by the public will. By the judicious form of our Constitution, the
public contribution is in its name and substance a grant. In its origin
it is truly voluntary: not voluntary according to the irregular,
unsteady, capricious will of individuals, but according to the will and
wisdom of the whole popular mass, in the only way in which will and
wisdom can go together. This voluntary grant obtaining in its progress
the force of a law, a general necessity, which takes away all merit, and
consequently all jealousy from individuals, compresses, equalizes, and
satisfies the whole, suffering no man to judge of his neighbor or to
arrogate anything to himself. If their will complies with their
obligation, the great end is answered in the happiest mode; if the will
resists the burden, every one loses a great part of his own will as a
common lot. After all, perhaps, contributions raised by a charge on
luxury, or that degree of convenience which approaches so near as to be
confounded with luxury, is the only mode of contribution which may be
with truth termed voluntary.
I might rest here, and take the loan I speak of as leading to a solution
of that question which I proposed in my first letter: "Whether the
inability of the country to prosecute the war did necessitate a
submission to the indignities and the calamities of a peace with the
Regicide power?" But give me leave to pursue this point a little
further.
I know that it has been a cry usual on this occasion, as it has been
upon occasions where such a cry could have less apparent justification,
that great distress and misery have been the consequence of this war, by
the burdens brought and laid upon the people. But to know where the
burden really lies, and where it presses, we must divide the people. As
to the common people, their stock is in their persons and in their
earnings. I deny that the stock of their persons is diminished in a
greater proportion than the common sources of populousness abundantly
fill up: I mean constant employment; proportioned pay according to the
produce of the soil, and, where the soil fails, according to the
operation of the general capital; plentiful nourishment to vigorous
labor; comfortable provision to decrepit age, to orphan infancy, and to
accidental malady. I say nothing to the policy of the provision for the
poor, in all the variety of faces under which it presents itself. This
is the matter of another inquiry. I only just speak of it as of a fact,
taken with others, to support me in my denial that hitherto any one of
the ordinary sources of the increase of mankind is dried up by this war.
I affirm, what I can well prove, that the waste has been less than the
supply. To say that in war no man must be killed is to say that there
ought to be no war. This they may say who wish to talk idly, and who
would display their humanity at the expense of their honesty or their
understanding. If more lives are lost in this war than necessity
requires, they are lost by misconduct or mistake: but if the hostility
be just, the error is to be corrected, the war is not to be abandoned.
That the stock of the common people, in numbers, is not lessened, any
more than the causes are impaired, is manifest, without being at the
pains of an actual numeration. An improved and improving agriculture,
which implies a great augmentation of labor, has not yet found itself at
a stand, no, not for a single moment, for want of the necessary hands,
either in the settled progress of husbandry or in the occasional
pressure of harvests. I have even reason to believe that there has been
a much smaller importation, or the demand of it, from a neighboring
kingdom, than in former times, when agriculture was more limited in its
extent and its means, and when the time was a season of profound peace.
On the contrary, the prolific fertility of country life has poured its
superfluity of population into the canals, and into other public works,
which of late years have been undertaken to so amazing an extent, and
which have not only not been discontinued, but, beyond all expectation,
pushed on with redoubled vigor, in a war that calls for so many of our
men and so much of our riches. An increasing capital calls for labor,
and an increasing population answers to the call. Our manufactures,
augmented both for the supply of foreign and domestic consumption,
reproducing, with the means of life, the multitudes which they use and
waste, (and which many of them devour much more surely and much more
largely than the war,) have always found the laborious hand ready for
the liberal pay. That the price of the soldier is highly raised is true.
In part this rise may be owing to some measures not so well considered
in the beginning of this war; but the grand cause has been the
reluctance of that class of people from whom the soldiery is taken to
enter into a military life,--not that, but, once entered into, it has
its conveniences, and even its pleasures. I have seldom known a soldier
who, at the intercession of his friends, and at their no small charge,
had been redeemed from that discipline, that in a short time was not
eager to return to it again. But the true reason is the abundant
occupation and the augmented stipend found in towns and villages and
farms, which leaves a smaller number of persons to be disposed of. The
price of men for new and untried ways of life must bear a proportion to
the profits of that mode of existence from whence they are to be bought.
So far as to the stock of the common people, as it consists in their
persons. As to the other part, which consists in their earnings, I have
to say, that the rates of wages are very greatly augmented almost
through the kingdom. In the parish where I live it has been raised from
seven to nine shillings in the week, for the same laborer, performing
the same task, and no greater. Except something in the malt taxes and
the duties upon sugars, I do not know any one tax imposed for very many
years past which affects the laborer in any degree whatsoever; while, on
the other hand, the tax upon houses not having more than seven windows
(that is, upon cottages) was repealed the very year before the
commencement of the present war. On the whole, I am satisfied that the
humblest class, and that class which touches the most nearly on the
lowest, out of which it is continually emerging, and to which it is
continually falling, receives far more from public impositions than it
pays. That class receives two million sterling annually from the
classes above it. It pays to no such amount towards any public
contribution.
