========
CHAP. I.
_Of the Interior Causes of Decline, arising from the Possession of
Wealth.--Its general Operation on the Habits of Life, Manners,
Education, and Ways of thinking and acting of the Inhabitants of a
Country_.
As necessity was the first cause of industry and invention, from which
wealth and power arise, it is natural that, when the action of that
necessity becomes less urgent, those exertions to which it gave rise
will gradually fall away. Though habit may sometimes counteract this
tendency, in the individual, yet, taken upon a general scale, and from
generation to generation, it must inevitably take place.
In this case, an individual who has obtained wealth enjoys an
advantage, which no nation ever can expect. With only common
prudence, he may cease from exertion or industry, and remain in
affluence. If he has property in land, he may let it, and live on the rent;
if in money, he may lend it, and live on the interest; but one nation
cannot let its lands, or lend its capital to another. It must, by its own
industry, render them productive. The great bulk of every nation, then,
must be industrious, however wealthy it may be; otherwise, the wealth
will soon be dissipated and disappear. The people of Flanders cannot,
for example, cultivate the fields of the French, and live in Flanders;
and, if the agriculture of a country is neglected, that country must soon
become poor and miserable. {67}
---
{67} We have seen what became of the Romans, when the tribute paid
by other nations enabled them to live in idleness. The influx of wealth
from America produced nearly the same effect on Spain: though it
lasted for a very short time, yet it ruined the country.
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[end of page #81]
It is not absolutely necessary, then, for an individual to conciliate
affluence with industry, or, which is the same thing, to preserve one of
the effects of necessity, after the necessity has ceased to exist. But if
it were possible for a sum of money, or property of any sort, to be given
to each individual in a nation, which would be sufficient, in the midst
of an industrious people, to enable him to live in perfect idleness, the
whole nation could not become idle. Such a case never can exist, as
that of all the individuals in a country becoming sufficiently rich to
live without labour. But something approaching towards that state of
things actually does take place, when, by the general increase of
wealth, the necessity for labour is diminished. The number of idle
people is constantly augmenting; and even those who continue to
labour do it less intensely than when the operation of necessity was
more severe. When a cause is diminished, the effect must in time fall
off in proportion.
With individuals, nature has given very powerful auxiliaries to
necessity, which strengthen and prolong its operation, but which do
not operate equally on nations.
Habit or custom is the one auxiliary, and ambition or avarice is the
other.
Habit, in all cases, diminishes the reluctance to labour, which is
inherent in the most part of mankind, and sometimes entirely
overcomes it. {68} Ambition, which appears under many different
forms, renders labour absolutely an enjoyment. Sometimes ambition is
merely a desire of amassing property, an avaricious disposition:
sometimes it is a desire to create a family; and even, sometimes, the
vain and delusive idea of retiring from business, and becoming happy
in a state of total idleness, spurs a man on to labour. It is a very
curious, but well-known fact, that, after necessity has entirely ceased
to promote industry, the love of complete idleness, and the hope of
enjoying it at some distant date, leads the wealthy man on, to his last
hour, in a train of augmented industry. Thus has nature most wisely
counteracted
---
{68} There are many instances where habit has rendered a particular
sort of labour absolutely a want. It has become a necessary,--a means
of enjoyment without which life has become a burthen.
-=-
[end of page #82]
the disposition of man to idleness; by making the very propensity to it,
after a certain time, active in promoting industry.
But this can never be the case with a race of men: {69} and, as a
nation consists of a greater number of individuals, so, also, its
existence consists of successive generations.
There is a difference between idleness and inaction. It is the natural
propensity of man to be idle, but not to be inactive. Enjoyment is his
aim, after he has secured the means of existence. Enjoyment and
idleness are supposed, in many cases, to go hand in hand; at any rate,
they can be reconciled, whereas inaction and enjoyment are
irreconcilable. {70}
But we may still go farther. As taste for any particular enjoyment is
acquired when a man is young, and the same taste continues in a more
advanced age; a man who has been long in business has had no time to
acquire a taste for those enjoyments that are incompatible with, or
perhaps that admit of being substituted for it.
Reading the study of the fine arts, and such other means of employing
time as men enjoy, who, at an early period of life, are exempted from
labour, afford no amusement to the man who has been always
accustomed to a life of business, {71} with whom there is an absolute
ne-
---
{69} It is perhaps amongst chances that seem likely enough; the only
one that has never happened, that of a race of misers, in the same
lineal descent, for several generations. The reason why I say it never
has happened is, that, if it had, the effects would have become so
conspicuous, by the riches accumulated, that they could not have
passed unobserved.
{70} By inaction is not meant the opposite of loco-motion, such as
laying =sic= in bed, or basking in the sun; it is supposed that a man, to
enjoy himself, must be reading, talking, in company, or _doing
something_.
{71} They sometimes affect this, but it is little else than through
vanity. It would be easy to give a hundred striking proofs, but their
frequency renders that unnecessary.
Hunting and fishing, the two most anxious and painful occupations in
the world, are, in all countries, followed by the affluent and idle as
amusements; they want to interest the mind, and occupy themselves.
Gaming, which is attended with very painful sensations, is followed
much more frequently from propensity than from the love of gain;
and, indeed, it would appear, that a life without occupations that
interest the mind, is of all others the most insipid: it appears to be
worse, it appears to be miserable.
-=-
[end of page #83]
cessity of filling up the time in one way or another. A certain portion
of time may be spent in company; but even that, to be enjoyed, must
be spent in the society of men of the same class. The inducement,
then, to a man who has dedicated the first part of his life
advantageously to industry, to become idle, is not great, even when he
is at free liberty to follow his inclination.
It is totally different with a young man; his propensity is to idleness,
without any of those favourable circumstances that counteract that
propensity. Necessity alone can be expected to operate on him; it is in
vain to seek for any other substitute. Not that we mean, by idleness, to
signify inaction; but that sort of idleness, which resists regular labour.
There is a natural propensity to action, but then it is a propensity that
operates irregularly, unless under the influence of necessity. It is a
continued and regular exertion, directed to a proper object, that is
wanted to obtain wealth; to procure this, it is well to imitate nature,
and create necessity.
But, in proportion as a nation grows wealthy, that necessity is done
away. It is of the art of prolonging necessity, or rather of reconciling
necessity with affluence and ease, for which we are going to search,
that we may, by that means, reconcile affluence with industry.
We must, in the first place, find what the natural operation is by which
industry leaves a country.
When a country is in a state of poverty, it maintains the same degree
of industry, from generation to generation, without any effort. The
new race is brought up in the same way that the former was before it,
and the same pressure of necessity, acting on the same desire (but no
greater desire) to shun labour, produces the same effect at one time
that it did at another. The son of a man, who has arrived at a greater
degree of affluence than that to which he was born, is generally
brought up differently. He is not brought up so hardily in his infancy
as his father was, nor so soon called to labour; and probably when he
is called to it, he is neither called with so imperious a voice, nor is he
so willing to obey the call.
Though we do not live long enough to see an example of this
operation on a whole nation, the progression being too slow for the
life [end of page #84] of a man, yet we see it in different parts of the
same country, that are in different degrees of advancement. How
frequent are the instances of men, bred in distant counties,
(particularly in the North,) bringing all that industry and those habits
of labour to London, that the poverty of their parents, and the state of
their part of the country naturally occasioned. Some of those have
arrived at affluence, and many of them have to competency; and even
those who do not arrive at a comparatively higher rank in London,
than their father held in his own county, bring up their children in a
very different manner.
Suppose, for example, a blacksmith, from Northumberland, or a baker,
from Scotland, settles in London, as his father did at Newcastle or
Edinburgh, his son or sons will be bred very differently from what he
was; and, after their father's death, the business will most probably go
to some new comer, from a distant county.
The father was brought up with the necessity of labouring, or the
alternative of wanting food to eat. From his earliest days, he
considered himself as fortunate if he could obtain a competent living
by honest industry; and this impression, with the habits acquired while
it was strong, lead a man, so brought up, to fill his place in life with
honour and advantage.
The son, who sees that his father is in affluence, and who partakes of
the fruits of a whole life of industry, seldom considers that he must
continue that industry, otherwise, that the affluence will cease with the
life of his father. It is impossible to make a young man, brought up in
this manner, feel as his father did; and, not having the same impulse
given to him at first, he never can set off in his course of life with the
same energy.
But the cause of this evil does not stop here. Frequently the mother is
an enemy to the industry of her son; and between the workings of real
affection, badly exercised, which leads her to humour the lad; and a
sort of silly vanity, equally misplaced, she encourages him, if not in
idleness, at least, in the hope that he will never need to stoop to
incessant industry. It is not necessary to ascertain the absolute portion
of idleness and pride that is infused into the young man; that depends
[end of page #85] on particular circumstances: {72} but, in most
cases, it is sufficient to prevent his following the footsteps of his
father with equal energy.
Perhaps the capital, or the connections a father leaves in trade, may, in
some degree, and for some time, compensate for this; but the instances
where they do so are not numerous.
This is an example of the manner in which every succeeding
generation is brought up differently from that preceding it; but it is an
extreme example, and one that, though very real in the individuals,
can never suddenly take place on a national scale.
The difference between the general affluence of a nation, and the
change of its manners during the life of a man, is by no means equal to
the difference between a remote province and the capital of an empire;
but, though the example is extreme, the same effect is produced, in the
course of several generations upon a nation, that was occasioned by
change of place in one individual family from father to son. {73}
When a change like this takes place in one family, (and there are
numerous instances of it every day,) poverty comes on again, and the
children fall back into the laborious class of society, probably in a
degraded state; but as the evil is supplied by new people rising up, it is
little felt on the nation; if, however, it occurs very generally, it must
have a bad effect; and, indeed, the best thing that can happen for the
---
{72} If the mother has been herself born in affluence, she generally
has a sort of smothered contempt for the mean origin of her husband.
She seldom is fully sensible of the merit by which he has raised
himself, and consequently cannot be capable of appreciating the
advantage of bringing up her boy in the same way; on the contrary, the
habits of industry, which the father acquired at an early age, under the
pressure of necessity, are generally secret objects of ridicule to the rest
of the family. If, again, the woman has been of low origin in herself,
and is become affluent, then matters are ten times worse. Then there is
all the pride and vanity that ignorance, and a desire to hide that mean
extraction create. Incapable of shewing delicacy and fine breeding in
herself, she spoils her harmless children by converting them into
specimens of the gentility of the family. For more of this, see the
chapter on Education.
{73} In Rome, after the taking of Carthage; and in Portugal,
immediately after it got possession of the trade to India; the change
must have been as great over the whole of the people in one
generation, as it is generally between a remote province and near the
capital.
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[end of page #86]
general welfare is, that such men may return to a state of
insignificance and labour as fast as possible; for, while they remain
above that, and in a declining state, they are filling their place in
society badly.
It is different where the change goes on through a whole country, then
no one can supply the place, they are all going the same way, and at
nearly the same rate; {74} the consequence will be, that this will not
be the fall of a family, but the fall of a whole people; the motion will,
indeed, be much more slow, but the moving body will be vastly
greater, and the effect will be in proportion.
