renounced it while proposing others. A collection in three volumes appeared 1836-38 under the title of Études sur les sciences sociales-the first was devoted to Études sur les constitutions des peuples libres, and the two others to Études sur l'économie politique which reproduced the views in the former work almost literally, or at least views inspired by the same doctrine.

Sismondi devoted twenty-three years of his life (from 1818 to 1842) to his Histoire des Français consisting of thirty-one volumes of which one volume contains the tables. He was prevented by death from doing more than twenty-nine volumes, and the thirtieth as well as the general index is written by M. Amédée Renée. It is an excellent work, but it would have gained, especially as regards style, by another revision.

Sismondi, in conjunction with Fix, assisted in the establishment of the Revue nouvelle d'économie

politique, which, in spite of its excellent editors, existed only for a short time (1833-1835).

Sismondi took part throughout his life in the political movements of his country-he was a member of the Assemblée constituante helvétique, and was appointed an active member a few days before his death, when he delivered a speech, though with great difficulty.

Besides those just mentioned, Sismondi produced many works, the most important of which are De la littérature du midi de l'Europe (4 vols. 8vo, 1813), republished in 1819 and 1829; Julia Sévéra ou l'an 420 (a description of the manners and customs of the Gauls of the time of Clovis) (3 vols. 12mo, 1822).-Histoire de la renaissance de la liberté en Italie, de ses progrès, de sa décadence et de sa chute (2 vols. 8vo, 1832).—Histoire de la chute de l'empire romain et du déclin de la civilisation de l'an 250 à l'an 1000 (2 vols. 8vo, 1835).

M. Mignet, in May 1835, and M. Alph. Courtois in October 1892, read notices of Sismondi and his works before the Institut de France, Académie des sciences morales et politiques, the former regarding him as an historian and a man of letters, the latter as an economist. A. C. f. SIXPENCE. English silver coin, first struck in the reign of Edward VI.

The following is a list of the coins of this denomination issued since that time:

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weaker has for a time prevailed. In early times it was customary to reduce to the status of slave all captives taken in war, however noble their birth might be. Alike in the East, in ancient Greece, and in ancient Rome, the system flourished. Of the conditions of slave life in Greece and Rome full accounts have come down to us, but to enter into the details of the status

and its ameliorations is hardly within the scope of this article (for further information see ABOLITIONIST; EMANCIPATION; SERF; VILLEINAGE). The general recognition of slavery as a lawful status was made more and more impossible by the spread of the Christian religion.

Slave Trade.

Nevertheless, in the course of the 16th century, a new and systematic traffic in slaves was inaugurated by Christian nations, and a régime of cultivation based on slavery was continued almost to our own day. The use of negro slaves by the Moors in North Africa, which had existed from time immemorial, probably suggested the idea of negro slaves to the Portuguese and Spaniards. The importation of the African negro into America and the West Indies became a recognised and profitable traffic which quickly fell into the hands of the Dutch, and later, under the ASSIENTO TREATY of 1713, was almost monopolised by the English. The facility of obtaining such labour built up the sugar industry of the West Indies, but placed it on a wasteful and extravagant basis; the same facility opened the mines of Mexico and Peru. To some extent the Spaniards and Dutch also enslaved the American aborigines; but these were inferior labourers, and the Dutch in their greatest American settlements-those in Guiana-found it the best policy to treat the natives as friends and allies. The king of Denmark, in 1792, took the lead in abolishing the traffic in negro slaves, England followed in 1807, and in the same year the United States completed their legislation against the trade. France was not long behind. Spanish government, which had always secretly encouraged the traffic, though interdicted from its actual exercise by the power of the Dutch, were last to give way. It followed naturally from the abolition of the slave trade that slavery itself should be abolished. It is hardly necessary to do more than refer to the emancipation of all slaves in the British colonies in 1833, and to the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1862 which led to civil war the same year. Through the action of Cuba (1886) and Brazil (1887) slavery in nations of European origin has entirely disappeared. Yet even at the present day, amongst highly civilised nations, forms of slave traffic are liable to revive from time to time, and are only checked by a lively public morality.

The

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1 Slave Labour.

It is generally admitted by economists that slave labour is dear labour, extravagant in method as well as brutalising in effect both on the master and slave. This may be fairly adopted as the broad principle based on experience and history; but it is not always of the essence of slave labour; many instances have occurred, both in the West Indies and the southern states of America, where a sort of feudal attachment had sprung up between slaves and the employer. It is possible that this could only take place where a creature of low organisation could not look beyond mere bodily comfort. There are certainly many who know the West Indian negro well who would argue that a negro slave, really well cared for, will do better and more cheerful work than many a free man. This side of the picture has been too often overlooked by writers on slavery; they have naturally revolted from the whole conception of slavery, and detested the thoughtlessness and barbarities which were too often the most conspicuous accompaniments of slave life in the West Indies and the southern states.

