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An Introduction to Pre-Smithian Economic Thought

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Many people believe that the study of economics began with the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Yet, for at least two centuries prior there had been numerous writers who had explored the area and had made substantial contributions to the field. For a list of authors who were writing on economics before Smith see the school of thought of Pre-Smithian Economists.

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One of the best places to begin exploring this field is the excellent collection of texts edited by Henry C. Clark, Commerce, Culture, and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism before Adam Smith, ed. Henry C. Clark (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Unfortunately, this book is not available online in HTML, only in PDF. So, what we have done here is to use Henry Clark’s insightful introductions to each reading with alternative versions of the texts which we do have online in HTML.

You also might wish to hear Henry Clark talk about his book in this podcast.

See our entire collection of books on Economics, our other website Econlib which is devoted to economics, an the collection of essays on economics in The Forum.

For more information about the authors and their works see:

1. Pieter de la Court, Political Maxims of the State of Holland (1662)
2. Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade (1690)
3. Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade (1691)
4. Andrew Fletcher, Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland (1697)
5. Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, Cato’s Letters (1721)
6. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1723)
7. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws (1748)
8. David Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts” (1752)
9. Turgot, Reflections on the Formation and the DistributionWealth (1766)
10. John Millar, On the Origin of the Distinction Ranks (1771)
11. Condillac, Commerce and Government Considered in Their Mutual Relationship (1776)

1: 1. Pieter de la Court, Political Maxims of the State of Holland (1662)

Pieter de la Court came from a family that was close to republican circles in Holland. A cloth manufacturer himself, Pieter’s grandfather Jacques had a medallion struck with the insignia “Long live liberty!” upon the death of the stadholder William I in 1650, though Pieter’s own writings on the subject are somewhat more complex and nuanced in their orientation. His Interest van Holland (The Interests of Holland ) was mostly completed by 1661. After consulting with Jan de Witt, who suggested a few changes, de la Court brought the book out in 1662. It was an immediate bestseller, widely read and discussed, but also highly controversial. For the better part of a decade, the author and his book were subject to disciplinary procedures by church and state. De la Court attempted to balance his political interests with his writer’s interest until 1672, at which point the return of the Princes of Orange to power made his republican political ambitions moot. De la Court died in 1685. The excerpts presented here are from Political Maxims of the State of Holland, translated by John Campbell, part 1, chapters 1, 9, 14, 15, and 16. This selection is meant to provide a cross-section of the ways in which the author connected commercial considerations with political and religious ones.

Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland (London: John Campbell, Esq, 1746). Chapter: PART I.

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/85/38151 on 2009-04-23

The text is in the public domain.

PART I.

CHAP. I.

Wherein are laid down the general political maxims which tend to the prosperity of all countries: and some reasons to make it evident, that the same do aptly agree to Holland and West-Friesland.

THAT we may not abruptly speak of the true interest and political maxims of Holland and West-Friesland, nor yet surprize the reader with unknown matters, I judge it necessary to begin with a general discourse of the universal and true political maxims of all countries: that the reader being enlightned by such reasoning, may the better comprehend the true political maxims of Holland and West-Friesland. And seeing that almost all the people in Europe, as the Spaniards, Italians, French, &c. do express the same by the word interest, I shall often have occasion to use the same likewise here for brevity sake, in the same sense that they do; viz. seeing the true interest of all countries consists in the joint welfare of the governors and governed; and the same is known to depend on a good government, that being the true foundation whereon all the prosperity of any country is built;The true interest of all countries consists in the prosperity of all the inhabitants. we are therefore to know, that a good government is not that where the well or ill-being of the subjects depends on the virtues or vices of the rulers; but (which is worthy of observation) where the well or ill-being of the rulers necessarily follows or depends on the well or ill-being of the subjects. For seeing we must believe that in all societies or assemblies of men, self is always preferred; so all sovereigns or supreme powers will in the first place seek their own advantage in all things, tho’ to the prejudice of the subject. But seeing on the other hand true interest cannot be compassed by a government, unless the generality of the people partake thereof; therefore the publick welfare will ever be aimed at by good rulers. All which very aptly agrees with our Latin and Dutch proverb, that, Tantum de publicis malis sentimus, quantum ad privatas res pertinet; i. e. We are only sensible of publick afflictions, in so far as they touch our private affairs; for no body halts of another man’s sore.

Whereby it clearly follows, that all wise men, whether monarchs, princes, sovereign lords, or rulers of republicks, are always inclined so to strengthen their country, kingdom, or city, that they may defend themselves against the power of any stronger neighbour. The rulers welfare therefore does so far necessarily depend on the welfare of the subject; else they would soon be conquer’d by stronger neighbouring princes, and be turn’d out of their government. Those monarchs and supreme powers, who by bad education, and great prosperity, follow their pleasures, suffer their government to fall into the hands of favourites and courtiers, and do commonly neglect this first duty; the said favourites in the mean time finding themselves vested with such sovereign power, do for the most part rule to the benefit of themselves, and to the prejudice, not only of such voluptuous and unwary chief magistrates, but also of their subjects; and by consequence to the weakning of the political state; so that we have often seen revolutions of such monarchies by the ill government of favourites. But such princes as are wife, and do not entrust their power in other mens hands, will not omit to strengthen their dominions against their neighbours as much as possible. But when monarchies, or republicks are able enough to do this, and have nothing to fear from their neighbouring states or potentates, then they do usually, according to the opportunity put into their hands by the form of their government, take courses quite contrary to the welfare of the subject.

Whence ’tis the interest of monarchs to weaken and impoverish the subject, that they may assume to themselves what power they please. Arist.For then it follows as truly from the said general maxims of all rulers, that the next duty of monarchs, and supreme magistrates, is to take special care that their subjects may not be like generous and metalsome horses, which, when they cannot be commanded by the rider, but are too headstrong, wanton, and powerful for their master, they reduce and keep so tame and manageable, as not to refuse the bit and bridle, I mean taxes and obedience. For which end it is highly necessary to prevent the greatness and power of their cities, that they may not out of their own wealth be able to raise and maintain an army in the field, not only to repel all foreign power, but also to make head against their own lord, or expel him.Polit. l. 5. c. 11. And as little, yea much less may prudent sovereign lords or monarchs permit that their cities, by their strong fortifications, and training their inhabitants to arms, should have an opportunity easily, if they pleas’d, to discharge and turn off their sovereign. Bot if herein a sovereign had neglected his duty, there’s no way left for him, but to wait an opportunity to command such populous cities and strongholds by citadels, and to render them weak and defenceless.L. 7. c. 11. ibid. And tho’ Aristotle says, that it very well suits an oligarchical state to have their cities under command of a castle, yet this is only true of a great and populous city, that hath a prince over it, and not of a city that governs itself, or hath a share in the supreme government; for in such a republick, the governor of that citadel would certainly be able to make himself master of that city, and to subjugate or overtop his rulers. And we see that this reason is so strong and clear, and confirm’d by experience, that the history of all former ages, as well as the age we live in, teach us, that the rulers of republicks, whatever they are, have wisely forborn erecting citadels, and do still continue to do so. So that it appears that the said maxim tending to the overthrow of great and populous cities, may be attributed to monarchs and princes at all times, but never to republicks, unless when they have inconsiderately subdued great cities; and tho’ not willing to demolish them, yet are willing to keep them distinct from the sovereiggn government. But if the inconsiderate reader be so far prepossess’d in favour of monarchy and against common freedom, that he neither can nor will submit himself to this way of reasoning, nor to the venerable and antient lessons of old and renowned philosophers, then let him know, that the christian and invincible monarch Justinian has for ever established the said monarchical maxim by form of law in the corpus juris, now become the common law-book of all civiliz’d people, and especially of Christians. As the Emperor Justinianus in his corpus juris, inform of a perpetual law, has establish’d it.* For the said emperor having by his captain general of the east, Belisarius, reconquer’d from the Goths that part of Africa which he had formerly lost, and brought it under his subjection, gave him no order that the inhabitants of great cities should be better disciplin’d and provided with arms, or strengthned by good walls, that they might jointly with ease defend themselves, and their great and populous cities, against the assaults of those barbarous people: but on the contrary, he commands the said captain general Belisarius (and consequently, according to the Roman laws, all his other governors of provinces) to make such provision, that no city or strong hold lying on the frontiers be so great as it could not be well kept; but in such cases so to order them to be built, that they may be well defended with few soldiers, and particularly such as were in pay, and depended only on the emperor of Rome.

And tho’ weak, voluptuous, dull and sluggish monarchs neglect all these things, yet will not the courtiers who govern in their stead, neglect to seek themselves, and to fill their coffers whether in war or in peace: and thus the subjects estates being exhausted by rapine, those great and flourishing cities become poor and weak. And to the end that the subject should not be able to hinder or prevent such rapine, or revenge themselves, those favourites omit no opportunities to divest those populous cities of all fortifications, provision, ammunition of war, and to hinder the exercising of the commonalty in the use of arms. Since it appears from the said maxims, that the publick is not regarded but for the sake of private interest;The interest of republican rulers, is to procure rich and populous cities. Arist. and consequently, that is the best government, where the chief rulers may obtain their own welfare by that of the people: It follows then to be the duty of the governours of republicks to seek for great cities,Pol. l. 7. c. 11. l. 5. c. 11. and to make them as populous and strong as possible, that so all rulers and magistrates, and likewise all others that serve the publick either in country or city, may thereby gain the more power, honour and benefit, and more safely possess it, whether in peace or war: and this is the reason why commonly we see that all republicks thrive and flourish far more in arts, manufacture, traffick, populousness and strength, than the dominions and cities of monarchs:* for where there is liberty, there will be riches and people.

Holland’s true interest consists in promoting fishing, manufacture, traffick, &c.To bring all this home, and make it suit with our state, we ought to consider that Holland may easily be defended against her neighbours; and that the flourishing of manufactures, fishing, navigation, and traffick, whereby that province subsists, and (its natural necessities or wants being well considered) depends perpetually on them, else would be uninhabited: I say, the flourishing of those things will infallibly produce great, strong, populous and wealthy cities, which by reason of their convenient situation, may be impregnably fortified: all which to a monarch, or one supreme head, is altogether intolerable. And therefore I conclude, that the inhabitants of Holland, whether rulers or subjects, can receive no greater mischief in their polity, than to be governed by a monarch, or supreme lord: and that on the other side, God can give no greater temporal blessing to a country in our condition, than to introduce and preserve a free commonwealth government.

But seeing this conclusion opposeth the general and long-continued prejudices of all ignorant persons, and consequently of most of the inhabitants of these United Provinces, and that some of my readers might distaste this treatise upon what I have already said, unless somewhat were spoken to obviate their mistakes, I shall therefore offer them these reasons.

Altho’ by what hath been already said, it appears, That the inhabitants of a republick are infinitely more happy than subjects of a land governed by one supreme head; yet the contrary is always thought in a country where a prince is already reigning, or in republicks, where one supreme head is ready to be accepted.

The interest of courtiers and soldiers is directly against them.For not only officers, courtiers, idle gentry, and soldiery, but also all those that would be such, knowing, that under the worst government they use to fare best, because they hope that with impunity they may plunder and rifle the citizens and country people, and so by the corruption of the government enrich themselves, or attain to grandeur, they cry up monarchical government for their private interest to the very heavens:1 Sam. 1. 8, 12. altho God did at first mercifully institute no other but a commonwealth government, and afterwards in his wrath appointed one sovereign over them.Which is not believed by some, Yet for all this, those blood-suckers of the state, and, indeed of mankind, dare to speak of republicks with the utmost contempt, make a mountain of every molehill, discourse of the defects of them at large, and conceal all that is good in them, because they know none will punish them for what they say:Because among others, the manner of judging among all common subjects, tends to the advantage of monarchy. wherefore all the rabble (according to the old*Latin verse) being void of knowledge and judgment, and therefore inclining to the weather or safer side, and mightily valuing the vain and empty pomp of kings and princes, say amen to it; especially when kept in ignorance, and irritated against the lawful government by preachers, who aim at dominion, or would introduce an independent and arbitrary power of church-government; and such (God amend it) are found in Holland, and the other United Provinces, insomuch, that all vertuous and intelligent people have been necessitated to keep silence, and to beware of disclosing the vices of their princes, or of such as would willingly be their governors, or of courtiers and rude military men, and such ambitious and ungovernable preachers as despise God, and their native country.

And how dangerous it is for the wiser sort to declare themselves to the prejudice of governments by single persons.Nay there are few inhabitants of a perfect free state to be found, that are inclinable to instruct and teach others, how much better a republick is than a monarchy, or one supreme head, because they know no body will reward them for it; and that on the other side,* kings, princes, and great men are so dangerous to be conversed with, that even their friends can scarcely talk with them of the wind and weather, but at the hazard of their lives; and kings with their long arms can give heavy blows.Which yet out of love to my native country, I have here performed, and enquired, And altho’ all intelligent and ingenuous subjects of monarchs, who have not, with lying sycophantical courtiers, cast off all shame, are generally by these reasons, and daily experience, fully convinced of the excellency of a republick above a monarchical government; yet nevertheless, many vertuous persons, lovers of monarchy, do plausibly maintain, that several nations are of that temper and disposition, that they cannot be happily governed but by a single person, and quote for this the examples of all the people in Asia and Africa, as well as Europe, that lie southerly.Whether any people naturally are to be governed by one person. They do also alledge, that all the people who lie more northerly, are more fit to be governed by a single person, and with more freedom; as from France to the northward, all absolute monarchical government ceaseth; and therefore maintain or assert, with such ignorant persons as I mentioned before, that the Hollanders in particular are so turbulent, factious, and disingenuous, that they cannot be kept in awe, and happily governed, but by a single person; and that the histories of the former reigns or government by earls, will sufficiently confirm it.

Whether the Hollanders are so peevish, that they cannot be governed but by a single person?But on the other side, the patriots, and lovers of a free-state will say, that the foregoing government by earls is well know to have been very wretched and horrid, their reigns filling history with continual wars, tumults, and detestable actions, occasioned by that single person. And that on the contrary, the Hollanders, subsisting by manufactures, fishing, navigation, and commerce, are naturally very peaceable, if by such a supreme head they were not excited to tumults.Deduct. Part 2. ch. 3, 4, 7, 13. Whether this be so or not, may be learned and confirmed too in part from those histories.

But here it may be said, that things are much altered within these 100 years last;Whether they would be happier under a stadtholder, than formerly under earls? for Holland then subsisted mostly by agriculture, and there were then no soldiery, treasure, or fortified places to be at the earl’s disposal. But when he had wars, it was with the help of his homagers and tenants, only subsidies or money being given him at his request by the states of the country: And moreover, the cities of Holland, and castles of the nobility were (according to the then method of war) so strong, that they could not be taken by the said earls, without great forces imployed against them; so that the states of Holland in their assemblies, have boldly contended for their rights against the earl’s encroachments. Therefore these earls, on the other side, by reason of their dignity, had many adherents that depended on them, which must needs make that government by earls every way unsteady, weak and tumultuous.

To this an approver of monarchical government may further add, that Holland now wholly subsists by traffick, and that one supreme head, captain-general, or stadtholder, would have his own life-guards at the Hague, the place of assembly, and likewise the assistance of a great and well-paid army, and of all the preachers, and by them the love of the whole populace; and that at his pleasure he may dispose of all the impregnable frontier towns of those provinces that have no suffrages or voices in the state, tho’ he should not increase his strength by any foreign alliances, or by collusion and flattery with the deputies of the other provinces of the generality; insomuch that the states of Holland would not dare, no not in their assemblies, to open their mouths against the interest of such a supreme head, or if they did, he would order his souldiers to take them by the collar, and might easily overpower most of the cities of Holland, the people being unaccustomed to arms, and moreover divided, fortifications but slight and mean in comparison of the present way of fortifying: so that one may truly say, that the Hollanders by setting up one supreme head over themselves, may now with ease, and without tumult, be govern’d like sheep, by an irresistible sovereign, against whom they durst not speak one word, when he should think fit to sheer, flea, or devour them.

Now what there is in this, and whether the Hollanders would be happy in such a condition, I shall at large hereafter give you my judgment.

Whether they are too stupid naturally to be governed as a commonwealth.But as to the stupidity of the Hollanders, whether that be so great, as that they have not wit enough to form a free commonwealth; and having found that precious jewel of freedom, would, with Esop’s cocks, prefer a grain of corn before it: This is what hath not been judged so hitherto, but on the contrary. Which that it may be evident to the reader, he may be pleas’d to observe the prudent conduct of the states of Holland, at their great assembly in the years 1650 and 1651, as also seriously to ponder and weigh the manifold reasons and examples produced to this end in their deduction of the year 1654.The States of Holland, since the year 1650, having manifested the contrary by manifold acts, as also All this is yet further confirmed by that magnanimous resolution of the 23d of January 1657, wherein the states of Holland unanimously declared, after consulting the general assemblies, or common-halls of the respective cities in that province, to hold for a fundamental and certain maxim, “That to place a perpetual head, chieftain, or general over the army, is not only needless, but likewise exceeding prejudicial, and that accordingly in this province all things shall be thus directed; that whenever in a time of war, and pressing necessity, the states of Holland, with the other provinces, shall think fit to proceed to elect a general for the army, or that upon any other occasion a captain-general should be chosen, then not to chuse such a chieftain as shall have a perpetual commission, but for such an expedition, campaign, or occasion only as may happen, &c.” And moreover, you may there fee, that these, and other vigorous resolutions of the like nature, were taken with this special proviso, “that the said resolution shall not be dispensed with, but by the unanimous consent of all the members of the said assembly.”

By this you may perceive, that the supposition of the Hollanders being phlegmatick and dull, and of a slavish nature, is altogether groundless; for seeing they became not free but by the death of the last stadtholder and captain general, and that it was unseasonable and imprudent before that time, for them to shew their commendable zeal for their freedom, and their skill in point of government: and seeing it is evident, that a generation of men that are in freedom, must be overcome, before we can pass a right judgment thereof, and stop the mouths of opposers; we must therefore, leave it to God and time: and if such as like monarchical government, and those base and slavish opposers of liberty survive those times, they will then be able to discern which of the two governments is founded on best reason.

It shall not satisfy me to have said thus much in general; for seeing the states of Holland in their deduction, Chap. 6. Art. 29. declare, that they will not lose their freedom, but with their lives;Because the states of Holland, in their deduction, affirm the contrary. Deductie. Par. 2. Chap. 6. Art. 29. I shall therefore presume to give my opinion of the political maxims of Holland, hoping that my sincere zeal and uprightness to express the same for the benefit of the publick, will be so acceptable to our lawful rulers, that tho’ I may have failed in some things, and by stating the true interest of my country, have been necessitated to reflect on persons, who seek their advantage to the prejudice of Holland, as it is now governed; the said rulers, and true lovers of their native country, will so favour this work, and its author, against the said malevolent persons, that it shall never repent him to have been the first generous and bold undertaker of so commendable a work. But howsoever things happen, or times oppose it, recte fecisse merces est, & ipsa sui pretium virtus; (i. e. to do good is a reward of it self, and virtue carries its own recompence along with it) I shall then, having done my duty as an honest man, good citizen, and upright christian, that may not bury his talent, be able to take comfort in my sincere endeavours: and posterity, into whose hands these writings may fall, will, in spite of all the present powers that oppose it, be able to judge impartially, and that with a sound judgment; because by that time they will have learned, by joyful or sad experience, whether Holland’s interest can be settled upon any other foundation or maxims than those herein exprest; and whether these reasons of mine will not be confirmed by the experience of following ages.

CHAP. II.

That the true interest, and political maxims of Holland and West-Friesland may be well understood; Holland must not be considered so, as in speculation it should be, but as it now stands at present.

BEING now about to enquire into, and lay down some maxims for Holland’s continual prosperity; it seems at first view to be necessary, that we consider the nature of the country, forasmuch as it is in it self perpetual; and what means may be found to improve it to its best advantage, and what good fruits and effects are to be expected from such improvement.Concerning all which, expedients may be found, whereby Holland may be improved to the most perfect republick. In order whereunto, we are first to consider the soil, rivers, meers of Holland, and its situation upon the sea, with the communication it may have with other nations. And next we are further to consider, what people Holland ought to be inhabited with, viz. whether with few, or many, in order to earn their bread: as also how the rulers ought to deport themselves towards foreign princes and governments: and lastly, by what form of government, and how the people ought to be governed.Wherefore such speculations would produce little benefit. But because such speculations use to build rempublicam Platonis, Aristotelis, eutopiam mori, a philosophical republick in the air, or such a one as was never yet found, the thoughts of it will afford little benefit: nor is this strange, considering that so many people cannot be suddenly brought to an uninhabited country, to erect a political state, according to the said speculation, and keep it on foot when it is establish’d. And since in all populous countries there is some form of government; therefore I say again, those speculations are for the most part useless. For if inquiry be made into the polity of all established governments, we shall always find, that there are ever an incredible number of ignorant and malevolent people, enemies to all speculation, and remedies, how good soever, which they conceive or really foresee will be prejudicial in any wise to themselves; and rather than admit them, they will press hard to embroil the state more than it was before. Besides, there is an endless number of political maxims which have so deep a root, that it is great folly to think any man should be able, or indeed that it should be thought fit to root them out all at once: and consequently it would be yet a greater piece of imprudence, if in Holland, tanquam in tabula rasa, as on a smooth, and in a very clean and good piece of ground, we should go about to sow the best seeds, in order to make it an angelical or philosophical republick:Because in affairs of polity we must ever strike the ball as it is found lying. so true is that good and ancient political maxim,* that in polity many bad things are indulged with less inconveniency than removed; and that we ought never in polity (as in playing at tennis) to set the ball fair, but must strike it as it lies; it being also true, that on every occurrence a good politician is bound to shew his art and love to his native country, that by such constancy the commonwealth may by degrees be brought to a better condition. I do therefore conceive myself oblig’d to consider Holland in the state as it now is, and hope that those thoughts will produce the more and better fruits, since those that duly consider the present state of it, will find that they agree for the most part with the climate, soil, rivers, meers, situation, and correspondence which such a country ought to have with other dominions, and especially with a free commonwealth government, which we have now at present in being: and I hope I shall not digress from it.What is understood by Holland’s interest. By the maxims of Holland’s interest, I understand the conservation and increase of the inhabitants as they now are, consisting of rulers and subjects. I shall likewise diligently enquire by what means this interest may be most conveniently attained. And tho’ in the first place the interest of the rulers ought to be consider’d, because distinctly and at large it always seems to occasion the subjects welfare and prosperity;Namely, and especially the prosperity, and in crease of the subjects. and a good form of government is properly the foundation whereon all the prosperity of the inhabitants is built: I shall nevertheless consider in the first place the preservation, and increase of the number of subjects, not only because it is evident in all governments, and especially in all republicks, that the number or paucity of subjects is the cause of an able or weak government; but also because ambitious spirits can seldom find a multitude of people living out of civil society and government, that will subject themselves to them: and on the contrary, where many inhabitants are, there will never want rulers, because the weakness and wickedness of mankind is so great, that they cannot subsist without government; insomuch that in case of a vacancy of rulers, every one would stand candidates for it themselves, or elect others.Seeing the prosperity of the rulers of the republick in Holland depends on the subjects. And above all, I find my self obliged more fully to consider and promote the welfare of the subjects in Holland above that of the rulers; because in this free commonwealth government, it is evident that the durable and certain prosperity of the rulers does generally depend on the welfare of the subjects, as hereafter shall be particularly shewn. And to give the unexperienc’d reader some insight at first, it is convenient to premise that Holland was not of old one republick, but consisted of many, which in process of time chose a head or governor over them by the name of Earl or Stadtholder;Because Holland was not of old one country, but consisted of many republicks; and also because of the diverse situations of the cities, it cannot possibly have one and the same interest. but seeing he had of old no armed men or soldiery of his own as dukes had, but was to be content with his own revenues, and to rule the land, or rather administer justice to each country according to their particular customs, and laws, they nevertheless continued so many several republicks. And tho’ in process of time they were jointly brought to a sovereign republic, yet is it also true that the members of this Dutch republic are of different natures and manners. For Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Horn, Enchuysen, Medenblick, Edam, Monnikendam, Dort, Schiedam, Briel, &c. lying on the sea, or on rivers where ships of great burden may conveniently arrive; Haerlem, Delf, Leyden, Grude, Gorcum, Schoonhoven, Alkmaer, Purmereynde, &c. lying within land, are not to be come at but with vessels that draw little water: besides which, the gentry who live in the plain or open countries of Holland, having great estates, and being not under any government, seem to have a quite particular interest. Wherefore every intelligent person may easily judge that a diversity of rules, subjects, countrys, and situations, must needs cause a diversity of interests, so that I cannot write of Holland’s prosperity as of a distinct country:And yet forasmuch as they all centre and agree in one, the interest of Holland is made evident nevertheless I incline, and do intend to bring it under one title, as far as all its cities or lands can be comprehended in one interest, to the best of my knowledge and skill. Which to do methodically, I shall in the first part inquire into, and show the maxims tending to the welfare or damage of Holland within its own confines. In the second part I shall propose how Holland must procure its own welfare as to foreign princes. And in the third part I shall enquire, and shew by what form of government such a country and inhabitants ought to be governed according to their true interest, seeing this is the general foundation whereon all the prosperity or adversity aforesaid is founded.

CHAP. III.

Of Holland’s natural burdens and hinderances.

Holland’s Situation.HOLLAND lying in the latitude of 51 to 53 degrees, north latitude upon the sea; having many inland rivers, and being besides a very low and plain country, is thereby subject to many inconveniences.

And inconveniences thence proceeding, even in a time of perfect peace.First, There are sharp and very long winters, so that there is need of more light, firing, cloathing, and food, than in warmer countries: besides which, all the cattle of our pasture-land must be then housed, tho’ thereby we bestow more cost and pains, and yet reap less profit of milk-meats than in summer, or in other adjacent lands, where the cattle remain longer, or perhaps all the winter in the field.

By the seasons.Secondly, The seasons are here so short, that they must be very punctually observed, to return us any profit by our plough’d lands; for the seed in this moist country being rotted and consumed in the earth, cannot be sowed again conveniently.

By the prepinquity of the sea.Thirdly, By the vicinity of the sea, and plainness of the land, it is subject in spring, and autumn, not only to unwholesome weather for the inhabitants, but in the spring the sharp cold winds blast most of the blossoms of the fruit-trees; and in and about autumn much unripe fruit is blown down by our usual storms of wind.

And lowness of the country.Fourthly, It is to be considered above all, that these lands lying for the most part lower than the floods of the sea, and rivers, must withstand the terrible storms of the ocean, and shoals of ice, against which it must be defended with great expence: for the making of one rod long of a sea dyke costs sometimes 600 guilders. On the rivers also, the charge of maintaining the banks is very great; and the most chargeable of all is, that notwithstanding so great an expence, the water of our dykes and lowlands sometimes breaks thro’, and overflows the country; so that above all this extraordinary charge, and damage, they cannot drain the country by mills in some years. And touching the ordinary charges in maintaing dykes and sluces, &c. how great an expence this must be, we may well imagine by the yearly charges of Rynland, which is about 80000 acres or * morgens in compass, which hath not much communication with the sea, nor with running, but only with standing waters: and yet as to acredg-money and inland charges, every acre must pay at least two guilders; besides, for draining out of the rain-water by mills to turn it out by trenches, each acre 30 stivers; likewise towards foot-paths, highways, and maintaining the ditches, at least 20 stivers more. And lastly, they are liable to many fines, and troubles, when they chuse their Bailiffs, Dyk. graves, and Heemraden for life, who are wholly ind pendent on the landed-men; tho’ they may elect their judges yearly, or continue their Heemraden.

Also poorness of land.Fifthly, It is evident that Holland affords no minerals, or the least product of mines; so that out of the earth there is nothing to be had but clay and turf, nor even that, but with the spoiling or disfiguring of the ground.

Holland thus contending and wrestling with the sea, rivers, and drained meers, can hardly make 400000 profitable acres, or morgens of land, down and heath not included. For according to the calculation taken in the year 1554, there were found about 300000 morgens, and some hundreds more.Smallness of territory. Likewise the states of Holland and Zealand, in a remonstrance since made to the earl of Leicester, say, that these two provinces, with all their heath, down, and grounds delved out, could make in all but five hundred thousand morgens. So that I conjecture Holland may now make in all four hundred thousand morgens, or acres of land. Seeing the chronicle of Zealand (according to the account given in by the surveyor Eversdyke) testifies, that in 1643. all the islands of Zealand contributed to the yearly poundage, no more than for one hundred eighty three thousand three hundred and fifty gemeeten, and sixty three rods of land: the gemeetens of the down-lands being reckoned after the rate of three for two So that if two gemeetens are reckoned against one Holland acre, then all the above-mentioned gemeetens would make out no more that 91675 morgens, and 63 rods.

Poorness of the soil.And seeing the ground in Holland is for the most part every where either sand, moor, or fenn, it must necessarily be inriched; and because such improvement of it, by reason of the loosness of the land, sinks down, it requires it the oftner.

So that the mischiess caused by war, are intolerable.This is the condition of Holland in a time of perfect peace; what will it be then when we consider, that the Hollanders must not only scour, or clear the sea from enemys, and defend their towns and country against all foreign force, but that they have also charged themselves with much more than the union of Utrecht obliged them to, with the keeping of many conquered cities, and circumjacent provinces, which bring in no profit to Holland, but are a certain charge, being supply’d by that province with fortifications, ammunition-houses, victuals, arms, cannon, pay for the soldiers, yea, and which is a shameful thing to mention, with guardhouses, and money for quartering of soldiers?

And how heavy the said burdens must needs be to the Dutch, may be easily imagined, if it be considered, that besides the customs and other revenues of the earls or states of Holland, in the year 1664.For by the ordinary taxes the inhabitants pay to the state about 14 millions of guilders yearly. by the ordinary charge which was levied of the inhabitants, one year with another, was paid

	Guilders.
To the states of Holland	11000000
To the admiralty of the Maese	472898
To the admiralty of Amsterdam	2000000
To the admiralty of the Northern quarter }	200000
In all—	13,672898

And in time of war they pay for the 200th penny, 2400000, and for half poundage 1200000, and for hearth or chimney-money 600000, guilders.And if it be considered that since that time, by reason of the wars, there were new ordinary taxes imposed; and that the extraordinary, namely, the two hundredth penny brings in 2400000, and the half verpondinge, or poundage, 1200000; and lastly, the chimney-money six hundred and seventy thousand Holland guilders; and that all those burdens are born by the inhabitants, besides the many excises and great sums of money which they must pay in their cities for their maintenance: these things I say considered, we may well conclude, that the inhabitants of Holland are exceeding heavily burdened and charged.

CHAP. IV.

Of the natural product and advantages of Holland.

The natural growth of Holland and what it yields.TO ballance these heavy burdens beforementioned, the inland waters yield nothing but fish, water-fowl and their eggs, the downs only conies: four hundred thousand acres, or morgens of land, nothing but brick-earth, turf, corn, herbs and roots, fruit of trees, flax, hemp, reeds, grass, madder, cattle, sheep, horses. But the downs may be also said to yield lime and sand. And how unsufficient all these products from so small and inconsiderable a bottom are in themselves for the subsistence of so many inhabitants, every one may easily imagine.

CHAP. V.

That the inhabitants of Holland cannot be fed by its own product.

Whereby it appears that Holland, whether in peace or war, cannot feed, or sustain itself.BUT if we should suppose that all the land in Holland could be, and were sowed with the most necessary grain, viz. wheat; and that every morgen in Holland produced fifteen sacks of wheat, yet would not four hundred thousand acres of land yield for two millions of people, each a pound of bread per day. And possibly there are now more people imployed about the manuring of land, than can be fed on it. So that if we should make a calculation of all the fruits which the earth yieldeth, with what else is necessary for the use of man, and continually imported, it would evidently appear that the boors, or husbandmen and their dependents would fall very much short of food, drink, apparel, housing and firing. Therefore if the Hollanders did not by their industry make many manufactures, or by their labour and diligence reap much profit by the seas and rivers, the country, or land of Holland, were not worthy to be inhabited by men, and cultivated, no not tho’ the people were very few in number, and no subsidies, imposts, or excises raised on them, for their common defence against a foreign enemy. On the other side, Holland being now inhabited by innumerable people, who bear incredible heavy taxes, imposts and excises, and must necessarily be so inhabited, the easier to bear so great a burden, and to defend themselves against all their neighbouring potentates: we may safely say, that Holland cannot in any wise subsist of itself, but that of necessity it must fetch its food elsewhere, and continually invite new inhabitants from foreign parts. I therefore find myself obliged to search into, and more particularly demonstrate the ways and means by which the same may be procured.

CHAP. VI.

That Holland lies very commodiously to fetch its provision out of the sea, and to provide itself by other arts and trades: and how great a means of subsistence the fisheries may prove to us.

So that the inhabitants must seek their bread out of the sea by fishing, or ashore by manufactures, and arts.HOLLAND is very well situated to procure its food out of the sea, which is a common element; it lies not only on a strand rich of fish, near the Dogger-Sand, where haddock, cod, and ling may in great abundance be taken, and cured; but also near the herring-fishery, which is only to be found on the coast of Great-Britain, viz. from St. John’s to St. James’s, about Schet-Land, Pharil, and Boekness; from St. James’s to the elevation of the cross about Boekelson or Seveniot, from the elevation of the cross to St. Katherines in the deep waters eastward of Yarmouth. And this herring fishing, which it is now 250 year ago since William Beakelson of Biervliet first learned to gill, salt, and pack them up in barrels, together with the cod-fishery, is become so effectual a means of subsistence for these lands, and especially since so many neighbouring nations, by reason of their religion, are obliged upon certain days and weeks of the year, wholly to refrain from eating of flesh; that the Hollanders alone do fish in a time of peace with more than a thousand busses, from 24 to 30 lasts burden each, and with above one hundred and seventy smaller vessels that fish for herrings at the mouth of the Texel; so that those thousand busses being set to sea for a year, wherein they make three voyages, do cost above ten millions of guilders, accounting only the buss with its tackle, at 4550 guilders, and the setting forth to sea 5500 guilders, there remaining nothing of all its victuals and furniture the second year, but the bare vessel, and that much worn and tatter’d, needing great reparation. So that if these 1000 busses do take yearly forty thousand last of herrings, counting them at least worth 200 guilders per last, they would yield in Holland more than eight millions of guilders.

And seeing that of late men have begun to make very much use of whale-oil, and whale-fins, which are taken to the northward not far from us, insomuch that with southerly winds, which are common in this country, we can sail thither within six or 8 days: the trade of fishing, and salt, may easily be fixed and settled with us;The great number of inhabitants is a powerful means to fix traffick in Holland. for to fix those fisheries, and several manufactures, and consequently the trade and returns thereof depending on navigation and ships let out to freight, we ought duly to consider, that the greatest difficulty for so innumerable a people to subsist on their own product, proves the most powerful means to attract all foreign wares into Holland, not only to store them up there, and afterwards to carry them up the country by the Mase, Waal, Yssel, and the Rhine (making together one river) to very many cities, towns, and people, lying on the sides of them (the most considerable in the world for consumption of merchandise) but also to consume the said imported goods, or to have them manufactur’d: it being well known, that no country under heaven, of so small a compass, has so many people and artificers as we have; to which may be added, that no country in the world is so wonderfully divided with rivers and canals, whereby merchandize may be carried up and down with so little charge.

Emanuel van Meteren says, that in the space of three days, in the year 1601, there sailed out of Holland to the eastward, between eight and nine hundred ships, and 1500 busses a herring fishing;How considerable the fisheries of Holland are, is mentioned by certain English writers, which is easy to believe, if we may credit what the English authors mention, viz. Gerard Malines in his Lex Mercatoria, and Sir Walter Rawleigh, and which Lievin van Aitzma, anno 1653. pag. 863. doth in some measure confirm, viz. That there are yearly taken and spent by the Hollanders more than 300,000 last of herrings, and other salt fish: and that the whale fishing to the northward, takes up above 12,000 men, which sail out of these countries. For since the Greenland company, or (to express myself better) the monopolizing grant thereof was annulled, and the whale-fishing set open in common, that fishery is increased from one to ten: so that when we reckon that all these fishing vessels are built here at home, and the ropes, sails, nets, and casks made here, and that salt is furnish’d from hence, we may easily imagine that there must be an incredible number of people that live by this means, especially when we add, that all those people must have meat, drink, clothes, and housing; and that the fish, when caught, is transported by the Hollanders in their vessels through the whole world.Who out of envy nevertheless overrate this means of our subsistence. And indeed if that be true, which Sir Walter Rawleigh (who made diligent inquiry thereinto, in the year 1618, to inform king James of it) affirms, that the Hollanders fished on the coast of Great Britain with no less than 3000 ships, and 50000 men, and that they employed and set to sea, to transport and sell the fish so taken, and to make returns thereof, nine thousand ships more, and one hundred and fifty thousand men besides: and if we hereunto add what he saith further, viz. that twenty busses do maintain eight thousand people, and that the Hollanders had in all no less than 20000 ships at sea; as also that their fishing, navigation, and traffick by sea, with its dependencies since that time, to the year 1667, is encreased to ⅓ more: I say, if that be so, we may then easily conclude, that the sea is a special means of Holland’s subsistence; seeing Holland by this means alone, yields by its own industry above three hundred thousand lasts of salt fish. So that if we add to this, the whale-fin, and whale-oil, and our Holland manufactures, with that which our own rivers afford us, it must be confessed, that no country in the world can make so many ships-lading of merchandize by their own industry, as the province of Holland alone.

CHAP. VII.

That in Europe there is no country fitter for traffick than Holland; and how great a means of subsistence commerce is to it.

HAving thus considered Holland’s conveniency for the fishing trade, and it coming into my thoughts, that all the traffick of Holland seems chiefly to have risen out of it, and still to depend upon it;Of the traffick of Holland. I shall now give my opinion wherein that aptness or conveniency mostly consists.

But first let me say, that by the word traffick, I mean the buying of any thing to sell again, whether for consumption at home, or to be sold abroad, without altering its property, as buying in foreign countries cheap to sell dearer abroad; the most considerable part of which is what I understand by the word traffick.

Holland’s convenient situation for trade.Secondly, I say that Holland is very conveniently seated for that end, lying in the middle of Europe, accounting from St. Michael the Arch-Angel in Muscovia, and Revel, to spain. And as to our lying further off from Italy and the Levant, and more to the eastward, it is a thing very necessary, inasmuch as most of the bulky and coarse goods, as pitch, tar, ashes, corn, hemp, and timber for ships, and other uses; as also Pomerania and Prussia wool must be fetch’d from thence, and brought hither; because the better half of those goods is consumed or wrought up in this country: and because very many wares may be sent up and down the rivers of the Rhine and Maese, whereby it appears, that the Hollanders sail with as many more ships to the eastward, as they do to the westward.

To which the conquests of the East-India company contribute.Thirdly, The conquer’d lands, and strong holds of the East-India company are now become very considerable, in order to secure to Holland the trade of all spices and Indian commodities, which is already pretty well fixed to it. And this improvement of trade might be made much more considerable, if the said conquerors would not, by virtue of their grant or patent, hinder all the other inhabitants of these lands from trading to those conquests, and to innumerable rich countries, where the said conquerors, for reasons of state may not, or for other reasons cannot, or perhaps will not trade. Yea, tho’ the said free trade of our inhabitants (to the greater benefit of the participants) were in some measure limited, and circumscribed to those lands and sea-ports lying in their district, to which they never yet traded, I should then expect to see much more fruit of that trade, and monopoly together, than of their monopoly alone: for if our East-India company could find some expedient, either as to freight of goods, to permit all the inhabitants of these lands freely to lade their goods on board the company’s own ships, or to import and export all manner of goods to the places of their conquests, and back to this country, or in process of time, by laying imposts on the consumption of the inhabiting planters, who would resort thither in great numbers by reason of a free trade, or by any other imaginable means tending to give it an open trade, they would thereby reap much more profit than the poor participants now commonly and with much uncertainty do enjoy; and then, if afterwards the said participants would be persuaded to deny themselves so much of their privilege, or authorized monopoly, as to set open that trade in some good measure to the inhabitants of these United Provinces, it would questionless produce to our industrious and inquisitive nation, so many new and unheard of consumptions of all our manufactures, especially of wool, and so great a trade, navigation, and commerce with that vast land of Africa, and the incredible great and rich Asia, which lies so convenient for trade, that many hundred ships would yearly make voyages thither, and bring their returns hither, especially from and to Amsterdam;And the advantage Holland hath, would be incredibly augmented, if the trade to the Indies were free for all the inhabitants. and by means of which alone, we should certainly, and very easily, work all other foreigners out of those Indian seas. Whereas on the other hand, to the end we may preserve our East-India trade, consisting yearly of no more than 10 or 16 ships going and coming, we find ourselves continually drawn into many quarrels and contentions with those foreign nations, with eminent danger of losing by such dissensions and wars, not only our European trade, but also those conquered Indian countries, and consequently that trade also for want of planters, and by the excessive great expences which they must be at more and more yearly, by reason of such great numbers of soldiers as lie in their garisons, and which will and must increase with their conquests, as (God amend it) hath but too plainly appeared by the West-India company of this country.

