enjoys at present depends on the present condition of this element being maintained, and not being suffered—as it very easily might be—to again become what it was three generations back. ◆³ Let us begin then with taking the amount of commodities produced in this country at the end of the last century, which is at once the most convenient and the most natural period to select; for production was then entering on its present stage of development, and its course from then till now is more or less familiar to us all. We will start therefore with the fact that, about a hundred years ago, our national income, if divided equally amongst the inhabitants of the kingdom, would have yielded to each inhabitant a share of about _fourteen pounds_; so that if we confine ourselves to Great Britain, the population of which was then about _ten millions_, we have a national income of _a hundred and forty million pounds_, or a heap of commodities produced every year to an amount that is indicated by that money value. Let us take then any one of the closing years of the last century, and consider for a moment the causes at work in this island to which the production of such a heap of commodities was due. In general language, these causes have been described already as Human Exertion of a certain definite amount applied to Land of a certain definite extent and quality; but it will now be well to restore to its traditional place the accumulated result of past exertion—namely Capital, and to think of it as a separate cause, according to the usual practice. For everybody knows that at the close of the last century, many sorts of machinery, and stores of all sorts of necessaries, were made and accumulated to assist and maintain Labour; and it is of such things that Capital principally consists. The Capital of Great Britain was at that time about _sixteen hundred million pounds_.[25] We will accordingly say that about a hundred years ago, the Land of this island, the Capital of this island, and the Exertions of a population of _ten million_ people produced together, every twelve months, a heap of commodities worth _a hundred and forty million pounds_. We need not, however, dwell, till later, on these details. For the present our national production at this particular period may be taken to represent the production of wealth generally. [Sidenote ◆1 How much in each case did Land, Capital, and Human Exertion produce respectively?]