So far as the condition of slaves was regulated with harshness, their labour was marked by the following defects :

(1) A low degree of productiveness, because there was no personal inducement to do good work.

(2) Great wastefulness and expense (a) because of the necessity of a disproportionate amount of supervision; (b) because of waste of life and the importation of fresh slaves at a high cost.

It is so generally admitted that "slave labour is of all kinds the most inefficient, and that punishment and authority are inferior to reward and free contract as stimulants to exertion" (Nicholson, Principles, p. 359), that it is hardly necessary to discuss the question fully. It is desirable, however, to point to the particularly fair and impartial summing up by MILL as to the extent to which slave labour in the West Indies may have enabled the organisation of the sugar industry, and been a source of wealth to the employers.

[The literature of slavery is endless, especially the English works during the first half of the 19th century. For an account of it in Greece and Rome see Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities; s.v. "Servus," and Wallon, Histoire de l'Esclavage dans l'antiquité, Paris, 1879, 3 vols. 8vo. For Rome see also Ramsay, Manual of Roman Antiquities, pp. 94-100. For a summary of negro slavery, see Payne, European Colonies, p. 73-5.— Caldecott, English Colonisation and Empire. Lucas, Historical Geography-West Indies, pp. 65 et seq. For economic effects consult Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. iii. ch. ii.-Mill's Principles of Political Economy, bk. ii. ch. v.— Nicholson, Principles, pp. 358-359. Cairnes, Slave Power, 2nd ed. 1863.]

C. A. I.

SLIDING SCALE (WAGES).

Sliding Scale, p. 410; the Standard Wage in the Sliding Scale, p. 411.

SLIDING SCALE (WAGES). In trades where it is recognised that the wages of labour may appropriately vary with the price of the particular product into which the labour enters, as in coal mining, and where there are organisations of capital and labour strong enough to obtain trustworthy statistics and enforce decisions, the sliding scale seems to commend itself as an admirable way of regulating wages. The initial difficulty lies in determining the “standards”; that is, the price which may be considered normal and the wage which may be considered normal when this price rules (see STANDARD RATE (OF WAGES)). The second difficulty lies in fixing the percentage of rise or fall of wage which shall accompany rise or fall of price, in such a way that there shall be an approximately satisfactory division of the added price between labour and the other factors. Usually a certain period of time, from one to six months, is taken as normal, and the average prices and wages ruling during this period are taken as the "standards." The relative percentages of rise or fall are likewise empirically determined. A revision-period of two or three months being decided on, at the end of each revision-period chosen accountants, who have access to the books of the employers, decide whether price has risen or fallen, and, on this finding, intimate an advance or reduction of wages.

For example, when the South Wales sliding scale was established in 1875, the standards were taken by reference to the prices and wages ruling during the year 1869: the revision-period was fixed at six months; and the percentages were 7 rise in wage for every shilling per ton advance in the price of coal. Since then various changes have been made from time to time; at present the standard price is between 7s. 101d. and 8s. Wages alter 83 per cent for every shilling in the rise or fall of coal; the revisionperiod is two months.

The advantages of a sliding scale as, to a certain extent, reconciling the interests of labour and capital, need not be dwelt on. It is, of course, only in a few cases that labour enters so largely and directly into the making of a particular commodity that wages can be regulated by its price. But in coal and iron-stone mining, and in the manufactured iron and steel trades, the application of the sliding scale is easy, and the fact that, for over twenty years, the richest and largest coal-fields in Great Britain, those of South Wales, have held by the system without a break is sufficient proof of its practicability.

The practical difficulties encountered may for the most part be traced to an economic weakness in principle. Granted that labour and capital, as instruments of production, get their value from that realised by their products,

and that the total remuneration of labour may be expected to follow the value of the total product of industry (national dividend), it is questionable if this principle is realised by a system which establishes a direct connection between price of any one kind of labour, and price of any one product. It is evident that the price of coal may be advanced or reduced without much reference to general prosperity, and a particular class of wages may, under a sliding scale, be raised or depressed at the same time that wages generally are taking an opposite direction, in which case the miner obtains a disproportionate share of the national produce. In the long run this would probably work out fairly enough, but it is a common experience that workmen are slow to recognise that, if they get an advance of wages when, irrespective of general prices, the prices of their particular product rise, they must submit to a reduction when the prices of their particular product fall. Where it is customary for employers to take contracts for delivery over long periods at a fixed price, as in shipping orders, in supply for gas works, etc., another form of the same difficulty emerges. In such cases the rise of wages which might be expected from the current newspaper quotations for coal does not come at the end of the revision-period, and may never come at all if prices should fall again before the contracts expire. The men are apt to think that they would have been better off without a slidingscale system. It is difficult, too, to persuade them that their employers, in making the contracts, have not trusted to the sliding scale to keep wages down, particularly if miners in other parts of the country, not under the sliding scale, are enjoying an advance.

