talent; tout talent suppose une étude préalable; et aucune étude ne peut avoir lieu sans des avances.” He applies this to the advice of the physician, the consultation of the lawyer, and the song of the musician, and then expressly states that, “le talent d’un fonctionnaire public lui-même est un capital accumulé.”* Now if it be true that the talents which produce music and good administrations are accumulated capitals, on what possible ground can it be asserted that musicians and employés, who can alone be the teachers of their arts to others, do not increase the national capital, particularly as the rapid consumption of the products of such capitals, so far from impeding accumulation, tends greatly to facilitate, it, and to increase the number and skill of the capitalists. M. Say, in a note to the second part of M. Storch’s Cours d’Economie Politique, adverting to those objects which he thinks should be considered as riches, observes, “que, ce n’est que la possibilité de les déterminer, de connaître par conséquent quand, et comment les biens augmentent, quand et comment ils diminuent, et dans quelles proportions ils se distribuent qui a fait de l’économie politique une science positive qui a ses expériences, et fait connaître des resultats.”†
Nothing can be more just than this. It is the main criterion to which, with a view to useful and practical conclusions, I should wish to refer. But M. Say, both in the last edition of his Traité d’Economie Politique, and still later in his Cours Complet‡ includes under the name of riches, all talents, natural and acquired; and I would ask in reference to such qualities, how it is possible to ascertain, “quand et comment ils augmentent, quand et comment ils diminuent, et dans quelles proportions ils se distribuent.” In every improved country there must always be a vast mass of natural and acquired talents, which are never made the subject of regular exchange or valuation; and of this
