The mere increase of national wealth is far from being, in every instance, an addition either to national strength, national security, or national happiness. On the contrary, it is often the greatest possible diminution to the whole three. It is not the increase of wealth, but _its distribution_, which is the great thing to be desired. It is on that that the welfare and happiness of society depend. When wealth, whether in capital or revenue, runs into a few hands--when landed property accumulates in the persons of a knot of territorial magnates, and commerce centres in the warehouse of a limited number of merchant princes, and manufactures in the workshop of a small body of colossal companies or individual master-employers, it is _absolutely certain_ that the great bulk of the people will be in a state of degradation and distress. The reason is, that these huge fortunes have been made by diminishing the cost of production--that is, the wages of labour--to such an extent, as to have enormously and unjustly increased the profits of the stock employed in conducting it. Society, in such circumstances, is in the unstable equilibrium: it rests on the colossal wealth, territorial or commercial, of a few; but it has no hold on the affections or interests of the great majority of the community. It is liable to be overturned by the first shock of adverse fortune. Any serious external disaster, any considerable internal suffering, may at once overturn the whole fabric of society, and expose the wealth of the magnates only as a tempting plunder to the cupidity and recklessness of the destitute classes of society. "There is as much true philosophy as poetry," says Sismondi, "in the well-known lines of Goldsmith-- 'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay! Princes and lords may flourish or may fade-- A breath may make them as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.'"