The experience of South Wales, however, has proved that when men and masters meet round a table to discuss points of conflict, the difficulties mentioned are found not insuperable.

THE STANDARD WAGE IN THE SLIDING SCALE. The determination of the "standard wage" on a sliding scale is usually empirical, being either the current wage at the time when the scale is established, or the average wage over a period of time taken as normal. Theoretically, the standard wage should be the wage which will keep the remuneration of the particular labour in equilibrium with that of all other kinds of labour of similar skill and conditions in the country; rises or falls therefrom being regarded either as accidental or as tending to balance each other. According as the empirical determination coincides with the theoretical standard, may the sliding scale be expected to work satisfactorily or not (see SLIDING SCALE).

[J. E. C. Munro, Sliding Scales in the Coal Industry-Sliding Scales in the Iron Industry. L. L. Price, Industrial Peace.-Smart, Studies in Economics, No. III.]

W. 8.

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SLIP. When an insurance broker is requested to effect a marine insurance he prepares a brief memorandum (called the slip) of the particulars of the proposed risk, which is presented to the underwriters, who each initial it for the sum he underwrites. The slip forms the agreement between the parties, but by the 30 Vict. c. 23, § 7 and 9, a marine insurance must be embodied in a policy. The slip, therefore, is not enforceable, though it may be given in evidence, if material (see INSURANCE, MARINE).

[Arnould on Marine Insurance, London, 1887.]

J. E. C. M.

SMALL HOLDINGS ACT 1892 (55 & 56 Vict. c. 31). Ever since J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy dwelt so earnestly on the usefulness of PEASANT PROPRIETORS, there has been a growing opinion in favour of an increase in the number of small landowners in England. But such a result is more easily desired than attained. Agricultural estates in England are usually of considerable extent, and their owners are commonly anxious to keep them undiminished. When the owner is disposed to sell, he generally finds it more convenient to sell in considerable quantities. Even when the owner is disposed to sell the land farm by farm, a single farm is usually more than the most thrifty labourer can purchase. He finds it cheaper and altogether more advantageous to hire than to buy. Partly through these obstacles, and partly through the opportunities of a different kind offered by the towns, the ambitious and energetic labourer seldom even thinks of becoming a landed proprietor. Occasionally he becomes a tenant farmer, but though this may be a more comfortable condition, it is not what agrarian reformers have desired for the country. In recent years the decline of agriculture has made many landowners anxious to sell at a low price to any one who would buy land, and the legislature has passed the Small Holdings Act to assist the labouring class to take advantage of this opportunity. Any county council may, and every county council not of a borough must, appoint a committee to consider whether there is cause for putting the act into operation. Any county elector may petition the council to do so, and if his application is in good faith, it must be acceded to. The county council may buy or lease land for small holdings, but has no power of compulsory purchase. It may also execute such works of road-making, draining, and fencing, as can best be carried out before the land has been divided. It may then sell the land in small holdings, that is to say, holdings of more than one acre but not of more than fifty acres, or exceeding an annual value of £50. One-fifth of the purchase-money is to be paid on completion of the contract, and the balance by half-yearly instalments of principal and

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interest spread over fifty years. Moreover, a fourth of the purchase-money may be secured by a perpetual rent-charge. Where the land has only been leased to the county council, or where the person desiring to occupy it cannot afford the purchase-money, it may be let in small holdings of not more than fifteen acres, or £15 annual value. Small holdings are only to be provided for those who mean to cultivate them personally, and must not be used for any but agricultural purposes, or be divided, assigned, or let without the sanction of the county council. The county council may also advance to tenants of small holdings on private estates the money necessary to purchase such holdings. Where small holdings have been provided, the county council may delegate its powers to a committee containing representatives of the parish council in whose jurisdiction the small holdings are situated. The intention of the act is that the county council should not incur any permanent loss in carrying out its provisions. The temporary burthen imposed on the county must not be more than can be met by a rate of 1d. in the pound.

