated of as a barbarous remnant of the institutions of the middle ages, in which incorporations of the crafts or trades with privileges, powers, and internal government, were encouraged in the towns, as a counterpoise and check to the powers of the nobles. But in every age and country this appropriation seems to have influenced the laws and institutions of society. The principle may be traced in the castes of the population of India, in the division of ancient Rome, and of all Eastern cities into quarters for different trades, in the social arrangements of the South Sea islanders, of the Esquimeaux, and of the most uncivilised tribes, acknowledging indeed scarcely any other kind of property. It must have some more deeply seated root than in accidental institutions prolonged by the corporation spirit of monoply, beyond the existence of the causes which gave them birth. The combinations of workmen, or trades unions of the present day, prove the existence of an obscure feeling even among us, that there is or should be a right of property to the exercise of industry and acquired skill. The subject is curious. Suppose a hundred emigrants landed upon an island in the mouth of the Swan river, and that five or six betook themselves to the making of clothes and hatchets for the rest, would it be very absurd in principle if the five or six were to say to the others, "We have all landed in this little world of ours, equal in our natural rights-no man has a better right than another to appropriate to himself any part of the land or its produce, and if we give up to you our natural right to the land by which you live, it is but just that you should give up to us your natural right to the exercise of the kinds of industry by which we live -the crafts of the blacksmith and tailor-each kind of property being of course subject to such conditions, regulations, or limitations as our government may find necessary for the general good of our community." It seems difficult to deny that labour may be property upon the same principle that land is property-the expediency of such appropriation for the general good of society. This expediency is admitted in the practice of all European countries except Great Britain. She formally abrogated all restraints upon the free exercise of industry by the act of 1624; but in the social structure of Europe she is in this the exception, not the rule; and may in reality be considered as in the middle of a great experiment, of which the ultimate effects upon the well-being of her community, and their physical and moral condition are not yet developed. The appropriation of the exercise of industry by laws and institutions has evidently been resorted to in every country, from the expediency of checking the undue increase of population beyond employ ment, in those classes not directly engaged in the production of food. It may be doubted whether any European country, except Britain, be physically in the situation to throw off in its domestic policy, this or some equivalent restraint upon local or partial excess of population. The principles of political economy are not like those of morality or justice, the same for all societies in all situations. The position of Britain on the globe, her dense population, her small fertile and level surface, her facilities of land and water carriage, her firepower, water-power, and her climate interrupting less the course of daily work by extremes of heat or cold than any in Europe, make those principles of political economy on which she may act, not necessarily adapted for, or safe for other countries. Prussia seemed disposed to enter the lists as a manufacturing and commercial country; but has taken the alarm, and replaced some of those restrictions of the old system upon the freedom of trade which she had relaxed. Sweden and Britain are the two extreme cases of the opposite principles, the appropriation of, and the entire freedom of the exercise of industry. Without venturing to reason about which may be the best for the well-being of a community, I shall merely state the facts and observations relative to this subject that fall in my way in this country; and the more fully, because the same system prevails in the rest of Europe. In Sweden, and I believe over all the Continent, every trade or branch of industry that can be thought of, excepting perhaps common labour in G |