◆¹ A consideration of these facts will be enough to bring home to anybody the accuracy of the simile of which I made use just now, when I compared the income of the nation to the column thrown up by a fountain. He will see how, like such a column, it is a constant stream of particles, taking its motion from a variety of complicated forces, and how it is a phenomenon of force quite as much as a phenomenon of matter. He will see that it is a living thing, not a dead thing: and that it can no more be distributed by any mechanical division of it, than the labour of a man can be distributed by cutting his limbs to pieces. This simile of the fountain, though accurate, is, like most similes, incomplete. It will, however, serve to introduce us to one peculiarity more by which our national income is distinguished, and which has an even greater significance than any we have yet dealt with. In figuring the national income as the water thrown up by a fountain, we of course suppose its estimated amount or value to be represented by the volume of the water and the height to which it is thrown. What I am anxious now to impress on the attention of the reader is that the height and volume of our national fountain of riches are never quite the same from one year to another; whilst we need not extend our view beyond the limits of one generation to see that they have varied in the most astonishing manner. The height and volume of the fountain are now very nearly double what they were when Mr. Gladstone was in Lord Aberdeen’s Ministry.[20] [Sidenote ◆1 Which are quite independent of the growth of population;] ◆¹ Some readers will perhaps be tempted to say that in this there is nothing wonderful, for it is due to the increase of population. But the increase of population has nothing to do with the matter. It cannot have anything to do with what I am now stating. For when I say that within a certain period the income of the nation has doubled itself, I mean that it has doubled itself in proportion to the population; so that, no matter how many more millions of people there may be in the country now than there were at the beginning of the period in question, there is annually produced for each million of people now nearly twice the income that was produced for each million of people then. Or in other words, an equal division now would give each man nearly double the amount that it would have given him when Mr. Gladstone was beginning to be middle-aged. [Sidenote ◆1 As we may see by comparing the income of this country with the income of others.]