No appreciable effect has been produced at present by this act. A parliamentary return, printed August 1895, showed that up to that time petitions under the act had been presented in rather less than half the counties of England and Scotland, that small holdings had been provided only in some eight or nine counties, and that their total extent was but a few hundred acres. It is impossible to predict whether the act will be more operative in the future.

Montpellier, and Geneva, but stayed longest (a year and a half) at Toulouse, and nearly a year at Paris. The Wealth of Nations was begun at Toulouse; and the author owed to this French visit the knowledge of French industries, finance, and administration so abundantly manifested throughout that work. His pupil's rank, his own rising fame, and, not least, his friendship with David HUME, secured him access to the philosophical, political, and literary celebrities whom he would most have desired to know, including VOLTAIRE, TURGOT, and QUESNAY. Returning to England October 1766, he was back at Kirkcaldy in May 1767, and was little out of it, except to visit Edinburgh and London, till the end of 1773, when he seems to have lived in London till his book was out at the beginning of 1776, the year of Hume's death. Two years afterwards Adam Smith was made commissioner of customs at Edinburgh 1778, and remained there till his death in 1790.

What Adam Smith proposed to achieve was not merely a treatise on moral philosophy and a treatise on economics, but a complete moral and political philosophy, in which the two elements of history and theory were to be closely conjoined. This was his programme as early as 1759, for it stands recorded in the concluding sentences of the Moral Sentiments. It was carried out for ethics in the Moral Sentiments; but Adam Smith found the rest of the programme too large for one book. "I shall in another discourse endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and government and of the different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods of society, not only in what concerns

F. C. M.

SMALL NOTES. See BANK NOTES. SMITH, ADAM (1723-90), was born at Kirkcaldy, Fifeshire, N. B., a few months after the death of his father, who was comptroller of the customs of Kirkcaldy. He attended the gram. mar school there, was barely three years student at Glasgow University (1737-40), and went with a Snell Exhibition in 1740 to Balliol College, Oxford. There he remained till 1746, returned to Kirkcaldy, delivered lectures on literature as well as on economics at Edinburgh 1748-49, and edited the poems of Hamilton of Bangour, published 1749. In 1751 he became professor of logic at Glasgow, and was transferred to the chair of moral philosophy in 1752. He contributed to the short-lived Edinburgh Review 1755, and gained fame outside of Scotland by his Moral Sentiments 1759. Charles Townshend persuaded him to resign his chair in 1763 and become travelling tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch. Under these auspices he visited Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux,

arms, and whatever else is the object of law' (Moral Sentiments, 1st ed., p. 551). In the Wealth of Nations, however, he dealt only with "police, revenue, and arms," in fact, with regulations founded on expediency, while those founded on justice remain almost entirely untouched as well as the general theory of jurisprudence itself. Some light is thrown on his probable lines of treatment by the Glasgow student's Notes of Lectures, edited by Mr. Cannan.

Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments is, in brief, that they are founded, not, as Hume said, on self-interest, but on fellow-feeling-the power one man has of putting himself in the place of another, and judging others by himself, himself by others. On this foundation are built two distinct kinds of moral judgments, judgments of propriety and judgments of merit. To have propriety, an action done by another must show an effect proportioned to the cause, it must not imply a passion greater than I should feel in the circumstances; outbursts of passion must be so toned down that the spectator can enter into them. On the other hand, to have merit, an action must show a tendency to

produce a beneficent effect. In both cases, the judgment depends on a regard for others which is a reflected regard for ourselves. Thus the treatise is, as described in the later title-pages, "an analysis of the principles by which men naturally judge concerning the conduct and character first of their neighbours, and afterwards of themselves." One of the moral virtues, however, stands by itself, namely justice. It begins with fellow-feeling, but its main support is utility. Without justice, society could not remain in existence. We have seen that the Wealth of Nations itself may be said to have grown out of a projected treatise on justice. It is true that there is no reference in the Wealth of Nations to the earlier book, but there is no conflict between them, and we must believe the express statements of the author that they form part of one whole. A belief in the "invisible hand" is common to both, and there is the same belief that, on the whole, "nature" works for human happiness and progress. There is no confusion of happiness with wealth; we are told in the earlier book that happiness is fairly well distributed over all ranks of life rich and poor.

The Wealth of Nations (1776) is the book that has probably secured its author as near an approach to immortality as can fall to any economic writer. following are the main outlines.

The

"Political Economy" is to Adam Smith "an inquiry

into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations." (Title, compared with IV. ix. 807, 1, ed. M'Culloch, 1863) "The annual produce of the land and labour" of a country makes the real wealth and revenue of all its inhabitants" (II. iii. 149, 1). "The annual labour of every nation is the fund which supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes" (I. Introd.). The labour is the "cause" and the commodities, the necessaries and conveniences are the "nature" of the wealth of nations.

