wants proportionately diminishes—a most unnatural and dismal theory, and up to the present time quite contrary to human experience. A more reasonable, more natural, and far more hopeful doctrine is that developed by Mr. Carey. He declares it altogether untrue that the most productive lands are those first occupied. On the contrary, in the infancy of society men are wholly unable to subdue the richer soils. These must wait till society becomes more numerous and capable of combination. At first only the thinner soils can be cultivated, on account of the feebleness of the inhabitants. Then, as the latter increase in numbers and in the power and art of combination, the deeper and heavier soils can be subdued, and finally, those which are covered with gigantic forests or rich swamps and vast deposits of vegetable mold. These are many times more productive than the soils first cultivated, and thus for a long period proportionately _increasing_ instead of _diminishing_ returns are found to go with the increase of population. There is scarcely any nation, the inhabitants of which have even now cultivated its most productive soil, and it is likely to be some time yet before the theoretical limit of diminishing returns is reached. The Malthusian doctrine of population is also widely, though not universally rejected, and it is evident that various counteracting principles prevail to affect the law of the uniform increase of population, even if that were demonstrably or approximately true. It is tolerably obvious that the fecundity of the human race diminishes as its development and civilization increase. This, taken in connection with the preceding statements, gives us great grounds, at least, for dispensing with the more forbidding features of what has been called “the dismal science.” Mr. Carey’s theory of the occupancy of land, as he abundantly shows, is consistent, and the only one consistent, not only with the great fundamental principles of association, but with the facts reached in the history of every civilized nation. He also holds that the value of land depends upon the same principle as that of any other value, namely, the labor that has been expended upon it. For, as he shows, there is in general no land that has a value which exceeds that of the labor which has been requisite to bring it and the property related to it into its present condition. VII. _Taxation_ furnishes the compensation paid to the government for its protection. Government is simply the agent of society, and those who are the individual constituents of this agency are entitled to a share of the aggregate product proportionate to the amount and quality of the labor bestowed.