This advantage which Holland hath for commerce and traffick, would be yet more improved, if the West-India company, in all places of their district, would also set that trade open:An open trade to the West-Indies would increase traffick and navigation. And in case things are so constituted, that the East and West-India trade cannot be preserved but by mighty companies, as some indeed affirm, who understand the India trade, and have the credit of affirming what they say, with good shew of reason; yet this however must be confess’d, that the said companies, as now constituted, do attract and preserve to Holland all the trade which depends on their vast equipages, ladings, and returns.

The low interest of money helpful here-unto.Fourthly, it is a great advantage for the traffick of Holland, that money may be taken up by merchants at 3½ per cent. for a year, without pawn or pledge; whereas in other countries there is much more given, and yet real estates bound for the same: So that it appears, that the Hollanders may buy and lay out their ready money a whole season, before the goods they purchase are in being, and manufactur’d, and sell them again on trust (which cannot be done by any other trading nation, considering their high interest of money) and therefore is one of the greatest means whereby the Hollanders have gotten most of the trade from other nations.

The chargeable living in Holland constrains the inhabitants to merchandising.Fifthly, There being many duties and subsidies to be paid in Holland, and little got by lands, houses, or money let out at interest; and we having also no cloisters, and but few lands in fief, or held by homage; and the women moreover being very fruitful of children, and men making equal dividends of their estates among them, which can therefore be but small, and so not fit to be put out to interest: all this, I say, is another great cause of the advancing of our traffick.

CHAP. VIII.

That Holland, by fishing and traffick, hath acquired mannfacturies and navigation; and how great a means of subsistence manufactory, and ships let out to freight prove to them.

THO’ it is evident by our histories, that in many cities in Holland great quantities of manufactures were made, when all the European traffick and navigation was mostly driven by the Easterlings and Hans-Towns, and before fishing, traffick, and freighting of ships were settled in these provinces;Traffick depends on fishing and manufacture. and that consequently we might say with good reason, that fishing and traffick, together with ships sailing for freight, took their rise rather from the manufactures, than the manufactures took their rise from them:Manufacture depends on fishing and traffick. yet generally it is certain, that in a country where there is fishing and traffick, manufacturies and freight ships may easily be introduced. For from them there must of necessity rise an opportunity of bringing commodities to be wrought up out of foreign parts; and the goods so manufactured may be sent by the same conveniency beyond seas, or up the rivers into other countries.

Thus we see that in Holland for the same reason, all sorts of manufactures of silk, flax, wool, hemp, twyne, ropes, cables, and nets, are more conveniently made, and yield better profit than in any other country, and the like; coarse salt boiled; and many ships are built by that means with outlandish timber. For it is evident, that shipwright’s work in Holland, must not be considered as a mere consumption, but as a very considerable manufacture and merchandize, seeing almost all great ships for strangers are built by the Hollanders. Besides which manufactures, there are others of necessary use, as well as for pleasure or ornament; which are of such a nature, that most of them require water, whether it be to work them, or for cheapness of carriage: and when by the shallowness of the waters there would be otherwise a defect, that want is supply’d by the constant winds that blow upon our low and plain land, which joining to the sea are thereby replenished.

Navigation, or shares in shipping depend on manufactures, fisheries and commerce.And as to the owning of parts of ships let out to freight, it appears that a ship lying for freight in a country where fishing, manufactury, and trading flourish, will be able to get its lading in a very short time: and that in countrys where they don’t flourish, such ships must sail from one port to another, and lose much time in getting freight: so that such as are owners of ships must necessarily fix in such a country where shipping may soonest find their full lading.

The climate of Holland very proper for manufacture.Besides all which, Holland lies in so cold a climate, that the people are not hindred from working, by reason of the heat of the country, as elsewhere: and seeing for the most part we have but a gross air, eat coarse diet, and drink small beer, the people are much fitter for constant work; and by reason of the great impositions, they are necessitated to use all the said means of subsistance, viz. to make manufactures by land, to fish by sea, to navigate ships for trade at home and abroad, and to let out their great and small vessels to freight.

A free republican government in clines all to get estates.And seeing the inhabitants under this free government, hope by lawful means to acquire estates, may fit down peaceably, and use their wealth as they please, without dreading that any indigent or wasteful prince, or his courtiers and gentry, who are generally as prodigal, necessitous, and covetous as himself, should on any pretence whatever seize on the wealth of the subject; our inhabitants are therefore much inclined to subsist by the forenamed and other like ways or means, and gain riches for their posterity by frugality and good husbandry.

CHAP. IX.

That the inhabitants of Holland, being in a state of freedom, are by a common interest wonderfully linked together; which is also shew’d by a rough calculation of the number of inhabitants, and by what means they subsist.

That the forementioned means of subsistence, and also the inhabitants are linked together.WE are moreover well to consider, that fishing is not the sole cause of traffick, nor fishing and traffick the cause of manufactury; as also that these three together do not always give occasion for the shipping that is to let out to freight, which is meant by navigation: but that fishing flourishes much more in those parts, because traffick, navigation and manufactures are settled among us, whereby the fish and oil taken may be transported and consumed. Likewise that more than the one half of our trading would decay, in case the trade of fish were destroyed, as well as all other sorts of commodities about which people are imployed in Holland; besides that, by consequence the inland consumption of all foreign goods being more than one half diminished, the traffick in those parts would fall proportionably.

Namely the greatest traders in fish and makers of manufacture.It is also certain, that of necessity all sorts of manufactures would be lessened more than a moiety, if not annihilated, as soon as this country should come to be berest of fishing, and of trading in those commodities which are spent abroad. And concerning owners of ships let out to freight, it is evident that they wholly depend on the prosperity or success of fishing, manufactury, and traffick: for seeing our country yields almost nothing out of its own bowels; therefore the ships that lie for freight, can lade nothing but what the merchants or traders put on board them of fish, manufactury, or merchandize.And the owners of shipping of those three together. And as little would foreign ships carry goods to Holland, in case no fishermen, merchants, or traders dealing in manufactury dwelt there. And contrariwise it is certain, that our fishers, manufacturers and traders, find a mighty conveniency and benefit in our great number of freightships, which continually lie for freight in all parts of the world, and are ready to carry the same at an easy rate to any place desired. So that the English and Flemish merchants, &c. do oft-times know no better way to transport their goods to such foreign parts as they design, than to carry them first to Amsterdam, and from thence to other places, especially when our admiralties, according to their duty, take care to convoy and defend our merchant ships, with men of war, against all pirates, or sea-robbers whatsoever.The husbandmen and artificers not concern’d in manufactures, are as a necessary consequence of all other inhabitants. It is also evident, that the husbandmen, or boors of Holland, can very well sell all the product or profit of their land, cattle, firing, &c. to the inhabitants that are fishers, mafacturers, traders, navigators, and those that depend on them; which is a great advantage beyond what all other boors have, who for the most part have their commodities spent abroad, and consequently must bear the charges of freight, and the duties outwards and inwards, and must also allow a double gain to the merchants and buyers. So that this great number of people, that are not husbandmen, are I think the only cause that those country boors, tho’ heavily taxed, are able to subsist. And seeing all the said inhabitants have need of meat, drink, cloathing, housing, and of the gain gotten by foreign consumption that is needful to support it; it is evident, that all the other inhabitants depend and live upon the aforesaid fishers, traders and navigators.

And how remarkable it is, that all rulers and others, who for any service depend on them, have a benefit by their great numbers, is so clear, that there needs no more to be said for proof:Our magistrates prosperity depends on the success of all their subjects. for when there were but few inhabitants in this country, within less than 100 years, the most eminent offices of burgomaster, and schepens or sheriffs, were even in the principal cities so great a burden as not to be born without much charge; whereas it is now become profitable to be but a city messenger, or undertaker to freight ships, seeing men are thereby enabled to maintain their families.

Furthermore, having a mind to convince the reader, not only by my reasoning, but by his own experience, that the prosperity of Holland is built upon the foresaid means of subsistence, and on no other; I find myself obliged to make a calculation of the number of people in Holland that are fixed inhabitants, or depend upon them;All which is set forth by a rough calculation, how the people in Holland maintain themselves. and at the same time, as far as I am able, to reckon in what proportion those people are maintain’d by the means of subsistence before-mentioned. In order to this I shall on the one hand consider, that Sir Walter Raleigh, endeavouring to move king James of England to advance the fishing trade, manufactures, and traffick by sea, hath possibly exceeded in his account of the profits arising from it, and augmented the number of the people that live upon it somewhat above the truth.

And likewise is considered how many inhabitants there are in Holland.And on the other hand I shall consider what Gerard Malines saith, in his Lex Mercatoria, Ann. 1622. that in Flanders there were then counted one hundred and forty thousand families; which being reckoned, one with another, at five persons each, they would amount to seven hundred thousand people. I shall likewise consider that in Holland that same year, the states laid a poll-tax upon all inhabitants, none excepted save strangers, prisoners, and vagrants, and those that were on the other side the line; yet were there found in all South-Holland that same wise no more than four hundred eighty one thousand nine hundred thirty and four: altho’ the commissioners instructions for that end were very strict and severe, to prevent all fraud and deceit. However that we may make the better guess whether this was a faithful account, I shall give you the particulars of it as registred in the chamber of Accounts.

Dort with its villages,	40523
Haerlem with its villages,	69648
Delft with its villages,	41744
Leyden and Rynland,	94285
Amsterdam and its villages,	115022
Goude and its villages,	24662
Rotterdam with its villages,	28339
Gornichem with its villages,	7585
Schiedam with its villages,	10393
Schoonboven with its villages,	10703
Briel with its villages,	20156
The Hague,	17430
Heusden.	1444
	481934
And supposing that West-Friesland might yield the fourth part of the inhabitants of South Holland, it would amount to	120483
In all	602417

But because possibly none but intelligent readers, and such as have travelled, will believe, what we see is customary in all places, that the number of people in all populous countries is excessively magnified, and that the common readers will think, that since many would be willing to evade the poll-tax, there was an extraordinary fraud in the number given in: I shall therefore follow the common opinion, and conclude, that the number of people was indeed much greater, and that these countries are since that time much improved in the number of inhabitants;And with what proportion they live by the said means. and accordingly I shall give a guess as by vulgar report, that the whole number, without excluding any inhabitants whatsoever, may amount to two millions and four hundred thousand people, and that they maintain themselves as followeth, viz.

By the fisheries at sea, and setting them out with ships, rigging, cask, salt, and other materials, or instruments, and the traffick that depends thereon,	450000.450000.
By agriculture, inland-fishing, herding, hay-making, turf-making, and by furnishing those people with all sorts of materials as they are boors, or husbandmen,	200000.200000.
By making all manner of manufactures, shipping, works of art, mechanick or handicraft works, which are consumed abroad; as likewise by trade relating to the said manufactures,	650000.650000.
By navigation or sailing for freight and trade jointly, by which I mean carriage into foreign parts for selling and buying; as also carrying to and from Holland all such wares and merchandise as relate not to our fishing and manufactury, nor depend thereon: and lastly, I include herein also all inhabitants that are any ways serviceable to such traders, and ships let out to freight, amounting in all to.	250000.250000.
By all these inhabitants, as being men, women, and children, that must be provided, and by working about what is spent in this country, as food, drink, cloathing, housing, and by making or selling houshould stuff, and all other things for art, ease, pleasure, or ornament.	650000.650000.
By the labour and care of all the above-mentioned persons, being gentry without employment or calling, civil magistrates and officers, those that live upon their estates or money, soldiers, the poor in hospitals, beggars, &c.	200000.200000.
In all	2400000.2400000.

And tho’ this calculation, whether considered as to the number of the inhabitants, or their proportionable means of subsistence, is very rough and uncertain; yet I suppose it to be evident, that the eighth part of the inhabitants of Holland could not be supplied with necessaries out of its own product, if their gain otherwise did not afford them all other necessaries:’Tis the happiness of Holland to have such as are linked together in interest. so that homo homini deus in statu politico, one man being a god to another under a good government, it is an unspeakable blessing for this land, that there are so many people in it, who according to the nature of the country are honestly maintain’d by such suitable or proportionable means, and especially that the welfare of all the inhabitants (the idle gentry, and foreign soldiers in pay excepted) from the least to the greatest, does so necessarily depend on one another: and above all, it is chiefly considerable, that there are none more really interested in the prosperity of this country than the rulers of this aristocratical government, and the persons that live on their estates.

For fishers, boors, or country people, owners of ships let to freight, merchants and manufacturers, in a general destruction of a country, could easily transport themselves into foreign parts, and there set up their fishing, agriculture, or husbandry, shipping, merchandize and manufactures: But such as have lands, or immovable estates cannot do this; and supposing they could, and should sell their estates and remove into other countries, yet would they there have no calling to subsist by, much less can they expect to be made use of in the government, or procure any office or advantage depending upon it.

And the greatest unhappiness, that the prosperity of all the inhabitants may be ruined by one single error of state.However, this excellent and laudable harmony and union may be violated, even to the ruin of all the inhabitants, none excepted but courtiers and soldiers, and that by one sole mistake in government, which is the electing one supreme head over all these inhabitants, or over their armies. For seeing such a single person for the increase of his grandeur, may curb and obstruct Holland’s greatness and power, by the deputies of the lesser provinces of the generality, who also may in their course check the great and flourishing cities in their own provincial assemblies, by the suffrages or votes of the envious gentry.Namely by advancing a single person over the civil magistracy and soldiery. And the lesser cities, and the great persons, courtiers and soldiers being all of his party, and depending on him, must needs prey upon the industrious or working inhabitants, and so will make use of all their power for their own benefit, and to the detriment of the commonalty. And to the end they may receive no let from the great and strong cities of Holland, it follows that they would either weaken or lessen all such cities, and impoverish the inhabitans, to make them obedient without controul. Which if so, we have just cause continually to pray, A furore monarcharum libera nos Domine; God preserve Holland from the fury of a monarch, prince, or one supreme head: But what there is of reality in this, shall be handled hereafter in a chapter apart.

CHAP. X.

That question consider’d, why the heavy taxes, occasioned by war, have not driven fishing, trading, manufactury, and shipping out of Holland?

Why traffick has not fix’d in other countries.IT is not enough to know how happy in general this country is, in finding imployment for so many hands, and affording them sustenance, seeing there have been many causes which would have hindred the success of our fishing, navigation and traffick, had there been but one country among the many that are near us, well situated for fishing, manufactury, traffick and navigation, which during our wars and troubles had seen and followed their own true interest; most of our neighbouring nations, all that time being in a profound peace, seemed to have less hinderance for promoting manufactures, traffick, employing of ships for freight and fishing, than our nation. So that to pursue the true interest and maxims of Holland, we ought particularly to know the reason, why the great inconveniencies of taxes and wars that we have laboured under, have not occasioned the fishing, manufactury, traffick and navigation, to settle and fix in other countries; as for example in England, where if all be well considered they have had far greater advantages of situation, harbours, a clean and bold coast, favourable winds, and an opportunity of transporting many unwrought commodities, a lasting peace, and a greater freedom from taxes than we have.

CHAP. XI.

Before we answer the said question, we shall relate the ancient state of manufacturies, fisheries, and navigation in Europe.

THAT I may from hence derive some light, I shall premise a brief relation how these affairs stood in antient times.

Above 700 years ago there were few merchants in Europe.It is well known, that 6 or 700 years ago, there were no merchants in all Europe, except a few in the republicks of Italy, who lived on the Mediterranean, and traded with the Indian caravans in the Levant; or possibly there might be found some merchants, tho’ but in few places, that drove an inland trade: so that each nation was necessitated to sow, build and weave for themselves to the northward and eastward, where there were then no outland nor inland merchants;How great inconveniences thence arose. and therefore in case of superfluity of people, they were compelled by force of arms for want of provision, and to prevent ill seasons, and hunger, to conquer more land. And this caused the irruptions of the Celiæ, Cimbri, Scythians, Goths, Quades, Vandals, Hunns, Franks, Burgundians, Normans, &c. who till about the year 1000 after Christ’s birth, were in their greatest strength; all which people, and in a word, all that spake Dutch or German, exchanged their superfluities, not for money, but, as it is reported, thus:Em. Suiero ann. de Flandes. two hens for a goose, two geese for a swine, three lambs for a sheep, three calves for a cow; bartering of corn was then also in practice, by which they knew how much oats was to be given for barley, how much barley for rye, and rye for wheat, when they wanted them; so that except for eatable wares there was neither barter nor traffick.

The Flemings were here the first traders in manufactures.The Flemings lying nearest to France were the first that began to earn their livings by weaving, and sold the same in that fruitful land, where the inhabitants were not only able to feed themselves, but also by the superfluous growth of their country could put themselves into good apparel; which young Boudewyn of Flanders, about the year 960, considerably improved, by setting up yearly fares or markets in several places, paying no duty or toll for any goods either exported or imported. By which means that way of merchandize improved 300 years successively, altho’ those commodities were only consumed in France and Germany, ’till the many prejudicial or hurtful laws of the Halls, which at first were fram’d on the pretence of preventing deceit, and the debasing of commodities, but were in truth intended to fix those manufactures to the cities: but at last having by force, which is ever prejudicial to traffick, driven much of this weaving trade out of the cities into the villages; the wars between France and Flanders drove it back from the villages to Tienen and Lovain in Brabant;Next them the Brabanders. notwithstanding which the Brabanders being nothing more prudent, did by the same occasion, viz. the laws of the halls, and imposts on manufactury during the war against France, occasion many tumults and uproars among the weavers about 100 years after in Flanders, where at Gent in the year 1301, in a tumult occasion’d by some coercive laws and orders about their occupation, there were slain two magistrates, and eleven other inhabitants. And at Bruges the next year after, for the same cause, there were slain above 1500 in a tumult. Likewise at Ypres, upon the same occasion, there being a mutiny, the Vohgt, or chief magistrate, with the ten scheepens (being all the magistrates of the city) were killed. And such like accidents happened afterwards in Brabant, amongst others at Lovain, where, in a great tumult of the clothweavers with their adherence, divers magistrates were slain in the council-house, and several of the offenders fled into England, whither they first carried the art of drapery: but many other clothweavers, with their followers, as well Brabanders as Flemings, dispersed themselves into the countries beyond the Mase, and into Holland;Lastly, the Hollanders and the English. and amongst other places, many of them fixed at Leyden. Mean while, the German knights of the cross, after the year 1200, under pretence of reducing the Heathens to the Christian faith, made themselves masters not only of barren Pomerania, and the river Oder, which they suffered the converted princes to enjoy, but of rich Prussia and Lyfland, and the rivers Weissel, Pregol, and Duina, and consequently of all those which fall into the sea, out of fruitful Poland, Lithuania, or Russia. By which conveniency the eastern cities that lay nearest to the sea, began to fetch away their bulky and * unwrought goods, and to carry them to the Netherlands, England, Spain, and France, and likewise from thence to and fro to export and import all the goods that were superfluous or wanting.

And seeing by the wars about the year 1360, between Denmark and Sweden, they suffered great losses by sea, and amongst others were plundered by the famous Wisbuy, sixty-six of their cities covenanted together, to scour or cleanse the seas from such piracies, and to secure their goods:When, and how the association of the Hanstowns was erected. and thus they became and continued, by that eastern trade, the only traffickers and carriers by sea, beating by that means all other nations out of the ocean, till after the the year 1400, that the art of salting and curing of herrings being found out in Flanders, the fisheries in these Netherlands being added to our manufactures, proved to be of more importance than the trade and navigation of the Easterlings, and therefore encreased more and more with the traffick by sea to Bruges, which lasted to the year 1482, when Flanders had wars with the arch-duke Maximilian, about the guardianship of his son and his dominions, which lasted ten years. Mean while Stuys, the sea-port of Bruges, being for the most part insested, those of Antwerp and Amsterdam, to draw the trade to their cities, assisted the duke in his unbridled tyranny, and barbarous destruction of the country, thereby regained his favour, and attain’d their own ends.And how the trade fell to them of Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. And seeing the Italians by their Levant trade, had gotten some seed of silk-worms from China and Persia, and raised such abundance of those worms, and mulberry trees, that they wove many silk stuffs, and in process of time had dispers’d their silks every where, and began to vent many of them at Antwerp: and moreover, when the passages to the West and East-Indies by sea were discovered, and the Spaniards and Portuguese fold their goods and spices at Antwerp; as also that the Netherlandish drapery was much of it removed into England;How great a merchandizing city Antwerp formerly was. and the English also settling their staple at Antwerp, these things produc’d many new effects.

1. Tho’ Antwerp was, in respect of its good foundation, and far extended traffick, the most renowned merchandizing city that ever was in the world, sending many ships to and again from France, England, Spain, Italy, and making many silk manufactures; yet Brabant and Flanders were too remote, and ill situated for erecting at Antwerp, or near it, the fishery of haddock, cod, and herring, and for making that trade as profitable there, as it might be in Holland.The trade of which, by reason of our fisheries and manufactures, withdrew into Holland.

2. Tho’ the Easterlings built their eastern houses, and set up their staple at Antwerp, yet had they not the conveniency at once of transporting their corn so far from the eastward, in pursuance of their new correspondence with the Spaniards and Italians, but were necessitated to have it laid up anew in Antwerp, to prevent its spoiling; especially when we add this consideration, that those remote lands had not occasion to take off whole ships ladings of fine wares which Antwerp afforded, as the Antwerpers could take off whole ships ladings of herring and salted fish, besides the rough and manufactur’d eastern and many other commodities, which are manufactur’d and spent in this country.

3. The Hollanders fishery of haddock, cod, and herring, and the great conveniency they have of selling them all at home, and transporting them abroad, was the reason that the Eastern countries took off very much of our herrings and salt. The trade to that country, since the breaking in of the inlet or passage into the Tixel, about the year 1400, when the river Ye began to be navigated with great ships, settled it self by degrees mostly at Amsterdam, and part of it in England.

CHAP. XII.

For answer to the former question, it is here particularly shewn, that fishing and traffick must entirely settle in Holland, and manufacturies must do the like for the most part, and consequently navigation, or sailing upon freight.

THIS was the state of trade till the year 1585, when Antwerp was taken by the prince of Parma. For that city being thus wholly shut up from the sea, and the king of Spain very imprudently neglecting to open the Scheld, being desirous, according to the maxims of monarchs, to weaken that strong city, which he thought too powerful for him, and to disperse the traffick over his many other cities;How the trade fell from Antwerp to Amsterdam. he bent all his strength against the frontiers of Gelderland, England, and France, whereby the merchants of Antwerp were necessitated to forsake their city, and consequently to chuse Amsterdam to settle in, which before the troubles was, next to Antwerp, the greatest mercantile city of the Netherlands. For when we rightly consider the innumerable inconveniences sound in all islands, and especially northward, by reason of storms and long winters, in the consumption of goods bought, and the necessary communication with many inland neighbours; every one may easily imagine why the Antwerpers sat not down in the adjacent islands of Zealand;Why not to the Zealand islands, and besides, neither in France nor England was there any liberty of religion, but a monarchical government in both, with high duties on goods imported and exported. And tho’ the protestant merchants, by reason of the great peace and good situation of England, would have most inclined to settle there;Nor to France nor England. yet were they discouraged from coming into a country where there were no city-excises or impost on lands, or any other taxes equally charging all, whether inhabitants or strangers; but heavy taxes and customs laid on all goods imported and exported, by which foreigners and their children and grandchildren, according to the laws of the land, must pay double as much as the natural English; yea in the subsidies of parliament, which extend to perpetuity on foreigners and their children, they must pay double assessment: besides which all strangers are excluded from their guilds and halls of trade and manufactures; so that none have the freedom there to work, either as journeyman or master-workman, save in that whereof the inhabitants are ignorant.Nor to any Eastern cities. And all these discouragements were also for the most part in the Eastern cities; yea in England as well as in the Eastern cities, a foreigner, tho’ an inhabitant, was not suffered to sell to any other but citizens; nor to sell wares by retail, or for consumption, or to buy any sort of goods of strangers, or of inhabitants that are strangers, neither by wholesale nor retail: all which made them think England no fit place for them to settle in.

It happened also at the same time, that the king of Spain allowing no where a toleration of religion, but making continual war, and utterly neglecting the scouring and cleansing of the seas, the fishing, and remaining traffick of the Flemish cities, which they drove into foreign parts, did wholly cease; so far were they from recovering the lost trade of Antwerp.Why all the manufactures did not abandon Flanders and Brabant, to fix with the traffick and navigation of Holland. So that the Flemish fishing also fell into Holland: but the manufactures were thus divided; one third of the dealers and weavers of says, damask, and stockings, &c. went casually into England &c. because that trade was then new to the English, and therefore under no halls nor guilds. Another great part of them went to Leyden; and the traders in linnen settled most at Haerlem. But there were still a great number of traders in manufactures that remained in Flanders and Brabant: for seeing those goods were continually sent to France and Germany by land carriage, it was impossible for us to prevent it by our ships of war, or any other means imaginable.

Namely by reason of the heavy taxes in Holland.On the other side, seeing that in Flanders and Brabant, especially in the villages where the manufactures are mostly made, there are but small imposts paid, and in Holland the taxes were very great, they might therefore have borne the charge of carrying those goods by land into some French harbours, from whence they might have been transported to any part of the world: and therefore upon good advice we thought it our interest to permit those Flemish manufactures, tho’ wrought by our enemies, to be brought into our country of Holland, charging them with somewhat less duty than they must have been at by going the furthest way about. And thus did those manufactures of foreign countries, by means of immunities from imposts and halls, greatly improve and flourish in those villages, because they could be made as cheap or cheaper than ours, which from time to time were more and more charged with duties on the consumption. Yea, and which is worthy of admiration, they were charged with convoy-money and other taxes upon exportation, till about the year 1634. when by the French and Dutch wars, and winter-quarters, all the most flourishing villages of Flanders, Brabant, and the lands beyond the Meuse were plundered, and the richest merchandizing cities obstructed from sending away their goods. So that the cities of Holland were hereby filled with inhabitants and their manufactures sold there; which was the greatest cause of the increase of trade in this country, and the subsequent riches of the inhabitants.

CHAP. XIII.

That Amsterdam is provided with better means of subsistence, and is a greater city of traffick, and Holland a richer merchandizing country, than ever was in the world.

Why Amsterdam is become the greatest city of traffick in Europe.BUT above all Amsterdam hath thriven most in all sorts of merchandizes, and means of subsistence and enlargement. For tho’ it seems not to be so well situated as many other towns in South and North-Holland, for receiving goods that come from sea, and transporting others beyond sea, as also because of the shallowness of the Pampus, for which ships must lade, or unlade most of their goods, and wait for winds in that unsafe road of the Texel;Namely by reason of its situation for trade. yet in this particular of the greatest consideration, Amsterdam lies better than any town in Holland, and possibly better than any city in Europe, to receive the fish manufacture, and other commodities which are taken and made by others, and especially to receive from the shipping into their warehouses store-goods to be spent at home. And it is well known to all persons whether owners of ships sailing for freight, or merchants, that this is a very great conveniency for readily equipping and full lading of ships, and selling their goods speedily, and at the highest price, which is ten times more considerable than a conveniency of importing or exporting goods speedily, or than the damages suffered by the storms, which may happen (tho’ but seldom) in the Texel. For men having an eye to their ordinary and certain profit according to true information of the present opportunity of gain from abroad, whether remote or near at hand, by export and import, they are ever moved more by such an opportunity, than deterred by such misfortunes, especially if they have kept or reserved such an estate or credit as to be still able to continue their traffick. At least it is certain that misfortunes depending on such unknown and uncertain causes, and happening so seldom, are ever little apprehended, and easily forgotten by those that have not had any loss by that means.Which causes a quick sale of all imported goods. And if any one should doubt whether Amsterdam be situate as well and better than any other city of Holland for traffick, and ships let out to freight, let him but please to consider in how few hours (when the wind is favourable) one may sail from Amsterdam to all the towns of Friesland, Overyssel, Guelderland, and North-Holland, & vice versa, seeing there is no alteration of course or tides needful: and in how short a time, and how cheap and easily one may travel from any of the towns of South-Holland, or other adjacent inland cities to Amsterdam, every one knows. And it hath evidently appeared how much the convenient situation of Amsterdam was esteemed by the Antwerp merchants, since the trade of Antwerp fixed no where but at Amsterdam. And after that the Antwerp trade was added to their eastern trade and fishing, the Amsterdammers then got by their sword the whole East-India trade, at least the monopoly of all the richest spices, and a great trade to the West-Indies; and upon that followed the whale-fishing: as also by the German wars, they acquired the consumption of the Italian silk stuffs, which used to be carried by land, and sold there. And besides, the raw silks have given them a fair opportunity of making many silk stuffs, as did the halls of Leyden, and an ill maxim of not early laying out the ground of a city, or not suffering any out-buildings beyond the place allowed for building, which was the only occasion that the weaving of wool was practised, not only in many other provinces and cities, but also throughout Holland, and especially at Amsterdam. And at last thereupon followed the troubles in England, and our destructive tho’ short war with them, and theirs against the king of Spain; as also the wars of the Northern kings among themselves, which were so prejudicial to us. By those eight years troubles the inhabitants of Holland probably lost more than they had gain’d in 20 years before.

The Hollanders are become the only carriers and navigators of the seas, which is a great blessing for all our inhabitants.It is nevertheless evident, that the Hollanders having well-nigh beaten all nations by traffick out of the great ocean, the Mediterranean, Indian, and Baltick Seas; they are the great, and indeed only carriers of goods throughout the world; catching of herring, haddock, cod and whale, making many sorts of manufactures and merchandize for foreign parts. Which is so great a blessing for the inhabitants, and especially for the rulers of the land, and those that are benefited by them, that a greater cannot be conceived. And seeing I may presume to say that I have clearly shewn, in the foregoing chapter, that Holland’s welfare and prosperity wholly depends on the flourishing of manufacturies, fishery, navigation of ships on freight, and traffick; it seems that the order of nature obliges me to give my thoughts in particular of all matters whereby the Holland manufacturies, fisheries, ships let out to freight, and traffick, may be improved or impaired. But seeing that would afford us endless matter of speculation, exceeds my skill, and is inconsistent with my intended brevity; I shall satisfy myself in laying down the principal heads thereof, and that in short.

CHAP. XIV.

That freedom or toleration in, and about the service or worship of God, is a powerful means to preserve many inhabitants in Holland, and allure foreigners to dwell amongst us.

By liberty of conscience many people may be drawn out of other countries to inhabit Holland.IN the first place it is certain, that not only those that deal in manufactures, fishing, traffick, shipping, and those that depend on them, but also all civilized people must be supposed to pitch upon some outward service of God as the best, and to be averse from all other forms; and that such persons do abhor to travel, and much more to go and dwell in a country, where they are not permitted to serve and worship God outwardly, after such a manner as they think fit. And also that as to freedom about the outward service of God, during the troubles, and shortly after; when the manufacturies, trading, and navigation for freight began to settle in Holland, the magistrate was so tender and indulgent, that there were very few useful inhabitants driven thence by any rigour or hardship, much less any foreigners: so that it brings that maxim into my mind, that* the surest way to keep any thing, is to make use of the same means whereby it was at first acquired.

And among those means, comes first into consideration the freedom of all sorts of religion differing from the Reformed.Seeing the clergy in all neighbouring nations generally persecute those that differ from the publick sentiments. For in regard all our neighbours (except Great Britain and the United Provinces) and for the most part all far remote lands, are not of the reformed religion; and that the clergy under the papacy have their own jurisdiction: and seeing, if not all those that are called spiritual, yet the clergy at least that differ from us, have in all countries a settled livelihood, which depends not on the political welfare of the land: we see that through human frailty, they do in all these countries think fit to teach and preach up all that can have a tendency to their own credit, profit, and ease, yea, tho’ it be to the ruin of the whole country; and moreover, when the doctrine, counsel, and admonition of these men is not received by any of their auditors, these clergymen do then very unmercifully use to prosecute them odio theologico. Whereas nevertheless all christian clergymen ought to rest satisfied, according to their master’s doctrine, to enlighten the minds of men with the truth, and to shew them the way to eternal life, and afterwards to endeavour to perswade, and turn such enlightned persons in all humility and meekness into the path that leads to salvation.Which yet oppugns the doctrine of the gospel. It is evident that all people, especially Christians, and more particularly their publick teachers, ought to be far from compelling, either by spiritual or bodily punishment, those that for want of light and persuasion are not inclined to go to the publick church, to do any outward act, or to speak any words contrary to their judgment; for potestas coercendi, the coercive power is given only to the civil magistrate; all the power and right which the ecclesiasticks have, if they have any, must be derived from them, as the same is excellently and unanswerably shewn by Lucius Antistius Constans, in his book de Jure Ecclesiasticorum lately printed.

Indeed the essential and only difference between the civil and ecclesiastical power is this, that the civil doth not teach and advise as the other doth, but commands and compels the inhabitants to perform or omit such outward actions, or to suffer some certain punishment for their disobedience;Whose authority is only to teach and exhort so that they have dominion over the subject, five volentes, five nolentes, whether they will or no. Whereas on the other side, the duty of christian teachers is to instruct and advise men to all christian virtues, as trusting in God our Saviour, the hope of possessing a future eternal blessed life, and the love of God and our neighbour.1 Cor. 13. Which virtues consisting only in the inward thoughts of our minds, cannot be put into us by any outward violence or compulsion, but only by the inlightning and convincing reasons of ministers, who to effect this, must on all occasions comply with the state and condition of their hearers, and be the least amongst them: and thus making themselves the least, and thereby converting most, and bringing forth most good fruits, they shall be the first in the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.Matt. 20 27. And besides, it is well known that our Lord Christ pretended to no other kingdom or dominion on earth (his kingdom not being of this world) than that every one being convinced of this his true doctrine,John 18. 36. and wholesome advice, and of his holy sufferings for us, should freely be subject to him, not with the outward man only, to do or omit any action, to speak or be silent, but with the inward man in spirit and truth, to love God, himself, and his neighbour;John 4. to trust in that God and Saviour in all the occurrences of our lives, and by his infinite wisdom, mercy and power, to hope for a blessed and everlasting state for our solus. So that it became not his disciples, or followers, and apostles, much less our present publick preachers, to set themselves above their spiritual lord and master, to lord it over others. The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; but ye shall not be so.Luke 22. 25, 26. The gospel also teacheth us, that they should not lord it over the people, but ought to be their servants, and ministers of the word of God. But notwithstanding all this, we see, that by these evil ambitious maxims of the clergy, almost in all countries, the dissenters, or such as own not the opinion of the publick preachers, are turned out of the civil state and persecuted;So that many, to escape that persecution, forsake their native country, and come into Holand. for they are not only excluded from all government, magistracies, offices and benefices (which is in some measure tolerable for the secluded inhabitants, and agrees very well with the maxims of polity, in regard it is well known by experience in all countries to be necessary, as tending to the common peace, that one religion should prevail and be supported above all others, and accordingly is by all means authorized, favoured, and protected by the state, yet not so, but that the exercise of other religions at the same time be in some measure publickly tolerated, at least not persecuted) but are so persecuted, that many honest and useful inhabitants, to escape those fines, banishments, or corporal punishments, to which by adhering to the prohibited service of God they are subject, abandon their own sweet native country, and, to obtain their liberty, chuse to come and sit down in our barren and heavy tax’d country.

Yea, and which is more, in some countries these churchmen will go so far, as by an inquisition to inquire who they are that differ from the opinion of the authorized preachers; and first by admonition and excommunication, bereave them of their credit, and afterwards of their liberty, estate or life.Which persecution for worshipping of God, is very detrimental to the state. And as heretofore the Romish clergy were not satisfied with obstructing the divine service of those that dissented from them, but laboured to bring the inquisition into all places; so would it be a great wonder if the ecclesiasticks in Holland should not follow the same worldly course, to the ruin of the country, if they conceiv’d it tended to the increase of their own profit, honour, power and grandeur. At least we see it in almost all countries, where the best and most moderate, yea even where the reformed clergy bear sway, that dissenting assemblies are prohibited. And seeing that the publick divine worship is so necessary for mankind, that without it they would fall into great ignorance about the service of God, and consequently into a very bad life; and since man’s life is subject to many miseries, therefore every one is inclined in this wretched state to nourish or comfort his soul with the hope of a better: and as men hope very easily to obtain the same by a free and willing attention to a doctrine they think to be built on a good foundation;And hinders the conversion of the erroneous. so every one may easily perceive how impossible it is to make any man by compulsion to hope for such advantage, in that which he cannot apprehend to be well grounded; and accordingly the dissenting party clearly discover the vanity of all manner of force in matters of religion.

Moreover, seeing all matters of fact, and likewise of faith, must in some measure be proved by testimony of good credit, such as is irreproachable, or beyond exception; and that all that are thus persecuted, whether by excommunication, fines, banishment or corporal punishments, reproach and hate their persecutors, to wit, the publick authorised preachers, as their enemies; it is evident that those persecutors lose all their weight to persuade people in matters of faith by means of their publick authority, which otherwife would be great among the common people. And besides, we see, that all persecuted people continually exercise their thoughts upon any thing that seems to confirm their own judgment, and oft-times out of mere stomachfulness and animosity will not ponder and sedately consider their enemies reasons: so that the persecuted people being wholly turn’d aside from the truth of God’s worship by such violence and compulsion, become hardned in their error. By this means manifold wars, miseries and removals of habitations have been occasioned since the reformation: and the like actions will still have the like effects.And hurtful to the civil state. How prejudicial such coercive practices are, especially in rich trafficking cities, Lubeck, Collen, and Aix la Chapelle may instruct us, where both the rulers and subjects of those lately so famous cities have since the reformation lost most of their wealth, and chiefly by such compulsion in religion; many of the inhabitants being thereby driven out of their respective cities, and strangers discouraged from coming to reside in them. And tho’ according to clear reason, and holy writ, the true glory and fame of all rulers consists in the multitude of their subjects, yet do these churchmen (forgetting their credit, their country, and their God, which is a threefold impiety) continue to teach, that it is better to have a city of an orthodox or sound faith, ill stocked with people, than a very populous, and godly city, but tainted with heresy. Thus it is evident that to allow all men the exercise of their religion with more freedom than in other nations, would be a very effectual means for Holland to allure people out of other countries, and to fix them, that are there already;So that especially in Holland toleration of Religion is needful. provided such freedom be not prejudicial to our civil state and free government. For, as on the one side those of the Romish religion have their spiritual heads, and the K. of Spain (heretofore Earl of Holland) for their neighbour, who may help the Romanists in the time of intestine division;Pol. disc. of D. C. lib. 4. Disc. 6. p. 320. so on the other side it is manifest, that our own government by length of time is enlarged, and the Spanish Netherlands become weak; and that notwithstanding the renunciation of the said superiority over Holland we are in peace with them, it is also certain that by persecuting the Romanists we should drive most of the strangers out of our country;Likewise for the roman catholicks. and the greatest number of the dissenting old inhabitants, viz. the gentry, monied-men and boors, who continue to dwell amongst us, would become so averse to the government, that in time it would be either a means to bring this country into the hands of our enemy, or else drive those people out of the country:Because our wars against Spain are grounded on the like reason and equity. which cruelty would not only be pernicious, but altogether unreasonable in the rulers and reformed subjects, who always us’d to boast that they fought for their liberty, and constantly maintain’d, that several publick religions may be peaceably tolerated and practised in one and the same country; that true religion hath advantage enough when it’s allowed to speak, errantis pæna doceri, and that there is no greater sign of a false religion (or at least of one to the truth of which men dare not trust) than to persecute the dissenters from it. So that it appears that toleration and freedom of religion is not only exceeding beneficial for our country in general, but particularly for the reformed religion, which may and ought to depend upon its own evidence and veracity.

CHAP. XV.

A second means to keep Holland populous, is a plenary freedom for all people that will cohabit with us, to follow any occupation for a livelihood.

Freedom to be given to all inhabitants to set up, and live by their trades;NEXT to a liberty of serving God, follows the liberty of gaining a livelihood without any dear-bought city-freedom, but only by virtue of a fixed habitation to have the common right of other inhabitants: which is here very necessary for keeping the people we have, and inviting strangers to come among us. For it is self-evident that landed-men, or others that are wealthy, being forced by any accident to leave their country or habitation, will never chuse Holland to dwell in, being so chargeable a place, and where they have so little interest for their mony. And for those who are less wealthy, it is well known, that no man from abroad will come to dwell or continue in a country where he shall not be permitted to get an honest maintenance. And it may be easily considered how great an inconveniency it would be in this country, for the inhabitants, especially strangers, if they should have no freedom of chusing and practising such honest means of livelihood as they think best for their subsistence; or if, when they had chosen a trade, and could not live by it, they might not chuse another. This then being evident, that strangers without freedom of earning their bread, and seeking a livelihood, cannot live amongst us: and as it is certain, that our manufacturies, fisheries, traffick and navigation, with those that depend upon them, cannot without continual supplies of foreign inhabitants be preserved here, and much less augmented or improved; it is likewise certain, that among the endless advantages which accrue to Holland by strangers, and which might accrue more, our boors may be likewise profited. For we see that for want of strangers in the country, the boors must give such great yearly and day-wages to their servants, that they can scarcely live but with great toil themselves, and their servants live rather in too great plenty. The same inconveniencies we are likewise sensible of in cities amongst tradesmen and servants, who are here more chargeable and burdensome, and yet less serviceable than in any other countries.