In every nation in Europe there is, between the capital and the distant
provinces, a difference of affluence, of wealth, &c. equal to what
probably takes place in a nation in one or two centuries. The
inhabitants of the capital have some great advantages over those that
come from a distance; they have connections, they have money and
stock; and, generally speaking, in their early years, they possess a
more ready and marketable knowledge. But all these avail nothing
against habits of industry, and being taught to expect nothing from
others, but to depend all on one's own powers. With this single, but
signal, advantage, the sons of the wealthy citizens are always yielding
to the son of the peasant; they are one by one giving way, and their
places are filled by a new race; while their descendants are sinking
into poverty, and filling prisons, poor-houses, and hospitals.
This vicissitude is so observable, that it would be unnecessary to dwell
upon it were it, =sic= not of such infinite importance. {75}
The alarming and lamentable increase of the poor, in proportion as
---
{74} It is always to be observed, that this reasoning is only applicable
in general, and not in every particular case. It has been remarked by
the writer of the notes on the Wealth of Nations, that where a fortune
is not realized in a family, sufficient to enable it to withdraw entirely
from trade, it seldom remains wealthy above two generations. The
sons most frequently want intelligence or industry to augment what
their father got, and the grandsons have generally dissipation enough
to squander entirely away what remains. This is so frequent a case in
London, that it may be called the regular routine of the business; and,
what arises by regular routine, must be derived from some general and
natural cause.
{75} In the chapter on Education, this subject is entered into more
fully, and the education of women makes a principal part. A subject
not noticed by the author of the Wealth of Nations, though very
important.
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[end of page #87]
a nation becomes rich, is a proof that it is not in capital cities alone
that the effect takes place, but over the whole of a country. {76}
In England, the number of inhabitants is about six times the number of
those in Scotland; and, perhaps, it costs twice as much to maintain a
poor person in the former as in the latter. The sum necessary for the
maintenance of the poor in England may then be reckoned at about
twelve times as much as in Scotland, in order to preserve a just
proportion between the two countries. But the poor cost more than
sixty times as much in England as in Scotland; that is, at least five
times more than the true proportion that ought to be !!!
This, it may be said, is owing to the different manner of managing the
business, and, in some degree, it no doubt is; {77} but, as the poor are
only maintained in England, and as they are also maintained in
Scotland, it would be wrong to allow so great a difference for that
alone.
In order, however, to put the matter out of all doubt, let us compare
England with itself, and we shall find that the poor's rates, or the
expense of maintaining the indigent, has increased more rapidly than
the price of provisions, or the price of labour. This ought not to be the
case, as they would only have augmented in the same proportion,
unless the number of poor was increased as well as the price of the
provisions they eat, at the same time that the nation is growing more
wealthy.
Of whom do the poor in every nation consist, but of the lame, the sick,
the infirm, the aged, or children unprovided for? Of those, the number,
in proportion to the total number of inhabitants, will be pretty nearly
the same at all times; for it is nature that produces this species of
helpless poverty. It would then appear that there is another species of
poverty, not of nature's creation, that comes in and destroys the
proportion. It would likewise appear, that that new species of poverty
---
{76} The Poor's Rate, and regulations respecting that augmenting
class of persons, are treated in a chapter by itself.
{77} For this see the chapter on the Poor, in which the subject is
investigated at considerable length. At present, it is only mentioned by
way of illustrating the effect of wealth on the manners of the people;
and to prove, that it is not confined to the capital alone, but is general
all over the country of England.
-=-
[end of page #88]
is occasioned by the general wealth, since it increases in proportion to
it.
If we find, then, that the increase of wealth renders the descendants of
a particular family helpless, and unable to maintain their place in
society; if we find, also, that it gives those portions of a country,
which are the least advanced, an advantage over those which are the
most advanced; and, if we find that the number of indigent increase
most where the wealth is greatest, we surely must allow, that there is a
strong tendency to decay that accompanies the acquisition of wealth.
The same revolutions that arise amongst the rich and poor inhabitants
of a country, who change places gradually, and without noise, must
naturally take place between the inhabitants of rich and poor
countries, upon a larger scale and in a more permanent manner. {78}
Such changes are generally attended with, or, at least, productive of,
violent commotions. Nations are not subservient to laws like
individuals, but make forcible use of the means of which they are
possessed, to obtain the ends which they have in view.
As this tendency is uniformly felt by a number of individuals over the
whole of a country, when it advances in wealth, and over whole
districts that are more advanced than the others, it must operate, in
length of time, in producing the decline of a whole nation, as well as it
does of a certain portion of its people at all times.
Changes, in the interior of a nation, take place by piece-meal or by
degrees; the whole mass sees nothing of it, and, indeed, it is not felt.
{79} But it is vain to think, that the same cause that gives the poorer
inhabitants of a nation an advantage over the richer, will not likewise
---
{78} As we find that wealth seldom goes amongst people of business
past the second, and almost never past the third generation, families
that rise so high as to be partners in profit, and not in labour or
attention, are an exception. Nations resemble the families that acquire
enough to be affluent, but not enough to retire from business. A nation
can never retire; it must always be industrious. The inference is clear
and cannot be mistaken; neither can the fact stated be denied.
{79} The number of bankruptcies have been considered as signs of
wealth; and their increase is a sign most undoubtedly of more trade;
but this is a barometer, of which it requires some skill to understand
the real index.
-=-
[end of page #89]
give poor nations an advantage over rich ones; or, at least, tend to
raise the one and draw down the other. Though we find, from the
history of the various revolutions that have taken place in different
countries, that they arose from a variety of causes, some peculiar to
one nation, and some to another; yet we have found a change of
manners and ways of thinking and acting, more or less operating in all
of them.
Amongst the interior causes of the decline of wealthy nations, arising
from the wealth itself, we must set this down as one of a very general
and natural operation. We must be particularly careful to remove this,
as far as possible, if we mean to avert those evils which hitherto have
arisen from a superior degree of wealth and power in every nation.
We are now going to examine other internal causes; but though they
are separate from this, yet this is at the root of all, this is perpetually
operating, we meet with it in every corner and at every turning. It is
what Mr. Pope says, speaking of the master-passion in individuals:
"The great disease that must destroy at length,
Grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength."
This radical case of decline is augmented by an ill conceived vanity in
the parents, as well as by necessity ceasing to act on the children.
Each is following a very natural inclination; the one to indulge, the
other to be indulged. It is the duty and the interest of the state to
counteract this tendency, and the manner how that it is to be done will
be inquired into in the first chapter of the third book of this work. =sic
--there is none.=
But it is not merely a neglect of industry and the means of rising in
society, or keeping one's place in it that is hurtful; the general way of
thinking and acting becomes different, and, by degrees, the character
of a nation is entirely altered. This change was the most rapid, and the
most observable in the Roman republic, and was the cause that
brought it to an end, and prepared the people for submitting to be
ruled by the emperors. The human character was as much degraded
under them, when the citizens were rich, as it ever had been exalted
under their consular government, when the people were indigent. [end
of page #90]
The various effects of this change in manners will be considered under
different heads, but it is too deeply rooted in human nature ever to be
entirely counteracted, much less entirely done away. It is firmly
connected with the first principles of action in man, and can no more
be removed than his entire nature can be altered. What is in the
extreme, if dangerous, may be diminished; and that is all that it would
be any way useful to attempt: it may be rendered less formidable in its
operation, and that is all that can be expected.
The degradation of moral character; the loss of attention to the first
principles to which a society owes its prosperity and safety, both of
which accompany wealth, are most powerful agents in the decline of
nations. We have seen that the Romans, the greatest of all nations,
were ruined, chiefly, by degradation of character, by effeminacy, by
ignorance; for we generally find that idleness degenerates, at last, into
sloth and inaction. To a love of justice, and a power of overcoming
danger, or of preventing it, listlessness and a total want of energy
succeed: at length, the mind becomes estranged from hope, and the
body incapable of exertion. This is the case with those who have for a
time enjoyed luxury when they begin to decline; their fall is then
inevitable. The Eastern empire, as well as the Western, fell by this
means; and it may be said to have been the ordinary course in the
decline of nations that have fallen gradually.
The Turks, {80} the Spaniards, and the Portuguese, all owe part of
their present feebleness to this cause; and the government of France
certainly, in a great measure, owed its downfal =sic= to the same.
There the courtiers had sunk in character, and it was become
impossible even for the energy, the activity, and intelligence of the
nation at large, to counteract the baneful effect of the change that had
taken place amongst those who regulated its affairs.
In history we have seen scarcely any thing similar to this, for it was
the effect operating on the rulers of the nation only; the strength of the
great body of the nation, on which it did not operate, supported that
---
{80} Those nations resemble each other in feebleness, and in the
cause of it, though, with respect to the Turks, it has existed for a
longer period.
-=-
[end of page #91]
pride and ignorance; whereas in Spain, Portugal, and Turkey, this evil
being general throughout the state, those who have the conducting of
affairs are held in some check by the general feebleness of the nation.
{81} This not only limits the power of action, but is so visible, that it
is impossible for those who govern not to be led to reflection, and to
be taught moderation by it.
The power of laying on taxes and the means of defending itself against
other nations are regulated by the situation of the people; but the
wisdom with which the affairs are conducted is dependent on the
rulers, and those who govern. It is therefore fortunate, when the rulers
are so far sensible of the feeble state of the country as to be moderate
and reasonable. {82}
None of the nations that know their own weakness would ever have
risked the experiment that was made on St. Domingo by the French;
neither would any nation, in the vigour of acquiring riches, have done
so. It required a nation, ruled by men who were ignorant of the true
principles, who were corrupted with wealth, and, at the same time, had
a vigorous nation to govern, to admit of such a situation of things.
{83} Had the nation been less wealthy or weaker, so as to have made
the poverty or weakness obvious, this could not have happened; or,
had the rulers been less corrupted and ignorant, it could not have taken
place. {84}
---
{81} The French nation, in reality, was never so powerful and wealthy
as at the time of the revolution breaking out. The effects of luxury had
only perverted the city of Paris and the court. The power which the
energies of the people at large put at the disposition of the government
was ill applied.
{82} Perhaps some of the greatest advantages that arise from a form
of government like that of England are, that those who have ruled,
owe their places to their abilities, and not to favour; that they maintain
their situations by exertion, and not by flattery; and that the situation
of the nation never can be long disguised. Without the turbulence of a
democracy, we have most of the advantages that arise from one, while
we have, at the same time, the benefits that proceed from the stability
and order of established monarchy.
{83} When the Portuguese were for abandoning the India trade, it was
a case pretty similar.
{84} Though the men who overturned the commerce of France were
not the same with the members of the ancient government, yet they
also were men ignorant of the true interests of the nation. A few
amongst them were bent upon an experiment, regardless of the ruin
with which it might be attended.
-=-
[end of page #92]
In all the interior causes, for the decline of nations, which we are
endeavouring to investigate, we shall find a change of manners, and
ways of thinking, constantly producing some effect in the direction
towards decline. This takes place, from the time that a nation becomes
more wealthy than its neighbours; until then, when it is only
struggling to equal them, a nation cannot be said to be rich, but to be
emerging from poverty.
The great aim then should be, to counteract this change of mind and
manners, that naturally attends an increased state of prosperity.
[end of page #93]
CHAP. II.
