or father are not wealth. This is sufficiently inconsistent; but this is not all. By this definition of wealth, a very large and most important portion of material commodities is excluded from the denomination. In the business of agriculture, a considerable share of the produce is always destined to be consumed on the spot without being exchanged. The common farmer calculates how much of what he produces must go the support of his own family and working cattle, before he can determine how much he will have to sell. The gentleman farmer supports perhaps a large private establishment upon his farm, lives hospitably, receives numerous guests, and sells comparatively very little. Our feudal ancestors pursued this course in a much greater degree. In fact it was the only way in which they could spend the principal part of the products of their large possessions. The great Earl of Warwick is said to have supported thirty thousand people daily on his different manors; and at an earlier period, the elder Spencer in his petition to Parliament complains of the ravages made by the barons on his estates, and enumerates 20,000 sheep, 1,000 oxen and heifers, 12,000 cows with their breed for two years, 560 cart horses, 2,000 hogs, 10 tons of cyder, together with 600 bacons, 80 carcasses of beef, and 600 muttons in the larder. From this enumeration, Hume observes, “the plain inference is, that the greater part of Spencer’s vast estates, as well as the estates of the other nobility was farmed by the landlord himself, managed by his stewards or bailiffs, and cultivated by his villains.”
Little or none of it was let on lease to husbandmen. Its produce was consumed in rustic hospitality by the baron, or his officers.
Now this large mass of material commodities, increased as it would be by the flax and wool raised, spun, and wove for home consumption, few, it is conceived, would venture to exclude from the denomination of wealth; and yet this produce has neither