It is certain, that in all cities, tho’ they invite strangers to cohabit with them, the ancient inhabitants have advantage enough by the government and its dependencies. And it is evident, that the old inhabitants, who live by their occupations, have a great advantage over the new comers, by their many relations, customers and acquaintance, most of the old manufactures, and great inland consumption: all which particulars yield the old inhabitants certain gain.Is more beneficial in Holland than in most other countries. But new comers leaving their own country upon any accident, and besides their moveable goods, bringing with them the knowledge of what is abounding, or wanting in their native country, and of all sorts of manufactures; they cannot live in Holland upon the interest of their money, nor on their real estates: so that they are compelled to lay out all their skill and estate in devising and forming of new fisheries, manufactures, traffick and navigation, with the danger of losing all they have. For he that sits idle in Holland, must expect to get nothing but certain and speedy poverty; but he that ventures may gain, and sometimes find out and meet with a good fishery, manufacture, merchandize or traffick: and then the other inhabitants may come in for a share in that new occupation, which is also very needful, because the old handicraft works being beaten down lower and lower in price, yield less profit. And therefore is is necessary that all strangers that are masters, journey-men, consumptioners, merchants, traders, &c. should live peaceably amongst us, without any disturbance, let, or molestation whatever, and use their own estates and trades as they shall judge best.

To a few old inhabitants it is detrimental.And tho’ this will be ever detrimental to some old inhabitants, who would have all the profit, and bereave others of it, and under one pretext or other exclude them from their trade; and therefore will alledge, that a citizen ought to have more privilege than a stranger; yet all inhabitants who have here a certain place of abode, or desire to have it as they are then no strangers, but inhabitants, so ought they to be permitted, as well as the burghers, to earn their necessary food, seeing they are in greater want than their opposers. And it is notorious, that all people, who to the prejudice of the common good would exclude others, that are likewise inhabitants of this land, from the common means of subsistence, or out of the repective cities, and for that end would have some speculiar favour from the rulers beyond the rest, are very pernicious and mischievous inhabitants: it is also certain, that a state which cannot subsist of itself, ought not to deny that strangers should live amongst them with equal freedom with themselves, under pretence of privilege and right of cities; nor should they exclude any strangers, but endeavour continually to allure in new inhabitants; else such a state will fall to ruin. For the great dangers of carrying on new designs, of being robb’d at sea, of selling their goods by factors to unknown people, on twelve months credit, and at the same time running the hazard of all revolutions by wars and monarchical governments against this state, and of losses among one another, are so important (yet all to be expected) that many inhabitants concerned in the fisheries, traffick, manufactury, and consequently in ships set out to freight, will give over their trade, and depart the country when they have been so fortunate as to have gained any considerable estate, to seek a securer way of living elsewhere. On the other hand, we are to consider, that there will ever be many bankrupts and forsaken trades, both by reason of the dangers of foreign trade, and intolerable domestick taxes, which cannot be denied by any that knows that in Amsterdam alone there are yearly about three hundred abandoned or insufficient estates registred in the chamber of accompts of that city; and therefore there are continually many inhabitants, who finding the gain uncertain, and the charge great, are apt to relinquish it. So that it is ever necessary that we leave all ways open for people to subsist by, and a full liberty, as aforesaid, to allure foreigners to dwell among us.Yea this freedom is profitable to the government of the land. Moreover, tho’ it be not convenient in general for strangers (i. e. such who, tho’ they dwell in Holland, and have continued there some considerable time, are not natives) to partake of the government, yet is it very necessary, in order to fix them here, that we do not exclude them by laws.

CHAP. XVI.

That monopolizing companies and guilds, excluding all other persons from their societies, are very prejudicial to Holland.

How hurtful select companies and guilds are,MUCH less ought we to curb or restrain our citizens and natives, any more than strangers, from their natural liberty of seeking their livelihoods in their native country, by select and authoriz’d companies and guilds: for when we consider, that all the trade of our common inhabitants is circumscribed or bounded well nigh within Europe, and that in very many parts of the same, as France, England, Sweden, &c. our greatest trade and navigation thither is crampt by the high duties, or by patent companies, like those of our Indian societies; as also how small a part of the world Europe is, and how many merchants dwell in Holland, and must dwell there to support it; we shall have no reason to wonder, if all the beneficial traffick in these small adjacent countries be either worn out, or in a short time be glutted with an over-trade. But we may much rather wonder, why the greatest part of the world should seem unfit for our common inhabitants to trade in, and that they should continue to be debarred from it, to the end that some few persons only may have the sole benefit of it.To all those means of subsistence, whereby to deprive them and lessen their number. It is certainly known that this country cannot prosper, but by means of those that are most industrious and ingenious, and that such patents or grants do not produce the ablest merchants. But on the other hand, because the grantees, whether by burghership, select companies, or guilds, think they need not fear that others, who are much more ingenious and industrious than themselves, and are not of the burghership, companies and guilds, shall lessen their profits; therefore the certain gains they reap make them dull, slow, unactive, and less inquisitive. Whereas on the other side, we say that necessity makes the old wife trot, hunger makes raw beans sweet, and poverty begets ingenuity.Who out of their abundance become wastful, dull and slothful. And besides, it is well known, now especially when Holland is so heavily taxed, that other less burdened people, who have no fisheries, manufactures, traffick and freight ships, cannot long subsist but by their industry, subtilty, courage, and frugality. In a word, these patent companies and guilds do certainly exclude many useful inhabitants from that trade and traffick. But those that possess those privileges with sufficient knowledge and fitness, need not fear that others that are more industrious and ingenious than themselves, shall prevent them of their profit by the exercise of the like abilities and parts;So that the inhabitants of other countries may the easier and sooner draw our means of subsistence to themselves. neither can it be so fully carried on and improved for the common benefit of the country, by a small number of people, as by many: so that in the mean time other people that we cannot exclude from that traffick or manufacture by means of our grants and guilds, have a great opportunity of profitably improving that which so foolishly, and with so much churlishness is prohibited to our common inhabitants.Enquiry made, whether if all countries have the freedom of an open trade, it would diminish our traffick in general, or quite destroy it. Whereas otherwise, the provident and industrious Hollanders would easily draw to them all foreign trade, and the making of incredibly more manufactures than we now work on. That which is objected against this is, that the Hollanders are a people of such a nature, that if the trade were open into Asia, Africa, and America, they would overstock all those countries with goods, and so destroy that trade to the prejudice of Holland; which is so far from the truth, and all appearance thereof, that it is hardly worth answering. For first, so great and mighty a trade by the Hollanders, in those vast and trafficking countries, would be the greatest blessing to them that could be wished for upon earth; would to God any of us could ever see Holland so happy. And next it cannot be denied, that even in this small Europe, the overstocking of countries with goods may indeed lessen the gains of some particular merchants;And the impossibility thereof is made manifest. but yet after such a manner that the said overstocking with the said goods really is, and can be no other than an effect or fruit of a present overgrown trade of this country, in proportion to the smallness of those countries with which we are permitted to traffick. And thirdly, it is evident, that the Hollanders by such overstocking have never yet lost any trade in any country or place of Europe, nor can they lose it so long as that trade remains open, because that superfluity of goods transported is soon spent, and that same trade is by the same or some other of our merchants immediately reassumed and taken up, so soon as by a following scarcity in those countries there is any appearance of making more profit by those, or other commodities.

But supposing it to be true, that the Dutch merchants by overstocking those trading countries should run a risque of losing that trade in some parts; yet considering the smallness of those lands, it would then be doubly necessary to prevent the same by setting open the trade to Asia, Africa and America, for all the merchants of Holland.As also that trading companies by charter have ever lessened trade and navigation, and oftentimes quite ruined both. But on the other side, it is certain that the licensed monopolizing companies, by the unfaithfulness, negligence, and chargeableness of their servants, and by their vast, and consequently unmanageable designs, who are not willing to drive any trade longer than it yields excessive profit, must needs gain considerably in all their trade, or otherwise relinquish and forsake all countries that yield it not, which nevertheless would by our common inhabitants be very plentifully carried on.

In this respect it is worthy observation, that the authorized Greenland company made heretofore little profit by their fishing, because of the great charge of setting out their ships, and that the train-oil, blubber and whale-fins were not well made, handled, or cured;Which appears by vacating of the Greenland company’s charter. and being brought hither and put into warehouses, were not sold soon enough, nor to the company’s best advantage. Whereas now that every one equips their vessels at the cheapest rate, follow their fishing diligently, and manage all carefully, the blubber, train-oil, and whale-fins are imployed for so many uses in several countries, that they can sell them with that conveniency, that tho’ there are now fifteen ships for one which formerly failed out of Holland on that account, and consequently each of them could not take so many whales as heretofore; and notwithstanding the new prohibition of France, and other countries, to import those commodities; and tho’ there is greater plenty of it imported by our fishers, yet those commodities are so much raised in the value above what they were whilst there was a company, that the common inhabitants do exercise that fishery with profit to the much greater benefit of our country, than when it was (under the management of a company) carried on but by a few. It is besides very considerable, that for the most part all trades and manufactures managed by guilds in Holland, do sell all their goods within this country to other inhabitants who live immediately by the fisheries, manufacturies, freight ships, and traffick: so that no members of those guilds, under what pretext soever, can be countenanced or indulged in their monopoly, or charter, but by the excluding of all other inhabitants, and consequently to the hindrance of their country’s prosperity. For how much soever those members sell their pains or commodities dearer than if that trade or occupation was open or free, all the other better inhabitants that gain their subsistance immediately, or by consequence by a foreign consumption, must bear that loss. And indeed our fishermen, dealers in manufactures, owners of freight-ships, and traders, being so burdened with all manner of imposts, to oppress them yet more in their necessity by these monopolies of guilds, and yet to believe that it redounds to the good of the land, because it tends to the benefit of such companies, is to me incomprehensible. These guilds are said indeed to be a useful sort of people; but next to those we call idle drones, they are the most unprofitable inhabitants of the country, because they bring in no profit from foreign lands for the welfare of the inhabitants of Holland. Esop hath well illustrated this folly by a cat, who first lick’d off the oil from an oiled file, and continued licking, not observing that she had by little and little lick’d her tongue thorough which was given her to sustain her life, and carry nourishment into her body, nor that she fed not on a file which did not consume, but on her own blood before her tongue was totally consumed.

On the contrary, I can see no good, nor appearance of good, which the guilds in Holland do produce, but only that foreign masters and journeymen artificers, having made their works abroad, and endeavouring to sell them to our inhabitants, thereby to carry the profit out of our country into their own, are herein check’d and opposed by our masters of guilds or corporations. But besides that this is more to the prejudice than advantage of the country, since by consequence our fishers, manufacturers, traders, and owners of ships let to freight, are thereby bereft of the freedom of buying their necessaries at the cheapest rate they can; it is also evident, that this feeding of foreigners upon the Hollander would be more strenuously and profitably opposed and prevented, in case all handicraft work and occupations were permitted to be made, sold and practised by all, and no other people, except such as have their settled habitations in this country.

CHAP. XVII.

That fishers, dealers in manufactures, merchants, and owners of freight-ships as such, ought not at all to be charged by paying any imposition to the country, under what pretext soever.

IF it be granted that the forementioned means of subsistence, namely, fishing, manufactury, traffick, and freight-ships, are so necessary in, and for Holland, as hath been above demonstrated; and if the Hollanders, who have no native commodities, must yet hold markets equally with other nations, who may deal in their own wares, or manufactures made of their own materials; then it follows, that our rulers ought not, under any pretence whatsoever, to charge or tax their own inhabitants, fishers, dealers in manufactures, owners of freight-ships, or merchants as such. And I suppose every one will easily grant me this conclusion in the general, because of its own perspecuity: for indeed, how fully and fixedly soever fishing, manufactury, navigation, and commerce seem to have settled themselves in Holland; yet it is evident, that one stiver of profit or loss, more or less, makes a commodity which is in æquilibrio, and that happens very often (namely when it is hardly discerned whether the profit be sufficient to continue the making of that commodity) wholly to preponderate, or be at a stand;Especially about traffick in Holland. even as a pair of scales wherein ten thousand pounds or less is weighed, being ballanced, one of them is as easily weighed down with a pound weight, as if there were but a hundred pounds in each scale. And by consequence it is evident, that our own fisheries, and manufactures, with their dependencies, as also the traffick in those wares, whether imported or exported, ought not at all to pay for tonnage, convoy, or other duties, nor any thing when brought to the scale, unless they are sold. I know that all such impositions, through the ignorance of those that are unacquainted with trade, are counted very light and insignificant; but those that are more intelligent and concerned therein, do know* that you may pull a large fowl bare, by plucking away single feathers, especially in Holland, where with light gains we must make a heavy purse.Illustrated by fable. The antients have compared these inconsiderate people to mice, who being to live on the fruit of an orchard, found that the roots of the trees relish’d well, and were of good nourishment, so that they made bold to eat of them; whereby the trees, for want of sufficient root, being depriv’d of their usual nourishment, bore less fruit: and the wisest of them told the others the reason of it, but were not believed by the foolish and greedy mice that continued gnawing and devouring of the root. And when in the following year, besides this unfruitfulness, those trees that had lost many of their roots and fibres, were either blown down by the storms, or kill’d by the frost; the wise mice did thereupon once again warn their imprudent brethren against it, who answered, that it was not their undermining and eating the roots, but the sierce storms and sharp winter that was the cause of it. So that they continued feeding on the roots, ’till the trees were so diminished, that both the wise and foolish mice must either die of hunger, or seek a better habitation.

Besides this, antient history teacheth us, that Antigonus king of Macedonia being imprudently covetous, was not content with the health of his subjects, and the profit which he and they receiv’d from the imposts paid by strangers, who came to drink his mineral waters, but he would needs tax the very fountain it self, by laying a duty upon every measure of water: which was so unacceptable to God and nature, that the fountain dried up, insomuch that he thereby lost not only the health of his subjects, but the impost on the consumption; and for this super-impost on the well, he was cursed and derided by his subjects and strangers.

From the fisheries, manufactures, and traffick, is drawn from all parts, what the other inhabitants pay to the magistracy.And indeed if we consider, that all duties levied on consumption must at the long run be born by the fishermen, manufacturers, traffickers and owners of ships, who for the most part employ all the people here directly or indirectly, we must acknowledge, that they alone are above measure burdened thereby, and discouraged by imposts above all others; which will evidently appear, if you consider it in an example or two, and inquire how much wages is here paid for building and setting to sea a ship of 200 lasts, or rather how many carpenters, smiths, rope-makers, sail-makers, &c. must be employed about such a vessel, and how much in the mean while they must altogether pay to the state, whether for imposts, or for poundage of house-hire.As the building of shipping. For I doubt not but it will charge a ship with some hundreds of guilders more than if we had no imposts, and consequently it must be sold so much the dearer. And if moreover we consider, that the owners who set to sea such a ship to seek a freight, must afterwards victual her with our provision and drink for the seamen, upon which our imposts charge very much, you will the easier discern it. And this would likewise appear manifestly, if we consider, that the price of weaving half a piece of ordinary home-made broad cloth, amounts to seventy guilders, and that this money is presently spent, (for such workmen, tho’ they can, will not lay up any thing) then we should see, that of this 70, more than twenty guilders is paid for imposts, and poundage upon house-hire;And drapery do manifest. for a half piece of cloth requires the labour of twenty-eight people for fourteen days, or at least so many may thereby be fed by the heads of families (reckoning five to a family) and then we see that a half piece of cloth is thereby charged with twenty guilders.

And tho’ the fisheries and traffick are not opprest near so much with such imposts, yet it certainly is, and continues an intolerable error, and thwarts the welfare of the whole state, to burden any dealers in manufactures, fishers, or merchants, as such; for we do not take care for the prosperity of the country, unless by all ways and means we lighten their burdens, and remove what makes them uneasy.

CHAP. XVIII.

That freedom of religion is against all reason obstructed in Holland.

HAving hitherto spoken of four considerable ways of preserving the prosperity of Holland, I think it not fit to go over any more tending to the same end, ’till I first briefly hint how Holland hath governed itself as to the said expedients.Toleration of religion was formerly more obstructed. And first as to freedom of religion, it is certain that having ’till this time been greater in Holland than any where else, it hath brought in many inhabitants, and driven out but few; yet it is also certain, that since the year 1618. we have begun to depart from that laudable maxim more and more.

Namely by placaets against the Remonstrants and Roman catholicks.First with the Remonstrants, persecuting them by placaets, fines, and banishments, and driving them into other lands: afterwards with the Romanists, by disturbing them more and more in their assemblies with severe placaets, and more rigorous execution, notwithstanding that by the prosperity of our own government, the great increase of the protestants, the peace, and the king of Spain’s renunciation of any pretence, right, or title for himself, or his heirs after him, to these United Provinces;Altho’ the moving reasons of the first placaets now wholly cease. the moving reasons of our first placaets against the Romanists, seemed to have been taken away. So that now, in order to enjoy their liberty, they must pay a heavy tax annually, to the profit of the bailiffs and schouts, which seems to be imposed for them, and for no other cause; for the government reaps no benefit by it. This is no less unreasonable, than detrimental to the land: for if we cannot spare the benefit which accrues to us by their abode and traffick, why should we prohibit that which is not hurtful to the state, and whereof the Romish inhabitants make so great account, and without which they cannot dwell amongst us? If we permit none but small assemblies in cities, in the houses of known citizens, with such priests as are best approved of by the rulers, that inconvenience would have an end, and peace and friendship increase more and more among the good inhabitants, yea and the true religion too. And moreover, our state would avoid that vexation which now by disturbing those prohibited meetings may happen: and on the contrary, the state could incur no danger by those well known assemblies, where every one might have free access, and no matter of secrecy could be consulted of, but the publick safety would every way be better secured. But what shall we say? not only the politicians, but also the clergy are men; and commonly the sweet temper of such as have suffer’d under persecution is changed into force and violence, so soon as they become masters of others: then they forget the evangelical lesson, and the law of nature to do nothing to others but what they would have done to themselves; and on the contrary, they remember and practise that old tyrannical and accursed maxim, As he hath done to me, so will I do to him; and he that hath the power, let him use it.Psal. 119. 71. And to speak all in a word, what the psalmist says, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes, is not truer in adversity, than in prosperity.Psal. 73. 5, 6.They are not in trouble, neither are they plagued like other men; therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain, and violence covereth them as a garment.

CHAP. XIX.

That the freedom of fishery and traffick in Holland, is likewise in some measure unjustly restrain’d.

THE freedom of fishery and traffick, is greater in this country than elsewhere, and yet heretofore there were many placaets published concerning the herring, and other fisheries, which tend altogether to the benefit of foreign fishers, who are not bound to obey them. We formerly manag’d the whale-fishing by a monopolizing company, exclusive of all others; and how mischievous that proved to Holland, appears now, that that fishing is open to all men, whereby it is advanced from one to ten, yea to fifteen, as was before shewn more at large. But erecting an East, and a West-India company, was a quite different thing; for it appeared to be a necessary evil, because our people would be trading in and about such countries where our enemies were too strong for particular adventures:Sometimes a monopoly charter is useful to settle a trade. so that this seemed to have been necessary in all respects, to lay the foundation of that trade by a powerful arm’d society. And seeing this country, engaged in war against the king of Spain, had need of using all its strength, it was very prudently done to erect those two societies. But that trade being now so well settled, we may justly make it a doubt, whether the said companies ought any longer to continue on the same foot. Some wise statesmen do with probable reasons maintain, that the politic rule of* preserving a thing best, by the same means whereby it was acquired, cannot agree with these companies: for it is certain, that the first moving reason of those grants to them, which was the war with the king of Spain, now ceaseth, and that in case of any new war against that people, they would no longer be formidable to us, but we to them.As appeared by the East-India Company. And secondly, as it is well known that it was necessary at first to make some conquests upon the spice islands of the said enemy, because the more lands they conquered, the more right and ability they would acquire to the trade which might happen in those parts:But that trade when settled, if manag’d by a select company, runs counter to the general good. so it cannot be denied, that when those good and necessary conquests are made, the grounds and maxims of the prosperity of the said companies begin to justle and oppugn the general good of this country, which is manifestly known to consist in a continual increase of our manufactures, traffick and freight ships: whereas nevertheless the true interest of such companies, consists in seeking the benefit of all the members, even with foreign, as well as our own manufactures, and (to the great prejudice of all other our inhabitants) by importing manufactures and other mechanick works into this country, and vending them throughout Europe; and in short, by making the greatest profit with the least traffick and navigation. As it is acknowledged, that if the East-India company can gain more by importing Japan garments, Indian quilts and carpets, &c. than raw silk; or if the company, by causing a scarcity of nutmegs, mace, cloves, cinamon, &c. could so raise the price of them, that they might gain as much by one hundred lasts as by a thousand: we ought not then to expect that those raw silks, and unnecessary and great disbursments which they are at, should cause a greater trade and navigation than those hundred lasts would just require, but that they would rather, to shun greater traffick and navigation, destroy all the superfluity they have in the Indies.

And it can be as little denied of such companies, that the more lands they conquer, the more of their stock they must necessarily spend for the preservation and defence of such lands; and the more dominion they have, the less are they able to mind and augment their traffick: whereas on the contrary, our particular inhabitants by those manifold conquered strong holds and lands, would have so much the more conveniency and security to trade in the Indies. We have now, to say no more, quite lost our open trade of Guiney, and that of salt in the West-Indies, which were heretofore so considerable by the erecting of the West-India company; and the mischief which was done to the king of Spain in the West-Indies, is recoil’d back, and fallen upon us:So that that monopoly ought then to have been taken away. so that we cannot cry up that company, who have bound the hands of particular men, and made war instead of traffick, unless at least they would in the mean time suffer all our inhabitants freely to trade in all their conquests. On the contrary, that company hath impoverish’d many of our good inhabitants. Whereas by an open trade, and consequently well settled colonies, we should not only, with small charge have easily defended those vast lands of Brazil, Guiney, Angola, St. Thomas, &c. against all foreign power, but (which is more considerable) have been able to carry on a very great trade with our own nation, without fear that any foreign potentate should seize our ships, goods or debts, to which those Hollanders that trade only in Europe are continually exposed.Else we wholly lose that trade, for land-conquests carried on by merchants are not at the long run tenable against all enemies. And how profitable and secure that trade would have been, may easily be apprehended, if it be well consider’d, that the said lands yield the best sort of commodities that are in request over all Europe, and are not to be had so good elsewhere, viz. sugar, brazil-wood elephants-teeth, gold, &c. and that which those inhabitants have need of in return, Holland could for the most part have supplied them with, as victuals, drink and apparel, yea even with most materials for building of houses, ships, &c. whereas now we are deprived of all these advantages. This is the ordinary fruit and punishment of monopolies and conquests, which for want of colonies they must keep up at a continual great charge. May our East-India company consider this effectually, before it be too late.

CHAP. XX.

That manufactures, and other mechanick Works, are no less imprudently restrained.

The freedom of manufactures is more and more obstructed.BY the freedom allow’d men to gain a livelihood by such things as are liable to consumption, or by handicrafts, it’s certain that we have kept an infinite number of people in the country, and have besides drawn in many foreigners to it: for in most cities of Holland there has been sufficient liberty given. But afterwards people withdrew from many cities, through the mischievous nature of some men, who rather chuse a sudden profit, tho’ to the general damage of their native country, than that which comes in by degrees with continued gain to the republick: for private or peculiar profit is the chief foundation (tho’ it always goes under the notion of a general advantage) of all those restrictions and burdens imposed on the citizens by corporations or guilds, which serve to no other end but to keep good people out of their cities, and in the mean while to give the members of such corporations a lasting opportunity of being enrich’d by their fellow inhabitants, and of selling their goods and manufactures the dearer to their neighbours, and so of levying as it were an impost upon them.

At least it cannot be denied, but that halls relating to manufactures, or any other sort of handicraft ware, with overseers or inspectors appointed by common consent; or the chief men of the guilds to circumscribe or limit the same; or by publick acts of state to appoint how those wares must be made which we fell into foreign lands, are as ridiculous as prejudicial. For it supposeth two very impertinent things: first, that the foreign buyers must needs purchase of us such manufactures and mechanick works as we shall please to make, be they what they will: and, secondly, that in other countries they must not make those sorts of manufactures, and handicraft wares which we prohibit. Whereas on the contrary it may be said, that the makers of them have hit the right mark, when they can best please the buyer, and the buyer can gain most by them. And it is certain that all our manufactures and other mechanick works, may be made and spent not only in the country villages and towns of Holland, but also in very many neighbouring countries; and that they may be there made with far less imposts on the consumption than with us: by which it appears that it would have been much better for Holland never to have laid on those restrictions and Prohibitions.

CHAP. XXI.

That the heavy and manifold imposts will at last destroy the prosperity of this country.

Taxes on consumpand merchandize in Holland too burdensome.AS to imposts upon imported or exported goods, and taxes upon consumption, and real or immoveable estates; I suppose former ages levied none such in time of peace. For when the earls of Holland supposed they should have occasion for an extraordinary supply in time of war over and above their revenues, they came in person, and according to their privilege desired it of the assembly of states; who sometimes granted it for a short time, and sometimes refused it, and were ever very cautious of granting any standing supply of money, as knowing their liberty could not subsist but under such an earl as had neither forces nor money beforehand. And our historians count it a great offence in our earls, that they endeavoured to make these lands tributary: for which reason the emperor Charles the fifth desiring a stiver to be imposed upon each acre or morgen of land, could not obtain it; and his son Philip, not without great trouble, got an impost for nine years to help to defray the charge of the war against France, but on this condition, that all sums so levied, should be received and disposed by such as the state impowered to do it. And on the same ground the states of Flanders and Brabant have to this day preserved their liberty of granting the king such requests, or (as it most commonly happens) of denying them. It makes nothing against what I have now said, that the earls of Holland have heretofore received customs upon goods imported and exported, seeing according to their privilege the citizens of the trading cities of Holland, viz. Dort, Haerlem, Delf, Leyden, Amsterdam, &c. are custom-free; so that such duties do only concern strangers, and even for them they are very easy. But in the time of the stadtholders government in the United Provinces, says Grotius, “By* endeavouring not to give the duke of Alva the tenth penny, we afterwards gave all”. After which being in banishment, he wrote to his friends here in this manner: “We† bore all manner of taxes and imposts, without preserving the least shadow of our common freedom.” For the same taxes are by the long continuance of the wars now screw’d up so high, that the like was never seen in any republick, much less in a trafficking country:To be able to continue long, and the country to thrive. so that it will be the greatest wonder in nature for us to sustain those intolerable burdens long, and, driving no trade with our own native commodities, to be able to traffick as other nations do. Nevertheless I willingly acknowledge, that if we must needs raise no less than fifteen millions of guilders yearly in this country, we have hit upon the most convenient course for it, viz. to charge the oldest inhabitants most, as being most fixed to the country by the advantage of the government, and their immoveable estates: for land is most liable to pay poundage, the 40th penny upon sale, and the 20th penny of inheritances, by those of the collateral ascending line, as also the tax of the 200th penny most strictly levied. But those manifold, yea innumerable imposts upon consumption, concern merchandize and manufacture only so far as those who are maintain’d by them are men, and must live by them. Besides it is well known, not only that in consumptions there may be great variety, but also that people do manifestly spend most of their income upon pomp and ornament, superfluity, wantonness, pleasure and recreation. So that fishermen, manufacturers, seamen and watermen, who are mostly poor, pay but little to this tax; whereas the richer inhabitants pay very much: and it cannot be denied but that they seem voluntarily to pay those imposts on consumptions.

But in real burdens and taxations, the favour and hatred of the first assessors has not only an influence, but those that are oppress’d by them, cannot free themselves from them by prudential forethought and frugality.Or poundage and the eighth penny. Moreover it is apparent that he who increases his estate by industrious and frugal living, is most burdened: and he that by laziness and prodigality diminisheth his estate will be less taxed. So that virtue is unjustly opprest, and vice favoured. Whereas on the contrary, the imposts on consumption fall heavy upon the riotous, and indulge and incourage the virtuous. But tho’ in all events the forementioned sums of money yearly demanded for defence of the country, be raised after the easiest way possible;That the inhabitants ought as soon as possible to be eased. yet the immenseness of the sum will not suffer us to imagine that our people continuing to be thus burdened, shall always be able to sell their merchandize at as low, or lower rates than other foreigners, who are charged less, and work up their own growth and manufactures ready for the merchant. So that it is absolutely necessary that our inhabitants be eased of such burdens as soon as possibly may be.

CHAP. XXII.

The grounds and reasons upon which the greatest caution is to be us’d in laying the tax of convoy-money, or customs.

Some exported and imported goods, and ships, may possibly he charged to the benefit of Holland.BUT the impost on goods imported and exported, and that on shipping, is a quite different thing; for some may possibly be laid for the benefit of the state, some without prejudice to it, and some cannot be laid without great and certain detriment to Holland. I shall therefore express my sentiments particularly upon this subject, and do premise, that so long as our polity about sea-affairs is built upon the same foundation as it was in the year 1597, that prohibition of any ships or merchandize whatever, whether imported or exported, must always be of great concernment to Holland.Holland ought to be very wary as to prohibited goods, and taxing of merchandize or shipping. The like may be said of laying any new or higher duty of tonnage, or convoy-money for clearing the seas; seeing we daily find that some provinces, admiralties, and cities, intending to tolerate the same among themselves, do privately connive and suffer them to be smuggl’d, or brought in custom-free, in order to gain that trade of navigation and commerce to themselves; and yet will be sure to be the most zealous in causing such prohibitions, and the laying in of higher convoy-money and taxes for clearing the seas, to be imposed by the states-general.See the grievances of the magistrates of Zierickzee in the year 1668. in Novemb. So that commonly the fairest dealing provinces, admiralties and cities of the United Provinces, and the most upright merchants suffer by the said placaets, while the most fraudulent and dishonest merchants do generally so contrive matters, as to get friends at court, by whose favour they find means to benefit themselves to the prejudice of honest men.

In the first place it is worthy observation, that in this affair, nothing can be more detrimental than to charge all ships, or goods coming in or going out with tonnage-duty, without distinction: for tho’ it be pretended to be taken of the shipping only, yet it is evident that all the goods they carry must pay for it. And to pay for clearing the seas, and thereby charging all goods, according to their value, with one per cent. or the like, is still more prejudicial. To make this more evident, I shall insist the longer upon it. Seeing Holland of it self yields almost nothing, and the greatest part of our traffick consists in fisheries, manufactures, mechanic works, and their dependencies, so that we must take those fish, and fetch the unwrought materials for manufactures, and all that is necessary thereunto from foreign parts; and likewise most of our fish, and wrought goods must afterwards be transported to foreign parts.Last-money, as now laid, is very detrimental, because it charges all without distinction. And seeing it is evident that the fisheries, manufactures, and other mechanick wares, may be practised and made in other countries, it is an inexcusable weakness to burden those necessary means of livelihood, and all other merchandize without distinction, and thereby indanger the driving them into other nations where they are less charged. How much this thwarts all good maxims of polity, I shall shew by an example or two.As is instanced by particular examples; viz. of inland broad-cloth. It was antiently very wisely considered, how much we were concerned in the manufactury of woollen-cloth, and therefore a half-inland made cloth was charged with no more than 4 stivers for exportation; whereas if it had paid 1 per Cent. for clearing the seas, it would have paid 30 stivers. So that every one may perceive the disparity, and into what danger we run by such errors, of losing this trade, and driving out of our country a very great number of people, as washers of wool, pickers, scourers, carders, spinners, weavers, dressers, fullers, dyers, nappers, pressers, &c. with the makers of the instruments necessary to those imployments. And lastly, it is the way to cause the trade of unwrought goods, thereunto subservient, and made use of likewise in the manufactures, to withdraw very readily into other countries, especially if besides all this, we do in the same impolitick manner tax the unwrought goods serving to the same end, which is against all good polity, and the great prudence of our ancestors, who having well considered how much weaving concerns us, very wisely ordered all wooll imported to be free, and all yarn woven here to pay but 15 stivers the 100 l. and but one per Cent. to be paid for clearing the seas;Of worsted yarn for weaving. the wool for an inland half-cloth ten stivers, and the yarn for a home-made camlet 45 stivers the piece: which yet by the ordinary convoy or customs (counting 15 stivers for 100 pounds) is charged but with one half stiver the piece; at least according to the first intent of the confederate states, it ought to be charged with no more. So that it is an inexcusable folly, and would be a very prejudicial exaction to charge the importer with more than 15 stivers convoy-money for 100 pounds of Turkey-yarn brought into this country to be woven. And it is no less imprudent so greatly to burden raw silk imported, as if it were of no concern to us, which by winding, throwing, and weaving, is so profitable to this country.Of raw silk. From all which I suppose every one will easily perceive how prejudicial this great difference is.

But in all events, whether for payment of convoymoney, direction, or tonnage-money, or for clearing the seas, it would be needful for the greater improvement of the navigation of Holland, that all foreign imported goods should be less charged than those that come in by land: whereas on the contrary we see daily that very many Levant, Italian, &c. fine wares are brought in by the land-carriage.To increase navigation, it were needful to charge such goods as come by land-carriage. And how much it concerns our inhabitants we may easily imagine, when we consider that the ships built here, are set to sea victual’d and mann’d, but the carriers and their waggons are foreign, and of no concern to us: and besides, our merchandize on board ships is always in our power, or at least we may convoy and defend them with our men of war as they go and come, whereas those that go by land-carriage are in the lands and power of other princes, so that they may at all times make seizure of them.

As also some foreign shipping.2. All ships and wares, coming out of countries where our inhabitants lade not at all, or at least not without paying duties, ought in proportion to be charged here with as much impost as our advantagious situation, and great consumption can bear: And where ours pay more impost than is taken in the country where the foreign masters of ships do live, we ought likewise to take as much of them here as was taken of ours. And thus having the navigation to ourselves, we may preserve the same, as also the passage on the rivers.

And foreign made wares.3. All wrought goods which we can make in this country, should be charged when imported with so much, and no more than the traffick may bear. And all foreign made goods ought to be charged with more than those made at home, being sold for consumption or wearing; and also the same goods in passing upon rivers into other countries, ought to be charged again so much, as they may not be carried with less charge thro’ other dominions to those rivers.Raw imported goods ought to be little charged. We are moreover duly to observe, that we ought not to charge any foreign goods that are to be transported again, whether manufactured or not, so as that our merchants should find it their advantage to pass by our havens, and chuse rather to carry those goods from one foreign country to another, which might perhaps be effected, especially in very coarse goods, whose lading and unlading cost more than ordinary.Those that come by or upon rivers more. But the wares imported or exported by the rivers, we may charge much more, especially all coarse or bulky goods, which cannot be brought hither by land: for the rivers we have under our command. And again, by charging the goods brought in by rivers, our navigation and traffick is favoured; and the cities that lie upward have for many years past bereft the Netherlandish vessels of their freight on those rivers by their staple duty. Of which great hardship we cannot complain with any reason, while any cities in Holland practise the like.

We ought to ease all imported unwrought goods, whereof our manufactures are made.4. All imported rough goods, which our inhabitants are to work up, ought not at all to be charged: but rough goods, as aforesaid, exported, we ought to charge so much as they can bear.

5. Goods manufactured in this country, and exported, ought not at all to be charged. But on the contrary, we should charge all foreign made goods, either imported or exported, as much as may be, without hazarding the loss of that traffick.And to ease our own, and charge outlandish manufacture.

As for charging foreign goods, and manufactur’d wares, ships, and masters of ships, tho’ it be a matter of great weight, yet I know not of any thing that hath been done in it.Which maxims the English have much better follow’d than we. See their book of rates of tonnage and poundage. But the English, anno 1660, settled their rates of customs and convoy-money so well, according to these maxims, to favour their inhabitants as much as they could, and to burden all foreign masters of ships, and merchants; that if we continue charged in this country so unreasonably as at present, and there too, and the English on the other hand continue to be so favourably used, both here and at home, they will bereave us of much of our trade, unless the merchants there under that government, be for other occasions oppressed with many and heavy taxes, whereunto traffick, under monarchs and princes, is always wont to be much exposed.

CHAP. XXIII.

That in levying Convoy-money, we in Holland deviate in many particulars from these maxims, and in many things have observed them well.

First, it hath been very detrimental to Holland, that they there prohibited the exportation of gold and silver.FIRST it is well worthy observation, that the inhabitants of Holland can trade in no countries but by carrying goods thither, which having sold, and turned into money, they convert it into other goods which they find there, or failing that, return their money into Holland by exchange: but if such foreign lands have little or no occasion for our goods, but afford rich commodities, then is it evident that we cannot trade with them to any purpose, unless we carry thither gold and silver in coin, or bullion. And since by consequence every one knows that Norway, the East-Country, Smyrna, Persia, India, China, &c. do afford us infinitely more merchandize than they take of us, we cannot trade with them but by gold and silver; and that moreover, these provinces, at least that of Holland, cannot subsist without the said traffick. Therefore we cannot enough wonder at the ignorance, or ill conduct of the states-general, who by many repeated placaets in the years 1606, 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613, 1621, &c. prohibited the exportation of coined or uncoined gold and silver. And tho’ it may be said, that the said placaets being well known to be detrimental, had no long duration, yet it is certain that the scouts, and advocat fiscal, did for a long time, nay and sometimes still make use of them to molest and disquiet our trading inhabitants.

But the not charging of fisheries, and the Eastern trade, is reasonably well ordered.But as to what concerns the freedom and advantages of fishery, and the Eastland trade, as also other unwrought goods imported, they are indifferently well ordered, seeing they pay little or nothing of duty, either on import or export, except that the herring-busses to secure themselves against sea-robbers, or pyrates, do yearly at their own charge, set out seven ships of war:See the rates of the convoy-money. which, for a fishery of so much importance to the country, is too heavy a burden, or at least a very great charge. But foreign salt imported or exported, is not at all charged. Fish of our own taking, herring, wood, ashes, pitch, tar, hemp, pay nothing inward, and but very little outward.But not the corn-trade. But corn, against all reason, pays duty inward, some more, and some less, and likewise when exported is too much charged.

If we consider how much must necessarily be gained in this country, by owners of ships, masters, mariners, corn-porters, hirers out of granaries to stow the same, and corn-shifters, before it is sent by our merchants into other countries:And how much Holland is concerned in having the staple of corn. we ought in all respects to ease, and be more favourable to our stores or staple of corn, merchandize, and fishery, and to keep the staple of corn within our country; that so during bad seasons, and the scarcity thereof in other nations, we may have it always cheaper with us than in any other countries; and besides that, we might enjoy many other publick advantages, which out of so redundant a treasure as is the store and staple of corn, might in very many cases and accidents be improved by wise magistrates. Whereas on the contrary, if by an imprudent burdening of that commodity we lose that staple; this indigent and populous country would in many cases, as bad harvests, and cross accidents of this world, fall into many extraordinary and unforeseen inconveniencies. But manufactures are too much charged.But above all it is to be lamented, that our own manufactures are so unreasonably charged with convoy-money, or customs, and much more with the duty of clearing the seas; but they are chiefly opprest by the imposition laid on the consumption; so that the interest of the manufactures and mechanick works is very ill look’d after. For tho’ undrest wool pays but 1 per Cent. of its worth at importation, yet certain it is that it pays too little at exportation. Flax, silk, and yarn are also too much charged upon importation, and no more (against all reason) at exportation.See the rates of convoy-money. The treaty of the English court in Holland, and L. V. Aitzma’s Hist of the year 1656. pag. 635. And as to weaving, or to speak plainer, all woven goods; it is wonderful why we should charge woven goods, whether imported or exported by sea, or rivers, so high as we foolishly do, or (in respect of their great value) much more than foreign commodities; yea (which is a shameful thing) the undrest English cloths are at importation not charged at all, and the English traders enjoy every way more freedom, and exemption from taxes in Holland, than even our own inhabitants.

As also our husbandmen.The interest of our husbandmen, or boors, is also much neglected; for what solid reason can be given, that the Holland butter exported is double as much charged as that of Friesland? Likewise, that all foreign butter and cheese may be imported duty free; but all foreign cheese exported, is charged with no more than that of Holland.