_Of the Education of Youth in Nations increasing in Wealth.--the
Errors generally committed by Writers on that Subject.--Importance
of Female Education on the Manners of a People.--Not noticed by
Writers on Political Economy.--Education of the great Body of the
People the chief Object.--In what that consists_
The changes of which we have spoken, that take place, gradually, in
a nation, from the increasing luxury and ease in which every
succeeding generation is raised, cannot be prevented. They are the
natural consequences of the situation of the parents being altered. But
when that period of life comes, when children enter upon what is
called education, then a great deal may be done; for, though the
fathers and mothers have still power over their offspring, it is a
diminished power; besides which, they are seldom so much disposed
to exert even what power remains, as at an earlier period.
It is necessary and fair, after the severe censure that has been passed
on parents, for bringing up children wrong, at an early period, to
admit, that for the most part, they would not run into that error, and
spoil their children, if they were sensible of doing so; and that, as they
grow up, they would have them properly instructed, if it were in their
power: that is to say, if they had the means.
There are certain things for which individuals can pay, but which it is
impossible for them to provide individually; and if they attempt to do
it collectively, it is liable to great abuse, and to be badly done.
Individuals never could afford to send their letters, from one end of
the kingdom to the other, without combining together, unless
government furnished them the means: but, by the aid of the
government, they are enabled to do it at a very cheap rate, with
expedition and safety, whilst a profit arises to government greater than
any regular business in the world produces.
There is a possibility of an individual sending a letter by a particu-
[end of page #94] lar messenger, at his own expense, to the greatest
distance, provided he can afford it; but, as it happens, there are many
more letters require sending than there are messengers to send, or
money to defray the expenses.
It is the same with the education of youth. A man may have a tutor to
his son, and educate him privately, if he can afford it; but it happens,
as with the letters, that there are many more sons to educate than there
are tutors to be found, or money to pay them.
As the individual, in the case of the letters, would be obliged to
depend on some self-created carrier, if government did not interfere,
so they are with regard to the education of their children; and, as in the
one case they would be very badly served, so they generally are in the
other.
In the first place, the plans of education are every where bad, and the
manner of executing still worse.--Those to whom the education of
youth, one of the most important offices in society, is intrusted
undergo no sort of examination, to ascertain whether they are fit for
the business. They, in general, depend upon their submissive conduct
towards the parents and improper indulgence of the children for their
success. It was found that the judges of criminal and civil law could
not be intrusted with the administration of justice, while they
depended on the pleasure of the crown. Can it then be expected that a
much more numerous set of men, who are, in every respect, inferior in
rank and education, to judges, will maintain that upright and correct
conduct that is necessary, when they are infinitely more dependent
than the judges ever were at any period?
This is one of the questions that is to be argued on the same principles,
that the independence, under a monarchical or democratic
government, is decided. Under the dominion of one chief, on
particular occasions, which occur but seldom, it may be necessary to
yield to his will, if the ruler is shameless enough and infamous enough
to insist upon it; but, with a community for one's master, there is a
complete system of submission, a perpetual deviation from that which
is right.
In the first place, the fathers and mothers are no judges themselves of
the merits of the master, or the proficiency of the boy, whom the [end
of page #95] master is obliged to treat with indulgence, that he may
not complain. Where there is a complete ignorance of the right and
wrong of the case, any thing will turn the balance; and it is clear, that
where there is no proof of superior merit, there must be good will,
flattery, or some other method taken, to obtain a preference.
There are, occasionally, men of real merit, who distinguish themselves
as teachers; and who, having a solid claim to a preference, use no mean
arts to obtain it. It is but justice to parents in general, to say that
such men are always encouraged, while they keep their good qualities
uncontaminated by some fault that counterbalances them. {85}
As this is a case where individuals cannot serve themselves, nor
provide the means of being properly served, it is one of those in which
the government of every country ought to interfere. Not in giving
salaries, at the public expense, to men, who, perhaps, would do no
duty; but in seeing that the men who undertake the task of education
are qualified, and that when they have undertaken it they do their duty,
and follow a proper system.
There should be proper examinations, from time to time, and registers
should be kept of the number of scholars, and the satisfaction they
have given to those who examined them.
Parents would then have a measure, by which they could estimate the
merit of a school; the master would have another motive for action,
and there would be an emulation amongst the scholars. The business
professed to be done, and undertaken, would then be performed. At
present, at about three times the expense necessary, children learn
about half what they are intended to be taught.
Interfering in this manner would be no infringement on private liberty;
nothing would be done that could hurt, in any way, the individuals,
but what must greatly benefit them. The evil habits that are contracted
in early childhood, at home, would be counteracted, and the
---
{85} As even those find it is necessary to make a strong impression on
the minds of parents, (and as some wish their children to be treated
with rigour,) there are teachers, who obtain a credit by overstraining
the discipline, after having obtained a fair reputation, by carrying it
only to a proper length.
-=-
[end of page #96]
youth would be taught to know what it is that renders a man happy in
himself, and respected and valued by society.
But the consideration of the system to be followed is not the least
important part of the business. The useful should be preferred to the
useless, and in this the example of the ancients might be followed with
advantage. They had no dead languages to study, and the mind
appears to have been in many cases expanded, far beyond its present
compass.
Nothing, indeed, can equal the ignorance of the most part of boys,
when they leave school; those who are considered as bad scholars,
have lost the good opinion of themselves, that ought to be maintained
throughout life; they think every thing difficult or impossible. Those,
again, who have excelled, are something less ignorant, but become
vain and conceited, owing perhaps to their having learnt some useless
and superfluous pieces of knowledge.
Education, on the general principle, consists in learning what makes a
man useful, respectable, and happy, in the line for which he is
destined, whether for manual labour, or for study; for a high or a low
occupation.
What is useful becomes a question, in some sort depending upon
place, and still more on circumstances, it will therefore be better to
discuss it at length in the Third Book, where England is the place, and
particular circumstances are taken into consideration.
There are, however, some general rules that apply to all places and to
all situations.
Good principles, honour, honesty, and integrity, are equally necessary
in every rank of society; with those qualities, even a beggar is
respectable, and will be respected; without them, no man ever was or
ever will be so. In every mode of education, the importance of those
should be inculcated; and that they may be adhered to, every man,
either by inheritance, or by talents, or by habits of industry, should
have it put in his power to command the means of living in the way
that he has been brought up.
Were this attended to, many scenes of misery and vice would be
prevented. Admitting that there are propensities in some minds, [end
of page #97] that lead to evil, independent of every possible check or
control, it must be allowed that the far greater proportion of those who
do well or ill in the world owe it to the manner in which they have
been brought up in their early days.
It follows, from this general rule, that parents should carefully avoid
bringing up children in a manner in which they have not the means of
being afterwards maintained; and that, in the second place, when they
cannot leave them in an independent fortune, they should, by making
them learn a trade or profession, give them the means of obtaining
what they have been accustomed to consider as necessary for them to
enjoy.
There are, indeed, great numbers, and the greatest numbers of all;
unable even to have their children taught what is called a trade. But
there are none whom poverty prevents from bringing their children up
to industry; and, if they have been taught to live according to their
situation, they will find themselves above their wants, and therefore
the same general rule will still apply.
Most writers have considered the subject of education as relative to
that portion of it only which applies to learning; but the first object
of all, in every nation, is to make a man a good member of society; and
this can never be done, unless he is fitted to fill the situation of
life for which he is intended.
Governments and writers on education fall, generally speaking, into
the same errors. They would provide for the education of persons
destined for the learned professions and sometimes for the fine arts;
but agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, are totally left out: {86}
the most essential, the most generally useful, are not noticed at all.
As so much value is set upon the language of the Greeks and Romans,
surely we might pay a little attention to the example of those
distinguished nations.
The Greeks studied the Egyptian learning, and improved upon it; but
this was only confined to those who followed learning as a profes-
---
{86} Lord Somerville has some excellent observations, relative to
this, in his publication on Agriculture, published in 1800.
-=-
[end of page #98]
sion, or whose means allowed them to prosecute it as a study. The
common education of citizens was different; it consisted in teaching
them to perform what was useful, and to esteem what was excellent. It
was a principle with them that all men ought to know how happiness
is attained, and in what virtue consists; but they neither trusted to
precept nor example. They enforced by habit and practice, and in this
the Romans followed the plan the Greeks had laid down, and, by that
means, they surpassed all other nations.
When those great nations of antiquity abandoned their attention to the
useful parts of education, they soon sunk in national character. It so
happens, in this case, that the mode of education and the manners of a
people are so closely connected that it is difficult, from observation, to
know which is the cause, and which the effect. Youth, badly educated,
make bad men, and bad men neglect the education of their children;
they set them a wrong example: such is the case, when a government
does not interfere. How this is to be done with advantage is the
question.
Writers on political economy have, in general, considered female
education as making no part of the system; but surely, if the wealth
and happiness of mankind is the end in view, there can scarcely be a
greater object, for none is more nearly connected with it.
Let it be granted that, in the first instance, women are not educated
with any view to carry on those labours and manufactures, on which
wealth is considered as depending. Let all this be admitted, and that,
in an early state of life, they are of no importance in this respect; yet,
surely, when they become wives and mothers, when the economy of
the family, and the education of the younger children depend chiefly
on them, they are then of very great importance to society. Their
conduct, in that important situation, must be greatly influenced by
their education.
Female education ought then to be considered as one of the things, on
the conducting of which well the prosperity of a state does in a great
measure depend; it ought, therefore, to be attended to in the same
manner as the education of youth of the other sex.
In this case, also, so much depends on place and circumstances, [end
of page #99] that we shall follow the same rule as with male
education. It shall be treated of as for England, and with the different
ranks of society as they are; but there are some general rules not to be
forgotten, and which are applicable to all places and all countries.
The great error, in female education, does not consist in neglecting to
instil good principles; for that is, in most countries, for obvious
reasons, pretty well attended to; but good principles, without the
means of adhering to them, are of little avail. If a desire for dress, or
other enjoyments, that cannot be gratified fairly, and by the means of
which they are possessed, are encouraged, principles will be
abandoned in order to gratify passions.--Females are taught frivolous
accomplishments in place of what would be useful, and expensive
vanity is substituted for that modest dignity that should be taught; the
consequence is, that, in every rank of life, according to her station, the
woman aims at being above it, and affects the manners and dress of
her superiors.
There is too much pains taken with adorning the person, and too little
with instructing the mind, in every civilized country; and when
women are wise, and good, and virtuous, it is more owing to nature
than to education.
As, indeed, the duties of a woman, in ordinary life, are of a nature
more difficult to describe than those of a man, who, when he has
learnt a trade, has little more to do, the care employed in seeing that
proper persons only are intrusted with the important office of teaching
them to perform those duties ought to be proportionally great.
The farther remarks on the subject of education are deferred to the
Fourth Book =sic--there is none.=, where place and circumstances
come into consideration. It is, however, to be observed, that, in all
cases, as a nation becomes more wealthy, the business of education
becomes more important, and has a natural tendency to be worse
managed; it therefore demands a double share of attention.
If the women of a nation are badly educated, it must have a great
effect on the education of their sons, and the conduct of their
husbands. The Spartan and Roman mothers had the glory of making
[end of page #100] their sons esteem bravery, and those qualities in a
man that were most wanted in their state of society. It should be one
part of female education to know and admire the qualities that are
estimable in the other sex. To obtain the approbation of the other sex,
is, at a certain time of life, the greatest object of ambition, and it is
never a matter of indifference.
The great general error consists in considering the woman merely in
her identical self, without thinking of her influence on others. It
appears to be for this reason, that writers on political economy have
paid no attention to female education; but we find no state in which
the virtue of men has been preserved where the women had none;
though there are examples of women preserving their virtues,
notwithstanding the torrent of corruption by which that of the men has
been swept away. [end of page #101]
CHAP. III.
