{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, imbibel'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.-=-[end of page #128][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.-=-[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.-=-[end of page #134]of such, but those persons would not have ventured a single shilling in a new enterprise. The connection between industry and revenue was lost in their ideas. They knew nothing of it, and the remnants of the industrious, who still cultivated the ancient modes of procuring wealth, were considered as an inferior class of persons, depending upon less certain means of existence, and generally greatly straitened for capital, which, as soon as they possessed in sufficient quantity, enabled them to follow the same example, and to retire to the less affluent, but more esteemed and idle practice of living upon interest.In countries where there are nobility, the capital of the commercial world is constantly going to them, either by marriage of daughters, or by the other means, which rich people take to become noble. Even where there are no nobility, the class of citizens living without any immediate connection with trade consider themselves as forming the highest order of society, and they become the envy of the others. There appears to be no means of preventing capital, when unequally divided, from being invested in the least profitable way that produces revenue. When more equally divided, it is employed in the way that produces the greatest possible income, by setting to work and maintaining the greatest possible quantity of labour.If there is not sufficient means of employing capital within a nation or country that has a very unequal division of wealth, there are plenty of opportunities furnished by poorer nations. Accordingly, every one of the nations, states, or towns, that has ever been wealthy, has furnished those who wanted it with capital, at a low interest. Amsterdam has lent great sums to England, to Russia, and France. The French owed a very large sum to Genoa at the beginning of the revolution. Antwerp, Cologne, and every one of the ancient, rich, and decayed towns had vested money in the hands of foreign nations, or lent to German princes, or to the great proprietors of land, on the security of their estates. The American funds found purchasers amongst the wealthy all over Europe, when they could not find any in their own states; and, it is probable, that the far greater portion of their debt is at this time in the hands of foreigners.Thus it is that wealthy nations let the means by which the wealth [end of page #135] was acquired go out of their hands; each individual in a new state, or in an old, follows his own interest and disposition in the disposal of his property. In the new state, the individual interest and that of the country are generally the same; in the old one, they are in opposition to each other, and that opposition is greatly increased by the unequal division of property. The middling class of proprietors never seek the most profitable employment for their money; the very wealthy are always inclined to seek for good security and certain payment, without any consideration of the interest of their country.
{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, imbibel'esprit du corps, and make a common cause.
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{99} In Brabant and Flanders the people were very jealous of their liberties. They were, however, most terribly oppressed by the churchmen and lawyers.
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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
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{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.
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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
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{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.
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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.
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{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.
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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.
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{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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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
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{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.
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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-
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{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.
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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;
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{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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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
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{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.
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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
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{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.
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of such, but those persons would not have ventured a single shilling in a new enterprise. The connection between industry and revenue was lost in their ideas. They knew nothing of it, and the remnants of the industrious, who still cultivated the ancient modes of procuring wealth, were considered as an inferior class of persons, depending upon less certain means of existence, and generally greatly straitened for capital, which, as soon as they possessed in sufficient quantity, enabled them to follow the same example, and to retire to the less affluent, but more esteemed and idle practice of living upon interest.
In countries where there are nobility, the capital of the commercial world is constantly going to them, either by marriage of daughters, or by the other means, which rich people take to become noble. Even where there are no nobility, the class of citizens living without any immediate connection with trade consider themselves as forming the highest order of society, and they become the envy of the others. There appears to be no means of preventing capital, when unequally divided, from being invested in the least profitable way that produces revenue. When more equally divided, it is employed in the way that produces the greatest possible income, by setting to work and maintaining the greatest possible quantity of labour.
If there is not sufficient means of employing capital within a nation or country that has a very unequal division of wealth, there are plenty of opportunities furnished by poorer nations. Accordingly, every one of the nations, states, or towns, that has ever been wealthy, has furnished those who wanted it with capital, at a low interest. Amsterdam has lent great sums to England, to Russia, and France. The French owed a very large sum to Genoa at the beginning of the revolution. Antwerp, Cologne, and every one of the ancient, rich, and decayed towns had vested money in the hands of foreign nations, or lent to German princes, or to the great proprietors of land, on the security of their estates. The American funds found purchasers amongst the wealthy all over Europe, when they could not find any in their own states; and, it is probable, that the far greater portion of their debt is at this time in the hands of foreigners.
Thus it is that wealthy nations let the means by which the wealth [end of page #135] was acquired go out of their hands; each individual in a new state, or in an old, follows his own interest and disposition in the disposal of his property. In the new state, the individual interest and that of the country are generally the same; in the old one, they are in opposition to each other, and that opposition is greatly increased by the unequal division of property. The middling class of proprietors never seek the most profitable employment for their money; the very wealthy are always inclined to seek for good security and certain payment, without any consideration of the interest of their country.