But especially we may wonder, that the rulers of Holland could ever find it good to charge all merchandize, without distinction, at importation with 1 per Cent. and at exportation with 2 per Cent. of its value: as if it were not enough to subject the merchant by the rated convoy-money, to the charges, pains, loss of time, and seizures, which must and will lawfully oftimes happen, and sometimes also to the unjust vexation and trouble of many,And especially the interest of merchants has been much neglected, by paying one and two per Cent. upon goods imported and exported. and delays of the custom-house officers, searchers, collectors, and fiscal, whereby many times fit opportunities of sending away or selling of their goods are lost: so that by the said one and two per Cent. of the value, all merchandize, even those which ought by all means to be favoured, are so heavily charged, as in the foregoing chapter is shew’d. And besides, power is given to the said fiscal and head customer or collector, to seize all goods for their own use, paying one sixth part more than the importer values them: which is a mischievous thing to the merchant;Which appears plainest by raw silk, and grogram yarn for in far more remote countries (for example, at Smyrna, or Messina, grogram yarn or silk) goods being bartered or bought, and not knowing whether those goods may be damaged in the voyage or not, and much less whether the same are so bartered or bought in, as to yield profit or loss, yet are they bound blindly to rate these goods. Whereas on the other side, the fiscal or collector may take or leave them at their pleasure. Besides, this one and two per Cent. is for the merchant so great a charge, and deprives them of so much profit, that by this alone very many goods that come from abroad, and will not sell off here, pass by our country, and are carried to other ports.

The truth is, when we consider all these heavy burdens upon the merchandize and manufactures of Holland; and then on the other hand, that we can in no wise subsist long without them, I cannot sufficiently wonder at that folly; for it is too nice and ticklish a case to lay any restraints upon the mouth, through which all nourishment must pass into the body. We ought to suspect and be jealous of all things which have any tendency, either to bereave or straiten us of life; especially seeing we can fail but once, and those that guess at things are apt to mistake. Perhaps it may be said, that necessity justifies all things, and that the wars brought a fear upon us of losing both country and trade at once.Which may be excused because necessity breaks law. Indeed he that is straitened by water or fire, will leap through the fire, or catch hold of a naked sword to preserve his life: but they must be fools when there is no such necessity, that will suffer their bodies to be harm’d by sword or fire.See Aitzma’s treaty of peace. That late puissant neighbouring enemy, in respect of whom merchandize was so heavily charged, is (God be praised for his mercy) so weakned by making war against us, that for eighteen years together he was necessitated to offer us a peace that was shameful for him, and glorious for us, before we would grant it him.But it is imprudent to continue that tax forclearing the seas of enemies when there is no need.

And these provinces, that may be accounted to have been formerly unarmed, in respect of their present condition, as Groeningen, Friesland, Overyssel, Guelderland, &c. have always been able to defend themselves against foreign force, and were very hardly by dissension among themselves brought to stoop to that mighty emperor Charles the fifth. So that now there is no shadow of reason to believe that being provided for the most part by the money of Holland with fortification, cannon, arms, and ammunition, they are not now able in a profound peace to defend themselves with their own force against the attempts of a weaker neighbour.And we in perfect peace by land. On the other hand it is true, that some of them being sensible of their own power, are not concern’d for the uneasiness of the Hollanders by sea, nor will they contribute a penny to ease them, but contrary to the terms of the union of Utrecht, as if that union were only made against the king of Spain’s attempts by land, pretending that all wars and robberies by sea, ought and may be sufficiently maintained, prevented and defended by convoymoney, and consequently sufficiently provided for by the merchants of Holland. Whereas nevertheless the said Holland merchants, besides their particular burdens as men and inhabitants, bear all impositions, whereby Holland is not only defended by land against all men, but likewise all the other united inland provinces: which in truth hath continued to this day, at the charge of much more contribution for Holland, and much less for the other provinces, than by virtue of the union of Utrecht they are obliged to.Art. 5. 6. So that it is high time for Holland to mind her own advantage, and discharge her self of all needless expences for these provinces, and bestow them on her own defence, whereof she hath every way, and evermore occasion by land, and especially by sea.That the sea must drip or maintain it self, is a very detrimental maxim for Holland. For if in truth that maxim used by the other provinces be true, That the sea must maintain it self, and that consequently all means to clear the seas, and to regain the merchants loss after such plunderings by foreigners, and damage sustained by sea, must cause the rates of convoy-money to be rais’d higher in proportion to that necessity; all which must be fetch’d from the merchant.Because the Turk will ever continue his depredations at Sea. If so, I say, Holland must necessarily decay and fall to ruin, considering that by the constitution of the trade at sea, and the many countries about us, not only in the Sound and Channel, but also by the fundamental government of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algier, they must be for ever pirated on by sea. For by this rule it would follow, that Holland should always bear its own burdens, and those of the other provinces too by sea, and so in a time of peace, as well as war, should also bear most of the charge by land:Voyage to the Levant, par le Sir des Haye. and that the others on their parts should wallow in idleness and gluttony with the wealth of Holland.

CHAP. XXIV.

What professions of the inhabitants of Holland, ought to be more or less burdened with taxes, or favoured by the politick magistrate.

But if Holland by a formermisgovernment, must be burdened with a yearly payment of 15 millions of guilders;BUT some will perhaps object against what I have affirmed, that during the time of the late monarchical government in these provinces, and the remainders of it, as also when we waged an offensive war, and seemed to leave our navigation as a prey to the Dunkirkers, Holland was burdened by money taken up at interest, and other taxes to the sum of fifteen millions yearly; therefore to rid ourselves of so great a burden under a free government, it was necessary to levy money of the inhabitants by several ways and means.Then no wonder if some hurtful ways of raising money have been used, and still be continued. And secondly it may be objected, that when easy or indifferent levies will not raise money enough for securing the country, and navigation against any sudden attempt, then we must find out other ways and methods which at present would be hurtful, but if continued any considerable time, would be mischievous to the state, yea ruin it. And therefore we in Holland have very prudentially practised all those and no other means and ways of raising money, but such as are now used by the state.

It will be fit to lay down same method in such cases of taxings.But tho’ the first objection be true, yet we may doubt whether the second be so. Therefore I find it good to examine here what ways or expedients are fit to be used to procure money in such an exigence, that so the reader himself may more exactly judge whether, and when the magistrates of Holland, have in this particular taken care of the welfare of the land in general, or have been neglective of it: and having expressed the same in as few words as may be, I shall afterwards, because of the general concernment of the thing, consider more fully whether all estates of the inhabitants of this country can be equally favoured; and in case they cannot, which of them ought more or less to be cherished and conniv’d at.

Under this head we ought first to raise money by way of impost.Namely, seeing all people do naturally endeavour to discharge and free themselves of burdens, tho’ even by burdening of others, or when that cannot be fully obtained, then will they seek to ease themselves of that burden by procuring partners to bear it: every one will then immediately judge that we should charge those of foreign nations that frequent Holland, who are no members of our political body, which we call the state, with all imaginable taxes, and by all means to ease our own inhabitants, as being true members of our own body. But seeing we have shewn you before, that Holland cannot subsist without commerce and merchandize with foreigners, we might by so doing take such methods as would prevent them from coming into Holland, to our great prejudice; and therefore we ought to be very wary and cautious about it, especially considering, that an extraordinary charge upon those strangers would not much ease us: so that consequently there is no other way, but to bear so great a burden with as many helpers as we can procure.All wares that are consumed at home. And it cannot be denied but we shall procure more supporters, if we charge all goods with some impost that are usually worn or consumed by the people as they are men and women.

And seeing those imposts which are most freely and spontaneously paid, are least offensive and irksom; we should therefore observe this order, viz. first, and most, to charge such goods as tend to ease, pleasure and ornament: and then such as no man can be without, as meat, drink, housing, firing and light, seeing strangers hereby will pay alike with the inhabitants, and none will be favoured or exempted.

And also all inhabitants of Holland.And seeing by all these means the said sum of fifteen millions cannot be levied, we should then afterwards in taxing the people, so charge them, as that all may bear their parts equally, none excepted. But since this is not practicable, but by taxing all peoples estates to make men pay alike without distinction, or by a blindfold poll; both which means of raising money being so unequal, and full of hardship, do ever cause great distaste among the people: we ought therefore to proceed to the charging of some particular sort of inhabitants, who bring in no profit to the country, but on the contrary live upon the other inhabitants.

But especially such as have any publick imployments and business of profit in Holland, excluding others.And among them are first all inhabitants, who from or on behalf of the state, or cities, open countries, drainers of water, makers of dykes, have any benefit of power, honour or reward, more than other inhabitants. For seeing they may refuse such offices, dignities and employments, to escape those taxes, and that we need not give them but to such inhabitants as are qualified for, and petition to have them; no inhabitant therefore to evade such taxes, will need to abandon the country, nor have any reason to complain of a burden which he annually loadeth himself with: and yet by this expedient much money may be raised for the common good, without burdening any of the other inhabitants the more.

And after them all inhabitants that live upon other inhabitants.Next to them should follow such inhabitants as are teachers, artists, and their instruments, for so much as they are imployed about matters of ease, pleasure, ornament, &c. that are made use of in this country. And after these former, all masters and journeymen of such trades who live by our own inhabitants only; such as bakers, brewers, sellers of wine and fish, butchers, taylors, shoemakers, carpenters, masons, smiths, and glasiers, &c. But in such a case it were needful, for the keeping of our provision, and to suffer strangers to live upon us as little as is possible, to charge all their goods or manufactures imported into Holland for consumption, so high, that our own may go better off than those that are foreign.

And next them those that live upon our lands or fund.Next would follow some charge or tax to be laid upon such inhabitants as live upon our own lands; such as are our husbandmen, grasiers and inland-fishers, for they will hardly forsake us because of our taxing them, seeing they may always be eased in better times.

And since all these means of raising money will burden none but such as are inhabitants in this country, and while they find their maintenance amongst us; it is evident that all the said ways for raising of money will excite the commonalty to ingenuity, diligence and frugality, and then they will be easily borne.

As also all immoveable Holland goods.But in case all these expedients will not raise money sufficient, we may then charge either ordinarily or extraordinarily all immoveable goods, lands and houses, with yearly taxes, or by impositions upon alienations and inheritances of them; wherein nevertheless there be those difficulties, that those taxes will not be paid with any freedom, but wholly by compulsion: and that the said immoveable goods being for that end to be valued, that valuation cannot be made without partiality, and these burdens will be then very unequally born. Besides, that by the accidental unfruitfulness of the lands, and standing empty of their houses, the owners and tenants of them wanting a great part of their yearly rent on which they depend for the maintenance of their families, they must necessarily suffer these two unavoidable inconveniencies. But seeing all owners of immoveable estates who dwell out of the land must also help to bear these burdens, without any prejudice to the estates of our common inhabitants; and the owners of land that dwell in the country, are so tied to Holland by their immoveable estates, that they cannot but with great difficulty remove their habitation to other countries: this means therefore of raising money, may be used without hurting the state.

By taxes on all moveable and immoveable goods jointly.Finally, in an extreme necessity of money, there may be impos’d a general tax on all the moveable and immoveable estates of the inhabitants, whereby they may pay the thousandth, two hundredth, and one hundredth penny: I say, in an unusual great necessity, because by these taxes there would fall a greater hardship upon the common inhabitants, and damage to the state, than could fall by any other expedient of this nature; for foreigners would bear nothing of this, but our inhabitants only. And seeing the assessors are wholly ignorant of mens personal estates, and what the inhabitants do owe, or is owing to them; and if they did know the value of them, yet could they not tax them so equally as may be done in the case of immoveable goods: we may therefore easily see, what by favour and hatred, and by ignorance of the assessors, especially in the trading province of Holland, where riches are very transitory and uncertain; that there must be an intolerable inequality in bearing this tax.Which notwithstanding is a very hard and unequal tax. Those that would honestly declare their estates might lighten the tax; but the fraudulent will unavoidably make it heavier. Besides, many inhabitants possessing neither immoveable estates nor merchandize, but living here on the interest of their money, to elude these heavy burdens, may remove to some neighbouring country, to the greater prejudice of this state than if any other of the forementioned inhabitants should forsake us; for such people frequently drawing their revenues from other parts, and spending them here, they gain not by our inhabitants, but they gain by them. Nevertheless, seeing such persons as live on their rents, are in respect of the other inhabitants but few in number, and do not set many people at work for a livelihood, therefore the said tax may and can be raised without any remarkable prejudice to the state.

We ought to be cautious of weakning the four pillars of our state, viz. manufactures, fisheries, traffick, and freightships.And it is more especially to be observed, that if by reason of all these taxes many inhabitants should forsake Holland, and settle in other countries, yet they, or other such persons, when the tax after a while should be released, might easily be drawn to return to Holland, or others would succeed them out of our own country, so long as our manufacturies, fisheries, traffick, and freight-ships remain and flourish amongst us: seeing they are the four main pillars by which the welfare of the commonalty is supported, and on which the prosperity of all others depends, tho’ they earn not their living immediately by them. This will not be denied, if we rightly apprehend, that many people are brought into our country that are strangers, or were formerly inhabitants, teachers, artists, consumptioners, tradesmen, and such as live on their rents, because there are many people here that live, or have lived by manufactures, fisheries, traffick, and freight-ships, and do all of them afford work, or a livelihood for the other inhabitants before-mentioned. But that on the other side the manufacturers, merchants, fishers, and owners of ships let to freight, will not return from foreign lands to these parts, or be invited hither because there are, or have been in Holland many teachers, artists, consumptioners, tradesmen, and men that live on their rents, seeing these do set to work or employ the foresaid people, and have their greatest profit from foreign parts, at least not from these last mentioned people that are natives.

But nevertheless upon an urgent necessity thereunto pressing, we should charge them least.But supposing the general necessity of levying money to be so great, that we could not raise enough by all the fore-mentioned taxes, or could not find out any expedient to raise the same but what were prejudicial; so that to defend the commonwealth, or preserve our body politick against some formidable enemy, we should be so put to it, as to tax the above-mentioned pillars of the land, and be pinch’d in our chiefest means of livelihood for a short time, in hope that such urgent and pressing necessities will soon have an end, and that then those taxes will be taken off; and doing thus, we may both secure our country and our estates: let us then see what order we are to take in pursuit of this method. And in the first place to express myself clearly, by the words manufacturers and fishers, I understand all such as live by any trade in or about fishing, making, transporting, and selling of our Holland manufacturies and fisheries. And by the word traders, I mean all such merchants that sell nothing by retail; but such as trade solely, whether at home or abroad, in all or any commodities, except Holland manufacturies and fisheries, and such as depend on them. And by the word owners of ships, I understand no other owners than such as set ships to sea, either for our own service, or for other merchants upon freight.

And now to come to the matter in hand, we ought well to consider, that we must lay the least tax upon that means of subsistance which most concerns us, and which we are apt soonest to lose, and being lost is not easily retrieved, and which might besides draw away with it other trades or means of subsistance.The manufactures. So that seeing in Holland there are six hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants who are maintained by manufactures, and such as depend on them, and those manufactures are not certainly fixed to us, since we cannot furnish ourselves with the unwrought materials of them from our own country, but from other parts; yea the greater part of them being easily carried by land, may be made, carried, and sold in foreign upland countries. And if this should happen, our merchants and owners of freight-ships would be oblig’d to remove and betake themselves, either to them, or to the countries and sea-harbours next to them; and if we should once lose those manufactures, and that our merchants and owners of ships should go over to another country which affords those materials for the making of them, they would probably never return to us. Wherefore it appears that we must charge them little or nothing, and the rather, seeing our manufactures are already charged with imposts on the consumption, much more than our fisheries, traffick, and freight-ships.

The fisheries more.And seeing our fisheries, by the propinquity of the coasts, where haddock, cod, herring, and whale are taken, are more fixed to us, and always will be so than to most other countries; and that by our over-taxing them, we have neglected and disregarded them, they may possibly return to us again if we ease their charge, considering our convenient situation; whereby it appears that we ought to tax them sooner, and more than our manufactures: nevertheless seeing there are four hundred and fifty thousand people employed in the fisheries; and the loss of the said fisheries to our merchants and owners of ships, would give them occasion to remove into those countries where the said fisheries might be establish’d: It appears therefore that we ought not inconsiderately to charge our fisheries too much.

Traffick yet more.But forasmuch as it cannot be apprehended, that while Holland preserves her manufactures and fisheries, she should lose all her traffick in foreign manufactures, fisheries, and other merchandize; and that this traffick does not at most maintain above one hundred and fifty thousand people in Holland: it therefore again appears, that we ought sooner, and more to charge those trafficks than our manufacturies and fisheries. Yet seeing those trafficks being removed into other countries, our owners of ships might first send their ships thither, and many of themselves follow after: it likewise appears, that we ought to charge that traffick less than the owners of ships.

And seeing the owners of freight-ships inhabiting these provinces do receive incomparably more advantage from our inland manufactures, and our own fisheries and trade, than any foreign owners of ships can do; yea, for as much as there be no supporters of the countries prosperity, but what are servants to our manufacturies, fisheries, and traders: it is not therefore imaginable that we can lose them so long as we can preserve our manufactures, fisheries, and traffick; so that the said ships may be charged sooner, and more than manufactures, fisheries, and trafficks.And the part-owning of shipping most of all. Yet since those ships lie for freight in foreign countries, and there raise money from strangers, they may in some measure be esteemed a support of our prosperity; and since there may possibly be fifty thousand people maintained that way, and that by their being charged too much our own manufactures, fisheries, and traffick, for which we are most concerned, might in some measure come to suffer at long run: we ought not therefore to proceed inconsiderately to the charging of them. Tho’ we should lose our freight-ships, yet we should not therefore lose our manufactures, fisheries, and traffick; but on the contrary, by their means, and by lessening the taxes at any time, the freight-ships would easily be induced to return to Holland.As appears by many reasons. We know that heretofore in Flanders, Brabant, and Holland, many inhabitants were maintained by manufactures, fisheries, and traffick, when the Easterlings were the only carriers and mariners by sea: as also that the said owners of freight ships were for the most part gradually compelled by our manufactures, fisheries, and traffick, to forsake those Easterlings, and to settle in Holland. And we still find every day, not only that our owners of freight-ships are serviceable to the manufacturers, fishers, and traders of other countries; and to that end send their ships from one harbour to another, to transport their goods at a price agreed on; but also that there are always strangers here, who for the sake of our manufactures, fisheries, and traffick, by reason of some freedom and privileges they have above us, either in their own countries, or in their voyage, do come and enter their ships for freight amongst ours.

And as these four pillars of the country’s prosperity may be more or less charged;So that it being now shewn at large what estates of our common inhabitants ought most or least to be charged with imposts, in order to levy fifteen millions of guilders yearly, we may from the same reasons in some measure calculate upon all occasions which of the inhabitants ought to be most or least favoured by the magistracy, and consequently I should finish this chapter: but seeing the welfare of the inhabitants most certainly depends on the good maxims of the rulers in that matter, I shall enlarge somewhat more upon it.

So in all events the rulers ought to favour them proportionably.Altho’ civil rulers are very well termed fathers, and the subjects their children, yet herein is the difference, that parents do indulge and take equal care of their children to their utmost power, or at least ought not to favour one to the prejudice of another, and in no case to ruin one child to provide for others, tho’ better children: and that contrariwise the politick governors making up with the generality one body politick, which we call the State, must shew more or less favour, yea hurt and ruin, to some who are more or less profitable, or pernicious to the state. As for instance, those that commit theft and murder, &c. who are punished with death or otherwise, for the good of the rest, and to deter them from committing the like evils.

Namely, first the things themselves before their dependencies.From which it follows; first, that all inhabitants, none excepted, ought to be favoured more than strangers, as much as is proper. Yet so, that none be favoured, who by any imployment can earn their living by others their fellow-subjects, to the prejudice of those by whom they procure their bread: because in such a case it would be foolish, that those who depend upon any thing should be favoured to the prejudice and ruin of that very thing whereon they depend. And besides, it is necessary, that we always remember to favour most, and consequently preserve in Holland such inhabitants, who can with more ease than others get their livings in other countries, and transport themselves thither.

2ly. The foreign before the inland traders.Secondly, it follows by the said maxims, that all inhabitants who seek their profit and livelihood from other countries, ought more to be favoured than those who in this country live on their fellow-inhabitants.

3ly. The masters ever before the servants.Thirdly, it follows from hence, that such inhabitants, who by their gains acquired by foreign countries contribute most to the subsistence of the inhabitants, and consequently of the state, ought most to be favoured; but with this caution, that the master should be more favoured than the servant; and our merchants who traffick in our own manufactures, and fisheries in foreign countries, above all others who are employed about the making or taking of the same. All which being well considered, it unanswerably appears, that the politick rulers of Holland ought least of all to favour strangers with any power or privilege, and consequently more and more to favour the inhabiting mechanicks, masters, journey-men, teachers, artists, consumers of any goods in the land, husbandmen, grasiers, inland-fishers, such as live on theit estates, owners of ships, merchants, fishermen, and finally almost all such inhabitants who are employed about manufactures spent in foreign parts.

And altho’ some may object, that the said advantages and disadvantages cannot be procur’d or avoided, unless, as abovesaid, the high and subordinate government consists of so many rulers and magistrates, that none of them could benefit himself to the prejudice of the community:Especially to erect colleges of persons according to the proportion, that are interested for themselves. yet it is very well known, that any violent change in the welfare of the common inhabitants of Holland, would at least much sooner ruin the best and most useful subjects, than improve them. And consequently, it ought to satisfy the lovers of their country, if the rulers and magistrates take so much care that the subordinate colleges of polity, treasury and justice, about the manufacturies, fisheries, trade and owning of ships, be so formed, that such persons as are employed therein, be most interested in the prosperity of manufactures, fisheries, traffick and freight-ships, and consequently least in any other way of subsistence; because otherwise every one will, to the prejudice of others, tho’ they ought more to be tendered as more profitable, draw the water to his own mill, and lay his burden on another man’s shoulders.About manufactures. So that there ought to be among the directors that are the superintendents, or have the oversight of manufactures, at least, as I conceive, four for foreign consumption, two to oversee the making of such manufactures, one over the inland-consumption, and one over the service depending on those manufactures. As for example, among the directors for the woolen cloth-trade, there ought to be four merchants dealing in cloth, two clothiers, one draper, one dyer or cloth-worker, &c.Fisheries. Likewise among the directors concerning our foreign fisheries, there ought to be in proportion at least four merchants that trade in those commodities, two over the setting out of the vessels and causing the fish to be taken, one over the inland-consumption thereof, and one over the fishing itself.Especially a college or merchant-court for trade. And if the rulers of these lands, or any cities thereof in particular, were inclined for preservation and increase of traffick in general, to erect a common council with authority to make statutes and laws relating thereunto; then such a council ought to be form’d after this proportion, viz. of twenty four merchants dealing in Holland manufacturies, sixteen merchants in Holland fisheries, six merchants in other commodities which belong not to our manufacturies and fisheries, and at most but two owners of ships, because such owners and the masters of ships in that quality are for the most part servants to the others, and depend on them, and without them are of small consideration.Else private interest will be sought against the common good: And if among the judges or commissioners set over the making of manufactures, fisheries, assurances, maritime affairs, &c. there should be some interested persons, it is evident, that in all such colleges the same proportion ought to be observ’d, that in case partiality should take place among the judges, the loser should at least have this comfort in his misfortune, that his loss would tend to the benefit of the community, in advancing manufacturies, fisheries, traffick and freight-ships: whereas otherwise the trouble of seeing himself divested of his livelihood and goods, by undue orders, and unjust sentences, and all to the loss and detriment of the commonwealth, would be intolerable.

As appears by the directors of the Levant trade, who are genenerally concern’d in ships let to freight.And that this may appear not to be spoken at random, let us please to remember that Roelof Martinson Vygeboom of Horne, a ship-master, or the owner of the ship called the Emperor Octavianus having in the year 1663, suffered his vessel laden by the Turkish emperor’s subjects, to be taken for a prey by some ships of war belonging to Malta, Leghorn and Venice, for which they paid him a very great freight;See the judicial and political considerations of the Turkish avenie, printed 1663. the said emperor of Turky required of Livinus Warnerus our resident at Constantinople satisfaction for the same: he by his faintheartedness, treachery or covetousness, made a promise within three months and fifteen days, to pay the Turks seventy eight thousand four hundred and forty-five lyon dollars for satisfaction; and that the said sum might the sooner be obtain’d, the said resident commanded, and thereupon the consul ordered, that not only all Holland ships set out to freight should be seized in all the havens of the Levant, which hath some glimpse of equity in it, but also all the goods of the innocent Holland merchants, who were constrained to pay that money for their redemption. It is easily imagined that this happened, because the resident and consul knew that the directors of the Levant trade living in Holland, were mostly concerned in the ships let out to freight that use the Levant, that it would have been very ill taken by them, and that they might have sat on the skirts of the resident and consul, if their ships had been seized for that reason.Who have favoured these freight ships more than the Holland manufactures and traffick; We afterwards saw the strength of this particular interest clearer in Holland: for these merchants who were unjustly forced to lay down this money, and being to be discharged, the said directors, who give their advice to the states-general in many cases, laid down in this particular no expedient, nor any think like it, whereby to procure this money to the least loss of the land, or charging themselves or other owners or masters of the Levant ships; no, nor to charge themselves together with the merchants; but on the contrary, have totally freed the said owners and masters of the same, and to the greater prejudice of the country, yea, and the spoil of our manufactures, charged one per cent. upon all goods outward and inward, not excepting Holland cloth, raw silks, and yarn, making together two per cent. So that the states following their advice, traffick and manufacture will be for so much imprudently charged to perpetuity, since the said oppressive tax will hardly ever be releas’d.Bringing the charge of the resident and consuls avenies, &c. on all our manufactures and traffick. And if we add hereunto, that all other traffick of the common inhabitants of the provinces, that is not under the tuition or care of such directors, being driven into countries where our consuls reside, the masters and owners of each ship going or coming in, must pay to the consul a certain fee for his consulage. But that the said directors of the Levant trade, for as much as they are owners of ships, have cast that burden from off their own shoulders, and laid it upon our own merchants, yea on our manufactures and all manner of Levant wares, without distinction of clothes, grogram yarn, raw silk, &c. going or coming to or from the Levant, to the benefit of the resident at Constantinople, and the consuls that reside in those havens on the behalf of this state, charging them with 1 ½ per cent. being together going and coming three per cent. which upon so rich a trade makes up a princely revenue, and royal maintenance.And that by cutting too large thongs out of others leather; And altho’ the said residents and consuls take their reward of the Holland Levant merchants, and having no other business to dispatch but the concerns of their traffick and navigation, ought to have remembred, that they being only clothed with a character of the state,Whereby the residents and consuls carry it as if they were lords over the Levant merchants. the better to effect the same, and for no other end, unless for order and decency, are really and indeed but ministers of the Levant merchants, and so must continue, seeing they have at the port of Constantinople in effect not any the least business of state to negotiate, as peace, war, alliances, assistance, &c. between the respective states. Nevertheless this shadow of their monarchical administration, and assuming an authority, and taking example by the ministers of monarchs, who likewise reside there:Which mismanagement may soon ruin the Levant trade. adding hereunto, that this too great income for citizens of a free commonwealth, hath all along raised in them a monarchical pride, and besides occasions oft-times other heavy taxes, and continual quarrels against the said Holland merchants, who are not willing nor able to endure so chargeable and oppressive a power, which will destroy our important Levant trade in a short time.

Let none object, that all that money is not exacted to the rigour, nor comes into the residents and consuls purse; for they enjoy most of it, and the factors charge the their principals with it, insomuch that this considerable Levant trade, and our manufactures depending upon it, by this prejudicial management of those chargeable residents and consuls, and by five per Cent. unnecessarily charged, and without any reason to favour and clear the owners and masters of ships, tho’ they cause more troubles in those parts than the merchants themselves, and also in other respects are subject to them, and consequently have more occasion of our residents and consuls advice than our traders, and are the cause of their much greater charge.

So that you may see by what I have said, that if the courts of justice relating to the fisheries, manufactures, traffick, insurances, and maritime affairs, are no better ordered according to the maxims of Holland’s prosperity, whereof I know none as yet:So that we may expect the like inconveniences from all other ill reformed colleges. Then certainly our manufactures, fisheries, and traffick in this country, being too little favoured, and too much opprest; and that all concerned therein having any difference with their labourers, servants, messengers, letter-carriers, ship-masters, or owners of ships, they have great reason ever to comply with them, or to fear a mischievous verdict or sentence, tho’ their cause be good. For since we cannot bereave judges of their human nature, we ought in such cases to expect that they will take more care for themselves, or their friends, than for the publick good.

And thus by degrees I am come down to matters of justice about traffick, whereof I purpose to speak more at large.

CHAP. XXV.

The antient state of justice in Holland and West-Friesland being here related, it is likewise at the same time shewn, that the laws and order of justice ought to be framed for the most advantage of traffick.

IT is well known that the German emperors drove out of these lands the Normans, and according to their custom divided the provinces among twelve or thirteen lords their favourites, making one of them the earl, who, as the* emperor’s stadtholder, was to govern this country with the assistance of the said nobility, without soldiery. And in case of war, if he and these noblemen, and common inhabitants, were not able to defend themselves against a foreign power, he was to be assisted by the duke of the next adjacent mark-lands, who was always arm’d and had 12 earls under him, and at his disposal.

Relation made of the state of justice, as in the times of the earls of Holland, who were sovereign lords.Pursuant to this our earls, with consent of the states of the land, framed and appointed all the laws or orders over the whole province; and their respective dykegraves, bailiffs and schouts, with their counsellors, homagers, judges, and sheriffs, made all peculiar laws and ordinances for the respective waters in the country, open lands, villages, and cities, and omitted not in their laws to express the punishment and fines which the offender was to suffer or pay. And moreover, our earl had power, with all other earls, as being chief judge himself, or by bailiffs and judges depending on him, and in his name, to give sentence and judgment between the inhabitants. It is observable, that all criminals, who had forfeited their lives, were to forfeit their estates also, and that all confiscations and fines came to the earls, or to the bailiffs and schouts, who for that end held their offices by farm. And to the end that those miserable subjects might undergo trial before the judges that were parties; we are to take notice, that our earls following the ungodly maxims of monarchical government in administring justice, stood much upon the enlarging of their power and profit, and but very little on the welfare of the common people:’Tis shewn how defective and tyrannical it then was. for they empowered these bailiffs and schouts, according to their will and pleasure, to take cognizance of all crimes and offences, whether really committed or not, to favour or prosecute all the inhabitants, without appeal to any but the patron, viz. the earl. And tho it was very necessary for the gentry, common people, and citizens, the better to obtain just sentences, to appoint upon all occasions a very great number of judges, and to give them a liberty, without respect of persons, to vote with balls or otherwise privately: or if few judges were appointed in those courts and places of justice, with command to vote publickly, that then at least those bailiffs, schouts and judges at certain times being complained of, were obliged to give an account of their actions before a very great number of them.By reason of the paucity of judges. Yet our said earls upon all, yea the most weighty occasions, would place no more but here and there an Azing, or five or seven judges in the open country, and about so many sheriffs or aldermen in the cities; obliging them, whether in criminal or civil causes, ever to deliberate or vote openly in presence of the earl, his bailiffs or schouts, and to give no account or reason to any but himself for what they acted.

By which form of justice, the earls and their bailiffs and schouts might favour or oppress all the inhabitants, under pretext of administring that sacred justice to which they were sworn.And their passing sentence as the earls and their bailiffs and schouts pleased. For they could give what sentence they pleased by reason of the paucity of judges, which they were fain to comply with, if they would hold their annual employments, and escape the resentment of their said lords. And when at best the said earls, bailiffs, and schouts did not concern themselves with the matter in question, if one of the parties, whether plaintiff or defendant, were favour’d or hated by the judges, and the other not, then in such case, * an upright sentence was seldom passed.

What little amendment hath been for the publick good since these times, about matters relating to justice.And tho’ since that time, by the abjuration of the government of earls, and especially since the death of the late stadtholder of Holland, the greatest occasion of favour or hatred in respect of judges and sheriffs, and consequently the greatest occasion of unrighteous sentences, either in greater or lesser affairs, was taken away; yet nevertheless the bailiffs and schouts in regard of the common people, and especially in criminal affairs, hold their former power and respect. By which remainder of that tyrannical government by earls, the inhabitants may be very much oppressed upon this account, because the judges and Scheepens being continued in their former small number may be misled, unless we should suppose them to be divested of their human nature, and not to be mov’d by their familiarity with, or hatred of the said bailiffs and schouts, or by the bribes, and love or hatred of the plaintiff or defendant; and because no further appeals, or account is to be given to higher powers at appointed times and places, upon the complaint of any persons thereunto impowered, and likewise because they are not obliged to suffer any punishment in case of error.

But my aim being chiesty at trade, I shall shew,But because I purpose more especially to consider our administration of justice, as it tends to the benefit and increase of our fishery, manufactures, traffick and freight-ships, I shall pass over all these common defects and faults in other matters of justice, and pursue my aim and purpose in this only.

Next to the perfect freedom of the people, and the more or less taxing and favouring the several trades or estates of the people of Holland, it is necessary that justice be equally administred against all open violence which may be acted in the land: which seeing it would be hurtful, not only to the merchants of our manufactures, and fisheries, and traders in foreign commodities, together with the owners of freight-ships, but also to other inhabitants, both subjects and rulers;How detrimental designing bankrupts are, so that no assembly, or body of men whatever, without securing themselves against it, can possibly subsist; there is of antient times an order of justice appointed, tho’ very defective. But tho’ fraud (whereby we may wrong a man of his due as well as by force) ought not to be less punished, and that merchandizing depending especially on the probity of men, yet by false deceit may be perfectly ruined; it is therefore to be wondered at, that Holland hath been able to preserve its traffick, as it must here be carried on with so many laws, or by the help of laws derived from the maxims of the warlike Roman republick, which give the merchants here an opportunity to gain more by fraud than by honest dealing.And how little provision is made against them. And on the other hand, here is so little care taken by good orders and laws to defend the honest merchant against the fraud and deceit of those who bear the name of merchants, and to help them to recover their own; that we may well ask the reason, why all the bad people of foreign countries come not into Holland, that under pretext of merchandizing they may openly learn to cheat in the beneficial way now so much practised, and that with impunity? For, * ’tis the rod makes the children good.What order might be taken to prevent it. Now to establish some better order in this, it would seem needful, that none should be suffered to drive any traffick in Holland, ’till first he hath entered the place of his abode in a publick register, which would have this effect.Which comes in here. First, that the parents and kindred of the said merchant, if they have not made a contrary entry in the same register within a year, shall not be allowed by any last will and testament, to leave to the said merchant a less legacy than without a will they might, to the prejudice of his creditors. Moreover, it shall not be lawful for any merchant, especially a bankrupt, in any case to refuse any profitable bequest or legacy. For this he cannot be supposed to do but in order to defraud his creditors; and for that reason he ought to be prohibited legally to alienate any estate, save for a gainful title, and that he hath receiv’d the value of it beforehand. I understand hereby, that if he happen to be a bankrupt afterwards, all his donations, conveyances and portions given for marriage, or estates bequeathed or consigned to his children, ought to be applied to the benefit of his creditors. For we see here too often the truth of this English proverb, Happy is that son whose father goes to the devil.

And settlements before marriage.And as it ought to be unlawful for a merchant to endow his wife with a marriage jointure to the prejudice of his creditors, so ought the wife to be prohibited to covenant to have her option of part in profit or loss: for there is nothing more rational than that he * who will have the profit, must bear the loss. Yea, the parents, and nearest kindred of such a wife, ought to demean themselves in all things in respect of inheritance, as the relations of the husband himself: and excluding community of estate, or the bringing in of engaged estates, they ought to be entred in the publick register.

The ordinary register or books of accounts of such merchants who are in reputation for honesty, and corroborated by oath, ought in all respects to be equivalent to any notars acts, and nothing ought to be preferred to it except special mortgage; seeing the custom of the country is such, that to prefer orphans, rent, or jointure, &c. to be first paid, is prejudicial to traffick, and consequently to the whole republick. But if at any time it be found that a merchant hath falsified his books or register, and confirmed them by perjury, he ought then in all respects to lose his life as a false coiner, that all men may be terrified by so severe a punishment, not to enrich themselves falsly and treacherously with other mens estates, to the prejudice of the commonwealth.

A debtbook under oath ought to be a sufficient ground for an immediate execution.Yea, it seems to me that traffick, and the accounts of a credible merchant, is of so much concernment, seeing the constitution of the same is such here, that it neither allows or permits of any other evidence: that therefore upon the said register alone confirmed by oath, there ought immediate execution to be taken as for money due to the state. For if traffick is with us salus populi, the country’s safety, what reason can there be of not using the like means (pari passu) as the state doth?

Vindications and evictions.It is also very prejudicial, that a sale should be counted for ready money, when after delivery of the goods the money is not immediately paid. For when the seller gives up his right of the goods by trusting of the buyer, he gives such knavish buyers great opportunities of making great bankrupts: and he who on the other side by his imprudence is in the greatest fault, does afterwards, by his unjust vindication or prosecution for his goods, take away the estate of the other creditors.

Present justice by a court-merchant is very necessary.There ought in each city to be at least one particular court of justice to decide matters between buyer and seller, that so such suits may not only be speedily ended, but that the judges apprehending the way of trading the better, may give or administer the better justice and sound judgment for the land: whereas the merchants now find, that their suits caused by difference in accounts, are almost never ended but by agreement of the parties when they grow weary of the law, and that mostly to the benefit of the unrighteous caviller, according to the proverb, The cavillers are gainers.

But the beneficium inventarii is detrimental, as areIt is very unreasonable and prejudicial to the merchant, that the estate of one deceased should be suffered to have beneficium inventarii, the right of making an inventory of the estate, when the common creditors will become his heirs; * seeing the creditors must bear the loss if the estate falls short of their debts, they ought to reap the profit when there is more: whereas otherwise those unmerciful greedy heirs by that course of justice, in the first case they cast off the burden from their own backs, and in the second case they carry away the profit.

Letters of cession, or attermination.And no less hurtful are letters of cession, or attermination, renouncing the estate, and gaining of time. And since no persons are prosecuted by the publick for particular debts, it is reasonably to be presumed, that the creditors will not prejudice themselves by taking over-rigorous courses with any person that cannot really pay, but is willing to do it; nor to bereave them of their good name, and drive them into extremities. But on the contrary, a dishonest man having concealed and made over his estate, will enrich himself, and seek ease, by delivering up his whole estate upon a false oath.

On the contrary, it would be profitable for the commonwealth, if upon the least complaint of a debtor’s non-payment, they should forthwith make him give in security; or in case of refusal, to keep him and his books of account in close ward. For in case he should then shew himself able to pay, he might soon be released upon security;What severe punishments are necessary against designed bankrupts, viz. to deprive them of their liberty. and being unable, we should be able to prevent his running away, and his giving in a false account of his debts, and his thievish making over and absconding his books and estate. In all such events, it ought to be lawful to imprison knavish debtors, with their wives and adult children, by publick authority, and to keep them in a publick workhouse, to make them earn their own bread, according to the law of Moses, and the Roman laws of the twelve tables.Exod. 22. Yea, and in case the wickedness of eminent and great debtors be aggravated by foul and knavish circumstances, we ought, according to the proclamation of the emperor Charles in the year 1540, to use them as we do thieves for burglary, hang them on a gallows, without suffering in any wise, as now it often happens, that such bankrupts remain dwelling among us, and continue driving their traffick under another’s name; according to the proverb,*Let him pay with his person, that cannot pay with his purse.

But in case the bankrupt be fled with his books and estate, without the jurisdiction and reach of Holland, and is protected by the civil authority of that place; I should think it convenient for the benefit of Holland to proceed thus. First, by virtue of a general law, all such persons ought to be prosecuted as publick betrayers of their country, amounting to as much as† being guilty of high-treason; the rather, seeing such a villainous bankrupt hath no less need of help to carry on his wicked design, than to betray his country: at least he cannot so have concealed matters, but that the accomptants and cashiers, his men-servants and maidservants must have some knowledge of it; and therefore they ought all of them to be apprehended, and if upon examination it were found that they had assisted in conveying away such thievish bankrupts, it were good to examine them upon the rack more strictly if there were cause of suspicion of the thing; or else upon their oaths according to the occasion. For if the rack be of any good use, it must be in cases whereon the prosperity of the country depends, and where it’s known there must be aiders and assisters in such gross knaveries.

And all creditors and debtors ought to be obliged by laws and publications.We might also at the same instant publickly proclaim throughout the whole land, that whosoever hath any estate of, or owes any thing to the person so fled, should immediately discover it, on pain of being punished as betrayers of their country, and concealers of that villany: and all persons should forthwith be examined upon oath who are suspected to know any thing of it; declaring by promise, that all those who shall uprightly purge themselves, should be accounted men of probity, altho’ they had formerly assisted in that wickedness; and if otherwise, they shall at all times be proceeded against and punished as perjured betrayers of their country, when by a third person it shall come to be known.

