16 THE NATION AND THE LABOURER.

wealth possessed by the inhabitants, collectively, amongst
those inhabitants. On the other hand, the town
would certainly gain by the avoidance of loss; by
the avoidance of crime and breaches of the law consequent
 upon men being subjected to conditions of
extreme hardship and want; by the avoidance of sickness
and death consequent upon men being subjected to conlitions
 under which proper care of the bodily health and
attention to sanitary rules become impracticable. Smallpox,
 fever, cholera, words of dire import, have an evidently
 very close connection with the subject, and should
have their place in the consideration of the policy of
choosing the laissez-faire plan on the one hand, or the
method authorized and commended by the Science of
Political Economy, on the other.
The very partial development which the subject of
this one subdivision has now received, may suffice to
exemplify the precise nature, as well as indicate the
quantity of work requiring to be done, before
the science of political economy can be considered as
arranged with that degree of imperfect completeness to
which other divisions of knowledge have already
attained. There is, however, no small quantity of good
material prepared as it were for arrangement ; requiring
only to be extricated from its present surroundings and
put into the right place. As in the time of Francis
Bacon, much sound and useful knowledge belonging to
Chemistry and Astronomy, was rendered of no practical
utility because included in the unsound and unscientific
systems of Alchemy and Astrology, so at the present
time, in the manifold writings on subjects belonging to