I hope it is not necessary for me to take notice of that language, so
ill suited to the persons to whom it has been attributed, and so
unbecoming the place in which it is said to have been uttered,
concerning the present war as the cause of the high price of provisions
during the greater part of the year 1796. I presume it is only to be
ascribed to the intolerable license with which the newspapers break not
only the rules of decorum in real life, but even the dramatic decorum,
when they personate great men, and, like bad poets, make the heroes of
the piece talk more like us Grub-Street scribblers than in a style
consonant to persons of gravity and importance in the state. It was easy
to demonstrate the cause, and the sole cause, of that rise in the grand
article and first necessary of life. It would appear that it had no more
connection with the war than the moderate price to which all sorts of
grain were reduced, soon after the return of Lord Malmesbury, had with
the state of politics and the fate of his Lordship's treaty. I have
quite as good reason (that is, no reason at all) to attribute this
abundance to the longer continuance of the war as the gentlemen who
personate leading members of Parliament have had for giving the enhanced
price to that war, at a more early period of its duration. Oh, the folly
of us poor creatures, who, in the midst of our distresses or our
escapes, are ready to claw or caress one another, upon matters that so
seldom depend on our wisdom or our weakness, on our good or evil conduct
towards each other!
An untimely shower or an unseasonable drought, a frost too long
continued or too suddenly broken up with rain and tempest, the blight of
the spring or the smut of the harvest will do more to cause the distress
of the belly than all the contrivances of all statesmen can do to
relieve it. Let government protect and encourage industry, secure
property, repress violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that
they have to do. In other respects, the less they meddle in these
affairs, the better; the rest is in the hands of our Master and theirs.
We are in a constitution of things wherein "_modo sol nimius, modo
corripit imber_."--But I will push this matter no further. As I have
said a good deal upon it at various times during my public service, and
have lately written something on it, which may yet see the light, I
shall content myself now with observing that the vigorous and laborious
class of life has lately got, from the _bon-ton_ of the humanity of this
day, the name of the "_laboring poor_." We have heard many plans for the
relief of the "_laboring poor_." This puling jargon is not as innocent
as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never
innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used
to excite compassion) has not been used for those who can, but for those
who cannot labor,--for the sick and infirm, for orphan infancy, for
languishing and decrepit age; but when we affect to pity, as poor, those
who must labor or the world cannot exist, we are trifling with the
condition of mankind. It is the common doom of man, that he must eat his
bread by the sweat of his brow,--that is, by the sweat of his body or
the sweat of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is, as
might be expected, from the curses of the Father of all blessings; it is
tempered with many alleviations, many comforts. Every attempt to fly
from it, and to refuse the very terms of our existence, becomes much
more truly a curse; and heavier pains and penalties fall upon those who
would elude the tasks which are put upon them by the great Master
Workman of the world, who, in His dealings with His creatures,
sympathizes with their weakness, and, speaking of a creation wrought by
mere will out of nothing, speaks of six days of _labor_ and one of
_rest_. I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and
vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man _poor_; I cannot pity my
kind as a kind, merely because they are men. This affected pity only
tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek
resources where no resources are to be found, in something else than
their own industry and frugality and sobriety. Whatever may be the
intention (which, because I do not know, I cannot dispute) of those who
would discontent mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in
the consequences, as if they were our worst enemies.
In turning our view from the lower to the higher classes, it will not be
necessary for me to show at any length that the stock of the latter, as
it consists in their numbers, has not yet suffered any material
diminution. I have not seen or heard it asserted; I have no reason to
believe it: there is no want of officers, that I have ever understood,
for the new ships which we commission, or the new regiments which we
raise. In the nature of things, it is not with their persons that the
higher classes principally pay their contingent to the demands of war.
There is another, and not less important part, which rests with almost
exclusive weight upon them. They furnish the means
"how War may, best upheld,
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,
In all her equipage."