_Of increased Taxation, as an Interior Cause of Decline.--Its
different Effects on Industry, according to the Degree to which it is
carried.--Its Effects on the People and on Government_.
There has been no instance of a government becoming more
economical, or less expensive, as it became older, even when the
nation itself was not increasing in wealth; but, in every nation that has
increased in wealth, the expenditure, on the part of government, has
augmented in a very rapid manner.
Amongst the interior causes of the decline of nations, and the
overthrow of governments, the increase of taxes has always been very
prominent. It is in the levying of taxes that the sovereign and the
subject act as if they were of opposite interests, or rather as if they
were enemies to each other.
In every case almost, where the subjects have rebelled against their
sovereign, or where they have abandoned their country to its enemies,
the discontents have been occasioned by taxes that were either too
heavy, imprudently laid on, or rigorously levied.
Sometimes the manner of laying on the tax has given the offence;
sometimes its nature, and sometimes its amount. The revolution in
England, in Charles the first's time, began about the manner of levying
a tax. The revolution of the American colonies began in the same way;
and it is generally at the manner that nations enjoying a certain degree
of freedom make objection. The excise had very nearly proved fatal to
the government of this country, as the stamp duties did to that of
France, and as the general amount and enormity of taxes did to the
Western Empire. {87}
---
{87} The system of taxation was ill understood amongst the Romans,
and its execution, under a military government, is always severe. The
Romans were so tormented, at last, that they lost all regard for their
country. Taxes seem to be the price we pay for the con-[end of page
#102] stitution we live under, and as they increase, the value of the
purchase lessens. The difference between value paid, and value
received, constitutes the advantage or loss of every bargain.
-=-
Perhaps the chief motive for submitting to the difficulties, the
oppressions, and the burthens, which people submit to under
republican forms of government arises in deception. They seem to be
paying taxes to themselves, and for themselves, when, in reality, they
are not doing so any more than under a monarchy, where the taxes, in
proportion to the service done, are generally less than in a
republic.{88}
---
{88} America is an exception, but then there is no similarity between
the United States and any other country in the world. Their existence,
as an independent country, is only of twenty-five years standing; they
have had no wars during that time, and the revolutionary war cost
little in actual money. The comparison between the states and other
nations will not hold, but, if we compare the expense of their
government now, and when under the British, it will be found they
pay near thirty times as much; and, even allowing their population to
have risen one-half, they still pay proportionately twenty times as
much. Their revenue now amounts to 16,000,000 of dollars. The
public expense, in 1795, when they revolted, was about 350,000
dollars.
-=-
This was the case in Holland and Venice. In England, the first great
increase of taxes took place under the long Parliament and
Commonwealth.
The only administration carried on by delegated authority, that is from
necessity obliged to be executed with unabaiting rigour, is the
department of finance. Money is a thing of such a nature, that strict
rules are absolutely necessary in its administration. There is here a
great distinction between money and other property, or money's
worth. A menial servant, of whose honesty there is no proof, and even
when it may be dubious, is habitually trusted with the care of property
to a considerable amount, and the account rendered is seldom very
rigorous; but, in the case of trusting with money, every precaution is
first taken, as to being trust-worthy. Security is generally demanded,
and neither friendship, confidence, nor the highest respectability, will
supply the place of a strict account, which, when not rendered, leaves
an indelible stain. There are many causes for this, but they are so
generally understood, or, at least, so generally felt, that it is not
necessary to examine them; the consequences are in some cases,
however, not so evident. One of the most important is, that the
accuracy with [end of page #103] which those appointed to collect
taxes are obliged to render their accounts, compels them to a strictness
in doing their duty that appears frequently rigorous to an extreme
degree, and scarcely consistent with justice or humanity.
A king is considered as an unrelenting creditor, and he certainly
appears in that character; but it should be considered why he is
obliged to be so; for, as a master, he is generally the most indulgent in
his dominions.
No duty or service is exacted with less rigour than that belonging to a
civil department under government, when it is not connected with
accountability in money; none so rigorous where money is concerned.
How is this to be accounted for, unless it is by shewing that the nature
of the situation admits of giving way to the feelings of humanity in
one case, and not in the other? A few examples will illustrate this
point, which is very important, very well known, but not well
understood.
A clerk in a public office wants, either for health or private business,
or, perhaps, only for amusement, to absent himself from duty; if his
conduct merits any indulgence, and if his request is any way
reasonable, it is immediately granted, though his salary during his
absence may amount to a considerable sum; but he receives the gift
under the form of time, not of money. If the same clerk is in arrear for
taxes to one-twentieth part of the amount, if he does not pay, his
furniture will be seized, and that perhaps by order of the same superior
from whom he obtained the leave of absence from his duty. {89}
The consequences would be fatal if the case were reversed. Supposing
that leave of absence had been refused, and that a remission of taxes
had been granted, the man who remitted the tax would be liable to
suspicion, which he could never do away; the receipt of the revenue
would never be secure, and the clerk, who had demanded a fair
indulgence, would be disgusted and provoked at the refusal.
We cannot, however, alter the nature of things. Taxes cannot be
remitted, in any case, without discretional authority, and that it would
---
{89} Accountability in money may be compared to military discipline,
when on duty. No allowances are to be made for negligence or
deviation from rule. Of this we have lately had a most striking and
memorable example.
-=-
[end of page #104]
be ruinous to the revenue to give, we must, therefore, never expect
that the augmentation of taxes will take place without an increase of
discontent, or, at least, an augmented indifference towards
government.
Perhaps nothing evinces more the general feeling, (even of the
respectable part of society,) with regard to the revenues of the state,
than the disposition to profit by evading the payment of duties
imposed upon articles of consumption.
The most respectable of the nobility or gentry will conceal a
contraband article, or one on which there is a heavy duty, on their
return from abroad: and what is more, if detected, they are more
ashamed, on account of their want of address, than on account of the
crime; for such it is, whatever custom may have taught us to think.
A man who is rigorously treated, by what is commonly called a lawful
creditor, whom he would never attempt to defraud must naturally feel
doubly incensed, when still more rigorously treated by one whom he
would think it very little harm, and no disgrace, to defraud. It is then
very clear, that, the common habits of thinking on the subject of debts
due to the king, is such as does not favour taxation, or incline people
to submit willingly to rigorous modes of recovery.
All taxes raise the prices of the articles taxed, but those are most felt
and most obnoxious which fall on personal property, or on persons
themselves.
All taxes, then, when they pass a certain point, have a tendency to
send away persons, and property, and trade, from a country, which, if
they do, its decline is inevitable. The extent, however, of that effect
must depend on a great variety of circumstances, such as the
comparative situation of other nations, their distance, the difficulty of
removing, &c.
If America were as near to England as France is, the industrious class
would emigrate in multitudes; and, if in France, property and persons
were as safe and free as in England, part of both would go there; but,
as matters are, to the former it is impossible to remove, and, to the
latter, the risk surpasses the advantage.
An increase of taxation tends to raise the wages of labour, and, where
it does so in due proportion, the labourer pays almost nothing; he still
for all that seems to pay, and he has the same disagreeable feeling
[end of page #105] as if he did pay. No feeling is more disagreeable
than that of being obliged, after earning money that can ill be spared,
to pay it away to a surly tax-gatherer, who treats a man and his family
with insolence, while he receives the money that should purchase
them bread. Besides this, though the prices of many articles keep pace
with the wages of labour, yet many others do not. Thus, in a country
where wages are rapidly altering, though some are bettered by it,
penury is entailed on others, who have not the means of raising their
prices.
If heavy taxes are levied on a few articles of consumption, then they
become inefficient, and if they are divided amongst a great many, they
become troublesome, so that either way they are attended with
inconvenience and difficulty.
In every country, where taxation has been carried to a great height, it
has, at last, become necessary to bear heavily upon personal property.
Such taxes are always attended with disagreeable feelings, and
peculiar inconveniency. The tax always comes in the form of a debt,
and whether convenient to be paid or not, it admits at best but of little
delay. {90}
In England the nature of the government, the disposition of the people,
and the same sort of genius that made them succeed in commercial
intercourse and regulation, led them to adopt the least objectionable
modes of taxation.
The customs were the first great branch of revenue at the time of the
revolution. The excise, land-tax, and stamps, rose next, none of which
can be objected to; for the person who pays the tax to government
only advances the money, and is reimbursed by the consumer, who,
again on his part, when he really pays the tax (for good and all) does it
under the form of an advance in price. Thus, then, the tax is disguised
to him that really pays it, and it is optional, inasmuch as he
---
{90} It will be seen, in a future part of this work, that the farmers have
lost nothing, but rather got by the high prices of grain in this country,
and it is so probably in all others. Those who sell necessaries raise the
price; those who make or sell superfluities have no such resource, and
therefore pay in the severest manner.
-=-
[end of page #106]
may avoid the tax, by not consuming the article. He never can be sued
for the tax, and he pays it by degrees, as he can spare the money. {91}
Some time before the taxation which the American war rendered
necessary, it was thought that the customs and excise could not be
carried much farther. Ministers did not chuse =sic= to venture on an
additional tax on land, and, consequently, stamps were augmented and
extended, as were also duties on windows. A variety of new taxes on
particular articles of consumption were resorted to. Those sort of taxes
harassed and tormented individuals more than they filled the treasury,
yet still, when, after an interval of a few years of peace, new burthens
became necessary, in 1793, the same plan was pursued, till it was
found ineffectual, being too troublesome and tedious, besides being
unequal to the increase of expenditure.
It was necessity that suggested a plan, which is the simplest and
easiest of any, so long as it succeeds and is productive. =sic= To
increase the excise and customs by an additional five or ten per cent.
on the articles that were supposed able to bear it. This has been done
again and again with those two branches of revenue, and with the
stamps likewise.
But the necessities of the state still outrun the means, and the assessed
taxes, the worst and most obnoxious of all, were augmented in the
same way; but even those were not productive. The inducement to
privation was too great, and the restraints laid on expenditure,
suggested the adoption of a tax on income; that is, on the means a man
has to pay, which carries in its very name a description of its nature.
We have mentioned the influence that necessity has on industry. One
of the effects of taxes, as well as of rent, is to prolong the operation of
necessity, or to increase it. A man who has neither rent nor taxes to
pay, as is the case in some savage nations, only labours to supply his
wants. Whatever proportion rent and taxes bear to the wants of
---
{91} The land-tax is not precisely the same, but very nearly. It
operates as a tax on the produce of land, that is on commodities for the
use of man, the same as those articles subject to duties of customs or
excise. The landholder just feels as the brewer, distiller, or importer of
foreign goods, he gets the tax reimbursed by the farmer, and the
farmer is reimbursed by the consumer.
-=-
[end of page #107]
a people their industry will be increased in the same proportion, unless
their forces are exceeded, and then the operation is indeed very
different.
It follows, from this, that both rent and taxes, to a certain degree,
increase the wealth of a people, by augmenting their industry. As rent
is not compulsive, it never can in general be carried beyond the point
that augmented industry will bear; but taxes are not either regulated by
the industry of the individual, or of the community; they may
therefore be carried too far, and when they are, the people become
degraded, disheartened, their independent spirit is lost and broken,
and industry, in place of increasing, as it did in the first stages of
taxation, flies away.