To bring in all their claims, whether to the benefit or charge of the deficient estate.And all such as claim, and pretend to any thing of the fugitive’s estate, ought also to be oblig’d immediately to lay claim to it upon great penalties, whereby two very great evils would be prevented; for seeing* no man becomes wicked to the highest degree all of a sudden, therefore all such who were lately possessed of the estate of such bankrupts, and consequently had not used or employed it as their own, should immediately bring in the same: the rather, that while the act was fresh, they could not arrive at so exact a knowledge of their estates and books as they might afterwards, by the seizing and examination of the offenders and their associates. And,

2dly, All those that pretend to any thing of the bankrupt’s estate, being also ignorant of what might come to be known of his condition, and whether there were any appearance at any time of compounding with him, should be necessitated to give in their real debts: whereas we see now, that all such estates are grasp’d by dishonest persons in such a manner, that there is seldom any thing left for the honest creditors, because people may conceal all debts with impunity, and on the other side, may enlarge their pretences after they see the matter brought to an issue.

This being done, the bankrupt ought to be summoned on a certain prefix’d day and hour, in which time the creditors ought to have leave absolutely to compound with him, and to stop their proceedings at law. But if the bankrupt neither appears nor agrees, he ought to be hanged in effigie on a gallows, and all his children old and young declared infamous.

By all which means jointly applied, many designed bankrupts would be prevented.If all these particulars could take effect immediately upon the fresh act, and before people could have laid aside the shame of such a new piece of knavery, I judge it would be of great influence to make men honester: whereas now they learn by degrees, that it is better to have other mens estates than none at all; and* that we can spend another man’s estate with much more pleasure than our own. Having overcome all shame, men can live easier and quieter in an infamous condition than to trouble themselves about points of honour, and pay so dear for them too.And likewise better agreements made with fugitive bankrupts. But seeing in all these prosecutions the benefit of the creditors ought to be aimed at, since it is purely an endeavour to make the most of it for them, therefore they ought to be enabled after that time to agree with their creditors, and to annul the sentence; for fiat justitia & pereat mundus, becomes a judge’s mouth very well; for they not being sovereigns, are for the sake of their honour, oath, and office, bound to judge by the laws, and not contrary to them: wherein if they fail, they are in all well-ordered republicks to be complained of, and punished. But the proberb does not at all become wise politicians, where salus populi, and not the peoples ruin, must be the supreme or highest law.

There ought to be given to an honest, tho’ insolvent merchant, a reasonable allowance.And seeing we ought on the one side to compare these fugitives, and base and unworthy cheats, to those vagrant and thievish drones among the bees, which by all means ought to be kept out of the land, or to be pursued and destroyed: so on the contrary we ought to look on all honest merchants, who through want of foresight, by the injustice or breaking of others, by storms, misfortunes, robberies at sea, or war, have lost their own estates, and part of others, and so cannot pay their debts. I say, we ought to regard them as profitable bees with compassion, declaring and promising them, that all such persons, making their losses appear, and not withdrawing themselves from justice, shall reserve, and hold to their own use the tenth part of what they had to begin to trade with at first, and not be troubled at all by their former creditors, and may remain in good name and fame with their children, tho’ they had enjoyed great portions or other gifts, as being a righteous fruit of their uprightness, and a comfort in their adversity. But seeing between these mischievous thieves, and their children, and these unfortunate losers who are much to be lamented, there is no difference either in punishment or infamy, it causeth many who otherwise would be honest, through necessity to step out of the honest way, and to take ill courses. For if opportunity makes a thief, necessity does it much more.

But supposing all useful laws were made for the benefit of traffick and navigation, and the inferior judges were well inclined to cause them to be put in execution, nevertheless as things now go in Holland, they may for the most part be made of none effect by appealing to a higher court.Our courts of justice ought to consist of many counsellors. For as our courts of judicature consist not of above ten or twelve judges, so they cannot hear and give judgment at more than one bench, and much less have their understandings exercised to comprehend all differences that occur, whereby the suits, because of the great number and trouble of them, remain depending there almost to perpetuity, and at last are all of a very uncertain issue. To redress which it were necessary, that the number of judges should be so encreased, that for some particular cases there may be some appointed out of that number, who according to the weightiness of the causes may bring in and report the same in full court, to have sentence pronounced upon them.That might give more dispatch, and pass juster sentences. By these means quicker and better justice would be administred, not only among the commonalty, and especially the merchants; but likewise among all other the more eminent inhabitants, whether secular or ecclesiastic, who might be minded to promote treason or sedition,And might be a terror to all seditious and traiterous persons. would be deterred by so considerable a court, that is accountable to none but their lawful sovereigns, that is, the assembly of the states of Holland and West-Friesland, and would carefully watch against such villanous practices as abovementioned, which now, impunitatis spe, by the length of suits, and slow justice, are but too frequent.

CHAP. XXVI.

That it would be very advantageous for the rulers and people of Holland, and for traffick and commerce, as well as navigation, to erect Dutch colonies in foreign countries.

BUT supposing all the expedients before-mentioned, to attract or allure foreigners to become inhabitants of Holland, were practised, and those inhabitants made to subsist by due administration of justice, yet would there be found in Holland many old and new inhabitants, who for want of estate and credit, live very uneasily, and therefore would desire to remove thence.In all countries there will ever be found many distressed persons. It is evident, first, as to persons and estates, that the inhabitants here are not only exposed to the ordinary misfortunes of mankind, of not foreseeing future events, weakness, and want; but besides, they make very uncortain profit by manufactures, fishing, trading, and shipping. And on the other side, by sickness, wars, piracies, rocks, sands, storms and bankrupts, or by the unfaithfulness of their own masters of ships, they may lose the greatest part of their estates, while in the interim they continue charg’d with the natural burdens of Holland, as great house-rent, imposts and taxes:Thro’ the uncertain profit, and certain taxes born by the inhabitants: nor have they any reformed cloisters to provide creditable opportunities for discharging themselves by such losses of maintaining their children, or according to the proverb, to* turn soldier or monk; so that by such accidents falling into extreme poverty, they consequently lose their credit and respect among men: for to† have been rich is a double poverty, and nothing is less regarded than a poor man’s wisdom; in such cases he would find himself in the most lamentable condition that can befal a man in this world.

Is also by the oligarchical governmentAnd, 2dly, as to reputation: it is well known that in this republick, the government consists of very few men in proportion to the number of inhabitants, and that the said government is not by law annexed or restrained to any certain family, but is open to all the inhabitants: so that they who have been eight or ten years burghers, may be chosen to the government in most cities, and have the most eminent employments of scheepen or burgomaster. Whence we may infer, that many that are the offspring of those that were heretofore made use of in the government, and also many others, who by reason of their antient stock, and great skill in polity, and extraordinary riches, thro’ natural self-love and ambition, conceive themselves wronged, when other new ones of less fitness and estate, are chosen to the government before them; and therefore thinking themselves undervalued, seek a change, and would be induced to transport themselves to other countries, where their qualifications, great estate and ambition, might produce very good effects.Which male-contented inhabitants might occasion great evil to the land. Whereas on the other side, whilst they continue to dwell in these lands, they speak ill of the government and rulers in particulars. And if by this, or any other accident, tumults should be occasioned against the rulers in particular, or the government itself, they being persons of quality, might become the leaders of the seditious, who to obtain their end, and to have such insurrections tend to their advantage, would not rest till they had displaced and turned out the lawful rulers, and put themselves in their places, which is one of the saddest calamities that can befal the republick, or cities: seeing* rulers, who became such by mutiny, are always the cause of horrible enormities before they attain the government, and must commit many cruelties e’er they can fix themselves on the bench of magistracy.

And seeing we have already made many conquests of countries in India, and finding how hardly (and that with great charge of soldiers) they must be kept; and that the politicians of old have taught us, that there is no better means, especially for a state which depends on merchandize and navigation, to preserve foreign conquests, than by settling colonies in them: we may easily conclude that the same method would be very useful and expedient for our state.

Especially because the poorest people come into Holland from the adjacent lands.Thirdly, it is well known, that the poorest people of all the countries round about us, come to dwell in Holland in hope of earning their living by manufactury, fisheries, navigation, and other trades; or failing that, they shall have the benefit of almshouses and hospitals, where they will be better provided for than in their own country. And altho’ in this manner very many poor people have been maintain’d, yet in bad times it could not last long; but thence might easily arise a general uproar, with the plunder, and subversion of the whole state:So that we ought to give those male-contents and over-taxed people, some vent by colonies. to prevent which, and other the like mischiefs, and to give discontented persons and men in straits an open way, the republicks of Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Greece and Rome, &c. in antient times, having special regard to the true interest of republicks, which were perfectly founded on traffick, or conquests of lands, did not neglect to erect many colonies: yea even the kings of Spain, Portugal, and England, &c. have lately very profitably erected divers colonies, and continue so doing in remote and uncultivated countries; which formerly added an incredible strength to those antient republicks, and do still to Spain, Portugal, and England, &c. producing besides their strength, the greatest traffick and navigation. So that it is a wonderful thing that Holland having these old and new examples before their eyes;Whereunto Hol and hath had a fair opportunity; and besides by its natural great wants, and very great sums of money given yearly for charity to poor inhabitants, and being yearly press’d by so many broken estates, and want of greater traffick and navigation, hath not hitherto made any free colonies for the inhabitants of Holland; tho’ we by our shipping have discovered and navigated many fruitful uninhabited, and unmanured countries, where, if colonies were erected, they might be free, and yet subject to the lords the states of Holland, as all the open countries, and cities that have no votes amongst us are: and it might cause an incredible great and certain traffick and navigation with the inhabitants of Holland.

It is well worthy observation, that these colonies would no less strengthen the treasure and power of the states in peace and war, than they do those of Spain, Portugal, and England, which during the manifold intestine dissensions and revolutions of state have always adhered to their antient native country against their enemies.And yet would have, in case the East and West-India companies would make use of them; And by this means also many ambitious and discontented inhabitants of Holland might conveniently, sub specie honoris, be gratified, by having some authority in and about the government of the said colonies. But some may object, that heretofore the rulers of Holland in the respective grants or charters given to the East and West-India, companies, have given them alone the power of navigating their districts, with exclusion of all other inhabitants, which extend so far, that out of them the whole world hath now no fruitful uninhabited lands, where we might erect new colonies; and that those districts are so far spread, because our rulers trusted that the said companies could and would propagate and advance such colonies: tho’ supposing those colonies must indeed in speculation be acknowledged singularly profitable for this state, yet nevertheless those respective districts and limits, bounds of the said companies, were purposely extended so far by the States General, and especially by the States of Holland, effectually to hinder the making of those colonies, since our nation is naturally averse to husbandry, and utterly unfit to plant colonies, and ever inclined to merchandizing.

Who neither will nor can trade in all the countries under their district.To which I answer, that it’s likely the first grants or charters, both of the East and West, and their copious districts, were probably made upon mature deliberation; but that the rulers perceiving afterwards how very few countries the said companies do traffick with, and what a vast many countries and sea-ports in their districts remain without traffick or navigation, they cannot be excused of too great imprudence in that they have, notwithstanding the continuance of such districts to this day, kept their common trading inhabitants consisting of so great numbers from those uninhabited countries by our companies:While the Holland merchants being too narrowly confin’d ix Europe, all cry out for more trafficking countries or colonies. so that by reason of the want of trafficking countries, or new colonies in little Europe, and its confines, the Hollanders are necessitated to overstock all trade and navigation, and to spoil and ruin them both, to the great prejudice of such merchants and owners of ships on whom it falls, altho’ Holland during that time of their trades being overstock’d, had a greater commerce, and deterred the traders of other countries from that traffick which the Hollanders with the first appearance of gain do, and must reassume, if they will continue to live in Holland; where all manner of foreign trade, since the erecting of the said companies, was necessitated to be driven, notwithstanding the uncertainty of gain, and fear of over-trading our selves.

But those companies incline not thereto, because the directors of them can thereby reap no profit.And that the said companies neither have, nor do endeavour to make new colonies for the benefit of the lands, and the inhabitants thereof, hath hitherto abundantly appeared, and we must not lightly believe that they will do otherwise for the future; which, I suppose, will also appear, if we consider, that the directors, from whom this should proceed, are advanc’d, and privately sworn to promote the benefit of the subscribers of the respective companies: so that if the colonies should not tend to the benefit of the subscribers in general, we cannot expect the companies should promote them; yea supposing such colonies should tend to the greatest profit of the said subscribers in general, yet such is the common corruption of man, that those plantations should not be erected unless such directors or governors can make their own advantage by them.

Nor yet the participants.And seeing all new colonies in unmanured countries, must for some years together have necessaries carried to them ’till such plantations can maintain themselves out of their own product, begin to trade and go to sea, and then there is some small duty imposed on the planters and their traffick or navigation, whereby the undertakers may be reimbursed: yet the partners having expended so much, are not assured that their grant or lease of years shall be prolonged and continued to them on the same terms. Moreover, in regard of these new colonies, the directors ought therefore to have less salary, seeing by this free trade of the planters and inhabitants, they may be eased of the great pains they take about their general traffick and equipage of ships, which concerns them much in particular, for many considerable reasons, not here to be mentioned.

And as concerning our people in the East and West, they being hitherto of so loose a life, are so wasteful, expensive, and lazy, that it may thence seem to be concluded, that the nation of Holland is naturally and wholly unfit for new colonies; yet I dare venture to say it is not so: but certain it is, that the directors of the said companies, their mariners and soldiers, and likewise their other servants, are hired on such strait-lac’d and severe terms, and they require of them such multitudes of oaths, importing the penalty of the loss of all their wages and estate, that very few inhabitants of Holland, unless out of mere necessity, or some poor ignorant slavish-minded and debauched foreigners, will offer themselves to that hard servitude.The worst, sort of foreigners that yield to the hard slavery of the said companies, are not fit for colonies. It is also true, that all such as are in the Indies, especially the East-Indies, do find, that not only while they serve, but after they have served their time for which they are bound, they are under an intolerable compulsive slavery; insomuch that none can thrive there but their great officers, who being placed over them, to exact the oaths of the mercenaries or hirelings, and to put in execution the companies commands, and being without controul, to accuse or check them, they commonly favour one another, and afterwards coming home with great treasures, are in fear that they will be seized and confiscated by the directors. He that will be further convinced hereof, let him but read the following placaet or proclamation, which was, and is yearly to be published at Batavia.

By the yearly placeat published at Batavia, it is ordered,THE governor general, and council of India, to all that shall see, hear, or read these presents, greeting. Know ye, that whereas the directors of the general Netherlandish East-India company settled by patent, at the assembly of seventeen, for divers good considerations, have found it useful and necessary that the orders and proclamations which we do yearly publish, and affix to the usual place against the time of the fleet’s return to our native country, after having first explained the points therein contained, and enlarged others, by some needful additions contracted all into one placaet, and so to publish it to the people, to the end that every one, whether in or out of the company’s service, travelling to the Netherlands, may thereby the sooner and better understand by what rules he is to govern himself before he leaves this country. We therefore, in pursuance of that order, having contracted all the foresaid orders and placaets (after previous elucidation and amplification, as aforesaid) into one, have found it requisite, now afresh to ordain and appoint, and by these presents we do ordain and appoint, that all such persons as intend to sail to the Netherlands, of what state, quality or condition soever they be, and purpose to have any claim or pretence upon the said company, proceeding from what cause or thing soever, shall be obliged to make the same known, none excepted, or reserved, before their departure hence, unto us, or our committees;That all pretensions on the company must be first adjusted by the companies own servants.that so having heard and examinedthe same, they may take such order about it as shall be found just and reasonable, upon pain that all those that shall have neglected or omitted the same, shall be taken and held to have had no action or pretence at all, and shall for ever be and remain void and of none effect. As likewise none arriving in the Netherlands unto the seventeen lords or their particular chambers, shall be heard concerning the same, unless they shew our special act of reference, which shall be granted if the matter be found of such a nature as is not proper to be decided and determined in this country. Likewise those that have any defect or error in their accounts, or may have lost the same, are to address themselves to the said lords commissioners; who after they have taken cognizance thereof, may provide therein as becometh. Likewise all such company’s servants or freemen that desire to receive any salary here as due to them, are likewise to address to the lords commissioners, and declare it to them, that so it may be signified to the lords our principals, that we may desire and receive authority for payment thereof.

That none may bay or sell any debt due by the company.No persons being in or out of the company’s service, of what state, quality or condition soever he be, that either here in India, or on their voyage homewards, buy, or sell any accounts proceeding of salaries, or monthly wages, either for himself or others, or as a pawn or pledge of friendship or debt, to accept or engage, and make it over, on pain that the buyers and sellers, transferrers and transferrees, that renounce their accounts, shall both of them, not only lose their right and title to the same, but also the buyers and transferrees shall be fined thrice as much as the ballance of the account so bought or pawn’d shall amount unto.

Likewise no person in or out of the company’s service, departing out of India, shall either for himself, or others, take with him any silver orgold, coined or uncoined, into his native country, or keep it by him;That none may carry away thence any money to the Netherlands, but deliver it to the company to receive it by exchange in Holland.much less may he conceal it, by delivering it to seamen, soldiers or others, whether here on shore, or upon the voyage, or lend it out, or put it to interest, upon forfeiture of all such money to the benefit of the company, where, and with whomsoever the same shall be found. But such as have money to spare, may discharge themselves of it at the chamber of accounts, that in conformity to the letter of articles, they may receive bills of exchange for the same.

Every one is therefore hereby forewarned, that those that will make over money to the Netherlands, whether he remains in India, or travels thither, shall beware of taking other ways or courses, than by the said chamber of accounts, to the end they may as aforesaid receive it by exchange; that is to say, by means or assistance of any European nation: and that none remit money over to England, or elsewhere, either directly or indirectly, on what pretence soever, under the penalty, that such who shall be found doing the same, shall besides the loss of his imployment and service, and loss of the salary which then shall be due, viz. if he remains in the company’s service, he shall further forfeit such sum as shal be proved he paid, or privately made over to anly other European nation.

That none may depart thence, unless they have twelve months wages due to them.Moreover it shall not be allowed for any person, being in the company’s service, to depart to the Netherlands, unless he shall have at the least twelve full months salary due to him, and that by original account, unless he shall have paid the contents thereof in ready money into the chamber of accounts here, upon exchange, to be repaid him by the company in the Netherlands.

Those that purpose to depart to the Netherlands, shall before such departure from hence, sell all their moveable and immoveable estates, as houses, gardens,lands and pedakkens, none excepted;Those that go home, are to sell their immoveable estates.whether they were sold publickly, or privately; and pay the proceed thereof into the chamber of accounts aforesaid, to be made good in the Netherlands; upon pain that the offender shall immediately forfeit all his right to the said goods to the company’s use.

Likewise those that are entrusted with the administration and disposal of any immoveable estates, whereof the proprietors are departed hence, shall be bound to sell the said goods, and turn them into money before the departure of the next returning ships, and to bring the proceed thereof into the chamber of accounts, to receive the same by exchange as aforesaid, upon pain as aforesaid.

And pay for the freight of their persons 300 guilders.The people that are free, and not in the company’s service, and disposed to return to the Netherlands, whether single, or with their families, shall before their departure from Batavia, pay for their freight and transportation money, at the general chamber of accounts as followeth, viz.For their diet in the great cabin, 30 stivers per diem.For all men and women, being twelve years of age and up wards, three hundred guilders; and those under that age, one hundred and fifty guilders: and be sides for their diet, for men that are accomodated in the great cabin, thirty stivers; those in the round house, eighteen stivers;For diet in the round-house 18 stivers, and before the mast 9.and those before the mast, nine stivers per diem. The women that are above twelve years of age, and eat in the cabin, twenty stivers; in the round-house, twelve stivers; and before the mast, nine stivers per diem: so that no person, whether man or woman, being either above or under twelve years of age, children included, shall pay any less than nine stivers a day. The said payments shall be made for the time of six months, and accordingly they shall have receipts thereof. But yet under this condition and promise, that if any such person should happen to die in the voyage, there shall be restored at the East-India chamber in the Netherlands, whereunto that ship goes consigned, to the right heir or executor, &c. of the deceased, so much of that sum as shall be in proportion to the money paid, to be accounted from their departure hence to their death.

That none may carry off any merchandize; but for freight of their houshold-stuff, must pay 2000 guilders per last.And seeing that notwithstanding our repeated prohibition, not only the said free people, but even the company’s servants, with their wives, widows, and others that are of their family, do carry over much houshold-stuff, and other bulky goods for their own provision and other uses, in the company’s ships, and do thereby greatly pester them. All such goods therefore that are no merchandize (seeing they ought in no wise to be carried with them, and that they ought to be seized by the company for their use without any favour shewn, whether they be found out in the road, or on the voyage, or discovered in the Netherlands) shall be declared and mentioned by inventory before their departure, and going on board; that after they have been visited and valued by our commissioners thereunto appointed, they may pay for freight at the rate of two thousand guilders for each last, being estimated or rated by bulk or weight; which accordingly is to be paid at the chamber of accounts. Which inventory being signed by our commissioners, with the receipt of having paid the freight, and being shewed to the lords our principals in the Netherlands, such goods being no merchandize as abovesaid, shall be delivered unto him; but upon pain that all such goods not mentioned in the inventory so taken with him, shall be, and remain confiscate to the said company’s use. All this being intended and spoken of the company’s servants for so much as pertains to the merchandize of such exceeding three months wages, which they are allowed to carry with them by the letter of articles which they carry along with them.

None may carry any Indians with them.And for as much as it hath ever been prohibited to carry hence into the Netherlands any black native Indians, whether free or bond, men and women, as the lords states general have likewise by their proclamation prohibited to bring the same into their dominions: we have hereby once again thought fit to interdict, and prohibit all persons to transport any such native blacks, whether men or women, from this place, or to conceal them on board ships, and that (for as much as it may concern the servants of the company) upon forfeiture of all the wages which shall be due to them on their voyage homeward; and for free people, upon pain of forfeiting one thousand guilders: and this, over and above the transportation and diet-money of such blacks for the sum before-mentioned, which at their arrival in the Netherlands shall by the master of such natives be made good to the company in the said Netherlands; with condition also, that besides the former sums, the said blacks being willing to return to the Indies, shall pay in the Netherlands the like sum for transportation and diet-money, as before is specified. Provided nevertheless, that in case any one for good reasons should desire to take with them a black nurse for his child or children, and it being granted, such person shall be bound to pay into the chamber of accounts her diet-money at 30 stivers per diem for the time of six months, allowing her for the same to have her passage back again gratis out of the Netherlands.

And to the end that none may pretend ignorance of any the premises herein mentioned, we have published this our ordinance after the ringing of the bell at the publick and usual place. We therefore charge and command the advocate fiscal of India, the bailiff of this city, and all other officers of justice, to take care strictly to observe the same, and to proceed against all offenders and transgressorswithout favour, connivance, dissimulation or forbearance; for we have found the same to tend to the service of the said company. Given at the castle of Batavia upon the island of Java Major, the—&c.

By this account no colonies can be made there.So that it is no wonder that so few good, and so many ignorant, lazy, prodigal and vicious people take service of the East-India company. But it is doubly to be admired that any intelligent, frugal, diligent and virtuous people, especially Hollanders, unless driven by extreme necessity, should give up themselves to that slavish servitude.

The Hollanders are naturally inclined and fit to erect new colonies.All which being true, let none think it strange, that the scum of Holland and of most other nations, having by their service become freemen there, and yet not permitted to drive any trade by sea, or with foreign people, are very unfit, and have no inclination at all to those forced colonies, and do always thirst after their own sweet and free native countries of Holland: whereas notwithstanding on the contrary, the ingenious, frugal, industrious Hollanders, by those virtues which are almost peculiar to them, are more fit than any nation in the world to erect colonies and to live on them, when they have the liberty given them to manure them for their own livelihoods. And those that doubt hereof, let them please to observe, that the Hollanders, before and since these two licensed companies, even under foreign princes, have made very many new colonies, namely in Lyfland, Prussia, Brandenburgh, Pomerania, Denmark, Sleswick, France, England, Flanders, &c. And moreover, have not only manured unfruitful unplanted lands, but also undertaken the chargeable and hazardous task of draining of fenlands. And it is observable, that in all the said places, their butter, cheese, fruits and product of the earth, are more desired, and esteemed than those of their neighbours.Fitter than any nation of the world. And if we farther observe, that no countries in the world, whether the land be for breeding or feeding, are so well ordered as those of our plain lands in Holland; and that no other boors or husbandmen do travel so many countries as ours do; we shall be convinced, that no nation under heaven is so fit for setting up new colonies, and manuring of ground as our people are. And if in our nation there is also to be found (which however is unjustly and unwisely denied by the opposers of these new Holland colonies) a very great aptness and inclination to merchandising and navigation, then we may in all respects believe, that we under our own free government might erect very excellent colonies, when it shall please the state to begin and encourage the same on good foundations, and to indulge them for a short time with their favour and defence. Having spoken thus far of the true political maxims to be observed concerning the inhabitants, I shall here conclude the first part of my treatise.

The End of the First Part.

[* ]Belisario magistro militum per orientem, &c. Interea vero fi aliquas civitates seu Castella per limites constituta providerit tua magnitudo nimiæ esse magnitudinis, & propter hoc nox posse bene custodiri ad talem modum ea construi disponat, ut possint per paucos bene servari, &c. Cod. l. 1. Tit. 27. par. 14.

[* ]Quippe ubi libertas, ibi & populus & divitiæ.

[*]

— Sed quid?
Turba Remi sequitur fortunam, ut semper, & odit damnatos.
Juven.

[*]

— Sed quid violentius aure tyranni,
Cum quo de pluviis aut æstibus aut nimboso
Vere locuturi fatum pendebat amici?
Juven.

[*]

Multa scire pauca exequi, Cor. Tacit.
Multa facere non oportet quæ facta tenent.
Curandi fieri quædam majora videmus
Vulnera, quæ melius non tetigisse su it

[* ]A morgen is about two English acres.

[* ]Which were transported beyond the seas, and dealt in by the East-countrypeople.

[* ]Res facile iisdem artibus retinentur quibus initio partæ sunt.

[*]

Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed sæpè cadendo:
Adde parum parvo, tandem sit magnus acervus.

[* ]Res facile iisdem artibus retinentur quibus initio partæ sunt.

[* ]Omnia dabant, ne decimam darent. Grot. Hist.

[† ]Omnia datis, & ne quidem liberatis umbram retinetis.

[* ]Tanquam Cæsaris præsidem ejus provinciæ. Annal. Dousæ

[* ]Quia favor aut odium in judice plus valet quam optima lex in codice.

[* ]Oderunt peccare mali (quales omnes natura sumus) formidine pœnæ.

[* ]Quem commoda, eum incommoda sequantur.

[* ]Secundum naturam est commoda cujusque rei eum sequi, quem sequentur incommoda.

[* ]Qui non habet in ære, luat in pelle.

[† ]Læsæ majestatis reos.

[* ]Nemo repentè fit pessimus, aut fuit turpissimus.

[* ]Qu’il n’y a chere, que de gens a l’arriere.

[* ]Desperatio facit militem aut monachum.

[† ]Divitem suisse duplex paupertas.

[* ]Res dura, & regni novitas me talia cogunt, &c. Virg.

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2: 2. Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade (1690)

Nicholas Barbonwas born in London in 1623. He studied medicine at the University of Leiden in 1661, receiving his M.D. at Utrecht and becoming an honorary fellow of the College of Physicians in 1664. He then became a real estate developer, and after the fire of London in 1666, he is said to have introduced fire insurance to England. Barbon developed whole sections of London in both commercial and residential real estate. He was elected a member of Parliament in 1690 and in 1695. He also took part in the land-bank speculations of the time, founding his own landbank. He died in 1698, after directing in his will that none of his debts be paid. In addition to the work included here, he wrote an essay on money in response to Locke in 1696, arguing for devaluing the silver currency. He was known also for arguing against the “balance” of trade. The edition used here is Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade, edited by Jacob H. Hollander (1690; repr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1905), and is reprinted in its entirety. One of the best-known early tracts for freedom of trade, it also discusses topics as varied as the nature of value, the role of fashion in economic life, the importance of moral dispositions such as emulation and vanity, industry and liberality in commerce, and the political effects and implications of commerce.

Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade. A Reprint of Economic Tracts, ed. Jacob H. Hollander (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1905).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/982 on 2009-04-23

The text is in the public domain.

INTRODUCTION

by Jacob H. Hollander, Ph. D.

Professor of Political Economy
Johns Hopkins University

The careful researches of Professor Stephen Bauer have thrown much needed light upon the life of Nicholas Barbon and upon his proper place in the history of economic thought.1 Born in London, probably in 1640, the son of Praisegod Barebone—"anabaptist, leather-seller, and politician,"2 —he studied medicine at Leyden, received a medical degree at Utrecht in 1661, and was admitted as an honorary fellow of the College of Physicians in 1664. After the great fire of 1666, he established the first insurance office in London, and participated actively in rebuilding the city. He was a member of Parliament in 1690, and again in 1695; he founded and conducted a land bank in 1695-96, and he died in 1698, making John Asgill the executor of his will, and directing that none of his debts should be paid.

Barbon's writings stand for the most part in immediate relation to the economic events of the period in which he lived. He defended his scheme of fire insurance; he advocated building extension in London; he discussed the possibilities of land-banking and he contributed a remarkable tract3 to the currency controversy of 1696.

Of more general scope than these semi-controversial pamphlets is the essay here reprinted. Of the circumstances under which it was written and of the obscurity into which it appears promptly to have fallen nothing is known. Less enthusiastic critics will dissent from Professor Bauer's opinions that certain of its passages place Barbon as an economist above both Petty and Locke, and that it contains the ablest refutation of the theory of the balance of trade previous to Hume and Adam Smith. But none will deny that the essay is surely entitled to reissue in accessible form, and that Barbon may properly receive, to a greater degree than has heretofore been accorded him, the attention of students of the development of economic thought from Hobbes to Hume.

The present edition is a reprint of Barbon's essay as issued in 1690.4 The general appearance of the title page has been preserved, the original pagination has been indicated and a few notes have been appended.
- BALTIMORE,
February, 1905.

THE PREFACE.5

THe Greatness and Riches of the UNITED PROVINCES, and STATES of VENICE, Consider'd, with the little Tract of Ground that belongs to either of their TERRITORIES, sufficiently Demonstrate the great Advantage and Profit that Trade brings to a Nation.

And since the Old Ammunition and Artillery of the GRECIANS and ROMANS are grown out ||* of Use; such as Stones, Bows, Arrows, and battering Rams, with other Wooden Engines, which were in all Places easily procured or made: And the Invention of Gunpowder hath introduced another sort of Ammunition and Artillery, whose Materials are made of Minerals, that are not to be found in all Countries; such as Iron, Brass, Lead, Salt-petre, and Brimstone; and therefore where they are wanting, must be procured by Traffick. TRADE is now become as necessary to Preserve Governments, as it is useful to make them Rich.

And notwithstanding the great Influence, that TRADE now hath in the Support and Welfare of || States and Kingdoms, yet there is nothing more unknown, or that Men differ more in their Sentiments, than about the True Causes that raise and promote TRADE.

LIVY, and those Antient Writers, whose elevated GENIUS set them upon the Inquiries into the Causes of the Rise and Fall of Governments, have been very exact in describing the several Forms of Military Discipline, but take no Notice of TRADE; and MACHIAVEL a Modern Writer, and the best, though he lived in a Government, where the Family of MEDICIS had advanced themselves to the Soveraignty by their Riches, acquired by Merchandizing, doth not mention TRADE, as any way || interested in the Affairs of State; for until TRADE became necessary to provide Weapons of War, it was always thought Prejudicial to the Growth of Empire, as too much softening the People by Ease and Luxury, which made their Bodies unfit to Endure the Labour and Hardships of War. And therefore the ROMANS who made War, (the only Way to Raise & Enlarge their Dominion) did in the almost Infancy of their State, Conquer that Rich and TRADING City of CARTHAGE, though Defended by HANIBAL their General, one of the greatest Captains in the World: so that, since TRADE was not in those days useful to provide Magazines for Wars, an Account of it || is not to be expected from those Writers. The Merchant, and other Traders who should understand the true Interest of TRADE, do either not understand it, or else, lest it might hinder their private Gain, will not Discover it. Mr. MUNN a Merchant, in his Treatise of TRADE,6doth better set forth the Rule to make an Accomplished Merchant, than how it may be most Profitable to the Nation; and those Arguments every day met with from the Traders, seem byassed with Private Interest, and run contrary to one another, as their Interest are opposite.

The TURKEY-Merchants Argue against the EAST-INDIA- || COMPANY, the WOOLLEN-DRAPER against the MERCERS, and the UPHOLSTER against the CAIN-CHAIR-MAKER; some think there are too many TRADERS, and Complain against the Number of BUILDERS; others against the Number of ALE-HOUSES; some use Argumen's for the Sole making of particular Commodities, others Plead for the Sole Trading to particular Countries: So that, if these Gentlemens Reasons might prevail in getting those Laws they so much solicite, (which all of them Affirm, would be for the Advance of TRADE, and Publick Good of the Nation) there would be but a few TRADES left for the next Generation of Men to be Em || ploy'd in, a much fewer sorts of Goods to make, and not a Corner of the World to Trade to, unless they purchase a License from them.

And how fair and convincing soever their Premises may appear for the Inlarging and Advancement of TRADE, the Conclusions of their Arguments, which are for Limiting andConfining of it to Number, Persons and Places, are directly opposite to the Inlarging of it.

The Reasons why many Men have not a true IDEA of TRADE, is, Because they Apply their Thoughts to particular Parts of TRADE, wherein they are chiefly concerned in Interest; and having || found out the best Rules and Laws for forming that particular Part, they govern their Thoughts by the same NOTIONS in forming the Great BODY of TRADE, and not Reflecting on the different Rules of Proportions betwixt the Body and Parts, have a very disagreeable Conception; and like those, who having learnt to Draw well an Eye, Ear, Hand, and other Parts of the Body, (being Unskilful in the Laws of Symmetry) when they joyn them together, make a very Deformed Body.

Therefore, whoever will make a true Representation of TRADE, must Draw a rough Sketch of the Body and Parts together, which || though it will not entertain with so much Pleasure as a well-finish't Piece, yet the Agreeableness of the Parts may be as well discern'd, and thereby such Measures taken, as may best suit the Shape of the Body.

||*Of Trade and the Stock, or Wares of Trade.

TRADE is the Making, and Selling of one sort of Goods for another; The making is called Handy-Craft Trade, and the ma|2|ker an Artificer; The Selling is called Merchandizing, and the Seller a Merchant: The Artificer is called by several Names from the sort of Goods he makes. As a Clothier, Silk-weaver, Shoo-maker, or Hatter, &c. from Making of Cloth, Silk, Shooes, or Hats; And the Merchant is distinguished by the Names of the Countrey he deals to, and is called, Dutch, French, Spanish or Turkey Merchant.

The chief End or Business of Trade, is to make a profitable Bargain: In making of a Bargain there are these things to be considered; The Wares to be Sold, the Quantity and Quality of those Wares, the Value or Price of them, the Money or Credit, by which the Wares are bought, the Interest that relates to the time of performing the Bargain.

The Stock and Wares of all |3| Trade are the Animals, Vegitables, and Minerals of the whole Universe, whatsoever the Land or Sea produceth. These Wares may be divided into Natural and Artificial; Natural Wares are those which are sold as Nature Produceth them; As Flesh, Fish, and Fruits, &c. Artificial Wares are those which by Art are Changed into another Form than Nature gave them; As Cloth, Calicoes, and wrought Silks, &c. which are made of Wool, Flax, Cotten, and Raw Silks.

Both these Sorts of Wares are called the Staple Commoditys of those Countreys where they chiefly abound, or are made. There are Different Climates of the Heavens, some very Hot, some very Cold, others Temperate; these Different Climates produce Different Animals, Vegitables, & Minerals. The Staples of the hot Coun|4|try are Spices; the Staples of the Cold, Furrs; but the more Temperate Climates produce much the same sorts of Commoditys; but by difference of the Quality or Conveniency of place where they abound, they become the Staple of each Country, where they are either best or easier acquired or exchanged: Thus, Herrings, and other Fish are the Staples of Holland; the Dutch living amongst the Water, are most naturally inclined to Fishing: English Wool being the best in the World, is the Staple of England, for the same reason. Oyles of Italy, Fruits of Spain, Wine of France, with several other sorts of Commoditys, are the Staples of their several Countrys.

Staple Commodities may be divided into Native or Forreign; the Native Staple is what Each Country doth Naturally and best produce; Forreign Sta|5|ple, is any Forreign Commodity, which a Country acquires by the sole Trade to a Forreign Place, or sole possession of a particular Art; as Spices are the Staple of Holland; and the making of Glass and Paper, were the Staple of Venice.

From the Stock, or Wares of Trade, these Three Things are Observable:

1. The Native Staple of each Country is the Riches of the Country, and is perpetual, and never to be consumed; Beasts of the Earth, Fowls of the Air, and Fishes of the Sea, Naturally Increase: There is Every Year a New Spring and Autumn, which produceth a New Stock of Plants and Fruits. And the Minerals of the Earth are Unexhaustable; and if the Natural Stock be Infinite, the Artificial Stock that is made of the Natural, must be Infinite, as Woollen and Linnen |6| Cloth, Calicoes, and wrought Silk, which are made of Flax, Wool, Cotton, and Raw Silks.

This sheweth a Mistake of Mr. Munn, in his Discourse of Trade, who commends Parsimony, Frugality, and Sumptuary Laws, as the means to make a Nation Rich; and uses an Argument, from a Simile, supposing a Man to have 1000 l. per Annum, and 2000 l. in a Chest, and spends Yearly 1500 l. per Annum, he will in four Years time Waste his 2000 l.7 This is true, of a Person, but not of a Nation; because his Estate is Finite, but the Stock of a Nation Infinite, and can never be consumed; For what is Infinite, can neither receive Addition by Parsimony, nor suffer Diminution, by Prodigality.

2. The Native Staple of Each Country, is the Foundation of it's Forreign Trade: And no Na |7| tion have any Forreign Commodities, but what are at first brought in by the Exchange of the Native; for at the first beginning of Forreign Trade, a Nation hath nothing else to Exchange; The Silver & Gold from Spain; the Silks from Turkey, Oyls from Italy, Wine from France, and all other Forreign Goods are brought into England, by the Exchange of the English Cloth, or some other Staple of England.

3. That Forreign Staples are uncertain Wealth: Some Countries by the Sole Trade to another Country, or by the Sole Possession of some Arts, gain a Staple of Forreign Commodities, which may be as profitable as the Native, so long as they enjoy the Sole possession of that Trade or Art. But that is uncertain; for other Nations find out the way of |8| Trading to the same place: The Artists for Advantage, Travel into other Countries, and the Arts are discover'd. Thus Portugal had the Sole Trade of India; afterwards the Venetians got a great Share of the Trade, and now the Dutch and English, have a greater share than both: The Arts of making several sorts of Silks, were chiefly confined to Genoa, & Naples; afterward Travelled into France, since into England and Holland, and are now Practised there in as great perfection as they were in Italy; So have other Arts wander'd, as the making of Looking-Glasses from Venice into England, the making of Paper from Venice into France and Holland.

|9|*Of the Quantity and Quality of Wares.

THE Quantity of all Wares are known by Weight or Measure. The Reason of Gravity is not understood, neither is it Material to this Purpose; Whether it proceeds from the Elastisity of the Air, or Weight of the utmost Spheer, or from what other Causes, its sufficient, that the ways of Trying the Weights of Bodies are perfectly discover'd by the Ballance. There are Two Sorts of Weights in Common Use, the Troy, and Averdupois.

The First are used to Weigh Goods of most Value, as Gold, Silver and Silk, &c. The Latter for Coarser, and more Bulky Goods, as Lead, Iron, &c. |10|

There are Two Sorts of Measures, the one for Fluid Bodies, as the Bushel, Gallon and Quart, for Measuring Corn, Wine and Oyl; the other for the Measuring the Dimensions of Solid Bodies, as a Yard, Ell, &c. to Measure Cloth, Silk. &c.

The Weights and Measures of all Countries differs, but that is no Prejudice to Trade; they are all made certain by the Custom or Laws of the Place, and the Trader knows the Weight or Measure in Use, in the Place he Deals to. It is the Care of the Government, to prevent and punish the Fraud of False Weights and Measures, and in most Trading-Cities, there are Publick Weigh-Houses, and Measurers: The Fraud of the Ballance, which is from the unequal Length of the end of the Beam, is least perceivable; and therefore in Weighing |11| Goods of Value, they usually Weigh them in both Scales.

The Qualities of Wares are known by their Colour, Sound, Smell, Taste, Make, or Shape.

The Difference in the Qualities of Wares are very difficultly distinguished; those Organs that are the proper Judges of those Differencies, do very much disagree; some Men have clearer Eyes, some more distinguishing Ears, and other nicer Noses and Tastes; and every Man having a good Opinion of his own Faculties, it is hard to find a Judge to determine which is best: Besides, those Qualities that belong to Artificial Wares, such as depend upon the Mixture, Make or Shape of them, are more difficultly discover'd: Those Wares, whose Quality are produced by the just Mixture of different Bodies, such as Knives and Razors, whose |12| sharpness arise from the Good Temperament and Mixture of the Steel & Iron, are not to be found out, but by the Use of them: And so doth the Mixture, and well making of Hats, Cloth, and many other things.