Not that they are exempt from contributing also by their personal
service in the fleets and armies of their country. They do contribute,
and in their full and fair proportion, according to the relative
proportion of their numbers in the community. They contribute all the
mind that actuates the whole machine. The fortitude required of them is
very different from the unthinking alacrity of the common soldier or
common sailor in the face of danger and death: it is not a passion, it
is not an impulse, it is not a sentiment; it is a cool, steady,
deliberate principle, always present, always equable,--having no
connection with anger,--tempering honor with prudence,--incited,
invigorated, and sustained by a generous love of fame,--informed,
moderated, and directed by an enlarged knowledge of its own great public
ends,--flowing in one blended stream from the opposite sources of the
heart and the head,--carrying in itself its own commission, and proving
its title to every other command by the first and most difficult
command, that of the bosom in which it resides: it is a fortitude which
unites with the courage of the field the more exalted and refined
courage of the council,--which knows as well to retreat as to
advance,--which can conquer as well by delay as by the rapidity of a
march or the impetuosity of an attack,--which can be, with Fabius, the
black cloud that lowers on the tops of the mountains, or, with Scipio,
the thunderbolt of war,--which, undismayed by false shame, can patiently
endure the severest trial that a gallant spirit can undergo, in the
taunts and provocations of the enemy, the suspicions, the cold respect,
and "mouth honor" of those from whom it should meet a cheerful
obedience,--which, undisturbed by false humanity, can calmly assume that
most awful moral responsibility of deciding when victory may be too
dearly purchased by the loss of a single life, and when the safety and
glory of their country may demand the certain sacrifice of thousands.
Different stations of command may call for different modifications of
this fortitude, but the character ought to be the same in all. And
never, in the most "palmy state" of our martial renown, did it shine
with brighter lustre than in the present sanguinary and ferocious
hostilities, wherever the British arms have been carried. But in this
most arduous and momentous conflict, which from its nature should have
roused us to new and unexampled efforts, I know not how it has been that
we have never put forth half the strength which we have exerted in
ordinary wars. In the fatal battles which have drenched the Continent
with blood and shaken the system of Europe to pieces, we have never had
any considerable army, of a magnitude to be compared to the least of
those by which in former times we so gloriously asserted our place as
protectors, not oppressors, at the head of the great commonwealth of
Europe. We have never manfully met the danger in front; and when the
enemy, resigning to us our natural dominion of the ocean, and abandoning
the defence of his distant possessions to the infernal energy of the
destroying principles which he had planted there for the subversion of
the neighboring colonies, drove forth, by one sweeping law of
unprecedented despotism, his armed multitudes on every side, to
overwhelm the countries and states which had for centuries stood the
firm barriers against the ambition of France, we drew back the arm of
our military force, which had never been more than half raised to oppose
him. From that time we have been combating only with the other arm of
our naval power,--the right arm of England, I admit,--but which struck
almost unresisted, with blows that could never reach the heart of the
hostile mischief. From that time, without a single effort to regain
those outworks which ever till now we so strenuously maintained, as the
strong frontier of our own dignity and safety no less than the liberties
of Europe,--with but one feeble attempt to succor those brave, faithful,
and numerous allies, whom, for the first time since the days of our
Edwards and Henrys, we now have in the bosom of France itself,--we have
been intrenching and fortifying and garrisoning ourselves at home, we
have been redoubling security on security to protect ourselves from
invasion, which has now first become to us a serious object of alarm and
terror. Alas! the few of us who have protracted life in any measure near
to the extreme limits of our short period have been condemned to see
strange things,--new systems of policy, new principles, and not only new
men, but what might appear a new species of men. I believe that any
person who was of age to take a part in public affairs forty years ago
(if the intermediate space of time were expunged from his memory) would
hardly credit his senses, when he should hear from the highest authority
that an army of two hundred thousand men was kept up in this island, and
that in the neighboring island there were at least fourscore thousand
more. But when he had recovered from his surprise on being told of this
army, which has not its parallel, what must be his astonishment to be
told again that this mighty force was kept up for the mere purpose of an
inert and passive defence, and that in its far greater part it was
disabled by its constitution and very essence from defending us against
an enemy by any one preventive stroke or any one operation of active
hostility? What must his reflections be, on learning further, that a
fleet of five hundred men of war, the best appointed, and to the full as
ably commanded as this country ever had upon the sea, was for the
greater part employed in carrying on the same system of unenterprising
defence? What must be the sentiments and feelings of one who remembers
the former energy of England, when he is given to understand that these
two islands, with their extensive and everywhere vulnerable coast,
should be considered as a garrisoned sea-town? What would such a man,
what would any man think, if the garrison of so strange a fortress
should be such, and so feebly commanded, as never to make a sally,--and
that, contrary to all which has hitherto been seen in war, an infinitely
inferior army, with the shattered relics of an almost annihilated navy,
ill-found and ill-manned, may with safety besiege this superior
garrison, and, without hazarding the life of a man, ruin the place,
merely by the menaces and false appearances of an attack? Indeed,
indeed, my dear friend, I look upon this matter of our defensive system
as much the most important of all considerations at this moment. It has
oppressed me with many anxious thoughts, which, more than any bodily
distemper, have sunk me to the condition in which you know that I am.