The government, in this case, generally becomes more severe, and
certainly more obnoxious. The broken spirit of the people makes
submission a matter of course, so that there is no effectual resistance
made to its power. Incapacity to pay comes at last, and defeats the
end; but, between incapacity and resistance, the difference is very
wide.
As calculators have been predicting the moment of a total stoppage to
the increase of revenue for nearly half a century; as ministers,
themselves, have never ventured to lay on a new burthen, except when
forced to it by necessity. {92} As taxes have been laid on at random,
in a manner similar to that in which the streets and houses of old cities
were built, without regularity or design, and as the effects predicted
have not taken place, it is fair to conclude, that the subject is not well
understood. If it were, the evil would be in the way to be obviated; but
still the conclusion would be the same, that increased taxation tends to
bring on discontent, and to drive men and capital from a country. The
degree of tendency, and the rapidity of its operations, are a question;
but respecting the tendency itself there can be no question.
Two things more are to be observed, relative to the effects of taxation,
as tending towards decline. The first is, that the taxes are levied by
and expended on men, who, having income only for their lives,
---
{92} Mr. Pitt seems an exception to this; but the establishment of a
sinking fund, at the end of the war, was as necessary for his
administration as any of the loans, during the war, were for Lord
North; and both measures required new taxes.
-=-
[end of page #108]
generally leave families in distress. Those who lose their parents when
young are often left destitute, and those who are farther advanced are
frequently ruined by being educated and accustomed to a rank in life
that they are not able to support. This is a very great evil, and is
renewed as it were every generation. As the revenues of a country
increase, this evil increases also: for, except what goes to the
proprietors of money in the stocks, all the public revenue, very nearly,
goes to people whose income perishes with themselves. To begin with
those who collect the taxes, custom-house officers, excise men,
collectors, and clerks of every rank and demonination =sic=, there is
not one in ten who does not die in indigence; and if he leaves a family,
he leaves it in distress.
It is no doubt the lot of the great bulk of mankind, that is to say, the
labouring part of the community in every country, to leave children
unprovided for; but then they are left in a rank of society that does not
prevent their going to work or to service, which is not the case with
the vast number left by those who enjoy, during life, a genteel and
easy existence under government.
The education of such persons is either neglected entirely, or ill fitted
for the line of life into which they are to go. If the sum-total of human
vice and misery was to be divided into shares, and if it were calculated
how much fell to each person, there is not a doubt but at least a double
portion would fall to the lot of those unfortunate persons who are left
by parents enjoying offices for life; who are generally obliged to
expend their income as they earn it. As, according to the natural
chance of things, a number of such persons must leave young families,
the seeds of misery are continually sowing a-fresh, to the great
detriment of society. This evil depends in a great degree upon the
habits and nature of the people, which augment or diminish it; and, in
commercial nations, the evil is far the greatest. Where commerce does
not flourish, persons belonging to the revenue-department are seldom
highly paid, and they by no means consider themselves as a class of
persons distinguished above the general run, or obliged to live more
expensively; but, in a manufacturing country, to live without working,
implies a degree of gentility that is extremely ruinous to those who
enjoy that fatal and flimsy pre-eminence. [end of page #109]
A manufacturer, who is getting a thousand pounds a year, will,
perhaps, not assume so much importance as a man in office who does
not get one hundred pounds; and the former, as well as his family,
knowing that they are beholden to industry for what they have, do not
think themselves above following it. {93}
Unfortunately, it also happens, that, in all sorts of occupation where
trust is reposed and punctuality required, more than in ordinary
business, it is rather late in life before those employed rise to
situations of considerable emolument. When they are old, their
families are generally young; thus it is, that the persons who are the
most unfit to marry late in life are generally those who do so. This
order of things cannot easily be changed. In the rate of payments
governments are regulated by the service done, and by the dependence
that can be placed on the person employed, who, on the other hand,
follows the natural propensities of human nature. When young, and on
a small allowance, a revenue-officer remains single; but when it is
necessary to become serious, attentive, and confidential, and when he
finds he has the means, he betakes himself to a domestic life, which is
the most natural to men arrived at a certain time of life, and the best
fitted for those who are to be depended upon for the correctness of
their conduct. It is impossible to prevent this natural state of things;
and if let go uncorrected, if not counteracted, the consequences are
very pernicious. It is to this, in a great measure, the augmentation of
vice and mendicity =sic= is to be attributed in nations, as they become
wealthy and great.
Perhaps more depends upon the manner of taxation than the amount;
at least it certainly is so in all countries where the amount is not very
high. In America, for example, the amount is of no importance; the
manner might be of very pernicious consequence. In France, before
the revolution, the taxes were more oppressive, from the manner of
levying them than from their amount. The same thing might be said
---
{93} This is a very important part of the consideration; but, as
education and it are connected, and that comes into the Fourth Book
=sic--there is none.=, the whole consideration is left till then; not only
the national prosperity is injured, but the feelings of humanity are
hurt, and the sum of human misery increased by this consequence.
-=-
[end of page #110]
of almost every country in Europe, England and Holland excepted. At
present, the case is greatly altered, in many countries, by the increase:
yet, still, one of the principal evils arises from the manner of levying
the taxes; the restraints imposed by them, the inconveniency, the
vexation, and, finally, the misery and ruin they, in many cases,
occasion.
Of all the examples, where taxation contributed most to the fall of a
country, Rome is the greatest. The luxury of the imperial court, and
the expenses of a licentious and disorderly army, added to the
ignorance of the subject, rendered the taxes every way burthensome.
From the fall of Rome, to the time of Louis XIV. the splendour of
courts, and their expenses, were objects of no great importance. We
are but lately arrived at a new aera in taxation; for, though taxation has
been the occasion of much discontent at all times, it was carried to no
considerable length, in any country in Europe, except in Spain and
Holland, till within this last century.
Indeed, when we consider the great noise that has often been made
about raising an inconsiderable sum, it is impossible not to be
astonished at the reluctance with which people pay taxes, when they
feel that they are paying them, and are not accustomed to the feeling.
Taxation is, then, to the feelings of men, disagreeable; to their
manners hurtful; they are also, in their operation, to a certain degree,
inimical to liberty. The ultimate consequence of this is, that persons
and property have both of them a tendency to quit a country where
taxes are high, and to go to one, where, with the same means, there
may be more enjoyment.
Taxes may be called a rent paid for living in a country, and operate
exactly like the rent of houses or land, or rent for any thing else; that
is, they make the tenant remove to a cheaper place, unless he finds
advantages where he is to counterbalance the expense.
Unfortunately, the persons who have the greatest disposition to quit a
country that is heavily taxed are those, who, having a certain income,
which they cannot increase, wish to enjoy it with some degree of
economy. They are, likewise, the persons who can remove with the
greatest [end of page #111] facility. Thus, people whose income is in
money are always the first to quit a country that is become too dear to
live in with comfort.
Many circumstances may favour or counteract this tendency, such as
the difficulty of finding an agreeable place to retire to, where the
money will be secure, or the interest regularly paid; but, an inquiry
into that will come more properly when we examine the external
causes of decline.
Though the increase of taxes, by augmenting the expense of living, and of
the necessaries of life, is little felt by the labouring class, their
wages rising in proportion; yet a most disastrous effect is produced on
the fine arts, and on all productions of which the price does not bear a
proportional rise.
Where taxes are high, and luxury great, there must be some persons
who have a great deal of ostentation, even if they have little taste. A
picture or a jewel of great value will, very certainly, find a purchaser,
but that will only serve as a motive for bringing the fine painting from
another country, where the necessaries of life are cheaper, and where
men enjoy that careless ease which is incompatible with a high state of
taxation.
When Rome became luxurious, to the highest pitch, there were neither
poets, painters, nor historians, bred within its walls; buffoons and
fiddlers could get more money than philosophers, and they had more
saleable talents. Had Virgil not found an Augustus, had he lived three
centuries later, he must either have written ballads and lampoons, or
have starved; otherwise he must have quitted Italy.
When Rome was full of luxury, and commanded the world and its
wealth, there was not an artist in it capable of executing the statues of
its victorious generals. {94}
Some Greek island, barren and bare, would breed artists capable of
making ornaments for imperial Rome.
---
{94} They were obliged to cut the heads off from ancient statues, as
their artists were only sufficiently expert to carve the drapery of the
body.
-=-
[end of page #112]
It is an easy matter, in a rich country, to pay for a fine piece of art,
But a difficult matter to find a price for the bringing up a fine
artist. {95}
The fine arts have not, indeed, any intimate or immediate connection
with the wealth or strength of a nation. The balance of trade has never
been greatly increased by the exportation of great masterpieces of art,
nor have nations been subdued by the powers of oratory; but the
knowledge and the arts, by which wealth and greatness are obtained,
follow in the train of the finer performances of human genius.
Where money becomes the universal agent, where it is impossible to
enjoy ease or comfort for a single day without it, it becomes an object
of adoration, as it were. To despise gold, which purchases all things, is
reckoned a greater crime than to despise him to whose bounty we are
indebted for all things; consequently, ambition, without which there
never is excellence, is, at an early period of life, bent towards the
gaining a fortune. A man, indeed, must either be of a singularly odd
and obstinate disposition, or very indifferent about the opinion of
others, and even about the good things of this world, (as they are
termed,) to persevere in obtaining perfection in science or art, while
without bread, when he might, with a tenth part of the care and study,
live in affluence, and get money from day to day. There are few such
obstinate fools; and without them, in a wealthy country, there can be
found few men profound in science, or excelling in any of the arts.
The augmentation of taxes, by rendering the produce of industry
dearer than in other countries, tends to cut off a nation of that de-
---
{95} This is liable to some exceptions. Natural genius may make a
man excel; but, even then, it is ten to one if he is not compelled to
labour in order to get bread, in place of trying to obtain fame. It was
thus the great Dr. Johnson, with a genius that might have procured
him immortal fame, drudged, during life, on weekly or daily labours,
which will soon be forgotten. Even his dictionary, wonderful as it is
for a single man, is not worthy of the English nation, and Johnson's
name is little known beyond the limits of his own country. His genius
was great, but his labours were little. His mind was in fetters; it was
Sampson grinding at the mill to amuse the Philistines; not Sampson
slaying lions, and putting to flight armies.
-=-
[end of page #113]
scription, from the markets in poorer countries. If all other countries
are poorer; and the taxes lower; it has a tendency to shut it out from all
the markets in the world.
An operation, that, at the same time that it renders people less happy,
less contented, and more indifferent to the fate of their country, and at
the same time tends to shut them out from foreign markets, is certainly
very hurtful to any country, but particularly so to one, the greatness of
which is founded on manufactures and commerce.
It would be useless to enlarge on so self-evident a consequence; yet,
even in this case, we shall find something of that mixture of good,
along with the bad, which is to be found in all human things.
As exertion originates in necessity or want, which it removes, taxation
has the effect of prolonging the operation of necessity, after it would
otherwise have ceased, and of rendering its pressure greater than it
otherwise would be; the consequence of this is a greater and larger
continued exertion on the part of those who have to pay the taxes.
Human exertion, either in the way of invention or of industry, is like a
spring that is pressed upon, and gains strength according to the
pressure, until a certain point, when it gives way entirely.
Those investigators, who have calculated the effect of such and such a
degree of taxation, of national debt, &c. have all erred, in not making
any, or a sufficient, allowance for the action of this elastic power. Mr.