The subject is treated in five books. The first is devoted to labour, the second to stock, including capital, the third to the history of the growth of wealth in different nations, the fourth to systems of political economy, and the fifth to the state and its revenue.

Why are savage societies less wealthy than civilised? Mainly because of the division of labour that prevails in the civilised, to the immense increase of the productive powers of the labourers. It improves dexterity, saves time, and leads to inventions. It is due to a "natural propensity" of men to barter and exchange with one another, but it is not itself devised by men, it has grown up of itself. It is not due to difference of talents; on the contrary it creates these. It is limited by the extent of the market, being the more applicable the more the market is widened (I. iii.). It leads, through the growing difficulties of barter, to the invention of money (I. iv.). It is at once the cause and the condition of the formation of stock (I. i. cp. II. i. Introd.).

The mention of money leads to an inquiry into value, and a distinction of value in use from value in exchange. Money is for short periods a good common measure of value in exchange, and corn is a better for long periods; but labour, which was the first price for all things, is the best measure of their value. By "labour" here Adam Smith means the labour purchased by an article, not the labour involved in the making of the article; but he finds it hard to hold by this distinction, and to keep the senses of the words clear. (See I. iv. v.)

What are the "component parts of the prices of commodities" as they are? They are mainly three-wages, profits, and rent (I. vi.). These are "the three original sources of all revenue as well as of all exchangeable value.

All other revenue is ultimately derived from some one or other of these" (I. v. 24, 1). Now there is in every given society or neighbourhood

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an ordinary, average, or customary rate of wages, profits, and rent, deterinined by the circumstances. This rate may be called the "natural" rate, and when goods are sold at such a price as to yield just this rate, then they are sold at their "natural" price. The market price is determined by the demand and supply of the moment, and may be above or below the natural price, but it "gravitates" " towards the natural price (27, 2); if the producers are to carry on their business, the price "over any considerable time" must be equal to the natural price, the price it has really cost to bring the goods to market (I. vii. 25, 26).

In detail, the "natural rate" of wages was at first the whole produce (I. viii. 29, 1), but, after the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, it is part of a contract between employer and employed. The lowest wages would yield only physical necessaries, but the actual customary rate is beyond that point in most countries, especially in England, where the customary rate has happily been rising. How high it is depends on the state of industry in a country, whether progressive, stationary, or declining (I. viii.).

The condition of the labouring poor, that is of the great body of the people, is happiest in the progressive state when society is advancing to the further acquisition of wealth (37, 1, cp. 85, 2). We seem to be in that state at present. On the contrary the rate of profit, reflected in the legal rate of interest, has been falling; "the increase of stock which raises wages tends to lower profit" through the competition of merchants (I. ix. 40). The two can be high together only in the exceptional circumstances of a new colony (42, 1).

If there is a "natural rate" for wages and profits, why is it that different trades are very differently rewarded? The answer is that in the long-established trades, under ordinary conditions, in the same neighbourhood, and apart from interference of government, "the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must be either perfectly equal or continually tending towards equality" (I. x. 45, 2, cp. 52, 2); but this means that the disagreeable, difficult, responsible, precarious, and inconstant employments must have a money reward in proportion to their drawbacks. In the case of profits, the disadvantages that secure compensation are mainly disagreeableness and risk. Profits tend much more surely to a level than wages (50, 2).

Even where liberty exists, there would be causes at work to disturb the balance. But there is not perfect liberty. Corporations, apprenticeships, laws of settlement, restrict competition and hinder the circulation of labour in one department, while endowments increase competition in another. The result is a disturbance of the natural progress of the country, to say nothing of the wrong often done to the labourer by the infringement of his most sacred rights of property, "the property which every man has in his own labour" (I. x. pt. ii., Inequalities occasioned by the policy of Europe).

"Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land," stands on a different footing from wages and profits. The landlord's interest is to leave the tenant no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood"; what remains is the "natural rent of land." It is a monopoly price, and is "not at al. proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give" (xi. 66, 67). If the price of the produce is less than enough to repay the farmer his outgoings with ordinary profits, there will be no surplus for rent. Hence rent enters into price in a different way from wages and profits. "High or low wages and profits are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it" (67, 1). Land on which food is raised always affords a rent, for men multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and so food is always in demand. Such land almost always produces a surplus for rent, though the amount of the surplus will vary (1) with the fertility, (2) with the situation (67, 2). The surplus too is greater for corn lands, and the value of these and their produce is greater also, till the time when with the extension of cultivation the supply of meat from the native pastures becomes insufficient,