Because the Difference in the Qualities of Wares, are so difficultly understood, it is that the Trader serves an Apprenticeship to learn them; and the Knowledge of them is called the Mystery of Trade; and in common Dealing, the Buyer is forced to rely on the Skill and Honesty of the Seller, to deliver Wares with such Qualities as he affirms them to have: It is the Sellers Interest, from the Expectation of further Dealing, not to deceive; because his Shop, the Place of Dealing, is known: Therefore, those Persons that buy of Pedlars, and Wandering People, run Great |13| Hazard of being Cheated.

Those Wares, whose Chief Qualities consist in Shape, such as all Wearing Apparel, do not so much depend upon the Honesty of the Seller; for tho' the Trader or Maker, is the Inventor of the Shape, yet it is the Fancy and Approbation of the Buyer, that brings it into Use, and makes it pass for a Fashion.

Of the Value and Price of Wares.

THE Value of all Wares arise from their Use; Things of no Use, have no Value, as the English Phrase is, They are good for nothing.

The Use of Things, are to supply the Wants and Necessities of Man: There are Two General Wants that Mankind is born with; |14|* the Wants of the Body, and the Wants of the Mind; To supply these two Necessities, all things under the Sun become useful, and therefore have a Value.

Wares, useful to supply the Wants of the Body, are all things necessary to support Life, such are in Common Estimation; all those Goods which are useful to supply the Three General Necessities of Man, Food, Clothes and Lodging; But if strictly Examined, nothing is absolutely necessary to support Life, but Food; for a great Part of Mankind go Naked, and lye in Huts and Caves; so that there are but few things that are absolutely necessary to supply the Wants of the Body.

Wares, that have their Value from supplying the Wants of the Mind, are all such things that can satisfie Desire; Desire implys Want: It is the Appetite of the |15| Soul, and is as natural to the Soul, as Hunger to the Body.

The Wants of the Mind are infinite, Man naturally Aspires, and as his Mind is elevated, his Senses grow more refined, and more capable of Delight; his Desires are inlarged, and his Wants increase with his Wishes, which is for every thing that is rare, can gratifie his Senses, adorn his Body, and promote the Ease, Pleasure, and Pomp of Life.

Amongst the great Variety of things to satisfie the Wants of the Mind, those that adorn Mans Body, and advance the Pomp of Life, have the most general Use, and in all Ages, and amongst all sorts of Mankind, have been of Value.

The first Effects that the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge wrought upon the Parents of Mankind, was to make them cloath themselves, and it has made the most Visible |16| Distinction of his Race, from the rest of the Creation: It is that by which his Posterity may write Man, for no Creatures adorn the Body but Man: Beside, the decking of the Body, doth not onely distinguish Man from Beast, but is the Mark of Difference and Superiority betwixt Man and Man.

There was never any part of Mankind so wild and barbarous, but they had Difference and Degree of Men amongst them, and invented some things to shew that Distinction.

Those that Cloathed with Skins, wore the Skins of those Beasts that are most difficultly taken; thus Hercules wore a Lyons Skin; and the Ermins and Sable, are still Badges of Honour. The Degree of Quality amongst the Affricans, is known by the waste Cloth, and amongst those that go naked, by adorning their Bodies with Co|17|lours, most rare amongst them, as the Red was the Colour most in Esteem amongst the Ancient Britains.

And the most Ancient and best of Histories, the Bible, shews, That amongst the Civilized People of the World, Ear-Rings, Bracelets, Hoods and Vails, with Changeable Suits of Apparel, were then worn: And the same Ornaments for the Body are still, and ever since have been Worn, only differing in Shapes and Fashions, according to the Custom of the Country.

The Shapes of Habits are much in use, to denote the Qualities of several men; but things rare and difficult to be obtained, are General Badges of Honour: From this Use, Pearls, Diamonds, and Precious Stones, have their Value: Things Rare are proper Ensigns of Honour, because it is |18| Honourable to acquire Things Difficult.

The Price of Wares is the present Value; And ariseth by Computing the occasions or use for them, with the Quantity to serve that Occasion; for the Value of things depending on the use of them, the Over-pluss of Those Wares, which are more than can be used, become worth nothing; So that Plenty, in respect of the occasion, makes things cheap; and Scarcity, dear.

There is no fixt Price or Value of any thing for the Wares of Trades; The Animals, and Vegetables of the Earth, depend on the Influence of Heaven, which sometimes causes Murrains, Dearth, Famine, and sometimes Years of great Plenty; therefore, the Value of things must accordingly Alter. Besides, the Use of most things being to supply the Wants of |19| the Mind, and not the Necessitys of the Body; and those Wants, most of them proceeding from imagination, the Mind Changeth; the things grow out of Use, and so lose their Value.

There are two ways by which the value of things are a little guessed at; by the Price of the Merchant, and the Price of the Artificer: The Price that the Merchant sets upon his Wares, is by reckoning Prime Cost, Charges and Interest.

The Price of the Artificer, is by reckoning the Cost of the Materials, with the time of working them; The Price of Time is according to the Value of the Art, and the Skill of the Artist. Some Artificers Reckon Twelve, others Fifteen, and some Twenty, and Thirty Shillings per Week.

Interest is the Rule that the |20| Merchant Trades by; And Time, the Artificer, By which they cast up Profit, and Loss; for if the Price of their Wares, so alter either by Plenty, or by Change of the Use, that they do not pay the Merchant Interest, nor the Artificer for his Time, they both reckon they lose by their Trade.

But the Market is the best Judge of Value; for by the Concourse of Buyers and Sellers, the Quantity of Wares, and the Occasion for them are Best known: Things are just worth so much, as they can be sold for, according to the Old Rule, Valet Quantum Vendi potest.

Of Mony, Credit and Interest.

MOny is a Value made by a Law; And the Difference of its Value is known by the Stamp, and Size of the Piece. |21|*

One Use of MONY is, It is the Measure of Value, By which the Value of all other things are reckoned; as when the Value of any thing is expressed, its said, It's worth so many shillings, or so many Pounds: Another Use of Mony is; It is a Change or Pawn for the Value of all other Things: For this Reason, the Value of Mony must be made certain by Law, or else it could not be made a certain Measure, nor an Exchange for the Value of all things.

It is not absolutely necessary, Mony should be made of Gold or Silver; for having its sole Value from the Law, it is not Material upon what Metal the Stamp be set. Mony hath the same Value, and performs the same Uses, if it be made of Brass, Copper, Tin, or any thing else. The Brass Mony of Spain, the Copper Mony of Sweeden, and Tin |22| Farthings of England, have the same Value in Exchange, according to the Rate they are set at and perform the same Uses, to Cast up the Value of things, as the Gold and Silver Mony does; Six Pence in Farthings will buy the same thing as Six Pence in Silver; and the Value of a thing is well understood by saying, It is worth Eight Farthings, as that it is worth Two Pence: Gold and Silver, as well as Brass, Copper and Tin Mony, change their Value in those Countries, where the Law has no Force, and yield no more than the Price of the Metal that bears the STAMP: Therefore, all Foreign Coins go by Weight, and are of no certain Value, but rise and fall with the Price of the Metal. Pieces of Eight, yield sometimes 4 sh. 6 d. 4 sh. 7 d. and 4 sh. 8 d. as the Value of Silver is higher or lower: |23| And so doth Dollars, and all Forreign Coin, change their Value; and were it not for the Law that fixeth the Value, an English Crown Piece would now yield Five Shillings and Two Pence, for so much is the Value of it, if it were melted, or in a Foreign Country. But the chief Advantage of making Mony of Silver and Gold, is to prevent Counterfeiting; for Silver and Gold, being Metals of great Value, those who design Profit by Counterfeiting the Coin, must Counterfeit the Metals, as well as the Stamp, which is more difficult than the Stamp. There's another Benefit to the Merchant, by such Mony; for Gold and Silver being Commodities for other Uses, than to make Mony; to make Plate, Gold & Silver Lace, Silks, &c. And Coins of little Bulk, in respect of their Value, the Mer|24|chant transmits such Mony from Place to Place, in Specie, according as he finds his Advantage, by the Rise of Bulloin; though this may be a Conveniency to the Merchant, it often proves a Prejudice to the State, by making Mony scarce: Therefore, there are Laws in most Countries, that Prohibit the Transportation of Mony, yet it cannot be prevented; for in Spain, though it be Capital, yet in Two Months after the Gallions are come home, there is scarce any Silver Mony to be seen in the Country.

Some Men have so great an Esteem for Gold and Silver, that they believe they have an intrinsick Value in themselves, and cast up the value of every thing by them: The Reason of the Mistake, is, Because Mony being made of Gold and Silver, they do not distinguish betwixt Mony, |25| and Gold and Silver. Mony hath a certain Value, because of the Law; but the Value of Gold and Silver are uncertain, & varies their Price, as much as Copper, Lead, or other Metals: And in the Places where they are dug, considering the smalness of their Veins, with the Charges of getting them, they do not yield much more Profit than other Minerals, nor pay the Miners better Wages for digging them.

And were it not for the Waste, made of Gold and Silver, by Plate, Lace, Silks, and Guilding, and the Custom of the Eastern Princes, to lay them up and bury them, that Half which is dug in the West, is buried in the East. The great Quantities dug out of the Earth, since the Discovery of the West-Indies, would have so much lessened the Value, that by this time, they would not have |26| much exceeded the Value of Tin, or Copper: Therefore, How greatly would those Gentlemen be disappointed, that are searching after the Philosopher's Stone, if they should at last happen to find it? For, if they should make but so great a Quantity of Gold and Silver, as they, and their Predecessors have spent in search after it, it would so alter, and bring down the Price of those Metals, that it might be a Question, whether they would get so much Over-plus by it, as would pay for the Metal they change into Gold and Silver. It is only the Scarcity that keeps up the Value, and not any Intrinsick Vertue or Quality in the Metals; For if the Vertue were to be considered, the Affrican that gives Gold for Knives, and Things made of Iron, would have the Odds in the Exchange; Iron being a much more Useful |27| Metal, than either Gold or Silver. To Conclude this Objection, Nothing in it self hath a certain Value; One thing is as much worth as another: And it is time, and place, that give a difference to the Value of all things.

Credit is a Value raised by Opinion, it buys Goods as Mony doe's; and in all Trading Citys, there's more Wares sold upon Credit, then for present Mony.

There are Two Sorts of Credit; the one, is Grounded upon the Ability of the Buyer; the other, upon the Honesty: The first is called a Good Man, which implys an Able Man; he generally buys upon short Time; to pay in a Month, which is accounted as ready Mony, and the Price is made accordingly. The other is accounted an Honest Man; He may be poor; he Generally |28| buys for three and Six Months or longer, so as to pay the Merchant by the Return of his own Goods; and therefore, the Seller relys more upon the Honesty of the Buyer, than his Ability: Most of the Retail Traders buy upon this Sort of Credit, and are usually Trusted for more than double they are worth.

In Citys of great Trade, there are publick Banks of Credit, as at Amsterdam and Venice: They are of great Advantage to Trade, for they make Payments easie, by preventing the Continual Trouble of telling over Mony, and cause a great Dispatch in Business: Publick Banks are of so great a Concern in Trade, that the Merchants of London, for want of such a Bank, have been forced to Carry their Cash to GoldSmiths, and have thereby Raised such a Credit upon Gold|29|smiths Notes, that they pass in Payments from one to another like Notes upon the Bank; And although by this way of Credit, there hath been very Vast Sums of Mony lost, not less then too Millions within five and Twenty Years, yet the Dispatch and Ease in Trade is so great by such Notes, that the Credit is still in some Measure kept up.

Therefore, it is much to be wondered at, that since the City of London is the Largest, Richest, and Chiefest City in the World, for Trade; Since there is so much Ease, Dispatch, and Safety in a Publick Bank; and since such vast Losses has Happened for want of it; That the Merchant and Traders of London have not long before this time Addressed themselves, to the Government, for the Establishing of a Publick Bank.

The Common Objection, that |30| a Publick Bank cannot be safe in a Monarchy, is not worth the Answering; As if Princes were not Governed by the same Rules of Policy, as States are, To do all things for the Well-fair of the Subjects, wherein their own Interest is concerned.

It is True, in a Government wholly Dispotical, whose Support is altogether in it's Millitary Forces; where Trade hath no Concern in the Affaires of the State; Brings no Revenue, There might be a Jealousy, That such a Bank might tempt a Prince to Seize it; when by doing it, he doth not Prejudice the Affairs of his Government: But in England, where the Government is not Dispotical; But the People Free; and have as great a Share in the Soveraign Legislative Power, as the Subjects of any States have, or ever had; where the Customs |31| makes great Figures, in the Kings Exchequer; where Ships are the Bullworks of the Kingdom; and where the Flourish of Trade is as much the Interest of the King as of the People, There can be no such Cause of Fear: For, What Objections can any Man make, that his Mony in the Bank, may not be as well secured by a Law, as his Property is? Or; Why he should be more afraid of Losing his Mony, than his Land or Goods?

Interest is the Rent of Stock, and is the same as the Rent of Land: The First, is the Rent of the Wrought or Artificial Stock; the Latter, of the Unwrought, or Natural Stock.

Interest is commonly reckoned for Mony; because the Mony Borrowed at Interest, is to be repayed in Mony; but this is a mistake; For the Interest is |32| paid for Stock: for the Mony borrowed, is laid out to buy Goods, or pay for them before bought: No Man takes up Mony at Interest, to lay it by him, and lose the Interest of it.

One use of Interest: It is the Rule by which the Trader makes up the Account of Profit and Loss; The Merchant expects by Dealing, to get more then Interest by his Goods; because of bad Debts, and other Hazards which he runs; and therefore, reckons all he gets above Interest, is Gain; all under, Loss; but if no more than Interest, neither Profit, nor Loss.

Another use of Interest, is, It is the measure of the Value of the Rent of Land; it sets the Price in Buying and Selling of Land: For, by adding three Years Interest more than is in |33| the Principle, Makes the usual Value of the Land of the Country; The difference of three Year is allowed; Because Land is more certain than Mony or Stock. Thus in Holland, where Mony is at three per. Cent. by reckoning how many times three is in a Hundred Pounds, which is Thirty Three; and Adding three Years more; makes Thirty Six Years Purchase; the Value of the Land in Holland: And by the same Rule, interest being at six per Cent. in England, Land is worth but Twenty Years Purchase; and in Ireland, but Thirteen; Interest being there at Ten per Cent: so that, according to the Rate of Interest, is that Value of the Land in the Country.

Therefore, Interest in all Countrys is setled by a Law, to make it certain; or else it could not |34| be a Rule for the Merchant to make up his Account, nor the Gentleman, to Sell his Land By.

Of the Use and Benefit of Trade.

THe Use of Trade is to make, and provide things Necessary: Or useful for the Support, Defence, Ease, Pleasure, and Pomp of Life: Thus the Brewers, Bakers, Butchers, Poulterers, and Cooks, with the Apothecaries, Surgeons, and their Dependencies provide Food, and Medicine for the support of Life: The Cutlers, Gun-smiths, Powder-makers, with their Company of Traders, make things for Defence; The Shoo-makers Sadlers, Couch, and Chair-makers, |35|* with abundance more for the Ease of Life: The Perfumers, Fidlers, Painters, and Booksellers, and all those Trades that make things to gratifie the Sense, or delight the Mind, promote Pleasure: But those Trades that are imploy'd to express the Pomp of Life, are Infinite; for, besides those that adorn Mans Body, as the Glover, Hosier, Hatter, Semstriss, Taylor, and many more, with those that make the Materials to Deck it; as Clothier, Silk-Weaver, Lace-Maker, Ribbon-Weaver, with their Assistance of Drapers, Mercers, and Milliners, and a Thousand more: Those Trades that make the Equipage for Servants, Trappings for Horses; and those that Build, Furnish, and Adorn Houses, are innumerable.

Thus Busie Man is imployed, and it is for his own Benefit; For by Trade, the Natural Stock of |36| the Country is improved, the Wool and Flax, are made into Cloth; the Skins, into Leather; and the Wood, Lead, Iron and Tin, wrought into Thousand useful Things: The Over-plus of these Wares not useful, are transported by the Merchants, and Exchanged for the Wines, Oyls, Spices, and every Thing that is good of Forreign Countries: The Trader hath One Share for his Pains, and the Land-Lord the Other for his Rent: So, that by Trade, the Inhabitants in general, are not only well Fed, Clothed and Lodged; but the Richer sort are Furnished with all things to promote the Ease, Pleasure, & Pomp of Life: Whereas, in the same Country, where there's no Trade, the Land-Lords would have but Coarse Diet, Coarser Clothes, and worse Lodgings; and nothing for the Rent of their Lands, but the |37| Homage and Attendance of their Poor Bare-footed Tenants, for they have nothing else to give.

Trade Raiseth the Rent of the Land, for by the Use of several sorts of Improvements, the Land Yieldeth a greater Natural Stock; by which, the Land-lord's Share is the greater: And it is the same thing, whether his Share be paid in Mony, or Goods; for the Mony must be laid out to Buy such Good's: Mony is an Immaginary Value made by a Law, for the Conveniency of Exchange: It is the Natural Stock that is the Real Value, and Rent of the Land.

Another Benefit of Trade, is, That, it doth not only bring Plenty, but hath occasioned Peace: For the Northern Nations, as they increased, were forced from the Necessities of their Climates, to Remove; and used to |38| Destroy, and Conquer the Inhabitants of the Warmer Climates to make Room for themselves; thence was a Proverb, Omne Malum ab Aquilone: But those Northern People being settled in Trade, the Land by their Industry, is made more Fertile; and by the Exchange of the Nations Stock, for Wines and Spices, of Hotter Climates, those Countries become most Habitable; and the Inhabitants having Warmer Food, Clothes, and Lodgings, are better able to endure the Extreamitys of their Cold Seasons: This seems to be the Reason, That for these Seven or Eight Hundred Years last past, there has been no such Invasions from the Northern part of the World, as used to destroy the Inhabitants of the Warmer Countries: Besides, Trade Allows a better Price for Labourers, than is paid for Fighting: So it is become |39| more the Interest of Mankind to live at home in Peace, than to seek their fortunes abroad by Wars.

These are the Benefits of Trade, as they Relate to Mankind; those that Relate to Government, are many.

Trade Increaseth the Revenue of the Government, by providing an Imploy for the People: For every Man that Works, pay by those things which he Eats and Wears, somthing to the Government. Thus the Excise and Custom's are Raised, and the more every Man Earns, the more he Consumes, and the King's Revenue is the more Increased.

This shews the way of Determining those Controversies, about which sort of Goods are most beneficial to the Government, by their Making, or Importing: The sole difference is from the Number of hands imploy'd in making them; Hence the Importation of Raw |40| Silk, is more Profitable to the Government than Gold, or Silver; Because there are more Hands imployd in the Throwing, and Weaving of the First; than there can be in working the Latter.

Another Benefit of Trade is, It is Useful for the Defence of the Government; It Provides the Magazines of Warr. The Guns, Powder, and Bullets, are all made of Minerals, and are wrought by Traders; Besides, those Minerals are not to be had in all Countries; The great Stock of Saltpeter is brought from the East Indies, and therefore must be Imported by the Merchant, for the Exchange of the Natives Stock.

The last Benefit is, That Trade may be Assistant to the Inlarging of Empire; and if an Universal Empire, or Dominion of very Large Extent, can again be rais|41|ed in the World, It seems more probable to be done by the Help of Trade; By the Increase of Ships at Sea, than by Arms at Land: This is too large a Subject to be here Treated of; but the French King's seeming Attempt to Raise Empire in Europe, being that Common Theam of Mens Discourse, has caused some short Reflections, which will appear by Comparing the Difficulty of the one, with the Probability of the other.

The Difficulties of Raising a Dominion of very Large Extent; especially in Europe, are Many.

First, Europe is grown more Populous than formerly, and there are more Fortified Towns and Cities, than were in the time of the Roman Empire, which was the last extended Dominion; and therefore, not easily Subjected to the Power of any one Prince.|42|

Whether Europe be grown more Populous, Solely by the Natural Increase of Mankind; There being more Born than Dye, which first Peopled the World?

Or, Whether, since the Inhabitants of Europe being Addicted to Trade, the ground is made more Fertile, and yields greater Plenty of Food; which hath prevented famine, that formerly destroy'd great Numbers of Mankind: So that no great Famines, has been taken Notice of by Historians, in these Last Three Hundred Years?

Whether by Dreining Great Bogs, Lakes, and Fens, and Cutting down vast Woods, to make Room for the Increase of Mankind, the Air is Grown more Healthy; So that Plagues, and other Epidemical Diseases, are not so destructive as formerly? none so violent, as Procopius8 and Wallsingham9 Report, which de|43|stroyed such Vast Numbers in Italy, that there were not left Ten in a Thousand; and in other Parts of Europe, not enough alive to Bury the Dead. Whereas, the Plague in (1665) the Greatest since, did not take away the Hundredth Person in England,Holland, and other Countries, where it Raged?

Whether, since the Invention of Guns and Gun-Powder, so many Men are not slain in the Wars as formerly? Xerxes lost 260000 in one Battle against the Grecians; ALEXANDER, destroyed 110000 of Darius's Army; Marius, slew 120000 of the Cimbri; and in great Battles, seldome less than 100000 fell: But now 20000 Men are accounted very great Slaughter.

Whether, since the Northern People have fallen on Trade, such |44| vast Numbers, are not destroyed by Invasions?

Whether, by all those Ways, or by which of them most, Europe is grown Populous, is not Material to this Discourse: It is sufficient to shew, That the Matter of Fact is so, which does appear by comparing the Antient Histories of Countries with the Modern?

In the Antient Descriptions, the Countries are full of Vast Woods, wild Beasts; the Inhabitants barbarous, and as wild, without Arts, and the Governments are like Colonies, or Herds of People: But in the Modern, the Woods are cut down, and the Lyons, Bears, and wild Beasts destroyed; no Flesh-Eaters are left to inhabit with Man, but those Dogs and Cats that he tames for his Use: Corn grows where the Woods did, and with the Timber |45| are built Cities, Towns and Villages; the People are Cloathed, and have all Arts among them; and those little Colonies and Families, are increased into Great States and Kingdoms; and the most undeniable Proof of the Increase of Mankind in England, is the Doom-Day-Book, which was a Survey taken of all the Inhabitants of England, in the Reign of William the Conquerour; by which it appears, that the People of England are increased more than double since that time: But since the Mosaical Hypothesis of the Increase of the World, is generally believed amongst the Christians. And the late Lord Chief Justice Hales, in his Book of the Origination of Mankind,10 hath endeavoured to satisfie all the rest of the World. It would be misspending of Time, to use any other Topick for the further Proof |46| thereof, than what naturally follows in this Discourse, which is from the Different Success of Arms, in the Latter and Former Ages.

In the Infancy of the World, Governments began with little Families and Colonies of Men; so that, when ever any Government arrived to greater Heighth than the rest, either by the great Wisdom or Courage of the Governor, they afterwards grew a pace: It was no Difficulty for Ninus, that was the oldest Government, and consequently, the most Populous, to begin the Assyrian Empire; nor for his Successors to continue and inlarge it: Such Vast Armies of Cyrus, Darius, Hystospis and Xerxes, the least of their Forces amounting to above 500000, could not be Resisted, when the World was but thin Peopled.|47|

These great Armies might at first sight, seem to infer, That the World was more Populous than now; because the Armies of the greatest Princes, seldom now exceed the Number of Fifty, or Sixty Thousand Men; But the Reason of those great Numbers, was, They were not so well Skilled in Military Arts, and shew that the World was in the Infancy of its Knowledge, rather than Populous; for all that were able to bear Arms, went to the Wars: And if that were now the Custom, there might be an Army in England of above Three Million, allowing the Inhabitants to be Seven Millions; and by the same Proportion, the King of France's Country, (being four Times bigger) might raise Twelve Millions; such a Number was never heard of in this World.|48|

The next Difficulty against the inlarging of Empire by Arms, is, That since Printing, and the Use of the Needle hath been discovered, Navigation is better known, and thence is a Greater Commerce amongst Men, the Countries and Languages are more understood, Knowledge more dispersed, and the Arts of War in all Places known; so that, Men fight more upon equal Terms than formerly; and like two Skilful Fencers, fight a long Time, before either gets Advantage.

The Assyrians & Persians Conquered more by the Number of Souldiers, than Discipline; the Grecians and Romans, more by Discipline than Number; as the World grew older, it grew wiser: Learning first flourished among the Grecians, afterwards among the Romans; and as the Latter succeeded in Learning, so they |49| did in EMPIRE. But now both Parties are Equally Disciplin'd and Arm'd; and the Successes of War are not so great; Victory is seldom gained without some Considerable Loss to the Conquerour.

Another Difficulty to the inlarging of Dominion by Arms, is, That the Goths Overcoming the greatest Part of Europe, did by their Form of Government, so settle Liberty, and Property of Land, that it is difficult for any PRINCE to Change that Form.

Whether the Goths were Part of the Ten Tribes, as some are of Opinion, and to Countenance their Conjectures, have Compared the Languages of the Inhabitants, Wales,Finland and Orchadis, and other Northern Parts (little frequented by Strangers, which might alter their Language) and |50| find them to agree with the Hebrew in many Words and Sound, all their Speech being Guttural. This is certain, their Form of Government seems framed after the Examples of Moses's Government in the Land of Canaan, by dividing the Legislative Power, according to the Property of Land, according to that Antient Maxim, That Dominion is founded upon Property of Land. There Monarchy seems to be made by an easie Division of Land into Thirds, by a Conquering Army, setting down in Peace; the General being King, has one Third; the Colonels being the Lords, another Third; and the Captains, and other Inferiour Officers being Gentlemen, another; the Common Souldiers are the Farmers, and the Conquered are the Villains: The Legislative Power is divided amongst them, according to their |51| Share in the Land; it being necessary that those that have Property of Land, should have Power to make Laws to Preserve it.

There seems to be but two settled Forms of Government; The Turkish, and Gothick, or English Monarchy: They are both founded upon Property of Land; in the First, the Property and Legislative Power is solely in the Prince; In the Latter, they are in both the Prince and People: The one is best fitted to raise Dominion by Armies; for the Prince must be Absolute to give Command, according to the Various Fortunes of Warr: The other is Best for Trade; for men are most industrious, where they are most free, and secure to injoy the Effects of their Labours.

All other Sorts of Government, |52| either Aristocracy, or Democracy, where the Supream Magistrate is Elective, are Imperfect, Tumultuous, and Unsettled: For Man is Naturally Ambitious; he inherits the same Ruleing Spirit that God gave to Adam, to Govern the Creation with: And the oftner that the Throne is Empty, the oftner will Contentions and Struggles Happen to get into it: Where deter digniori is the Rule, Warr always Ensues for the Golden Prize. Such Governments will never be without such Men as Marius and Scilla, to disturb them; nor without such a Man as Caesar to Usurp them; notwithstanding all the Contrivance for their Defence by those Polititians who seems fond of such Formes of Government.

The Gothick Government being a well fixed Form, and the People so free under it, is great hinde|53|drance to the Enlarging of Dominion; for a People under a good Government do more Vigorously Defend it: A free People have more to lose than Slaves, and their Success is better Rewarded than by any Mercenary Pay, and therefore, make a better Resistance: It was the Freedom of the Grecians and Romans that raised their Courage, and had an equal Share in raising their Empires, with their Millitary Discipline: The free City of Tyre put Alexander to more Trouble to Conquer, than all the Citys of Asia.

The People of Asia, living under a Dispotick Power, made little Resistance; Alexander subdued Libia,Phoenicia,Pamphilia, without much Opposition in his Journey to meet Darius; Egypt came under Subjection without Fighting, and so did many Countries, |54| being willing to Change the Persian Yoak: Besides, he Fought but two Battles for the whole Persian Empire; and the Resistance of those slavish People was so weak, that he did not lose 500 Grecians in either of the Battles, tho' Darius Number far exceeded his; the one being above 260000, and the other not Forty; And there was as great Disproportion in the Slaughter; for at the Battle in Cilicia he slew 110000, and that at Arbela 40000; whereas, the Spartan, a Free People, about the same time, fought with Antipater his Vice-Roy of Macedon; and in a Fight, where neither Army exceeded 60000, slew 1012 of the Macedonians, which was more than Alexander lost in both his Battles: So great is the Difference of fighting against a Free, and a Slavish Effeminate People.

For the same Reasons, That the |55| World is grown more Populous, That the Arts of War are more known. That the People of Europe live under a Free Government. It is as difficult to keep a Country in Subjection, as to Conquer it. The People are too Numerous to be kept in Obedience: To destroy the greatest Part, were too Bloody, and Inhuman; To Burn the Towns, and Villages, and so force the People to remove, Is to lose the greatest share in Conquest; for the People are the Riches and the Strength of the Country, And it is not much more Advantage to a Prince, to have a Title to Lands, in Terra Incognita, As to Countries without People.

Besides, Countries and Languages being more known; And Mankind more acquainted than formerly: The Oppressed People remove into the next Country they |56| can find Shelter in, & become the Subjects of other Governments. By such Addition of Subjects, those Governments growing stronger, are better able to Resist the Incroaches of Empire: So that, every Conquest makes the next more difficult, from the Assistance of those People before Conquered; To Transplant the Conquered into a Remote Country, as formerly, Is not to be Practised; There is now no Room, the World is so full of People.

To Conquer, and leave them Free, only paying Tribute and Homage, Is the same as not to Conquer them: For there is no Reason to expect their Submission longer, than till they are able to Resist; which will not be long before they make the same Opposition, if they continue in the same Possession; and therefore, though the Romans in the Infan|57|cy of their Government, did leave several Countries Free, as an Assistance to other CONQUEST; yet, when they grew stronger, they turned all their Conquest into Provinces, being the surest way to keep them from Revolting.

These are the Difficulties of inlarging Dominion at Land, but are not Impediments to its Rise at Sea: For those Things that Obstruct the Growth of Empire at Land, do rather Promote its Growth at Sea. That the World is more Populous, is no Prejudice, there is Room enough upon the Sea; the many Fortified Towns may hinder the March of an Army, but not the Sailing of Ships: The Arts of Navigation being discover'd, hath added an Unlimited Compass to the Naval Power. There needs no Change of the Gothick Government; for that best Agrees with such an Empire.|58|

The Ways of preserving Conquests gain'd by Sea, are different from those at Land. By the one, the Cities, Towns and Villages are burnt, to thin the People, that they may be the easier Governed, and kept into Subjection; by the other, the Cities must be inlarged, and New ones built: Instead of Banishing the People, they must be continued, in their Possession, or invited to the Seat of Empire; by the one, the Inhabitants are inslaved, by the other, they are made Free: The Seat of such an Empire, must be in an Island, that their Defence may be solely in Shipping; the same way to defend their Dominion, as to inlarge it.

To Conclude, there needs no other Argument, That Empire may be raised sooner at Sea, than at Land; than by observing the Growth of the United Provinces, |59| within One Hundred Years last past, who have Changed their Style, from Poor Distressed, into that of High and Mighty States of the United Provinces: And Amsterdam, that was not long since, a poor Fisher-Town, is now one of the Chief Cities in Europe; and within the same Compass of Time, that the Spaniard & French have been endeavouring to Raise an Universal Empire upon the Land; they have risen to that Heighth, as to be an equal Match for either of them at Sea; and were their Government fitted for a Dominion of large Extent, and their Country separated from their Troublesome Neighbour the Continent, which would Free them from that Military Charge in defending themselves, they might, in a short Time, Contend for the Soveraignity of the Seats.

But England seems the Properer |60| Seat for such an Empire: It is an Island, therefore requires no Military Force to defend it. Besides, Merchants and Souldiers never thrive in the same Place; It hath many large Harbours fitting for a large Dominion: The Inhabitants are naturally Couragious, as appears from the Effects of the Climate, in the Game Cocks, and Mastiff Dogs, being no where else so stout: The Monarchy is both fitted for Trade and Empire. And were there an Act for a General Naturalization, that all Forreigners, purchasing Land in England, might Enjoy the Freedom of Englishmen, It might within much less Compass of Time, than any Government by Arms at Land, arrive to such a Dominion: For since, in some Parts of Europe, Mankind is harrassed and disturbed with Wars; Since, some Governours have incroached upon the Rights of their |61| Subjects, and inslaved them; Since the People of England enjoy the Largest Freedoms, and Best Government in the World; and since by Navigation and Letters, there is a great Commerce, and a General Acquaintance among Mankind, by which the Laws and the Liberties of all Nations, are known; those that are oppressed and inslaved, may probably Remove, and become the Subjects of England: And if the Subjects increase, the Ships, Excise and Customs, which are the Strength and Revenue of the Kingdom, will in Proportion increase, which may be so Great in a short T I M E, not only to preserve its Antient Soveraignty over the Narrow Seas, but to extend its Dominion over all the Great Ocean: An Empire, not less Glorious, & of a much larger Extent, than either Alexander's or Ceasar's.

|62|*Of the Chief Causes that Promote TRADE.

THE Chief Causes that Promote Trade, (not to mention Good Government, Peace, and Scituation, with other Advantages) are Industry in the Poor, and Liberality in the Rich: Liberality, is the free Usage of all those things that are made by the Industry of the Poor, for the Use of the Body and Mind; It Relates chiefly to Man's self, but doth not hinder him from being Liberal to others.

The Two Extreams to this Vertue, are Prodigality and Covetousness: Prodigality is a Vice that is prejudicial to the Man, but not to Trade; It is living a pace, and spending that in a Year, that should last all his |63| Life: Covetousness is a Vice, prejudicial both to Man & Trade; It starves the Man, and breaks the Trader; and by the same way the Covetous Man thinks he grows rich, he grows poor; for by not consuming the Goods that are provided for Man's Use, there ariseth a dead Stock, called Plenty, and the Value of those Goods fall, and the Covetous Man's Estates, whether in Land, or Mony, become less worth: And a Conspiracy of the Rich Men to be Covetous, and not spend, would be as dangerous to a Trading State, as a Forreign War; for though they themselves get nothing by their Covetousness, nor grow the Richer, yet they would make the Nation poor, and the Government great Losers in the Customs and Excises that ariseth from Expence. |64|

Liberality ought Chiefly to be Exercised in an equal Division of the Expence amongst those things that relate to Food, Cloaths, and Lodging; according to the Portion, or Station, that is allotted to every Man, with some allowance for the more refined Pleasures of the Mind; with such Distributions, as may please both sect of Philosophers, Platonist and Epicureans: The Belly must not be starved to cloath the Back-Part.

Those Expences that most Promote Trade, are in Cloaths and Lodging: In Adorning the Body and the House, There are a Thousand Traders Imploy'd in Cloathing and Decking the Body, and Building, and Furnishing of Houses, for one that is Imploy'd in providing Food. Belonging to Cloaths, is Fashion; which is the Shape or Form of Apparel. |65|

In some places, it is fixt and certain; as all over Asia, and in Spain; but in France, England, and other places, the Dress alters; Fashion or the alteration of Dress, is a great Promoter of Trade, because it occasions the Expence of Cloaths, before the Old ones are worn out: It is the Spirit and Life of Trade; It makes a Circulation, and gives a Value by Turns, to all sorts of Commodities; keeps the great Body of Trade in Motion; it is an Invention to Dress a Man, as if he Lived in a perpetual Spring; he never sees the Autum of his Cloaths: The following of the Fashion, Is a Respect paid to the Prince and his Court, by approving his Choice in the shape of the Dress. It lyes under an ill Name amongst many Grave and Sober People, but without any Just Cause; for those that Exclaim against the |66| Vanity of the New Fashion, and at the same time, commend the Decency of the Old one, forget that every Old Fashion was once New, and then the same Argument might have been used against it. And if an Indian, or Stranger, that never saw any person Cloathed before, were to be Judge of the Controversy, and were to Determin upon seeing at the same time a well Drest-Courtier in the New Fashion, and another in the Old, which is accounted Decent; and a third in the Robes of an Officer, which by common Esteem, had a Reverence: It will be Two to One, against any One of the Grave Fashions; for it's only Use and Custom by which Habits become Grave and Decent, and not any particular Conveniency in the shape; for if Conveniency were the Rule of Commendation, there would arise |67| a Question not Easily to be Determined, Whether the Spanish Garb made strait to the Body, or the loose Habit of the Turks, were to be Chosen? And therefore since all Habits are equally handsome, and hard to know which is most Convenient: The Promoting of New Fashions, ought to be Encouraged, because it provides a Livelihood for a great Part of Mankind.

The next Expence that chiefly promotes Trade, is Building, which is natural to Mankind, being the making of a Nest or Place for his Birth, it is the most proper and vible Distinction of Riches, and Greatness; because the Expences are too Great for Mean Persons to follow. It is a Pleasure fit to entertain Princes; for a Magnificent Structure doth best represent the Majesty of the Person that lives in it, and is the most lasting and |68| truest History of the Greatness of his Person.

Building is the chiefest Promoter of Trade; it Imploys a greater Number of Trades and People, than Feeding or Cloathing: The Artificers that belong to Building, such as Bricklayers, Carpenters, Plaisterers, &c. imploy many Hands; Those that make the Materials for Building, such as Bricks, Lyme, Tyle, &c. imploy more; and with those that Furnish the Houses, such as Upholsterers, Pewterers, &c. they are almost Innumerable.

In Holland, where Trade hath made the Inhabitants very Rich, It is the Care of the Government, to Incourage the Builder, and at the Charge of the State, the Grafts and Streets are made. And at Amsterdam, they have three Times, at great Expence, Thrown down the Walls of their |69| City, and Dreined the Boggs, to make Room for the Builder: For Houses are the Places where the Artificers make their Goods, and Merchants Sell them; and without New Houses, the Trades and Inhabitants could not Increase.

Beside, There is another great Advantage to Trade, by Enlarging of Cities; the Two Beneficial Expences of Cloathing and Lodging, are Increased; Man being Naturally Ambitious, the Living together, occasion Emulation, which is seen by Out-Vying one another in Apparel, Equipage, and Furniture of the House; whereas, if a Man lived Solitary alone, his chiefest Expence, would be Food. It is from this very Custom; If the Gentry of France Living in Cities, with the Invention of Fashion; That France, tho' a Country no way fitted for Trade, has so great a share |70| of it: It is from Fashion in Cloaths, and Living in Cities, That the King of France's Revenues is so great, by which he is become troublesome to his Neighbours, and will always be so, while he can preserve Peace within his own Country; by which, those Fountains of Riches, may run Interrupted into his Exchequer.

|71|*Of the Chief Causes of the Decay of TRADE in England, and Fall of the RENTS of LAND.

THE Two Chief Causes of the Decay of Trade, are the many Prohibitions and high Interest.

The Prohibition of Trade, is the Cause of its Decay; for all Forreign Wares are brought in by the Exchange of the Native: So that the Prohibiting of any Foreign Commodity, doth hinder the Making and Exportation of so much of the Native, as used to be Made and Exchanged for it. The Artificers and Merchants, that Dealt in such Goods, lose their Trades; and the Profit that was gained by such Trades, and laid out amongst other Traders, is Lost. The Native Stock for want of such Ex|72|portation, Falls in Value, and the Rent of the Land must Fall with the Value of the Stock.

The common Argument for the Prohibiting Foreign Commodities, is, That the Bringing in, and Consuming such Foreign Wares, hinders the Making and Consuming the like sort of Goods of our own Native Make and Growth; therefore Flanders-Lace, French-Hats, Gloves, Silks, Westphalia-Bacon, &c. are Prohibited, because it is supposed, they hinder the Consumption of English-Lace, Gloves, Hats, Silk, Bacon, &c. But this is a mistaken Reason, and ariseth by not considering what it is that Occasions Trade. It is not Necessity that causeth the Consumption, Nature may be Satisfied with little; but it is the wants of the Mind, Fashion, and desire of Novelties, and Things scarce, that causeth |73| Trade. A Person may have English-Lace, Gloves, or Silk, as much as he wants, and will Buy no more such; and yet, lay out his Mony on a Point of Venice, Jessimine-Gloves, or French-Silks; he may desire to Eat Westphalia-Bacon, when he will not English; so that, the Prohibition of Forreign Wares, does not necessarily cause a greater Consumption of the like sort of English.

Besides, There is the same wants of the Mind in Foreigners, as in the English; they desire Novelties; they Value English-Cloth, Hats, and Gloves, and Foreign Goods, more than their Native make; so that, tho' the Wearing or Consuming of Forreign Things, might lessen the Consuming of the same sort in England; yet there may not be a lesser Quantity made; and if the same Quantity be made, it |74| will be a greater Advantage to the Nation, if they are Consumed in Foreign Countries, than at Home; because the Charge, and Imploy of the Freight, is Gained by it, which in bulky Goods, may be a Fourth Part of the whole Value.