Hume and Mr. Smith, certainly, both of them, men of profound
research, have erred completely in this. The former, in calculating the
ultimatum of exertion, at a point which we have long since passed;
and, the latter, in reasoning on the taxation at the time he wrote, as if
nearly the utmost degree, though it has since trebled, and the difficulty
in paying seems to be diminished; at least it appears not to have
augmented.
To fix the point at which this can stop is not, indeed, very easy;
particularly, as the value of gold and silver, which are the measures of
other values, do themselves vary. Thus, for example, a working man
can, with his day's wages, purchase as much bread and beer as he
could have done with it forty years ago. Though the national debt [end
of page #114] is five times as great as it was then, at the present price
of bread, it would not take twice the number of loaves to pay it that it
would have required at that time.
The depreciation of money, then, as well as the continuation and
augmented pressure of necessity, counteract, to a certain degree, and
for a certain time, the natural tendency of taxes; but that counteraction,
though operating in all cases, in its degree and duration, must depend
upon particular circumstances; and though, perhaps, it cannot be, with
much accuracy, ascertained in any case, it is impossible to attempt
resolving the question in a general way; we shall, therefore, return to
the subject, when we apply the general principles to the particular
situation of England.
One conclusion, however, is, that as taxes, carried to a great extent,
are very dangerous, though not so if only carried to a certain point; as
that point cannot be ascertained, it ought to be a general rule to lay on
as few taxes as possible; and the giving as little trouble and
derangement to the contributor as may be, is also another point, with
respect to which there cannot be two different opinions. [end of page
#115]
CHAP. IV.
_Of the interior Causes of Decline, arising from the Encroachments of
public and privileged Bodies, and of those who have a common
Interest; on those who have no common Interest_. {96}
From the moment that any particular form of government or order is
established in a nation, there must be separate and adverse interests;
or, which is the same thing, bodies acting in opposition to each other,
and seeking their own power and advantage at the expense of the rest.
In a country where the executive government is under no sufficient
control, its strides to arbitrary power are well known; but, in a
government poised like that of England, where there are deliberative
bodies, with different interests, acting separately, and interested in
keeping each other and the executive in check, it is not from the
government that much danger is to be apprehended.
It is not meant to dwell on this particular part of the subject. As those
governed hold a check on the executive power, which alone can be
supposed to profit by oppression, there is a means of defence, in the
first instance, and of redress, in the second, which diminishes greatly,
if it does not entirely do away all danger from encroachment.
Another thing to be said about this government is, that government
and the subject never come into opposition with each other, except
where there is law or precedent to determine between them.
The danger, then, of encroachment on that side, is not very great, and
it is the less so in this country, that, when there have been contests,
they have always ended in favour of the people; whereas, in most
---
{96} The public certainly has a common interest, but it feels it not,
and even those who have separate interests make part of that very
public.--This will be exemplified, in a variety of instances, in the
course of the present chapter.
-=-
[end of page #116]
other countries, they have terminated in favour of the executive
power.
It is not so, however, with many other of the component parts of
society. Those deliberating bodies, who have separate interests, and all
those who live, as it were, on the public, and have what they call, in
France, _l'esprit du corps_, for which we have no proper expression,
though it may be defined to be those who have a common interest, a
fellow feeling, and the means of acting in concert, are much more
dangerous.
In nations where the executive power has no control, the progress of
public bodies is less dangerous than where the power of the king is
limited. It is always the interest of the sovereign, who monopolises all
power, and those around him, to prevent any man, or body of men,
from infringing on the liberty of the subject, or becoming rivals, by
laying industry under contribution, so we find that, in every such
nation, the clergy excepted, all public bodies are kept under proper
subjection. {97}
---
{97} In all countries, those who have the care of religious matters
must necessarily have some control over the minds of the people,
which they can to a certain degree turn either to a good or a bad
purpose. It is, therefore, impossible that the government and clergy
can, for any length of time, act in opposition to each other: one or
other of the two must soon fall, and there have been instances of the
triumph of each. We have sometimes seen kings triumph over the
clergy, but not very often; and we have frequently seen governments
overturned by their means: except, therefore, in a state of revolution,
they must mutually support each other. This is the natural state of
things; but, in Roman Catholic countries, priests have a superior sway
to what they have in any other, for several reasons that are very
obvious. In the first place, the sovereign of the nation is not the head
of the church; and, in the second, by means of a very superior degree
of art and attention, during the dark ages, when the laity were sunk in
ignorance, the catholic clergy contrived to entail the church property,
from generation to generation, upon the whole body: at the same time,
enjoining celibacy, by which all chance of alienation, even of personal
property, was done away. As to the means of acquiring property, and
of augmenting it; they were many, and, in every contest with the
secular authority, they had a great advantage, by speaking, as it were,
through ten thousand mouths at once, and giving the alarm to the
consciences of the weak. In countries where the protestant religion has
been established, the case is widely different. Gothic darkness was
nearly fled before the reformation: besides this, the clergy are like
other men, with regard to the manner of living; they are fathers and
husbands, and, as such, liable to have all the property that is their own
alienated, as much as any other set of men [end of page #117]
whatever. The reformers, who were neither destitute of penetration nor
zeal, and who knew all the abuses of the church of Rome, in matters
of regulation as well as of opinion, were very careful to settle the new
order of things on such a plan, as to be free from the evils which they
had experienced, and against which they had risen with such energy
and zeal.
-=-
The simple state of the case is, that the interest of the people is that of
the sovereign; and, except in cases where there is a profound
ignorance of what is good for the nation, every wise sovereign takes
the part of the people. But, under a limited monarchy, or in a
democracy, the case is different. There, those bodies, which an
arbitrary monarch would reduce to obedience at once, stand upon
prerogative themselves; they form a band in the legislature, and act
true to their own interests; so that the sovereign himself is compelled
to admit of abuses, which he is willing but not able to remedy.
It is a great mistake, and one of the greatest into which people have of
late been apt to run, that the government and people of a country are
of opposite interests; and that governments wish to oppress the people,
and rob them of the means of being affluent and happy: the very
contrary is the case; all enlightened monarchs have acted quite
differently.
Alfred the Great, Edward III. Queen Elizabeth, and nearly all her
successors have endeavoured to increase the wealth and happiness of
the people in England. Henry IV. of France, even Louis XIV. Peter the
Great of Russia, Catherine, and indeed all his successors, as also the
Kings of Prussia, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and other sovereigns,
who know how to shew their disposition, have tried to enrich their
people, and render them happy. The great study of the English
government has always been directed to that end, and the Romans
extended their care even to the nations they subdued. Though there are
many sovereigns who have not known how to do this, and therefore
have either not attempted it, or erred in the mode they have taken; yet,
with very few exceptions indeed, sovereigns have been found to wish
for the prosperity of the nations over which they ruled.
In all human institutions there is much that is bad, and something [end
of page #118] that is good; and the best, as well as the worst, are only
combinations of good and evil, differing in the proportions. In mixt
governments, or in limited governments, the people can defend their
rights better against the sovereign than against those bodies that spring
up amongst themselves: whereas, in pure monarchies, they have only
to guard against the encroachments of the sovereign; and he will take
care to prevent them from being oppressed by any other power.
This tendency to destruction, from encroachments of public bodies in
established governments, is more to be dreaded in limited monarchies,
and in democracies, than in pure monarchies; but we have had little
occasion to observe the progress in governments of the former sort,
excepting the clergy, though the military and the nobles generally play
their part.
In Rome, the military never were dangerous, while the armies were
only raised, like militias, for the purpose of a particular war; but, when
they became a standing body, they were the proximate efficient cause
of destroying liberty, though this was only the prelude to that decline
which afterwards took place.
In limited monarchies, the lawyers are the greatest body, from which
this sort of danger arises, and the reasons are numerous and evident.
United in interest, and constantly occupied in studying the law of the
country, while the public at large are occupied on a variety of different
objects, and without any bond of union, there can be nothing more
natural than that they should contrive to render the business which
they alone can understand, of as much importance and profit as
possible.
In the criminal law of the country, where the king is the prosecutor,
and where the lawyers are not interested in multiplying expense or
embarrassment, our laws are administered with admirable attention;
though, perhaps, in some cases, they are blamed for severity, they are
justly admired over the world for their mode of administration.
It is very different in cases of property, or civil actions, where it is
man against man, and where both solicitor and council =sic= are
interested in the intricacy of the case. Here, indeed, the public is so
glaringly imposed upon, that it would be almost useless to dwell on
the sub-[end of page #119] ject, and, as a part of the plan of this work
is to offer, or point out, a remedy, it may be sufficient, in this case, to
go over the business once, and leave the examples till the relief is
proposed.
At present, it is, however, necessary to shew why, as things are
constituted in mixed governments like this, no remedy is to be had.
The public only acts by representatives; and, in the House of Lords,
the law-lords, who have _l'esprit du corps_, may easily contrive to
manage every thing. One or two noblemen excepted, no one either
has, or pretends to have sufficient knowledge to argue or adjust a
point of law. Indeed, it is no easy matter to do so with effect, for,
besides that, the law-lords have ministers on their side, or, which is
the same thing, are on the side of ministers, the speaker is himself at
the head of the law. The other members who look up to the law-lords,
and who are generally very few in number on a law-question,
generally give their assent. In the House of Commons, in which there
are a number of lawyers, they are still less opposed. The country
gentlemen profess ignorance. They think that to watch money-bills,
the privileges of the house, the general interests of the nation, roads,
canals, and inclosures, is their province. The mercantile, and other
interests, composed of men getting money with great rapidity,
consider the abuses of law as not to them of much importance; they do
not feel the inconvenience, and have neither time nor inclination to
study the subject. {98}
The prerogative of the king to refuse his assent, might, perhaps, be
expected to come in as a protection, but here there is least of all any
thing to be expected. In the first place, it is thought to be wise never to
use that prerogative, and, in the second place, the lord-high-chancellor
is the king's guide in every thing of the sort, insomuch, that he is
styled the keeper of the king's conscience.
With power, influence, and interest on one side, and nothing to oppose
it on the other, (for the common proverb is true, as all common
---
{98} The law is the widest, and the shortest, and the nearest road to a
peerage. A Howe, Nelson, and St. Vincent, play a game, partly of
skill, and partly of chance, for title; they must have luck and
opportunity. The others are sure with fewer competitors to have more
prizes.
-=-
[end of page #120]
proverbs are, that what is every body's business is nobody's,) the
lawyers must encroach on the public, and they have done so to a most
alarming degree.
In this case, it is not, as in others, where the great cut out work for and
employ the small. No. The great generally (indeed almost always)
begin with the advice and by the means of an attorney, who is only
supposed to understand law-practice. The proceeding does not
originate with the council, who could form some judgment of the
justice of the case, so that a mean petty-fogging attorney may, for a
trifle, which he puts into his own pocket, ruin two ignorant and honest
men; he may set the ablest council to work, and occupy, for a time, the
courts of justice, to the general interruption of law, and injury of the
public.
This is, perhaps, one of the greatest and most crying evils in the land,
and calls out the most loudly for redress, as the effects are very
universal. In a commercial country, so many interests clash, and there
are such a variety of circumstances, that the vast swarms of attorneys,
who crowd the kingdom, find no difficulty in misleading one of the
parties, and that is the cause of most law-suits.
