◆¹ It is plain then that, under the complicated system of production to which the wealth of the modern world is due, an equal division of the capital of a country like our own is not the way to secure an equal division of wealth. ◆² The only thing that could conceivably be divided is income. If, however, it is true that capital is, as we have seen it is, in its very nature living, and ceases to be itself the moment that life goes out of it, still more emphatically must the same thing be said of income, for the sake of producing which capital is alone accumulated. Agitators talk of the national income as if it were a dead tree which a statesman like Mr. Gladstone could cut into chips and distribute. It is not like a dead tree; it is like the living column of a fountain, of which every particle is in constant movement, and of which the substance is never for two minutes the same. [Sidenote ◆1 The national income consists of money no more than the national capital does.] [Sidenote ◆2 It consists of other things, or rights to other things;] [Sidenote ◆3 Namely, of perishable goods, durable goods, and services.] ◆¹ Let us examine the details of this income, and the truth of what has been said will be apparent. The total amount, as we have seen, is estimated at _thirteen hundred million pounds_; it is not, however, made up of sovereigns, but of things of which sovereigns are nothing more than the measure. ◆² The true income of the nation and the true income of the individual consist alike of things which are actually consumed or enjoyed; or of legal rights to such things which are accumulated for future exercise. Of these last, which, in other words, are savings, and are estimated to amount to _a hundred and thirty million pounds_ annually, we need not speak here, except to deduct them from the total spent. The total is thus reduced to _eleven hundred and seventy million pounds_—or to things actually consumed or enjoyed, which are valued at that figure. Now what are these things? That is our present question. ◆³ By far the larger part of them comes under the following heads: Food, Clothing, Lodging, Fuel and Lighting, the attendance of Servants, the Defence of the Country and Empire, and the Maintenance of Law and Order. These together represent about _eight hundred million pounds_. Of the remaining _three hundred and seventy million pounds_, about a third is represented by the transport of goods and travelling; and not much more than a quarter of the total income, or about _two hundred and seventy million pounds_, by new furniture, pictures, books, plate, and other miscellaneous articles. The furniture produced annually counts for something like _forty million pounds_; and the new plate for not more than _five hundred thousand pounds_. And now let us examine these things from certain different points of view, and see how in each case they group themselves into different classes.