The whole of the incomes of every person in a society, in whatever way they may be actually employed, might be employed, as far as they would go, directly in the support of man. Consequently, according to the definitions of Mr. Macculloch, all incomes are capital. But he is not satisfied even with this very unusually-extended meaning of the term. He can trace a resemblance between a working man and a working horse, and is, consequently, led to say, “However extended the sense previously attached to the term capital may at first sight appear, I am satisfied that it ought to be interpreted still more comprehensively. Instead of understanding by capital all that portion of the produce of industry extrinsic to man, which may be applicable to his support, and to the facilitating of production, there does not seem to be any good reason why man himself should not, and very many why he should, be considered as forming a part of the national capital. Man is as much the produce of labour as any of the machines constructed by his agency; and it appears to us, that in all economical investigations he ought to be considered in precisely the same point of view.”[35] That there is some resemblance between a working man and a working horse cannot for a moment be doubted; but is that sufficient reason why they should be confounded together under the name of capital? The question is not whether there is a partial resemblance between these two objects, but whether there is a characteristic difference; and surely there is a sufficient distinction in all economical investigations between a free man, and the horse, the machine, or the food which he uses, to warrant a different designation, especially when one of the greatest objects of all economical investigations, and certainly the most worthy, has been how to secure at all times a full sufficiency of the produce of industry extrinsic to man as compared with man himself. It has been hitherto usual to say, that the happiness of the labouring classes of society depends chiefly upon the rate at which the capital of the country increases, compared with its population; but if the capital of the country includes its population, there is no meaning in the statement. Yet hardly any writer that I know of has more frequently made this statement than Mr. Macculloch himself. Nothing, indeed, can show more strikingly the extreme difficulty of maintaining consistently new and unusual definitions, than the frequency with which he seems to be compelled to use terms in their old and accustomed sense, notwithstanding the different definitions which he has given of them.