As commercial wealth increases the evil augments, not in simple
proportion, but in a far more rapid progression; first, in proportion to
the wealth and gain to be obtained, and, secondly, according to the
opportunities which augment with the business done.
In addition to the real dead expense, the loss of time, the attention, and
the misfortune and misery occasioned by the law, are terrible evils;
and, if ever the moment comes, that a general dissatisfaction prevails,
it will be the law that will precipitate the evil.
The mildness of the civil laws in France, and the restraints under
which lawyers are held, served greatly to soften the rigours of the
revolution for the first two years. Had they possessed the power and
the means they do in England, the revolution must have become much
more terrible than it was at the first outset.
The lawyers owe all their power to the nature of the government. An
arbitrary monarch will have no oppressor but himself, but here the
[end of page #121] different interests are supposed to be poised; and
when they are, all goes right, but, when they happen not to be so, the
most active interest carries the day.
Though the law is the greatest of those bodies that is of a different
interest from the public at large, yet there are some others deserving
notice, and requiring reformation. It is the interest of all those who are
connected with government to do away abuses that tend to endanger
its security, or diminish its resources.
As the public revenue is all derived from those who labour, and as it
can come from no other persons, if the prosperity and happiness of the
subject were a mere matter of indifference, which it cannot be
supposed to be; still it would be an object for government to preserve
his resources undiminished. It was our lot, in another chapter, to
mention the enormous increase of the poor's rate, which was in part
attributed to the general increase of wealth; mal-administration is,
however, another cause, and, the public is the more to be pitied, that
the parish-officers defend their conduct against their constituents at
the expense of their constituents.
In an inquiry after truth, it should be spoken without fear of offending;
and, in this case, though the feelings of Englishmen may, perhaps, be
hurt, and their pride wounded, it must be allowed, that if it were not
for the mock-democratical form of administrating =sic= the funds for
the maintenance of the poor, they would never suffer the extortion,
and the bare-faced iniquities that are committed. {99} The ship-
money, the poll-tax, the taxes on the Americans, and others, that have
caused so much bloodshed and strife, never amounted to one-tenth, if
all added together, of what the English public pays to be applied to
maintain the poor, and administered by rude illiterate men, who render
scarcely any account, and certainly, in general, evade all regular
control. Those administrators, though chosen by the people, always,
while in office, imbibe _l'esprit du corps_, and make a common
cause.
---
{99} In Brabant and Flanders the people were very jealous of their
liberties. They were, however, most terribly oppressed by the
churchmen and lawyers.
-=-
[end of page #122]
The repairs of highways, bridges, streets, and expenses of police in
general; whatever falls on parishes, towns, or counties, in the form of
a tax or rate, is generally ill-administered, and the wastefulness
increases with wealth. The difficulty of controling or redressing those
evils proceeds from the same spirit pervading all the separate
administrations. Government alone can remedy this; and it is both the
interest and duty of the government to keep a strict watch over every
body of men that has an interest separate from that of the public at
large. Similar to the human body, which becomes stiff and rigid with
age, so, as states get older, regulation upon regulation, and
encroachment on encroachment, add friction and difficulty to the
machine, till its force is overcome, and the motion stops. In the human
body, if no violent disease intervenes, age occasions death. In the
body politic, if no accidental event comes to accelerate the effect, it
brings on a revolution; hence, as a nation never dies, it throws off the
old grievances, and begins a new career.
The tendency that all laws and regulations have to become more
complicated, and that all bodies, united by one common interest, have
to encroach on the general weal, are known from the earliest periods;
but we have no occasion to go back to early periods for a proof of that
in this country. As wealth increases, the temptation augments, and the
resistance decreases. The wealthy part of society are scarcely pressed
upon by the evils, and they love ease too well to trouble themselves
with fighting the battles of the public. Those who are engaged in trade
are too much occupied to spare time; and, if they were not, they
neither in general know how to proceed, nor have they any fund at
their disposal, from which to draw the necessary money for
expenditure.
It sometimes happens, that an individual, from a real public spirit, or
from a particular humour or disposition, or, perhaps, because he has
been severely oppressed, musters sufficient courage to undertake the
redress of some particular grievance; but, unless he is very fortunate,
and possesses both money and abilities, it is generally the ruin of his
peace, if not of his fortune. He finds himself at once beset with a host
of enemies, who throw every embarrassment in his way: his friends
[end of page #123] may admire and pity, but they very seldom lend
him any assistance. If some progress is made in redressing the
grievance, it is generally attended with such consequences to the
individual, as to deter others from undertaking a similar cause. Thus
the incorporated body becomes safe, and goes on with its
encroachments with impunity.
Much more may be said upon this subject; but, as it is rather one of
which the operation is regulated by particular circumstances, than by
general rules, the object being to apply the result of the inquiry to
England, we shall leave it till we come to the application of it to that
country, only observing, that the church, the army, and the law, are the
three bodies universally and principally to be looked to as dangerous;
and each of them according to the situation and the form of
government of the respective countries, though, in England, the
church has less means than in any country in Europe of extending its
revenues or power, the law and corporate bodies the most; and, under
arbitrary governments, the church and the military have the most, and
the law and corporate bodies little or none. [end of page #124]
CHAP. V.
_Of the internal Causes of Decline, arising from the unequal Division
of Property, and its Accumulation in the Hands of particular Persons.--
Its Effects on the Employment of Capital_.
In every country, the wealth that is in it has a natural tendency to
accumulate in the hands of certain individuals, whether the laws of the
society do or do not favour that accumulation. Although it has been
observed in a former chapter that wealth follows industry, and flies
from the son of the affluent citizen to the poor country boy, yet that is
only the case with wealth, the possessor of which requires industry to
keep it; for, where wealth has been obtained, so as to be in the form of
land or money at interest, this is no longer the case. {100}
In America, and in countries that are new, or in those of which the
inhabitants have been sufficiently hardy, and rash to overturn every
ancient institution, precautions have been taken against the
accumulation of too much wealth in the hands of one person, or at
least to discourage and counteract it; but, in old nations, where we do
not chuse =sic= to run such risks, the case is different. The natural
vanity of raising a family, the means that a rich man has to
accumulate, the natural chance of wealth accumulating by marriages,
and many other circumstances, operate in favour of all those rich men,
who are freed from risk, and independent of industry. In some cases,
extravagance dissipates wealth, but the laws favour accumulation of
landed property, and counteract extravagance; the advantages are in
favour of all the wealthy in general, and the consequence is, that from
the first origin of any particular order of things, till some convulsion
takes place, the division of property becomes more and more unequal.
Far from counteracting this by the laws of the land, in all those
---
{100} Amongst the Romans, in early times, property in land was by
law to be equally divided; but that absurd law was never strictly
attended to, and when the country became wealthy was totally set
aside.
-=-
[end of page #125]
countries, the governments of which took strength during this feudal
system, there are regulations leading greatly to accelerate the progress.
The law of primogeniture has this effect; and the law of entails, both
immoral and impolitic in its operation, has a still greater tendency.
These laws only extend to agricultural property; but commerce, which
at first tends to disseminate wealth, in the end, has the same effect of
accumulating it in private hands.
Industry, art, and intelligence, are, in the early ages, the spring of
commerce; but, as machinery and capital become necessary, a set of
persons rise up who engross all the great profits, and amass immense
fortunes. {101}
The consequence of great fortunes, and the unequal division of
property, are, that the lower ranks, though expensively maintained,
become degraded, disorderly, and uncomfortable, while the middling
classes disappear by degrees. Discontent pervades the great mass of
the people, and the supporters of the government, though powerful,
are too few in number, and too inefficient in character to preserve it
from ruin.
The proprietors of land or money should never be so far raised above
the ordinary class of the people as to be totally ignorant of their
manner of feeling and existing, or to lose sight of the connection
between industry and prosperity; for, whenever they do, the
industrious are oppressed, and wealth vanishes. {102}
It requires not much knowledge, and little love of justice, to see that
there must be gradations in society, which, instead of diminishing,
increase the general happiness of mankind; but when we
---
{101} Invention has nearly the same effect in commerce that the
introduction of gunpowder and artillery have on the art of war. Wealth
is rendered more necessary to carry them on. Every new improvement
that is made, in either the personal strength and energy of man
becomes of less importance.
{102} Some of the greatest proprietors in this kingdom, much to their
honour, are the most exemplary men in it, with respect to their
conduct to their tenantry; but though the instances are honourable and
splendid, they are not general; nor is it in the nature of things that they
can be general. In France, matters were in general different; and the
inattention of the nobility to their duty was one cause of the
revolution; they had forgot, that, if they neglected or oppressed the
industrious, they must ruin themselves.
-=-
[end of page #126]
find that the chance of being born half an hour sooner or later makes
one man the proprietor of 50,000 acres and another little better than a
beggar; when we consider that, by means of industry, he never may be
able to purchase a garden to grow cabbages for his family, it loosens
our attachment to the order of things we see before us, it hurts our
ideas of moral equity. A man of reflection wishes the evil to be
silently counteracted, and if he is violent, and has any disposition to
try a change, it furnishes him with arguments and abettors.
When the Romans (with whose history we are tolerably well
acquainted) {103} grew rich, the division of property became very
unequal, and the attachment of the people for their government
declined, the middle classes lost their importance, and the lower
orders of free citizens became a mere rabble. When Rome was poor,
the people did not cry for bread, but when the brick buildings were
turned into marble palaces, when a lamprey was sold for fifty-six
pounds, {104} the people became a degraded populace, not much
better, or less disorderly than the Lazzeroni of Naples. A donation of
corn was a bribe to a Roman citizen; {105} though there is not,
perhaps, an order of peasantry in the most remote corner of Europe,
who would consider such a donation in ordinary times as an object
either worthy of clamour or deserving of thanks. {106}
The Romans, at the time when Cincinatus held the plough, and the
conquerors of nations roasted their own turnips, would have thought
themselves degraded by eating bread obtained by such means; but it
was different with the Romans after they had conquered the world.
In a more recent example, we may trace a similar effect, arising from a
cause not very different.
---
{103} We know better about the laws and manners of the Romans
2000 years ago, in the time of the first Punic War, than about those of
England, in the time of Henry the Fourth. They had fixed laws, their
state was young, and the division of property tolerably equal.
{104} See Arbuthnot on Coins.
{105} Do not the soup-shops of late invention, and certainly well
intended, bear some resemblance to these days of Roman
wretchedness and magnificence.
{106} It is to be observed, these donations were not on account of
scarcity, but to save the people from the trouble of working to earn the
corn; they were become idle in body and degraded in mind.
-=-
[end of page #127]
The unequal division of property in France was one of the chief causes
of the revolution; the intention of which was, to overturn the then
existing order of things. The ignorance of the great proprietors
concerning of their true interests, and the smallness of their numbers,
disabled them from protecting themselves. The middle orders were
discontented, and wished for a change; and the lower orders were so
degraded, that, at the first signal, they became as mutinous and as
mean as the Plebians at Rome, in the days of its splendor. {107}
That this was not alone owing to the unequal division of property is
certain, there were other causes, but that was a principal one. As a
proof that this was so in England, where property is more equally
divided than it was in France, the common people are more attached
to government, and of a different spirit, though they are changing
since the late great influx of wealth into this country, and since
difficulties which have accumulated on the heads of the middle orders,
while those who have large fortunes feel a greater facility of
augmenting them than at any former period.
