II. The causes may be political. By political, I mean such as are brought about by the laws, either the fundamental laws, the constitution, or the minor laws, statutes. Sometimes the laws tend to make the whole nation poor. Such are the laws which force the industry of the people out of the natural channel, restricting commerce, agriculture, manufactures, industry in general. Sometimes this is done by promoting war, by keeping up armies and navies, by putting the destructive work of fighting, or the merely conservative work of ruling, before the creative works of productive industry. France was an example of that a hundred years ago. Spain yet continues such, as she has been for two centuries. Sometimes this is done by hindering the general development of the nation, by retarding education, by forbidding all freedom of thought. The States of the Church are an example of this when compared with Tuscany; all Italy and Austria, when compared with England; Spain, when compared with Germany, France, and Holland. Sometimes this is brought about by keeping up an unnatural institution--as slavery, for example. South Carolina is an instance of this, when compared with Massachusetts. South Carolina has many advantages over us, yet South Carolina is poor while Massachusetts is rich. Sometimes this political action primarily affects only the distribution of wealth, and so makes one class rich and another poor. Such is the case with laws which give all the real estate to the oldest son, laws which allow property to be entailed for a long time or forever, laws which cut men off from the land. These laws at first seem only to make one class rich and the others poor, and merely to affect the distribution of wealth in a nation, but they are unnatural and retard the industry of the people, and diminish their productive power, and make the whole nation less rich. Legislation may favor wealth and not men--property which is accumulated labor, rather than labor which is the power that accumulates property. Such legislation always endangers wealth in the end, lessening its quantity and making its tenure uncertain. Two things may be said of European legislation in general, and especially of English legislation. First, That it has aimed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few and keep it there. Hence it favors primogeniture, entails monopolies of posts of profit and of honor. Second, It has always looked out for the proprietor and his property, and cared little for the man without property; hence it always wanted the price of things high, the wages of men low, and in addition to natural and organic obstacles it continually put social impediments in the poor man's way. In England no son of a laborer could rise to eminence in the law or in medicine, scarcely in the church; no, not even in the army or navy.