Should it please Providence to restore to me even the late weak remains
of my strength, I propose to make this matter the subject of a
particular discussion. I only mean here to argue, that the mode of
conducting the war on our part, be it good or bad, has prevented even
the common havoc of war in our population, and especially among that
class whose duty and privilege of superiority it is to lead the way
amidst the perils and slaughter of the field of battle.
The other causes which sometimes affect the numbers of the lower
classes, but which I have shown not to have existed to any such degree
during this war,--penury, cold, hunger, nakedness,--do not easily reach
the higher orders of society. I do not dread for them the slightest
taste of these calamities from the distress and pressure of the war.
They have much more to dread in that way from the confiscations, the
rapines, the burnings, and the massacres that may follow in the train of
a peace which shall establish the devastating and depopulating
principles and example of the French Regicides in security and triumph
and dominion. In the ordinary course of human affairs, any check to
population among men in ease and opulence is less to be apprehended from
what they may suffer than from what they enjoy. Peace is more likely to
be injurious to them in that respect than war. The excesses of delicacy,
repose, and satiety are as unfavorable as the extremes of hardship,
toil, and want to the increase and multiplication of our kind. Indeed,
the abuse of the bounties of Nature, much more surely than any partial
privation of them, tends to intercept that precious boon of a second
and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed in the first great
command to man from the All-Gracious Giver of all,--whose name be
blessed, whether He gives or takes away! His hand, in every page of His
book, has written the lesson of moderation. Our physical well-being, our
moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all
depend on that control of all our appetites and passions which the
ancients designed by the cardinal virtue of _temperance_.
The only real question to our present purpose, with regard to the higher
classes, is, How stands the account of their stock, as it consists in
wealth of every description? Have the burdens of the war compelled them
to curtail any part of their former expenditure?--which, I have before
observed, affords the only standard of estimating property as an object
of taxation. Do they enjoy all the same conveniences, the same comforts,
the same elegancies, the same luxuries, in the same or in as many
different modes as they did before the war?
In the last eleven years there have been no less than three solemn
inquiries into the finances of the kingdom, by three different
committees of your House. The first was in the year 1786. On that
occasion, I remember, the report of the committee was examined, and
sifted and bolted to the bran, by a gentleman whose keen and powerful
talents I have ever admired. He thought there was not sufficient
evidence to warrant the pleasing representation which the committee had
made of our national prosperity. He did not believe that our public
revenue could continue to be so productive as they had assumed. He even
went the length of recording his own inferences of doubt in a set of
resolutions which now stand upon your journals. And perhaps the
retrospect on which the report proceeded did not go far enough back to
allow any sure and satisfactory average for a ground of solid
calculation. But what was the event? When the next committee sat, in
1791, they found, that, on an average of the last four years, their
predecessors had fallen short, in their estimate of the permanent taxes,
by more than three hundred and forty thousand pounds a year. Surely,
then, if I can show, that, in the produce of those same taxes, and more
particularly of such as affect articles of luxurious use and
consumption, the four years of the war have equalled those four years of
peace, flourishing as they were beyond the most sanguine speculations, I
may expect to hear no more of the distress occasioned by the war.
The additional burdens which have been laid on some of those same
articles might reasonably claim some allowance to be made. Every new
advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to
retrench the quantity of his consumption; and if, upon the whole, he
pays the same, his property, computed by the standard of what he
voluntarily pays, must remain the same. But I am willing to forego that
fair advantage in the inquiry. I am willing that the receipts of the
permanent taxes which existed before January, 1793, should be compared
during the war, and during the period of peace which I have mentioned. I
will go further. Complete accounts of the year 1791 were separately laid
before your House. I am ready to stand by a comparison of the produce of
four years up to the beginning of the year 1792 with that of the war. Of
the year immediately previous to hostilities I have not been able to
obtain any perfect documents; but I have seen enough to satisfy me,
that, although a comparison including that year might be less favorable,
yet it would not essentially injure my argument.
You will always bear in mind, my dear Sir, that I am not considering
whether, if the common enemy of the quiet of Europe had not forced us to
take up arms in our own defence, the spring-tide of our prosperity might
not have flowed higher than the mark at which it now stands. That
consideration is connected with the question of the justice and the
necessity of the war. It is a question which I have long since
discussed. I am now endeavoring to ascertain whether there exists, in
fact, any such necessity as we hear every day asserted, to furnish a
miserable pretext for counselling us to surrender at discretion our
conquests, our honor, our dignity, our very independence, and, with it,
all that is dear to man. It will be more than sufficient for that
purpose, if I can make it appear that we have been stationary during the
war. What, then, will be said, if, in reality, it shall be proved that
there is every indication of increased and increasing wealth, not only
poured into the grand reservoir of the national capital, but diffused
through all the channels of all the higher classes, and giving life and
activity, as it passes, to the agriculture, the manufactures, the
commerce, and the navigation of the country?