The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market
settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and
conference of the CONSUMER and PRODUCER, when they mutually discover
each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection
what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness,
the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is
settled. They, who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain
by arbitrary regulation decree, that defective production should not be
compensated by increased price, directly lay their AXE to the root of
production itself.
"PRIESTS OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN."
His Grace, like an able orator, as he is, begins with giving me a great
deal of praise for talents which I do not possess. He does this
to entitle himself, on the credit of this gratuitous kindness, to
exaggerate my abuse of the parts which his bounty, and not that of
nature, has bestowed upon me. In this, too, he has condescended to copy
Mr. Erskine. These priests (I hope they will excuse me; I mean priests
of the rights of man) begin by crowning me with their flowers and their
fillets, and bedewing me with their odours, as a preface to the knocking
me on the head with their consecrated axes. I have injured, say they,
the constitution; and I have abandoned the Whig party and the Whig
principles that I professed. I do not mean, my dear sir, to defend
myself against his Grace. I have not much interest in what the world
shall think or say of me; as little has the world an interest in what
I shall think or say of any one in it; and I wish that his Grace
had suffered an unhappy man to enjoy, in his retreat, the melancholy
privileges of obscurity and sorrow. At any rate, I have spoken, and I
have written, on the subject. If I have written or spoken so poorly
as to be quite forgot, a fresh apology will not make a more lasting
impression. "I must let the tree lie as it falls." Perhaps I must take
some shame to myself. I confess that I have acted on my own principles
of government, and not on those of his Grace, which are, I dare say,
profound and wise; but which I do not pretend to understand. As to the
party to which he alludes, and which has long taken its leave of me,
I believe the principles of the book which he condemns are very
conformable to the opinions of many of the most considerable and most
grave in that description of politicians. A few indeed, who, I admit,
are equally respectable in all points, differ from me, and talk his
Grace's language. I am too feeble to contend with them. They have the
field to themselves. There are others, very young and very ingenious
persons, who form, probably, the largest part of what his Grace, I
believe, is pleased to consider as that party. Some of them were not
born into the world, and all of them were children, when I entered into
that connection. I give due credit to the censorial brow, to the broad
phylacteries, and to the imposing gravity, of those magisterial rabbins
and doctors in the cabala of political science. I admit that "wisdom is
as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like honourable old age."
But, at a time when liberty is a good deal talked of, perhaps I might be
excused, if I caught something of the general indocility. It might not
be surprising, if I lengthened my chain a link or two, and in an age
of relaxed discipline, gave a trifling indulgence to my own notions.
If that could be allowed, perhaps I might sometimes (by accident, and
without an unpardonable crime) trust as much to my own very careful, and
very laborious, though, perhaps, somewhat purblind disquisitions, as to
their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authority. But the modern liberty
is a precious thing. It must not be profaned by too vulgar an use.
It belongs only to the chosen few, who are born to the hereditary
representation of the whole democracy, and who leave nothing at all, no,
not the offal, to us poor outcasts of the plebeian race.
"HIS GRACE."
Amongst those gentlemen who came to authority, as soon, or sooner than
they came of age, I do not mean to include his Grace. With all those
native titles to empire over our minds which distinguish the others, he
has a large share of experience. He certainly ought to understand
the British constitution better than I do. He has studied it in the
fundamental part. For one election I have seen, he has been concerned
in twenty. Nobody is less of a visionary theorist; nobody has drawn his
speculations more from practice. No peer has condescended to superintend
with more vigilance the declining franchises of the poor commons. "With
thrice great Hermes he has outwatched the bear." Often have his candles
been burned to the snuff, and glimmered and stunk in the sockets, whilst
he grew pale at his constitutional studies; long sleepless nights has he
wasted; long, laborious, shiftless journeys has he made, and great sums
has he expended in order to secure the purity, the independence, and the
sobriety of elections, and to give a check, if possible, to the ruinous
charges that go nearly to the destruction of the right of election
itself. Amidst these his labours, his Grace will be pleased to forgive
me, if my zeal, less enlightened to be sure than his by midnight lamps
and studies, has presumed to talk too favourably of this constitution,
and even to say something sounding like approbation of that body which
has the honour to reckon his Grace at the head of it. Those, who dislike
this partiality, or, if his Grace pleases, this flattery of mine, have
a comfort at hand. I may be refuted and brought to shame by the most
convincing of all refutations--a practical refutation. Every individual
peer for himself may show that I was ridiculously wrong: the whole
body of those noble persons may refute me for the whole corps. If they
please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves, than a
thousand scribblers like me can be in their favour. If I were even
possessed of those powers which his Grace, in order to heighten
my offence, is pleased to attribute to me, there would be little
difference. The eloquence of Mr. Erskine might save Mr.-- from the
gallows, but no eloquence could save Mr. Jackson from the effects of his
own potion.