The particular Trades that expect an Advantage by such Prohibition, are often mistaken; For if the Use of most Commodities depending upon Fashion, which often alters; The Use of those Goods cease. As to Instance, Suppose a Law to Prohibit Cane-Chairs; It would not necessarily follow, That those that make Turkey-Work Chairs, would have a better Trade. For the Fashion may Introduce, Wooden, Leather, or Silk Chairs, (which are already in Use amongst the Gentry, The Cane-Chairs being grown too Cheap and Common) |75| or else, they may lay aside the Use of all Chairs, Introducing the Custom of Lying upon Carpets; the Ancient Roman Fashion; still in Use amongst the Turks, Persians, and all the Eastern Princes.

Lastly, If the Suppressing or Prohibiting of some sorts of Goods, should prove an Advantage to the Trader, and Increase the Consumption of the same sort of our Native Commodity: Yet it may prove a Loss to the Nation. For the Advantage to the Nation from Trade, is, from the Customs, and from those Goods that Imploys most Hands. So that, tho' the Prohibition may Increase, as the Consumption of the like sort of the Native; yet if it should Obstruct the Transporting of other Goods which were Exchanged for them, that Paid more Custom, Freight, or Imployed more Hands in |76| making; The Nation will be a loser by the Prohibition: As to Instance, If Tobacco or Woollen-Cloth were used to Exchange for Westphaly-Bacon, The Nation loseth by the Prohibition, tho' it should Increase the Consumption of English-Bacon; because the First, Pays more Freight, and Custom; and the Latter, Imploys more Hands. By this Rule it appears, That the Prohibiting of all unwrought Goods, such as raw Silk, Cotton, Flax, &c. and all Bulky Goods; such as Wines, Oyls, Fruits, &c. would be a Loss to the Nation; because nothing can be sent in Exchange that Imploys fewer Hands than the First, or Pays greater Freight than the Latter.

It doth not alter the Case, If the Ballance of the Account, or all the Foreign Goods, were bought by Silver or Gold; For |77| Silver and Gold, are Foreign Commodities; Pay but little Freight, and Imploy but few Hands in the Working; And are at First brought into England, by the Exchange of some Native Goods, and having Paid for their coming hither, must Pay for the Carriage out. It is true, That if our Serge, Stuffs, or Cloth, are Exchanged for Unmanufactured Goods, it would be a greater Advantage to the Nation, because of the difference in Number of Hands in the making of the First, and the Later.

But all Trading Countries Study their Advantage of Trade, and Know the difference of the Profit by the Exchange of wrought Goods, for unwrought: And therefore, for any Nation to make a Law to Prohibit all Foreign Goods, but such only as are most Advantageous; Is to put other |78| Nations upon making the same Laws; and the Consequence will be to Ruine all Foreign Trade. For the Foundation of all Forreign Trade, is, from the Exchange of the Native Commodities of each Country, for one another.

To Conclude, If the bringing in of Foreign Goods, should hinder the making and consuming of the Native, which will very seldom happen; this disadvantage is not to be Remedied by a Prohibition of those Goods; but by Laying so great Duties upon them, that they may be always Dearer than those of our Country make: The Dearness will hinder the common Consumption of them, and preserve them for the Use of the Gentry, who may Esteem them, because they are Dear; and perhaps, might not Consume more of the En|79|glish Growth, were the other not Imported. By such Duties, the Revenue of the Crown, will be Increased; And no Exceptions can be taken by any Foreign Prince, or Government; Since it is in the Liberty of every Government, To Lay what Duty or Imposition they please. Trade will continue Open, and Free; and the Traders, Enjoy the Profit of their Trade: The Dead Stock of the Nation, that is more than can be Used, will be Carried off, which will keep up the Price of the Native Stock, and the Rent of the Land.

The next Cause of the Decay of TRADE in England, and the Fall of Rents, is, That Interest is higher in England, than in Holland, and other places of great Trade: It is at Six per Cent. in England, and at Three in Holland; For all Merchants that |80| Trade in the same sort of Goods, to the same Ports, should Trade by the same Interest.

Interest is the Rule of Buying and Selling: And being higher in England, than in Holland; The English Merchant Trades with a Disadvantage, because he cannot Sell the same sort of Goods in the same Port, for the same Value as the Dutch Merchant. The Dutch Merchant can Sell 100 l. worth of Goods, for 103 l. And the English Merchant must Sell the same sort, for 106 l. to make the same Account of Principal and Interest.

When Sir Thomas Gresham had almost the sole Trade of Spain, and the Turky-Company the sole Selling of Cloth into Turky, and several other places; The Difference of Interest was then, no prejudice to Trade, tho' Interest was then in England, at Eight |81| per Cent. Because, whoe're has the sole Trade to a place, may set what Price he pleaseth upon his Goods: But now, Trade is dispersed, the same sort of Manufacture, is made in several Countries. The Dutch and English Merchants, Trade in the same sort of Goods, to the same Forreign Parts, and therefore they ought to Deal by the same Interest, which is the Measure of Trade.

Besides, And the English Merchant hath the same Disadvantage in the Return of the Goods he Buys; for the Dutch Merchant making his Return in the same sort of Goods, can under-Sell him.

By this Difference of Interest, Holland is become to be the great Magazine, and Store-House of this Part of Europe, for all sorts of Goods: For they may be laid up Cheaper in |82| Holland, than in England.

It is impossible for the Merchant when he has Bought his Goods, To know what he shall Sell them for: The Value of them, depends upon the Difference betwixt the Occasion and the Quantity; tho' that be the Chiefest of the Merchants Care to observe, yet it Depends upon so many Circumstances, that it's impossible to know it. Therefore if the plenty of the Goods, has brought down the Price; the Merchant layeth them up, till the Quantity is consumed, and the Price riseth. But the English Merchant, cannot lay up his, but with Disadvantage; for by that time, the Price is risen so as to pay Charges and Interest at Six per Cent. the same Goods are sent for from Holland, and bring down the Price: For they are laid up there, at Three per Cent, and |83| can therefore be Sold Cheaper.

For want of Considering this, in England, many an English Merchant has been undone; for, though by observing the Bill of Lading, he was able to make some Guess of the Stock that was Imported here; and therefore, hath kept his Goods by him for a Rise: But not knowing what Stock there was in Holland, hath not been able to sell his Goods to Profit, the same Goods being brought from thence before the Price riseth high enough to pay Ware-House-Room, and Interest.

So that, now the great part of the English Trade is driven by a quick Return, every Day Buying and Selling, according to a Bill of Rate every day Printed. By this Means, the English Trade is narrowed and confined, and the King loseth the Revenue |84| of Importation, which he would have, if England were the Magazine of Europe; and the Nation loseth the Profit, which would arise from the Hands imploy'd in Freight and Shipping.

Interest being so high in England, is the Cause of the Fall of Rents; for Trade being confined to a Quick Return: And the Merchant being not able to lay up Foreign Goods, at the same Interest as in Holland, he Exports less of the Native; and the Plenty of the Native Stock Brings down the Rent of Land; for the rest of the Land that produceth the Stock, must fall, as the Price of the Stock doth.

Whereas, if Interest were at the same Rates as in Holland, at Three per Cent. it would make the Rent more certain, and raise the Value of the Land.

This Difference of Three per Cent. |85| is so Considerable, that many Dutch Merchants Living in Holland, having Sold their Goods in England; give Order, to put out their Stock to Interest in England; thinking That a better Advantage than they can make by Trade.

It will raise the Rent of some Estates, and preserve the Rent of others: For the Farmer must make up his Account, as the Merchant doth; the Interest of the Stock, must be reckoned, as well as the Rent of Land: Now if the Farmer hath 300 l. Stock, upon his Farm, that is so easily Rented, that he Lives well upon it; he may add 9 l. per Annum more to the Rent, when the Interest is at Three per Cent. and make the same Account of Profit from the Farm: As he doth now Interest, is at Six per Cent. And those Farmers that are hard |86| Rented, having the same Stock, will have 9 l. per Annum Advance in the Account, towards the Easing the Rent: For altho' the Farmer gets nothing more at the Years end, yet in making up of Account, there must 9 l. add to the Value of Land, and taken from the Account of the Stock. If Interest were at Three per Cent. there would always be a Magazine of Corn and Wooll in England, which would be a great Advantage to the Farmer, and make his Rent more certain; for there are Years of Plenty, and Scarcity; and there are more Farmers undone by Years of great Plenty, than Recover themselves in Years of Scarcity; for when the Price is very low, the Crop doth not pay the Charge of Sowing, Farming, and Carrying to Market; and when it is Dear, It doth not fall to all Mens For|87|tune that were losers by Plenty, to have a Crop: Now if Interest were at Three per Cent. Corn and Wooll in Years of great Plenty, would be Bought and Laid up to be Sold in Years of Scarcity. The Buying in Years of Plenty, would keep the Price from Falling too Low; and the Selling in Years of Scarcity, would prevent it from Rising too High; by this means, a moderate Price, being best upon Corn and Wooll; the Farmers Stock and Rent of the Land, would be more certain.

But now Holland being the great Magazine of Corn, Man will Lay up any considerable Quantity in England at Six per Cent. when he may always Buy as much as he wants, that was Laid up at Three per Cent. and may bring it from thence, as Soon, and as Cheap, into any Parts of |88| England, as if it were Laid up here.

Thirdly, If Interest were at Three per Cent. the Land of England, would be worth from Thirty Six, to Forty Years Purchase; for Interest, sets the Price in the Buying and Selling of Land.

The bringing down of Interest, will not alter the Value of other Wares; for the Value of all Wares, arriveth from their Use; and the Dearness and Cheapness of them, from their Plenty and Scarcity: Nor will it make Mony more Scarce. For if the Law allow no more Interest, than Three per Cent. they that Live upon it, must Lend at that rate, or have no Interest; for they cannot put it forth any where else to better Advantage. But if it be supposed, That it may make Mony scarce, and that it |89| may be a Prejudice to the Government, who want the Advance of the Mony; It may be provided for, by a Clause, that all that Lend Mony to the King, shall have 6 l. per Cent.; such Advantage would make all Men Lend to the Government: And the King will save two per Cent. by such a Law.

The seeming Prejudice from such a Law, is, It will lessen the Revenue of those who live upon Interest: But this will not be a General Prejudice; for many of those Persons have Land as well as Mony, and will get as much by the Rise of one, as the by the Fall of the other. Besides, many of them, are Persons that live Thriftily, and much within the Compass of their Estates; and therefore, will not want it, but in Opinion. They have had a long Time, the Advantage of |90| the Borrower; for the Land yielding but 4 l. per Cent. and the Interest being at 6 l. per Cent. a new Debt is every Year contracted of 2 l. per Cent. more than the Value of the Debt in Land will pay, which hath Devoured many a good Farm; and eat up the Estates of many of the Ancient Gentry of England.

Moses, that Wise Law-Giver, who designed, that the Land, divided amongst the Jews, should continue in their Families; forbid the Jews, to pay Interest, well knowing that the Merchants of Tyre, who were to be their near Neighbours, would, by Lending Mony at Interest, at last get their Lands: And that this seems to be the Reason, is plain; For the Jews might take Interest of Strangers, but not pay; for by taking Interest, they could not lose their Estates.

The Lawyers have invented In|91|tails, to preserve Estates in Families; and the bringing down of Interest to Three per Cent. will much help to continue it; because the Estates being raised to double the Value, will require double the Time, after the same Proportion of Expence to Consume it in.

The raising the Value of Land, at this Time, seems most necessary, when the Nation is Engaged in such a Chargeable War: For the Land is the Fund that must support and preserve the Government; and the Taxes will be lesser and easier payd; for they will not be so great: For 3 sh. in the Pound, is now 133½ Part of every Mans Estate in Land, reckoning at Twenty Years Purchase. But if the Value of the Land be doubled, it will be the 226 Part of the Land, which may be much easier born. |92|

Campinella, who Wrote an 100 years since, upon considering of the great Tract of the Land of France; says, That if ever it were United under one Prince, it would produce so great a Revenue; It might give Law to all Europe.11

The Effect of this Calculation, Is since, seen by the Attempts of this present King of France: And therefore, since England is an Island, and the Number of Acres cannot be Increased; It seems absolutely necessary, That the Value of them, should be raised to Defend the Nation against such a Powerful Force: It will be some Recompence to the Gentry, whose Lands must bear the Burthen of the VVar, to have the Value of their Estates Raised; which is the Fund and Support of the Government; Is a great Advantage to the whole Nation; and it's the greater, because it doth not Disturb, Lessen, nor Alter the Value of any Thing else.
|93|
FINIS.

[1.]Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (Jena), Bd. XXI (1890), N. F., pp. 561-590; also "Barbon" in "Dictionary of Political Economy" (ed. Palgrave), Vol. I, pp. 119-121.

[2.][2] "Praisegod Barebone" in "Dictionary of National Biography" (ed. Stephen), Vol. III, p. 151.

[3.]"A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money lighter. In Answer to Mr. Lock's Considerations about raising the Value of Money" (London, 1696).

[4.]The formal collation of the tract is as follows: Title page, reverse blank; Preface, nine folios without pagination; Contents, one folio; Text, ninety-two folios. Size, small 16mo.

[5.][5] In the original tract the pages of "The Preface" and "The Contents" are unnumbered.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[6.]"England's Treasure by Forraign Trade. Or, The Ballance of our Forraign Trade is The Rule of our Treasure" (London, 1664); see chapter I ('The knowledge and qualities, which are required to be in a perfect Merchant of forraign trade').

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[7.]Ibid., chap. II ('The means to enrich the Kingdom, and to encrease our Treasure').

Essay 5, Of the Use and Benefit of Trade

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[8.]"Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae. Edito emendatior et copiosior, consilio B. G. Niebuhrii C. F. instituta auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Regiae Borussicae Continuata, Pars II: Procopius" (Bonnae, 1883); see I, 249-255 (De Bello Persico) and II, 162 (De Bello Gotthico).

[9.]"Ypodigma Neustriae" (ed. by Henry Thomas Riley in Gt. Brit. Rolls Chron., London, 1876); cf. p. 292 (A. D. 1349). The work was first published in 1574, and again appeared, as part of the "Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, a Veteribus scripta," of William Camden, published at Frankfort in 1603.

[10.]Sir Matthew Hale (1609-76) "The Primitive Origination of Mankind, considered and examined according to the Light of Nature." According to the "Dictionary of National Biography" (XXIV, 22), the work was not published until after Hale's death.

Essay 7, Of the Chief Causes of the Decay of TRADE in England, and Fall of the RENTS of LAND

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1690 Barbon text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[11.]"Th. Campenella de Monarchia Hispania." Editio novissima, aucta et emendata ut praefatio ad lectorem indicat (Amsterodami, 1653); see chap. XXIV (De Gallia), p. 187.
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3: 3. Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade (1691)

Dudley North was born the son of the fourth Baron North in 1641. It is said that he was stolen by a beggar-woman for his clothes as a child but was soon recovered. He showed no taste for book learning early in life and was apprenticed to an English merchant named Davis, who made him agent to the Turkish trade at Smyrna in 1661 and Constantinople in 1662. By all accounts, he was a vigorous and successful factor, giving life to what had been a rather sluggish trade there. He was made treasurer of the Turkey Company, and there was apparently some talk of his becoming ambassador of England to Constantinople. Having made a fortune, he returned to London in 1680, a respected man of the world, fluent in Turkish and some of the dialects of the Levant. In 1682, he was named sheriff of London, to the great dismay of the Whigs. Afterward, he became a commissioner for the customs and an agent in the treasury as well as a Tory member of Parliament from Banbury during the reign of James II. After the accession of William of Orange in 1689, he remained in London and was the subject of an inconclusive inquiry for his role in packing the juries that condemned Algernon Sidney and others in 1682. Thereafter, he was active mainly in commercial ventures until his death on the last day of 1691. The work reprinted here is Discourses upon Trade (1691; repr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1907, ed. Jacob H. Hollander), and is one of the earliest attempts to theorize as a whole the workings of a market economy in England.

Sir Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade. A Reprint of Economic Tracts, ed. Jacob H. Hollander (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1907).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/299 on 2009-04-23

The text is in the public domain.

INTRODUCTION
by Jacob H. Hollander, Ph. D.

Professor of Political Economy
Johns Hopkins University

The circumstances under which the remarkable tract here reprinted, was written and published are described by Sir Dudley North's brother and biographer, Roger North.1 It is doubtful whether the essay, as originally printed, received any attention or served any use. For a considerable period, indeed, it was supposed to be entirely lost. Writing in 1744, Roger North intimated that the tract was designedly suppressed, and declared "it is certain the pamphlet is, and hath been ever since, utterly sunk, and a copy not to be had for money."2

North's work remained neglected and forgotten for more than a century. With the heightened interest in economic discussion growing out of the Bank restriction and the corn-law debates, the attention of the little group of liberals, just then beginning to call themselves with some confidence "political economists", was drawn by the references, in Roger North's biographies, to the "Discourses" and to the economic opinions of Sir Dudley North.3

We are told, that many searches and inquiries were thereafter made for the pamphlet, but without result. Not until the sale of Ruding's library was a copy brought to light, taken to Edinburgh, and a small, admirably printed impression struck off from the Ballantyne press, with an unsigned prefatory "Advertisement."4 We may suspect McCulloch, then doubtless beginning his great collection of economic texts, of being both purchaser and editor. Certainly it is to this indefatigable Scotch bibliophile-economist that the circulation of the tract and the appreciation of its author were thenceforth due.5

In 1846 the pamphlet was again issued in limited edition by the Blacks, probably through McCulloch's influence and with a preface not unlikely from his pen, and in 1856 it was included in the 'select collection of early English tracts on commerce' edited by McCulloch for the Political Economy Club. All of these reprints have become but a degree less scarce than the original tract.

North's essay is of interest rather than of influence in the development of economic thought and action. Even here cautious critics may not concur in McCulloch's unqualified verdict that the tract contains "a more able and comprehensive statement of the true principles of commerce than any that had primarily appeared, either in the English or any other language."6 But withal the pamphlet is a notable performance, and its re-issue in accessible form will be welcomed by students of the history of economic theory.

The present edition is a reprint of the "Discourses" as issued in 1691. The general appearance of the title page has been preserved, and the original pagination has been indicated.7
The original title page.

Discourses
UPON
TRADE;
Principally Directed to the
CASES
OF THE
Interest, Coynage, Clipping, Increase, of MONEY.

LONDON:
Printed for Tho. Basset, at the
George in Fleet-Street. 1691.

THE PREFACE.

These Papers came directed to me, in order, as I suppose, to be made Publick: And having transmitted them to the Press, which is the only means whereby the University of Mankind is to be inform'd, I am absolv'd of that Trust.

The Author is pleas'd to conceal himself; which after perusal of his Papers, I do not ascribe to any Diffidence of his Reasons, the Disgusts of Great Men, nor overmuch Modesty, which are the ordinary Inducements for lying hid; but rather to avoid the Fatigue of digesting, and polishing his Sentiments into such accurate Method, and clean Style, as the World commonly expects from Authors: I am confident he seeks only the Publick Good, and little regards Censure for the want of Neatness, and Dress, whereof he seems to make a slight account, and to rely wholly upon the Truth, and Justice of his Matter; yet he may reasonably decline the being noted, for either a careless, or an illiterate Person.

The Publick is an acute, as well as merciless Beast, which neither over-sees a Failing, nor forgives it; but stamps Judgment and Execution immediately, thô upon a Member of itself; and is no less Ingrateful than common Beggars, who affront their Benefactors, without whose Charity their Understandings would starve. |[ii]|*

Wherefore I cannot but excuse our Friend's Retiredment, and shall take advantage of his absence so far, as to speak of his Discourses with more freedom, then I verily believe his Presence would bear.

As for the Style, you will find it English, such as Men speaks, which, according to Horace, is the Law and Rule ofLanguage.8Nor do I perceive that the Gentleman intended more than his Title holds forth; common Discourses, which possibly were taken by an Amanuensis, and dispatcht without much Correction. Surely no Man would refuse the Conversation of an ingenious Friend, because he doth not speak like Tully; And if the Conversation be so desirable, why should we quarrel with the same thing in Writing? Nay, it is very impolitick, by such Exactions of Labour and Pains, to discourage all Ingenious Persons from medling in Print, whereby we lose the benefit of their Judgment, in matters of common concern.

Words are indeed a Felicity, which some have in great perfection; but many times, like a fair Face, prove Temptations to Vice; for I have known very good Sence neglected, and post-poned to an Elegance of Expression; whereas if Words are wanted, the whole Effort is made by pure strength of Reason, and that only is relied on.

The Lawyers in their Deeds, wave all the Decorums of Language, and regard only incontrovertible Expressions. The Merchants in their Policies and Exchanges, use no one Word but what is necessary to their Point, because the Matter and Substance only is intended, and not the Dress; Why then should Reasoners be incumbred, beyond what is necessary to make their Reason understood?

To speak very short, and yet clear, is a Vertue to be envyed; and if directed to Persons, or Assemblies whose business is great, or made so by many Mens interposing in it, it is absolutely necessary; for your Discourse, if it be |[iii]| tedious, is better spared than the time; but it is not so in dealing with lazy Ignorance of any sort, or an Ear-itching Rabble, who are actually impertinent (as well as impetuous) and not sensible of cheat. And I may add, That in Writing, unless in the Epistolary way, (which being supposed hasty, ought to be short and figurative) an abundance of Words is more pardonable than obscurity, or want of Sence, because we take our own time, and have leisure to peruse it.

I will grant that amongst opulent and idle Persons, as well as Schollars, whose business lies in Words, the bare polishing of Language, is one of the most commendable Entertainments; and to them we resign it; for to Men of business, it is the most hateful thing, I mean, meer Idleness.

I grant also, that delicacy of Words, now most used in Poetry, is useful for disposing way-ward People to learn, or make them endure to read. But the World is not at such low ebb of Curiosity in this Age. Men are forward enough to run their Noses into Books, especially such as deal in Faction and Controversie: And it were well if they were either Wrote or Read with as much Integrity as Industry; we have no need of Sugar-plum devices to wheedle Men into Reading, they are Inquisitive enough; and if the Subject be their own Interest, I am of Opinion, if you can make 'em understand it, you may trust them.

As for the Method used in these Papers, there is so little of it affected, that I am afraid some will say there is none at all: I never thought that true Method consisted in affected Divisions, and Sub-divisions, Firsts, Seconds, Sub-firsts, &c. tho' all that is very useful in Works intended to be consulted as Repertories; but where the Understanding is to be informed, it is meer trash, and the business is often lost in it. |[iv]|

And in such Designs it is enough, if Things lie in the Order of Nature, and the Conclusion is not put before the Premisses, so that the course of the Argument is limpid, and intelligible: A Friend of mine used to say, That if the First Chapter were before the Second, it was all the Method he cared for, meaning only what I have observed, which I suppose you will find here.

This drudgery of Digesting, is another Excise upon Sence, which keeps back a great deal of it from coming forth; and without a singular tallent, and much exercise, it makes composing extreamly difficult. I do not understand why other Men, as well as Mountaigne,9may not be indulged to ramble in Essays, provided the Sence fails not.

The Scalligerana,10 Pirroana,11 Pensees,12and Mr. Selden's Table-talk,13are all heaps of incoherent scraps; yet for the wit and spirit esteemed; therefore let that which is most valuable, Reason and Truth be encouraged to come abroad, without imposing such chargeable Equipages upon it, whereby Writers are made to resemble Brewers Horses, very useful Animals, but arrant Drudges.

Methinks when I meet with a great deal of Firsting, and Seconding, I smell one who conceits himself an Author, a Creature as fulsome as any other sort of Impertinents. If there be Reason, and that understood, what could the formal Methodist add? Let me have the Cockle, and who will take the gay shell.

Now after all this it will be injust, not to say somewhat of the Subject-matter of these Discourses, which is Commerce and Trade; and the Author's manner of Treating it.

He seems to be of a Temper different from most, who have medled with this Subject in Publick; for it is manifest, his Knowledge and Experience of Trade is |[v]| considerable, which could not be attained, unless he were a Trader himself; and yet it is not to be collected from anything he says, of what Nature his dealing hath been; for he speaks impartially of Trade in general, without warping to the Favour of any particular Interest. It hath been observed formerly, when Merchants have been consulted, and the Questions concerned only Trade in general, they agreed in Opinion; but when opposite Interests were concerned they differed toto cælo. As for his Opinion touching Interest of Money, wherein he is clear, that it should be left freely to the Market, and not be restrained by Law, he is lyable to the same suspicion, which attends those of a different Judgment; that is, partiality to his own Interest; the difference is only in the supposed Cause, which in the one, is Wealth, and in the other Want. He hath given his Judgment with his Reasons, which every one is free to canvas; and there is no other means whereby a wise and honest Person can justifie his Opinions in Publick Concerns.

In the next place, I find Trade here Treated at another rate, than usually hath been; I mean Philosophically: for the ordinary and vulgar conceits, being meer Husk and Rubbish, are waved; and he begins at the quick, from Principles indisputably true; and so proceeding with like care, comes to a Judgment of the nicest Disputes and Questions concerning Trade. And this with clearness enough, for he reduceth things to their Extreams, wherein all discriminations are most gross and sensible, and then shows them; and not in the state of ordinary concerns, whereof the terms are scarce distinguishable.

This Method of Reasoning hath been introduc'd with the new Philosophy, the old dealt in Abstracts more than |[vi]| Truths; and was employed about forming Hypotheses, to fit abundance of precarious and insensible Principles; such as the direct or oblique course of the Atomes in vacuo, Matter and Form, Privation, solid Orbs, fuga vacui, and many others of like nature; whereby they made sure of nothing; but upon the appearance of Des Carte's excellent dissertation de Methodo, so much approved and accepted in our Ages, all those Chymera's soon dissolved and vanisht.

And hence it is, that Knowledge in great measure is become Mechanical; which word I need not interpret farther, than by noting, it here means, built upon clear and evident Truths. But yet this great Improvement of Reason which the World hath lately obtained, is not diffus'd enough, and resides chiefly with the studious and learned, the common People having but a small share; for they cannot abstract, so as to have a true and just thought of the most ordinary things, but are possest and full of the vulgar Errors of sense: Except in some few things that fall within the compass of their day-labour, and so gives them an Experience; As when a Common-Seaman, with all his Ignorance, proves a better Mechanick, for actual Service, than the Professor himself, with all his Learning.

The case of Trade is the same; for although to buy and sell, be the Employment of every man, more or less; and the Common People, for the most part, depend upon it for their dailysubsistence; yet there are very few who consider Trade in general upon true Principles, but are satisfied to understand their own particular Trades, and which way to let themselves into immediate gain. And out of this active Sphere nothing is so fallacious, and full of Error, as mens Notions of Trade. And there is another Reason, why this matter seems less understood, |[vii]| than in truth it is. For whenever Men consult for the Publick Good, as for the advancement of Trade, wherein all are concerned, they usually esteem the immediate Interest of their own to be the common Measure of Good and Evil. And there are many, who to gain a little in their own Trades, care not how much others suffer; and each Man strives, that all others may be forc'd, in their dealings, to act subserviently for his Profit, but under the covert of the Publick.

So Clothiers would have men be forc'd to buy their Manufacture; and I may mention such as sell Wool, they would have men forc'd to buy of them at an high Price, though the Clothier loseth. The Tinners would have their Tin dear, though the Merchant profits little: And in general all those who are lazy, and do not, or are not active enough, and cannot look out, to vent the Product of their Estates, or to Trade with it themselves, would have all Traders forc'd by Laws, to bring home to them sufficient Prizes, whether they gain or lose by it. And all the while, not one of them will endure to be under a force, to Sell, or Let their own Estates at lower rates, than the free Market of things will produce.

Now it is no wonder, that out of these Ingredients a strange Medley of Error should result, whereby seldom any Publick Order, which hath been establisht, and intended, or at least pretended for the good of Trade in general, hath had a suitable Effect; but on the contrary, hath for the most part proved prejudicial, and thereupon, by common consent, been discontinued. But this is too copious Matter for a Preface, and tho' many Instances occur, I leave all, and return to the matter of Vulgar Errors in Trade.

It is not long since there was a great noise with Inquiriesinto the Balance of Exportation and Importation; |[viii]| and so into the Balance of Trade, as they called it. For it was fancyed that if we brought more Commodities in, than we carried out, we were in the High-way to Ruin. In like manner have we heard much said against the East-India Trade, against the French Trade, with many other like politick conceits in Trade; most of which, Time and better Judgment hath disbanded; but others succeed in their room, according as new Persons find Encouragement to invent, and inspire, for promoting their private Interest, by imposing on those, who desire to be cunning. And now we complain for want of Money in specie, that Bullion is Exported or mis-employed to other uses, than making Money; and ascribe the deadness of Trade, especially of Corn, and Cattel in the Country, to this; and hope by a Regulation of the Bullion-Trade, and stinting the Price, except it be in Money, to make a thorough Reformation, and give new Life to all things, with, much more, ejusdem farina, which I do not particularize, this being enough for a taste.

Now it may appear strange to hear it said,

That the whole World as to Trade, is but as one Nation or People, and therein Nations are as Persons.

That the loss of a Trade with one Nation, is not that only, separately considered, but so much of the Trade of the World rescinded and lost, for all is combined together.

That there can be no Trade unprofitable to the Publick; for if any prove so, men leave it off; and whereever the Traders thrive, the Publick, of which they are a part, thrives also.

That to force Men to deal in any prescrib'd manner, may profit such as happen to serve them; but the Publick gains not, because it is taking from one Subject, to give to another. |[ix]|

That no Laws can set Prizes in Trade, the Rates of which, must and will make themselves: But when such Laws do happen to lay any hold, it is so much Impediment to Trade, and therefore prejudicial.

That Money is a Merchandize, whereof there may be a glut, as well as a scarcity, and that even to an Inconvenience.

That a People cannot want Money to serve the ordinary dealing, and more than enough they will not have.

That no Man shall be the richer for the making much Money, nor have any part of it, but as he buys it for an equivalent price.

That the free Coynage is a perpetual Motion found out, whereby to Melt and Coyn without ceasing, and so to feed Goldsmiths and Coyners at the Publick Charge.

That debasing the Coyn is defrauding one another, and to the Publick there is no sort of Advantage from it; for that admits no Character, or Value, but Intrinsick.

That the sinking Money by Allay or Weight is all one.

That Exchange and ready Money, are the same, nothing but Carriage and re-carriage being saved.

That Money Exported in Trade is an increase to the Wealth of the Nation; but spent in War, and Payments abroad, is so much Impoverishment.

In short, That all favour to one Trade or Interest against another, is an Abuse, and cuts so much of Profit from the Publick. With many other like Paradoxes, no less strange to most men, than true in themselves; but in my Opinion, clearly flowing from the Principles, and Discourses that follow, which you may freely peruse and censure, for now I have done. |[x]|

* A DISCOURSE Concerning the Abatement of INTEREST.

Arguments for Abatement of Interest are many, viz.

I. When Interest is less, Trade is incourag'd, and the Merchant can be a Gainer; whereas, when it is great, the Usurer, or Money-owner takes all.
II. The Dutch, with whom Interest is low, Trade cheaper, and under-sell us.
III. Land falls in value, as Interest riseth.

With divers others, whereof the Facts may be true, but proceed from another Cause, and conduce nothing to the purpose for which they are alledg'd.

I shall not formally apply myself to answer all the Arguments and Discourses, that commonly are found in Pamphlets, and Conversation upon this Subject; as if I were to Advocate the Cause of Interest: But give my thoughts impartially in the whole matter, with regard to the Profit of the whole Nation, and to no particular Persons project: Wherein I hope to propose, that which |2| may resolve any doubt that can be raised, and leave every one to apply it, as they think fit.

The Question to be considered is, Whether the Government have reason by a Law, to prohibit the taking more than 4 l. per Cent. Interest for Money lent, or to leave the Borrower and Lender to make their own Bargains.

In the Disquisition of this, many things are to be considered, and particularly such as relate to Trade, of which a true Notion will set right a World of Mistakes, wherefore that now shall be chiefly treated of.

Trade is nothing else but a Commutation of Superfluities; for instance: I give of mine, what I can spare, for somewhat of yours, which I want, and you can spare.

Thus Trade, whilst it is restrained within the limits of a Town, Country, or Nation, signifieth only the Peoples supplying each other with Conveniences, out of what that Town, Country, or Nation affords.

And in this, he who is most diligent, and raiseth most Fruits, or maketh most of Manufactory, will abound most in what others make, or raise; and consequently be free from Want, and enjoy most Conveniences, which is truly to be Rich, altho' there were no such thing as Gold, Silver, or the like amongst them.

Mettals are very necessary for many Uses, and are to be reckon'd among the Fruits and Manufactories of the World. And of these, Gold and Silver being by nature very fine, and more scarce than others, are higher prized; and a little of them is very reasonably esteem'd equal in value with a great quantity of other Mettals, &c. For which reason, and moreover that they are imperishable, as well as convenient for easie stowage and removal, and not from any Laws, they are made |3| a Standard, or common Measure to deal with; and all Mankind concur in it, as every one knows, therefore I need not inlarge further in this matter.

Now it is to be consider'd, that Mankind being fallen into a way of commuting in this manner, to serve their occasions, some are more provident, others more profuse; some by their Industry and Judgment raise more Fruits from the Earth, than they consume in supplying their own occasions; and then the surplus remains with them, and is Property or Riches.

And Wealth thus contracted, is either commuted for other Mens Land (supposing all Men to have had some) or massed up in heaps of Goods; be the same of Mettals, or anything valuable. And those are the Rich, who transmit what they have to their Posterity; whereby particular Families become rich; and of such are compounded Cities, Countries, Nations, &c.

And it will be found, that as some particular Men in a Town grow richer, and thrive better than others; so also do Nations, who by Trade serving the occasions of their Neighbours, supply themselves with what they have occasion for from abroad; which done, the rest is laid up, and is Silver, Gold, &c. for as I said, these being commutable for everything, and of small bulk, are still preferr'd to be laid up, till occasion shall call them out to supply other Necessaries wanted.

Now Industry and Ingenuity having thus distinguisht Men into Rich and Poor; What is the consequence? One rich Man hath Lands, not only more than he can manage, but so much, that letting them out to others, he is supplied with a large over-plus, so needs no farther care.

Another rich Man hath Goods; that is, Mettals, Manufactures, &c. in great quantity, with these he serves |4| his own occasions, and then commutes the rest in Trade; that is, supplies others with what they want, and takes in exchange what they had of, beyond their own occasions, whereby managing cunningly, he must always advance.

Now as there are more Men to Till the Ground than have Land to Till, so also there will be many who want Stock to manage; and also (when a Nation is grown rich) there will be Stock for Trade in many hands, who either have not the skill, or care not for the trouble of managing it in Trade.

But as the Landed Man letts his Land, so these still lett their Stock; this latter is call'd Interest, but is only Rent for Stock, as the other is for Land. And in several Languages, hiring of Money, and Lands, are Terms of common use; and it is so also in some Countries in England.

Thus to be a Landlord, or a Stock-lord is the same thing; the Landlord hath the advantage only in this: That his Tenant cannot carry away the Land, as the Tenant of the other may the Stock; and therefore Land ought to yield less profit than Stock, which is let out at the greater hazard.

These things consider'd, it will be found, that as plenty makes cheapness in other things, as Corn, Wool, &c. when they come to Market in greater Quantities than there are Buyers to deal for, the Price will fall; so if there be more Lenders than Borrowers, Interest will also fall; wherefore it is not low Interest makes Trade, but Trade increasing, the Stock of the Nation makes Interest low.

It is said, that in Holland Interest is lower than in England. I answer, It is; because their Stock is greater than ours. I cannot hear that they ever made a Law |5| to restrain Interest, but am certainly informed, that at this day, the Currant Interest between Merchant and Merchant, when they disburse Money for each others Account, is 6 per Cent. and the Law justifies it.

I allow Money is many times lent at 3, and 4 per Cent. but it is upon Mortgages, out of which the State hath a Duty, and by the course of Titles there, such dealing is perfectly safe; and this is still by private consent and agreement, and not by co-ersion and order of Law. The like often happens here, when poor Widows and Orphans purchase the Security of their Livelihoods, and punctual Payment, by lending at small Interest, to such as need not the Money.

It might not be amiss in this place, to say somewhat of the Publick Banks that are in Forreign Parts, as Amsterdam, Venice, &c. but that is a Subject I have not time to dilate upon: I shall only say, that it is a cunning way of supplying the Government once with a great Sum; and as long as the Government stands, it is no loss to them that have the Credit, nor no great Inconveniency; for all Bills of Exchange are made by Law payable in Bank, and not otherwise; for Dealers in Exchanges it is best that way, and such as want their Money, find no difficulty in selling their Credits, the price of which riseth and falleth according to Demanders, as of other things.

I do not understand that true, two14 Banks pay any Interest; it is true there are several Funds, viz. The Mint in Venice, and the Chamber in Amsterdam, with several others in those and other Cities, where Money is put out at Interest for Lives, and several other ways, and at different Rates, more or less, according to the Credit these Funds have, which are the Security; and these may, by mistake, be called the Banks, which they are not, being only such as the Chamber of London, East-India-House, &c. were. |6|

I do not believe, but the Usurer, according to the saying, will take half a Loaf, rather than no bread: But I averr, that high Interest will bring Money out from Hoards, Plate, &c. into Trade, when low Interest will keep it back.

Many Men of great Estates, keep by them for State and Honour, great Quantities of Plate, Jewels, &c. which certainly they will be more inclin'd to do, when Interest is very low, than when it is high.

Such as have nothing to subsist by, but the Interest of Money, must either let it out, or Trade with it themselves, and be contented with what they can get; but that hinders not, but very many other Men, who are rich, and not so prest, may, if Interest be very low, choose to make use of their Stocks in Jewels, Plate, &c. rather than run the hazards, and be at the trouble of dealing with necessitous and knavish Men, such as many Borrowers are, for inconsiderable gains.

So that it cannot be denied, but the lowering of Interest may, and probably will keep some Money from coming abroad into Trade; whereas on the contrary, high Interest certainly brings it out.

Next is to be considered, that Dealings between Borrowers and Lenders are of two kinds: 1. Upon Mortgage, or Pawn. 2. Upon Personal Security, and that either by single Bond, or with Sureties; all which, as they differ in goodness, so ought in reason to bear different Prizes. Shall any Man be bound to lend a single Person, upon the same Terms, as others lend upon Mortgages, or Joynt Obligations?

Then again it is to be considered, that the Moneys imployed at Interest in this Nation, are not near the Tenth part, disposed to Trading People, wherewith to manage their Trades; but are for the most part lent |7| for the supplying of Luxury, and to support the Expence of Persons, who though great Owners of Lands, yet spend faster than their Lands bring in; and being loath to sell, choose rather to mortgage their Estates.

So that in truth an Ease to Interest, will rather be a Support to Luxury, than to Trade; the poor Trading Man, who hath but a narrow Stock, or none at all, supplies himself by buying Goods of rich Men at time, and thereby pays Interest, not at the rate of 5, 6, or 8, but 10, 12, and more per Cent. And this is not in the Power of any Legislature to prevent, or remedy.

It may be said, let him take Money at Interest, and not buy at Time. But then Men must be found, that will lend; the Legislative must provide a Fund to borrow upon.

The Trade of setting out Ships, runs very much upon this course, wherein it is usual to Bum'em (as they call it) at 36 per Cent. And this cannot be remedied; and if it were, it would be a stop, as well to the Building, as the setting out of many Ships; whereby, after all, not only the publick, but the private Persons concern'd are Gainers for the most part.

Thus when all things are considered, it will be found best for the Nation to leave the Borrowers and the Lender to make their own Bargains, according to the Circumstances they lie under; and in so doing you will follow the course of the wise Hollanders, so often quoted on this account: and the consequences will be, that when the Nation thrives, and grows rich, Money will be to be had upon good terms, but the clean contrary will fall out, when the Nation grows poorer and poorer.

Let any one Answer me, why do not the Legislators in those poor Countries, where Interest is at 10, & 12 per Cent, make such Laws to restrain Interest, and reduce |8| it for the good of the People? If they should attempt it, it wou'd soon appear, that such Laws would not be effectual to do it. For when there are more Borrowers than Lenders, as in poor Countries, where if a rich Man hath 100 l. to dispose, and there are four, five or more Men striving for it; the Law would be evaded by underhand Bargains, making Loans in Goods, drawing Bills, and a thousand Ways beside; which cannot be prevented.

It is probable that when Laws restrain Interest of Money, below the Price, which the Reason of Trade settles, and Traders cannot (as we will suppose) evade the Law, or not without great difficulty, or hazard, and have not Credit to borrow at Legal Interest, to make, or increase their Stock; so much of Trade is lopt off; and there cannot be well a greater obstruction to diminish Trade then that would be. The consideration of all these Matters, makes out an universal Maxime, That as more Buyers than Sellers raiseth the price of a Commodity, so more Borrowers than Lenders, will raise Interest.

