and it therefore has no exchange value. Water very generally can be obtained in an unlimited quantity, and therefore it is not wealth; but the population of a large town would soon absorb all the water which nature spontaneously provides, and therefore water must be supplied by artificial means It then at once possesses an exchange value, and is justly considered to be wealth. Wealth, therefore, is not determined by the nature and quality of a commodity, but rather by the circumstances in which that commodity may be placed. A gallon of the water which flows from the springs at Amwell is not, there, wealth; it would be as valueless to sell as a cubic foot of air, because, there, a supply of water can be as easily obtained as a supply of air; but that same water conveyed a few miles, to the metropolis, produces the large annual revenues of the New River Company.
The character of wealth may be also given to a commodity by the shifting caprice, or by the changing wants of man. It thus becomes evident that exchange value is the characteristic which stamps a commodity with the attribute of wealth.
Various amounts of wealth in different ages and countries.The most striking variations in wealth are exhibited by the same nation in different ages, and by different nations in the same age. There was a time when England was as poor as any country which is now consigned to the wandering savage, and yet she possessed then those same natural resources which now so materially contribute not only to form but to sustain her present wealth. The richest seams of coal were unworked, but in those remote times her population was in a condition in which they could have no demand for coal, and therefore this article had no exchange value; and that commodity which is now so valuable, could not then be legitimately classed as wealth. Hence it is manifest that the social condition of a nation and the state of its civilisation determine to what extent natural resources may be classed as wealth.
Each stage through which progressive nations have advanced from barbarism to civilisation is preserved at the present time in some parts of the globe. The savage still exists who lives by hunting and fishing; the wandering Arabs are true types of the ancient nomad tribes whose flocks and herds were grazed on natural