In those parts of this country, where wealth has made the least
progress, the character of the people supports itself the best amongst
the lower classes; and the inverse progress of that character, and of the
acquisition of wealth, is sufficiently striking to be noticed by one who
is neither a very near, nor a very nice observer.
Discontent and envy rise arise from comparison; and, where they
become prevalent, society can never stand long. They are enemies to
fair industry.
Whatever may have been the delusive theories into which ill-
intentioned, designing, and subtile men have sometimes deluded the
great mass of the people, they have never been successful, except
when they could fight under the appearance of justice, and thereby
create discontent. The unequal division of property has frequently
served them in this case.
---
{107} The Parisian populace were the instruments in the hand of those
who destroyed the former government, as the regular army is in the
hands of him who has erected that which now exists.
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[end of page #128]
[Transcriber's note: possible omissis--page 128 ends as above, page 129
starts as next follows...]
while it increased the ignorance, and diminished the number of the
enemies they had to encounter.
As this evil has arisen to a greater height in countries which have had
less wealth in the aggregate than England, it is not the most dangerous
thing we have to encounter; but, as the tendency to it increases very
rapidly of late years, we must, by no means, overlook it. A future
Chapter will be dedicated to the purpose of inquiring how this may be
counteracted in some cases, in others modified and disguised, so as to
prevent, in some degree, the evil effects that naturally arise from it.
Of all the ways in which property accumulates, in particular hands, the
most dangerous is landed property; not only on account of entails, and
the law of primogeniture, (which attach to land alone,) but because it
is the property the most easily retained, the least liable to be alienated,
and the only one that augments in value in a state that is growing rich.
An estate in land augments in value, without augmenting in extent,
when a country becomes richer. A fortune, lent at interest, diminishes,
as the value of money sinks. A fortune engaged in trade is liable to
risks, and requires industry to preserve it: but industry, it has been
observed, never is to be found for any great length of time in any
single line of men; consequently, there are few great monied men,
except such as have acquired their own fortunes, and those can never
be very numerous nor overgrown.
Besides our having facts to furnish proofs that there are no very great
fortunes, except landed fortunes; it can scarcely have escaped the
notice of any one, that no other gives such umbrage, or shews the
inferiority men =sic= who have none so much. {108}
That there is a perpetual tendency to the accumulation of property, in
the hands of individuals, is certain; for, amongst the nations
---
{108} If a man has wealth, in any other form, it is only known by the
expenditure he makes, and it is quickly diminished by
mismanagement; but the great landed estate, which is seldom well
attended to, is mismanaged to the public detriment without ruin to the
proprietor.
-=-
[end of page #129]
of Europe, those who are the most ancient, exhibit the most striking
contrasts of poverty and riches.
Nations obtaining wealth by commerce are less liable to this danger
than any others; at least we are led to believe so, from the present
situation of things: we are, perhaps, however, not altogether right in
the conclusion.
In France there were, and in Germany, Russia, and Poland, there are
some immense fortunes, though general wealth is not nearly equal to
that of England: so much for a comparison between nations of the
present day. Again, it is certain, there were some fortunes in England,
in the times of the Plantagenets and Tudors, much greater than any of
the present times. {109} England was not then near so wealthy as it is
now, and had very little commerce: it would then appear, that whether
we compare England with what it was before it became a wealthy and
commercial nation, or with other nations, at the present time, which
are not wealthy, commerce and riches appear to have operated in
dividing riches, and making that division more equal, rather than in
rendering their accumulation great in particular hands, and their
distribution unequal.
Before we are too positive about the cause, though we admit this
effect, let us inquire whether there are not some other circumstances
that are peculiar to the present situation of England, that may, if not
wholly, at least in part, account for it.
The form of government in England is different from that of any of
those countries. It is also different in its nature, though not in its
form, from what it was under the Plantagenets and Tudors. Court favour
cannot enrich a family in this country, and the operation of the law is
tolerably equal. As neither protection, nor rank, in this country, raise
a man above the rest of society, so the richest subject is obliged to
obtain, by his expenditure, that consideration which he would ob-
---
{109} Two centuries ago, land was sold for twelve years purchase,
and the rents are five times as great as they were then; 10,000 L.
employed in buying land then would now produce 5000 L. a year. Had
the same money been lent, at interest, it would but produce 500 L. The
land, too, would sell for 140,000 L. The monied capital would remain
what it was.
-=-
[end of page #130]
tain by other means, under another form of government, {110} and he
is as much compelled to pay his debts as any other man.
It is not, however, the great wealth of one individual, or even of a few
individuals, that is an object of consideration. It will be found that the
great number of persons, who live upon revenues, sufficiently
abundant to exempt them from care and attention, and to enable them
to injure the manners of the people, (being above the necessity of
economy, feeling none of its wants, and contributing nothing by their
own exertion to its wealth or strength,) is a very great evil, and one
that tends constantly to increase.
But if this progress goes on, while a nation is acquiring wealth, how
much faster does it not proceed when it approaches towards its
decline? It is, then, indeed, that the extremes of poverty and riches are
to be seen in the most striking degree.
The higher classes can never be made to contribute their share towards
the prosperity of a state; where there are no middling classes to
connect the higher and lower orders, and to protect the lower orders
from the power of the higher, a state must gradually decline.
It is in the middling classes that the freedom, the intelligence, and the
industry of a country reside. The higher class may be very intelligent,
but can never be very numerous; and being above the feeling of want,
except in a few instances, (where nature has endowed the wealthy
with innate good qualities,) there is nothing to be expected or obtained
of them, {111} towards the general good.
From the working and laborious classes, again, little is to be expected.
They fill the part assigned to them when they perform their duty to
themselves and families; and they have neither leisure, nor other
means of contributing to general prosperity as public men;
---
{110} In France, the richest subject under the crown was a prince of
the blood, &c.
{111} In this case, the English form of government is good, because,
it not only hinders any man from forgetting that he is a man, but
whenever there is any ambition, no one in this country can rise above
the necessity of acting with, and feeling for, their inferiors, of whom
they sometimes have to ask favours, which they never do under a pure
monarchy.
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[end of page #131]
they, indeed, pay more than their share of taxes in almost every
country; {112} but they cannot directly, even by election, participate
in the government of the country.
If any number of persons engross the whole of the lands of a nation,
then the labourers that live on those lands must be in a degraded
situation; they then become less sound and less important members of
the state than they would otherwise be.
Necessity does not act with that favourable impulse on people, where
property is very unequally divided, that it does where the gradation
from the state of poverty to that of riches is more regular.
As the action of the body is brought on by the effect produced on the
mind; and as there is no hope of obtaining wealth where it appears
very unequally divided, so also there is no exertion where there is no
hope. {113}
Where there is no regular gradation of rank and division of property,
emulation, which is the spur to action, when absolute necessity ceases
to operate, is entirely destroyed; thus the lower classes become
degraded and discouraged, as is universally found to be the case in
nations that have passed their meridian; the contrary being as regularly
and constantly the case with rising nations.
Besides the degradation and listlessness occasioned in the lower ranks,
by an unequal distribution of property, the most agreeable, and the
strongest bond of society is thereby broken. The bond that
---
{112} This is less the case in England than in any other country.
{113} It is strange how possibility, which is the mother of hope, acts
upon, and controuls, the passions. Envy is generally directed to those
who are but a little raised above us. They are reckoned to be madmen
who envy kings, or fall in love with princesses, and, in fact, they are
such, unless when they belong to the same rank themselves.
Love, for example, which is not a voluntary passion, or under the
controul of reason, ought, according to the chances of things,
sometimes to make a sensible and wise man become enamoured of a
princess, but that never happens. It would appear, that, in order to
become the object of desire, there must be a hope founded on a
reasonable expectation of obtaining the object. This can be but very
small in the lower classes, when they look at the overgrown rich, and
have no intermediate rank to envy or emulate.
-=-
[end of page #132]
consists, in the attachment of the inferior classes, to those immediately
above them. Where the distance is great, there is but little connection,
and that connection is merely founded upon conveniency, not on a
similarity of feeling, or an occasional interchange of good actions, or
mutual services. By this means, the whole society becomes, as it were,
disjointed, and if the chain is not entirely broken, it has at least lost
that strength and pliability that is necessary, either for the raising a
nation to greatness, or supporting it after it has risen to a superior
degree of rank or power.
Amongst the causes of the decline of wealthy nations, this then is one.
The great lose sight of the origin of their wealth, and cease to
consider, that all wealth originates in labour, and that, therefore, the
industrious and productive classes are the sinews of riches and power.
The French nation, to which we have had occasion to allude already,
was in this situation before the revolution. Rome was so likewise
before its fall. We are not, however, to expect to find this as a
principal cause in the fall of all nations; many of them fell from
exterior and not interior causes. Venice, Genoa, and all the places that
flourished in the middle ages, fell from other causes. Whatever their
internal energy might have been, their fate could not have been
altered, nor their fall prevented. The case is different with nations of
which the extent is sufficiently great to protect them against the
attacks of their enemies; and where the local situation is such as to
secure them from a change taking place in the channels of commerce,
a cause of decline which is not to be resisted by any power inherent in
a nation itself.
In Spain and Portugal the internal causes are the preponderating ones,
and, in some measure, though not altogether so, in Holland. If
England should ever fall, internal causes must have a great share in
the catastrophe. In this inquiry, then, we must consider the interior
state of the country as of great importance.
When property is very unequally divided, the monied capital of a
nation, upon the employment of which, next to its industry, its wealth,
or revenue, depend, begins to be applied less advantageously. A
preference is given to employments, by which money is got with most
ease and [end of page #133] certainty, though in less quantity. A
preference also is given to lines of business that are reckoned the most
noble and independent.
Manufacturers aspire to become merchants, and merchants to become
mere lenders of money, or agents. The detail is done by brokers, by
men who take the trouble, and understand the nature of the particular
branches they undertake, but who furnish no capital.
The Dutch were the greatest example of this. Independent of those
great political events, which have, as it were, completed the ruin of
their country, they had long ceased to give that great encouragement
to manufactures, which had, at first, raised them to wealth and power
in so surprising a manner. They had, in the latter times, become agents
for others, rather than merchants on their own account; so that the
capital, which, at one time, brought in, probably, twenty or twenty-
five per cent. annually, and which had, even at a late period, produced
ten or fifteen, was employed in a way that scarcely produced three.
If it were possible to employ large capitals with as much advantage,
and to make them set in motion and maintain as much industry as
small ones are made to do, there would scarcely be any limit to the
accumulation of money in a country; but a vast variety of causes
operate on preventing this.
Whatever, therefore, tends to accumulate the capital of a nation in a
few hands (thereby depriving the many) not only increases luxury, and
corrupts manners and morals, but diminishes the activity of the capital
and the industry of the country. {114}
In all the great places that are now in a state of decay, we find families
living on the interest of money, that formerly were engaged in
manufactures or commerce. Antwerp, Genoa, and Venice, were full
---
{114} It is a strange fact, that when this country was not nearly so far
advanced as it is now, almost all the merchants traded on their own
capitals; they purchased goods, paid for them, sold them, and waited
for the returns; but now it is quite different. They purchase on credit,
and draw bills on those to whom they sell, and are continually obliged
to obtain discounts; or, in other words, to borrow money, till the
regular time of payment comes round; they may, therefore, be said to
be trading with the capital of money-lenders, who afford them
discount.
-=-