And the State may with as much Justice make a Law that Lands which heretofore have been Lett for 10 s. per Acre, shall not now be Lett for above 8 s. per Acre, as that Money, or Stock, from 5 per Cent, shall be Lett for 4 per Cent, the Property being as good, and as much the Substance of the Kingdom in the one, as in the other.

I will not say any thing to the Theological Arguments against Interest of Moneys; by those 3 per Cent is no more lawful, than 4, or 12. But this I shall maintain Politically, that if you take away Interest, you take away Borrowing and Lending. And in consequence the Gentry, who are behind hand, be it for what cause soever, must sell, and cannot Mortgage; which will bring down the Price of Land. And the Trader whatever his |9| skill is, if he hath no Stock, must either sit still, or buy at Time, which is Interest under another Name. And they who are poor, will always be so, and we should soon relapse into the state of One Thousand Years ago.

And whereas the Stock of the Nation is now reckon'd great, let it be fairly valued, and it will be found much less than it seems to be; for all the Monies that are owing upon Land Securities, must be struck off, and not estimated; or else you will have a wrong Account; for if a Gentleman of 500 l. per Annum, owes 8000 l. and you value his Land, and the Lender's Stock both, you make an account of the same thing twice.

And whereas we make great Accounts of Money'd Men in the Nation, in truth there are but few; for suppose all that have lent upon Mortgage, had Land for their Moneys, as indeed in strictness of Law they have, there wou'd be but few Money'd Men in the Nation left. The borrowing of Money of one, to pay another, call'd, Robbing of Peter to pay Paul, so much practis'd now-a-days, makes us think the Nation far richer than it is.

10|*A Discourse of COYNED MONEY.

IN the former Discourse, it hath been already made appear, that Gold and Silver for their scarcity, have obtained in small quantities, to equal in value far greater quantities of other Metals, &c. And farther, from their easie Removal, and convenient Custody, have also obtained to be the common Measure in the World between Man and Man in their dealings, as well for Land, Houses, &c., as for Goods and other Necessaries.

For the greater Improvement of this Convenience, and to remove some Difficulties, which would be very troublesome, about knowing quantities and qualities in common and ordinary dealing: Princes and States have made it a matter of Publick concern, to ascertain the Allay, and to determine the Weights, viz. the quantities of certain Pieces, which we call Coyn, or Money; and such being distinguish'd by Stamps, and Inscriptions, it is made difficult, and highly Penal to Counterfeit them.

By this means the Trade of the World is made easie, and all the numerous species of several Commodities have a common Measure. Besides the Gold and Silver being thus coyned into Money, and so become more useful for Commerce than in the Log or Block, hath in all places, except in England since the free Coynage, reasonably obtained a greater value than it had before: And that not only above the real charge of making it so, but is become a State-Revenue (ex|11|cept as before) tho' not very great. Whereas if Silver coyned and uncoyned bore the same rate, as it doth with us in England, where it is coyned at the Charge of the Publick, it will be lyable frequently to be melted down, as I shall shew anon.

Money being thus the Common Measure of Buying and Selling, every body who hath any thing to sell, and cannot procure Chapmen for it, is presently apt to think, that want of Money in the Kingdom, or Country is the cause why his Goods do not go off; and so, want of Money, is the common Cry; which is a great mistake, as shall be shewn. I grant all stop in Trade proceeds from some cause; but it is not from the want of specifick Money, there being other Reasons for it; as will appear by the following Discourse.

No Man is richer for having his Estate all in Money, Plate, &c. lying by him, but on the contrary, he is for that reason the poorer. That man is richest, whose Estate is in a growing condition, either in Land at Farm, Money at Interest, or Goods in Trade: If any man, out of an humour, should turn all his Estate into Money, and keep it dead, he would soon be sensible of Poverty growing upon him, whilst he is eating out of the quick stock.

But to examine the matter closer, what do these People want, who cry out for Money? I will begin with the Beggar; he wants, and importunes for Money: What would he do with it if he had it? buy Bread, &c. Then in truth it is not Money, but Bread, and other Necessaries for Life that he wants. Well then, the Farmer complains, for the want of Money; surely it is not for the Beggar's Reason, to sustain Life, or pay Debts; but he thinks that were more Money in the Country, he should have a Price for his Goods. |12| Then it seems Money is not his want, but a Price for his Corn, and Cattel, which he would sell, but cannot. If it be askt, if the want of Money be not, what then is the reason, why he cannot get a price? I answer, it must proceed from one of these three Causes.

1. Either there is too much Corn and Cattel in the Country, so that most who come to Market have need of selling, as he hath, and few of buying: Or, 2. There wants the usual vent abroad, by Transportation, as in time of War, when Trade is unsafe, or not permitted. Or, 3. The Consumption fails, as when men by reason of Poverty, do not spend so much in their Houses as formerly they did; wherefore it is not the increase of specifick Money, which would at all advance the Farmers Goods, but the removal of any of these three Causes, which do truly keep down the Market.

The Merchant and Shop-keeper want Money in the same manner, that is, they want a Vent for the Goods they deal in, by reason that the Markets fail, as they will always upon any cause, like what I have hinted. Now to consider what is the true source of Riches, or in the common Phrase, plenty of Money, we must look a little back, into the nature and steps of Trade.

Commerce and Trade, as hath been said, first springs from the Labour of Man, but as the Stock increases, it dilates more and more. If you suppose a Country to have nothing in it but the Land it self, and the Inhabitants; it is plain that at first, the People have only the Fruits of the Earth, and Metals raised from the Bowels of it, to Trade withal, either by carrying out into Foreign Parts, or by selling to such as will come to buy of them, whereby they may be supplyed with the Goods of other Countries wanted there. |13|

In process of time, if the People apply themselves industriously, they will not only be supplied, but advance to a great overplus of Forreign Goods, which improv'd, will enlarge their Trade. Thus the English Nation will sell unto the French, Spaniards, Turk, &c. not only the product of their own Country, as Cloath, Tin, Lead, &c. but also what they purchase of others, as Sugar, Pepper, Callicoes, &c. still buying where Goods are produc'd, and cheap, and transporting them to Places where they are wanted, making great advantage thereby.

In this course of Trade, Gold and Silver are in no sort different from other Commodities, but are taken from them who have Plenty, and carried to them who want, or desire them, with as good profit as other Merchandizes. So that an active prudent Nation groweth rich, and the sluggish Drones grow poor; and there cannot be any Policy other than this, which being introduc'd and practis'd, shall avail to increase Trade and Riches.

But this Proposition, as single and plain as it is, is seldom so well understood, as to pass with the generality of Mankind; but they think by force of Laws, to retain in their Country all the Gold and Silver which Trade brings in; and thereby expect to grow rich immediately: All which is a profound Fallacy, and hath been a Remora, whereby the growing Wealth of many Countries have been obstructed.

The Case will more plainly appear, if it be put of a single Merchant, or if you please to come nearer the point, of a City or County only.

Let a Law be made, and what is more, be observ'd, that no Man whatsoever shall carry any Money out of a particular Town, County, or Division, with liberty to carry Goods of any sort: so that all the Money which every one brings with him, must be left behind, and none be carried out. |14|

The consequence of this would be, that such Town, or County were cut off from the rest of the Nation; and no Man would dare to come to Market with his Money there; because he must buy, whether he likes, or not: and on the other side, the People of that place could not go to other Markets as Buyers, but only as Sellers, being not permitted to carry any Money out with them.

Now would not such a Constitution as this, soon bring a Town or County to a miserable Condition, with respect to their Neighbours, who have free Commerce, whereby the Industrious gain from the slothful and luxurious part of Mankind? The Case is the same, if you extend your thought from a particular Nation, and the several Divisions, and Cities, with the Inhabitants in them, to the whole World, and the several Nations, and Governments in it. And a Nation restrained in its Trade, of which Gold and Silver is a principal, if not an essential Branch, would suffer, and grow poor, as a particular place within a Country, as I have discoursed. A Nation in the World, as to Trade, is in all respects like a City in a Kingdom, or Family in a City.

Now since the Increase of Trade is to be esteem'd the only cause that Wealth and Money increase, I will add some farther Considerations upon that subject.

The main spur to Trade, or rather to Industry and Ingenuity, is the exorbitant Appetites of Men, which they will take pains to gratifie, and so be disposed to work, when nothing else will incline them to it; for did Men content themselves with bare Necessaries, we should have a poor World.

The Glutton works hard to purchase Delicacies, wherewith to gorge himself; the Gamester, for Money to venture at Play; the Miser, to hoard; and so others. |15| Now in their pursuit of those Appetites, other Men less exorbitant are benefitted; and tho' it may be thought few profit by the Miser, yet it will be found otherwise, if we consider, that besides the humour of every Generation, to dissipate what another had collected, there is benefit from the very Person of a covetous Man; for if he labours with his own hands, his Labour is very beneficial to them who imploy him; if he doth not work, but profit by the Work of others, then those he sets on work have benefit by their being employed.

Countries which have sumptuary Laws, are generally poor; for when Men by those Laws are confin'd to narrower Expence than otherwise they would be, they are at the same time discouraged from the Industry and Ingenuity which they would have imployed in obtaining wherewithal to support them, in the full latitude of Expence they desire.

It is possible Families may be supported by such means, but then the growth of Wealth in the Nation is hindered; for that never thrives better, then when Riches are tost from hand to hand.

The meaner sort seeing their Fellows become rich, and great, are spurr'd up to imitate their Industry. A Tradesman sees his Neighbour keep a Coach, presently all his Endeavors is at work to do the like, and many times is beggered by it; however the extraordinary Application he made, to support his Vanity, was beneficial to the Publick, tho' not enough to answer his false Measures as to himself.

It will be objected, That the Home Trade signifies nothing to the enriching a Nation, and that the increase of Wealth comes out of Forreign Trade.

I answer, That what is commonly understood by Wealth, viz. Plenty, Bravery, Gallantry, &c. cannot be |16| maintained without Forreign Trade. Nor in truth, can Forreign Trade subsist without the Home Trade, both being connected together.

I have toucht upon these matters concerning Trade, and Riches in general, because I conceive a true Notion of them, will correct many common Errors, and more especially conduce to the Proposition I chiefly aim to prove; which is, that Gold and Silver, and, out of them, Money are nothing but the Weights and Measures, by which Traffick is more conveniently carried on, then could be done without them: and also a proper Fund for a surplusage of Stock to be deposited in.

In confirmation of this, we may take Notice, That Nations which are very poor, have scarce any Money, and in the beginnings of Trade have often made use of something else; as Sueden hath used Copper, and the Plantations, Sugar and Tobacco, but not without great Inconveniences; and still as Wealth hath increas'd, Gold and Silver hath been introduc'd, and drove out the others, as now almost in the Plantations it hath done.

It is not necessary absolutely to have a Mint for the making Money plenty, tho' it be very expedient; and a just benefit is lost by the want of it, where there is none; for it hath been observed, that where no Mints were, Trade hath not wanted a full supply of Money; because if it be wanted, the Coyn of other Princes will become currant, as in Ireland, and the Plantations; so also in Turky, where the Money of the Country is so minute, that it is inconvenient for great Payments; and therefore the Turkish Dominions are supplied by almost all the Coyns of Christendom, the same being currant there.

But a Country which useth Forreign Coyns, hath great disadvantage from it; because they pay strangers, |17| for what, had they a Mint of their own, they might make themselves. For Coyned Money, as was said, is more worth than Uncoyned Silver of the same weight and allay; that is, you may buy more Uncoyned Silver, of the same fineness with the Money, than the Money weighs; which advantage the Stranger hath for the Coynage.

If it be said, That the contrary sometimes happens, and coyned Money shall be current for less than Bullion shall sell for. I answer, That where-ever this happens, the Coyned Money being undervalued, shall be melted down into Bullion, for the immediate Gain that is had from it.

Thus it appears, that if you have no Mint whereby to increase your Money, yet if you are a rich People, and have Trade, you cannot want Specifick Coyn, to serve your occasions in dealing.

The next thing to be shewed is, That if your Trade pours in never so much Money upon you, you have no more advantage by the being of it Money, then you should have were it in Logs, or Blocks; save only that Money is much better for Transportation than Logs are.

For when Money grows up to a greater quantity than Commerce requires, it comes to be of no greater value, than uncoyned Silver, and will occasionally be melted down again.

Then let not the care of Specifick Money torment us so much; for a People that are rich cannot want it, and if they make none, they will be supplied with the Coyn of other Nations; and if never so much be brought from abroad, or never so much coyned at home, all that is more than what the Commerce of the Nation requires, is but Bullion, and will be treated as |18| such; and coyned Money, like wrought Plate at Second hand, shall sell but for the Intrinsick.

I call to witness the vast Sums that have been coyned in England, since the free Coynage was set up; What is become of it all? no body believes it to be in the Nation, and it cannot well be all transported, the Penalties for so doing being so great. The case is plain, it being exported, as I verily believe little of it is, the Melting-Pot devours all.

The rather, because that Practice is so easie, profitable, and safe from all possibility of being detected, as every one knows it is. And I know no intelligent Man who doubts, but the New Money goes this way.

Silver and Gold, like other Commodities, have their ebbings and flowings: Upon the arrival of Quantities from Spain, the Mint commonly gives the best price; that is, coyned Silver, for uncoyned Silver, weight for weight. Wherefore is it carried into the Tower, and coyned? not long after there will come a demand for Bullion, to be Exported again: If there is none, but all happens to be in Coyn, What then? Melt it down again; there's no loss in it, for the Coyning cost the Owners nothing.

Thus the Nation hath been abused, and made to pay for the twisting of straw, for Asses to eat. If the Merchant were made to pay the price of the Coynage, he would not have sent his Silver to the Tower without Consideration; and coyned Money would always keep a value above uncoyned Silver: which is now so far from being the case, that many times it is considerably under, and generally the King of Spain's Coyn here is worth One penny per Ounce more than our New Money. |19|

This Nation, for many Years last past, hath groaned, and still groans under the abuse of clipt Money, which with respect to their Wisdom, is a great mistake; and the Irish whom we ridicule so much, when in Peace, would not be so gulled, but weighed their (Pieces of Eight) Cobbs, as they call them, Piece by Piece; this Errour springs from the same Source with the rest, and needs no other Cure then will soon result from Non-currency. Whereof I shall set down my thoughts.

There is great fear, that if clipt Money be not taken, there will be no Money at all. I am certain, that so long as clipt Money is taken, there will be little other: And is it not strange, that scarce any Nation, or People in the whole World, take diminisht Money by Tale, but the English?

What is the reason that a New Half-crown-piece, if it hath the least snip taken from the edge, will not pass; whereas an Old Half-crown clipt to the very quick, and not intrinsically worth Eighteen Pence, shall be currant?

I know no reason, why a Man should take the one, more than the other; I am sure, that if New Money should pass clipt, there would soon be enough served so. And I do not in the least doubt, unless the currency of clipt Money be stopt, it will not be very long before every individual piece of the Old Coynes be clipt.

And if this be not remedied, for fear of the Evil now, how will it be born hereafter, when it will be worse? surely at length it will become insupportable, and remedy itself as Groats have done; but let them look out, in whose time it shall happen; we are all shoving the Evil-Day as far off as may be, but it will certainly come at last. |20|

I do not think the great Evil is so hard to be remedied, nor so chargeable as some have judged; but if rightly managed, it may be done with no intolerable loss, some there will be, and considerable; but when I reflect where it will fall, I cannot think it grievous.

The general Opinion is, That it cannot be done otherwise, then by calling in of all the Old Money, and changing of it, for doing which the whole Nation must contribute by a general Tax; but I do not approve of this way, for several Reasons.

For it will be a matter of great trouble, and will require many hands to execute, who will expect, and deserve good pay; which will add to the Evil, and increase the Charge of the Work; and the Trust of it, is also very great, and may be vastly abused.

Now before I give any Opinion for the doing this thing, let some estimate be made of the loss, wherein I will not undertake to compute the Total, but only how the same may fall out in One Hundred Pound: There may be found in it Ten Pound of good New Money, then rests Ninety Pound; and of that I will suppose half to be clipt Money, and half good; so there will be but Five and Forty, in One Hundred Pounds, whereupon there will be any loss; and that will not surely be above a Third part: so I allow 15 l. per Cent. for the loss by clipt Money, which is with the most, and in such Computes, it is safest to err on that side.

Now in case it should be thought fit, that the King should in all the Receipts of the Publick Revenue, forbid the taking of clipt Coyn, unless the Subject were content to pay it by weight at 5 s. 2 d.per Ounce, every Piece being cut in Two, (which must |21| be especially and effectually secured to be done) I grant it would be a great surprize, but no great cause of Complaint when nothing is required, but that the Publick Revenue may be paid in lawful English Money.

And those who are to make Payments, must either find good Money, or clip in two their cropt Money, and part with it on such terms; by this Example it would likewise be found, that in a short time, all Men would refuse clipt Money in common Payment.

Now let us consider, where the loss would light, which I have estimated to be about 15 per Cent.

We are apt to make Over-estimates of the Quantities of current Money; for we see it often, and know it not again; and are not willing to consider how very a little time it stays in a place; and altho' every one desires to have it, yet none, or very few care for keeping it, but they are forthwith contriving to dispose it; knowing that from all the Money that lies dead, no benefit is to be expected, but it is a certain loss.

The Merchant and Gentleman keep their Money for the most part, with Goldsmiths, and Scriveners; and they, instead of having Ten Thousand Pounds in Cash by them, as their Accounts shew they should have, of other Mens ready Money, to be paid at sight, have seldom One Thousand in Specie; but depend upon a course of Trade, whereby Money comes in as fast as it is taken out: Wherefore I conclude, that the Specifick Money of this Nation is far less than the common Opinion makes. |22|

Now suppose all the loss by clipt Money should happen and fall where the Cash is, it would be severe in very few Places. It could do no great harm to Hoards of Money; because those who intend to keep Money, will be sure to lay up that which is good. It would not signifie much to the poor Man, for he many times hath none; and for the most part, if he hath any, it is very little, seldome Five Shillings at a time. The Farmer is supposed to pay his Landlord, as fast as he gets Money; so it is not likely he should be catcht with much: Wherefore it will light chiefly upon Trading Men, who may sometimes be found with Hundreds by them; and frequently not with many Pounds. Those who happen to have such great Cashes at such time would sustain loss.

In short, clipt Money is an Evil, that the longer it is born with, the harder will the Cure be. And if the Loss therein be lain on the Publick, (as the Common Project is) the Inconveniences are (as hath been shewed) very great; but in the other way of Cure it is not such a terrible Grievance, as most Men have imagined it would be.

So to conclude, when these Reasons, which have been hastily and confusedly set down, are duly considered, I doubt not but we shall joyn in one uniform Sentiment: That Laws to hamper Trade, whether Forreign, or Domestick, relating to Money, or other Merchandizes, are not Ingredients to make a People Rich, and abounding in Money, and Stock. But if Peace be procured, easie Justice maintained, the Na|23|vigation not clogg'd, the Industrious encouraged, by indulging them in the participation of Honours, and Imployments in the Government, according to their Wealth and Characters, the Stock of the Nation will increase, and consequently Gold and Silver abound, Interest be easie, and Money cannot be wanting.

||* Postscript.
Upon farther Consideration of the Foregoing Matters, I think fit to add the following Notes.

WHEN a Nation is grown Rich, Gold, Silver, Jewels, and every thing useful, or desirable, (as I have already said) will be plentiful; and the Fruits of the Earth will purchase more of them, than before, when People were poorer: As a fat Oxe in former Ages, was not sold for more Shillings, than now Pounds. The like takes place in Labourers Wages, and every thing whatever; which confirms the Universal Maxim I have built upon, viz. That Plenty of any thing makes it cheap.

Therefore Gold and Silver being now plentiful, a Man hath much more of it for his labour, for his Corn, for his Cattle, &c. then could be had Five Hundred Years ago, when, as must be owned, there was not near so much by many parts as now.

Notwithstanding this, I find many, who seem willing to allow, that this Nation at present, abounds with Gold and Silver, in Plate and Bullion; but are yet of Opinion, That coyned Money is wanted to carry on |[ii]| the Trade, and that were there more Specifick Money, Trade would increase, and we should have better Markets for every thing.

That this is a great Error, I think the foregoing Papers makes out: but to clear it a little farther, let it be considered, that Money is a Manufacture of Bullion wrought in the Mint. Now if the Materials are ready, and the Workmen also, 'tis absurd to say, the Manufacture is wanted.

For instance: Have you Corn, and do you want Meal? Carry the Corn to the Mill, and grind it. Yes; but I want Meal, because others will not carry their Corn; and I have none: say you so; then buy Corn of them, and carry it to the Mill your self. This is exactly the Case of Money. A very rich Man hath much Plate, for Honour and Show; whereupon a poorer Man thinks, if it were coyned into Money, the Publick, and his self among the rest, would be the better for it; but he is utterly mistaken; unless at the same time you oblige the rich Man to squander his new coyn'd Money away.

For if he lays it up, I am sure the matter is not mended: if he commutes it for Diamonds, Pearl, &c. the Case is still the same; it is but changed from one hand to another: and it may be the Money is dispatcht to the Indies to pay for those Jewels: then if he buys Land, it is no more than changing the hand, and regarding all Persons, except the Dealers only, the Case is still the same. Money will always have an Owner, and never goeth a Beggar for Entertainment, but must be purchast for valuable consideration in solido.

If the use of Plate were prohibited, then it were a sumptuary Law, and, as such, would be a vast hindrance to the Riches and Trade of the Nation: for now seeing |[iii]| every Man hath Plate in his House, the Nation is possest of a solid Fund, consisting in those Mettals, which all the World desire, and would willingly draw from us; and this in far greater measure than would be, if Men were not allowed that liberty. For the poor Tradesman, out of an ambition to have a Piece of Plate upon his Cupboard, works harder to purchase it, than he would do if that humour were restrain'd as I have said elsewhere.

There is required for carrying on the Trade of the Nation, a determinate Sum of Specifick Money, which varies, and is sometimes more, sometimes less, as the Circumstances we are in requires. War time calls for more Money than time of Peace, because every one desires to keep some by him, to use upon Emergiences; not thinking it prudent to rely upon Moneys currant in dealing, as they do in times of Peace, when Payments are more certain.

This ebbing and flowing of Money, supplies and accommodates itself, without any aid of Politicians. For when Money grows scarce, and begins to be hoarded, then forthwith the Mint works, till the occasion be filled up again. And on the other side, when Peace brings out the Hoards, and Money abounds, the Mint not only ceaseth, but the overplus of Money will be presently melted down, either to supply the Home Trade, or for Transportation.

Thus the Buckets work alternately, when Money is scarce, Bullion is coyn'd; when Bullion is scarce, Money is melted. I do not allow that both should be scarce at one and the same time; for that is a state of Poverty, and will not be, till we are exhausted, which is besides my subject. |[iv]|

Some have fancied, that if by a Law the Ounce of Silver were restrained to 5 s. value, in all dealings, and at the Tower the same were coyned into 5 s. 4 d. or 5 s. 6 d. per Ounce, all the Plate in England would soon be coyned. The answer to this, in short, is: That the Principle they build upon is impossible. How can any Law hinder me from giving another Man, what I please for his Goods? The Law may be evaded a thousand ways. As be it so: I must not give, nor he receive above 5 s. per Ounce for Silver; I may pay him 5 s. and present him with 4 d. or 6 d. more; I may give him Goods in barter, at such, or greater profit; and so by other contrivances, ad Infinitum.

But put case it took effect, and by that means all the Silver in England were coyned into Money; What then? would any one spend more in Cloaths, Equipages, Housekeeping, &c. then is done? I believe not; but rather the contrary: For the Gentry and Commonalty being nipt in their delight of seeing Plate, &c. in their Houses, would in all probability be dampt in all other Expences: Wherefore if this could be done, as I affirm it cannot, yet instead of procuring the desired effect, it would bring on all the Mischiefs of a sumptuary Law.

Whenever the Money is made lighter, or baser in allay, (which is the same thing) the effect is, that immediately the price of Bullion answers. So that in reality you change the Name, but not the thing: and whatever the difference is, the Tenant and Debtor hath it in his favor; for Rent and Debts will be paid less, by just so much as the intrinsick value is less, then what was to be paid before.

For example: One who before received for Rent or Debt, 3 l. 2 s. could with it buy twelve Ounces, or a Pound of Sterling Silver; but if the Crown-piece be |[v]| worse in value than now it is, by 3 d. I do averr, you shall not be able to buy a Pound of such Silver under 3 l. 5 s. but either directly, or indirectly it shall cost so much.

But then it is said, we will buy an Ounce for 5 s. because 'tis the Price set by the Parliament, and no body shall dare to sell for more. I answer, If they cannot sell it for more, they may coyn it; And then what Fool will sell an Ounce of Silver for 5 s. when he may coyn it into 5 s. 5 d.?

Thus we may labour to hedge in the Cuckow, but in vain; for no People ever yet grew rich by Policies; but it is Peace, Industry, and Freedom that brings Trade and Wealth, and nothing else.

FINIS

[1.]"The Life of the Hon. Sir Dudley North." 4to. London, 1744; also "The Lives of the Right Hon. Francis North..., the Hon. Sir Dudley North..., and the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North...." A new edition. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1826.

[2.]Ibid., 8vo ed., vol. III, p. 173.

[3.]"Preface" to reprint of 1846.

[4.]q. v.

[5.]It was a copy of this reprint of 1822 which Lord Murray sent to Ricardo, and concerning which Ricardo wrote to McCulloch: "I had no idea that anyone entertained such correct opinions, as are expressed in this publication, at so early a period." See "Letters of David Ricardo to John Ramsay McCulloch", ed. Hollander (New York, 1895), p. 126.

[6.]"The Literature of Political Economy" (London, 1845), p. 42.

[7.]The formal collation of the tract is as follows: Title page, reverse blank; Preface, ten folios without pagination; Text, twenty-three folios; Postscript, five folios without pagination. Size, small 4to.

BALTIMORE, January, 1907.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1691 North text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[8.]De Arte Poetica, 70.

[9.]The first two books of Montaigne's "Essays" were published in 1580, the third in 1588.

[10.]"Scaligeriana, sive Excerpta ex ore Josephi Scaligeri"—a collection of the familiar conversations of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), the classicist and scholar—was first printed at The Hague in 1666, and in various editions thereafter. Des Maizeaux, a later editor and the literary historian of the work, characterizes it as "le pere de tous les livres qu' on a publiez sous le titre d' ANA" (cf. "Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana, et Colomesiana...avec les notes de plusiers savans." 2 vol. 12°. Amsterdam, 1740).

[11.]Probably "Perroniana," a collection of the epigrams and observations—critical, historical, and moral—of Cardinal du Perron, made by Christophle du Puy and first published in 1669 (cf. Des Maizeaux, note 3, above).

[12.]Pascal's "Pensées" first appeared in 1670, eight years after the author's death, in garbled and fragmentary form.

[13.]Selden's "Table Talk" was edited by his secretary, Richard Milward, and printed in 1689.

[*]Double vertical bars, ||, denote page breaks in the original 1691 North text, with page numbers when available (e.g., |2|). The bars and numbers were inserted by Hollander and are preserved in this Econlib edition.—Econlib Ed.

[14.]sic.

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4: 4. Andrew Fletcher, Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland (1697)

Andrew Fletcher was born in 1653 to the laird of Saltoun, Sir Robert Fletcher. In his youth, he traveled much and conceived a great interest in books, old buildings, and the great cities of northern Europe (London, Paris, Amsterdam). He early plunged into a political career, becoming commissioner for his county in 1678 and again in 1681. It was then that he first took a position against a standing army. During Monmouth’s rebellion, which he supported, he shot dead a man named Dare over his use of Dare’s horse in an expedition. After being estranged from Monmouth, he was arrested and imprisoned in Bilbao on orders of the English government in 1686 and sentenced to death for treason. After escaping prison, he next fought with the Hungarians against the Turks (whom he is said to have called the “common enemy of mankind”). By now of marked republican leanings, he refused an amnesty because it emanated from the King and not the legislature. He was with William of Orange in 1688 and returned to Scotland at that time; his lands were restored to him by special act of Parliament in 1690. In the tumultuous debates of the 1700s, he led the national party against the court party on the Union question. He proposed home rule, a national militia, and annual Scottish Parliaments. As a majority drifted toward the Union position (1704-7), he had to be restrained more than once from the threat of a duel with Lord Stair and the Duke of Hamilton during sessions of Parliament. He was accused of fomenting a French invasion of Scotland for the Pretender in 1708. Acquitted, he left public life. He oversaw the construction (1710) of an innovative barley mill modeled on one he had seen in his travels to Amsterdam. He died a lifelong bachelor in September 1716. The Jacobite Lockhart said of Fletcher that he was “so steadfast to what he thought right that no hazard nor advantage, no, not the universal empire, nor the gold of America, could tempt him to yield or desert it.” The present work was written in 1698 and published as part of a somewhat larger work, Two Discourses Concerning the Affairs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1698).

Andrew Fletcher, Selected Discourses and Speeches: A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militias (Edinburgh, 1698); Two Discourses concerning the Affairs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1698); Speeches by a Member of the Parlaiment (Edinburgh, 1703); A Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Government (Edinburgh, 1704). Chapter: the second DISCOURSE concerning the AFFAIRS OF SCOTLAND; written in the year 1698

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The text is in the public domain.

the second DISCOURSE concerning the AFFAIRS OF SCOTLAND; written in the year 1698

The affairs of which I have spoken in the preceding discourse are such as the present conjuncture makes a proper subject for the approaching session of parliament: but there are many other things which require no less their care, if the urgent and pressing distresses of the nation be considered. I shall therefore with all due respect to the parliament offer my opinion concerning two, which I presume to be of that nature.

The first thing which I humbly and earnestly propose to that honourable court is, that they would take into their consideration the condition of so many thousands of our people who are at this day dying for want of bread. And to persuade them seriously to apply themselves to so indispensable a duty, they have all the inducements which those most powerful emotions of the soul, terror and compassion, can produce. Because from unwholesome food diseases are so multiplied among the poor people, that if some course be not taken, this famine may very probably be followed by a plague; and then what man is there even of those who sit in parliament that can be sure he shall escape? And what man is there in this nation, if he have any compassion, who must not grudge himself every nice bit and every delicate morsel he puts in his mouth, when he considers that so many are already dead, and so many at that minute struggling with death, not for want of bread but of grains, which I am credibly informed have been eaten by some families, even during the preceding years of scarcity. And must not every unnecessary branch of our expense, or the least finery in our houses, clothes, or equipage, reproach us with our barbarity, so long as people born with natural endowments, perhaps not inferior to our own, and fellow citizens, perish for want of things absolutely necessary to life?

But not to insist any more upon the representation of so great a calamity, which if drawn in proper colours, and only according to the precise truth of things, must cast the minds of all honest men into those convulsions which ought necessarily to be composed before they can calmly consider of a remedy; and because the particulars of this great distress are sufficiently known to all, I shall proceed to say, that though perhaps upon the great want of bread, occasioned by the continued bad seasons of this and the three preceding years, the evil be greater and more pressing that at any time in our days, yet there have always been in Scotland such numbers of poor, as by no regulations could ever be orderly provided for; and this country has always swarmed with such numbers of idle vagabonds, as no laws could ever restrain. And indeed when I considered the many excellent laws enacted by former parliaments for setting the poor to work, particularly those in the time of King James the sixth, with the clauses for putting them in execution, which to me seemed such as could not miss of the end, and yet that nothing was obtained by them, I was amazed, and began to think upon the case of other nations in this particular, persuaded that there was some strange hidden root of this evil which could not be well discovered, unless by observing the conduct of other governments. But upon reflection I found them all subject to the same inconveniences, and that in all the countries of Europe there were great numbers of poor, except in Holland, which I knew to proceed from their having the greatest share in the trade of the world. But this not being a remedy for every country, since all cannot pretend to so great a part in trade, and that two or three nations are able to manage the whole commerce of Europe; yet there being a necessity that the poor should everywhere be provided for, unless we will acknowledge the deficiency of all government in that particular, and finding no remedy in the laws or customs of any of the present governments, I began to consider what might be the conduct of the wise ancients in that affair. And my curiosity was increased, when upon reflection I could not call to mind that any ancient author had so much as mentioned such a thing, as great numbers of poor in any country.

At length I found the original of that multitude of beggars which now oppress the world, to have proceeded from churchmen, who (never failing to confound things spiritual with temporal, and consequently all good order and good government, either through mistake or design) upon the first public establishment of the Christian religion, recommended nothing more to masters, in order to the salvation of their souls, than the setting such of their slaves at liberty as would embrace the Christian faith, though our Saviour and his apostles had been so far from making use of any temporal advantages to persuade eternal truths, and so far from invading any man’s property, by promising him heaven for it, that the apostle Paul says expressly, ‘In whatever condition of life every one is called to the Christian faith, in that let him remain. Art thou called being a slave? Be not concerned for thy condition; but even though thou mightest be free, choose to continue in it. For he who is called whilst a slave, becomes the freeman of the Lord; and likewise he that is called whilst a freeman, becomes the slave of Christ, who has paid a price for you, that you might not be the slaves of men. Let every one therefore, brethren, in whatever condition he is called, in that remain, in the fear of God.’ That the interpretation I put upon this passage, different from our translation, is the true meaning of the apostle, not only the authority of the Greek fathers, and genuine signification of the Greek particles, but the whole context, chiefly the first and last words (which seem to be repeated to enforce and determine such a meaning) clearly demonstrate. And the reason why he recommends to them rather to continue slaves (if they have embraced the Christian faith in that condition) seems to be that it might appear they did not embrace it for any worldly advantage, as well as to destroy a doctrine which even in his days began to be preached, that slavery was inconsistent with the Christian religion; since such a doctrine would have been a great stop to the progress of it. What the apostle means by saying, we ought not to be the slaves of men, I shall show hereafter.

This disorder of giving liberty to great numbers of slaves upon their profession of Christianity, grew to such a height, even in the time of Constantine the great, that the cities of the empire found themselves burdened with an infinite number of men, who had no other estate but their liberty, of whom the greatest part would not work, and the rest had been bred to no profession. This obliged Constantine to make edicts in favour of beggars; and from that time at the request of the bishops, hospitals, and alms-houses, not formerly known in the world, began to be established. But upon the rise of the Mahometan religion, which was chiefly advanced by giving liberty to all their slaves, the Christians were so molested by the continual rebellion of theirs, that they were at length forced to give liberty to them all; which it seems the churchmen then looked upon as a thing necessary to preserve the Christian religion, since in many of the writings, by which masters gave freedom to their slaves, it is expressly said, they did so, to save their own souls.

This is the rise of that great mischief, under which, to the undoing of the poor, all the nations of Europe have ever since groaned. Because in ancient times, so long as a man was the riches and part of the possession of another, every man was provided for in meat, clothes, and lodging; and not only he, but (in order to increase that riches) his wife and children also: whereas provisions by hospitals, alms-houses, and the contributions of churches or parishes have by experience been found to increase the numbers of those that live by them. And the liberty every idle and lazy person has of burdening the society in which he lives, with his maintenance, has increased their numbers to the weakening and impoverishing of it: for he needs only to say that he cannot get work, and then he must be maintained by charity. And as I have shown before, no nation except one only (which is in extraordinary circumstances) does provide by public work-houses for their poor: the reason of which seems to be, that public work-houses for such vast numbers of people are impracticable except in those places where (besides a vast trade to vend the manufactured goods) there is an extraordinary police, and that though the Hollanders by reason of the steadiness of their temper, as well as of their government (being a commonwealth) may be constant to their methods of providing for the poor; yet in a nation, and under a government like that of France, though vast public work-houses may be for a while kept in order, it will not be long before they fall into confusion and ruin. And indeed (next to Plato’s republic, which chiefly consists in making the whole society live in common) there is nothing more impracticable than to provide for so great a part of every nation by public work-houses. Whereas when such an economy comes under the inspection of every master of a family, and that he himself is to reap the profit of the right management; the thing not only turns to a far better account, but by reason of his power to sell those workmen to others who may have use for them, when he himself has a mind to alter his course of life, the profit is permanent to the society; nor can such an economy or any such management ever fall into confusion.

I doubt not, that what I have said will meet, not only with all the misconstruction and obloquy, but all the disdain, fury, and out-cries, of which either ignorant magistrates, or proud, lazy, and miserable people are capable. Would I bring back slavery into the world? Shall men of immortal souls, and by nature equal to any, be sold as beasts? Shall they and their posterity be for ever subjected to the most miserable of all conditions; the inhuman barbarity of masters, who may beat, mutilate, torture, starve, or kill so great a number of mankind at pleasure? Shall the far greater part of the commonwealth be slaves, not that the rest may be free, but tyrants over them? With what face can we oppose the tyranny of princes, and recommend such opposition as the highest virtue, if we make ourselves tyrants over the greatest part of mankind? Can any man, from whom such a thing has once escaped, ever offer to speak for liberty? But they must pardon me if I tell them, that I regard not names, but things; and that the misapplication of names has confounded everything. We are told there is not a slave in France; that when a slave sets his foot upon French ground, he becomes immediately free: and I say, that there is not a freeman in France, because the king takes away any part of any man’s property at his pleasure; and that, let him do what he will to any man, there is no remedy. The Turks tell us, there are no slaves among them, except Jews, Moors, or Christians; and who is there that knows not, they are all slaves to the grand Seignior, and have no remedy against his will? A slave properly is one who is absolutely subjected to the will of another man without any remedy: and not one that is only subjected under certain limitations, and upon certain accounts necessary for the good of the commonwealth, though such a one may go under that name. And the confounding these two conditions of men by a name common to both, has in my opinion been none of the least hardships put upon those who ought to be named servants. We are all subjected to the laws; and the easier or harder conditions imposed by them upon the several ranks of men in any society, make not the distinction that is between a freeman and a slave.

So that the condition of slaves among the ancients will upon serious consideration appear to be only a better provision in their governments than any we have, that no man might want the necessities of life, nor any person able to work be burdensome to the commonwealth. And they wisely judged of the inconveniences that befall the most part of poor people, when they are all abandoned to their own conduct. I know that these two conditions of men were confounded under the same name, as well by the ancients as they are by us; but the reason was, that having often taken in war the subjects of absolute monarchs, they thought they did them no wrong if they did not better their condition: and as in some of their governments the condition of slaves was under a worse regulation than in others, so in some of them it differed very little, if at all, from the condition of such a slave as I have defined. But I do not approve, and therefore will not go about to defend any of those bad and cruel regulations about slaves. And because it would be tedious and needless to pursue the various conditions of them in several ages and governments, it shall be enough for me to explain under what conditions they might be both good and useful, as well as I think they are necessary in a well-regulated government.

First then, their masters should not have power over their lives, but the life of the master should go for the life of the servant. The master should have no power to mutilate or torture him; that in such cases the servant should not only have his freedom (which alone would make him burdensome to the public) but a sufficient yearly pension so long as he should live from his said master. That he, his wife, and children should be provided for in clothes, diet, and lodging. That they should be taught the principles of morality and religion; to read, and be allowed the use of certain books: that they should not work upon Sundays, and be allowed to go to church: that in everything, except their duty as servants, they should not be under the will of their masters, but the protection of the law: that when these servants grow old, and are no more useful to their masters (lest upon that account they should be ill-used) hospitals should be provided for them by the public: that if for their good and faithful service, any master give them their freedom, he should be obliged to give them likewise wherewithal to subsist, or put them in a way of living without being troublesome to the commonwealth: that they should wear no habit or mark to distinguish them from hired servants: that any man should be punished who gives them the opprobrious name of slave. So, except it were that they could possess nothing, and might be sold, which really would be but an alienation of their service without their consent, they would live in a much more comfortable condition (wanting nothing necessary for life) than those who having a power to posses all things, are very often in want of everything, to such a degree, that many thousands of them come to starve for hunger.

It will be said, that notwithstanding all these regulations, they may be most barbarously used by their masters, either by beating them outrageously, making them work beyond measure, suffer cold or hunger, or neglecting them in their sickness. I answer, that as long as the servant is of an age not unfit for work, all these things are against the interest of the master: that the most brutal man will not use his beast ill only out of a humour; and that if such inconveniences do sometimes fall out, it proceeds, for the most part, from the perverseness of the servant: that all inconveniences cannot be obviated by any government; that we must choose the least; and that to prevent them in the best manner possible, a particular magistrate might be instituted for that end.

The condition of such a servant is to be esteemed free; because in the most essential things he is only subject to the laws, and not to the will of his master, who can neither take away his life, mutilate, torture, or restrain him from the comforts of wife and children: but on the other hand, for the service he does, is obliged to ease him of the inconveniences of marriage, by providing for him, his wife, and children, clothes, food, and lodging: and the condition of a bashaw, or great lord, under arbitrary government (who for the sake, and from a necessity of what they all government, has joined to the quality of a slave the office of a tyrant, and imagines himself a man of quality, if not a little prince, by such pre-eminence) is altogether slavish; since he is under the protection of no law, no not so much as to his life, or the honour of his wife and children; and is subjected to stronger temptations than any man, of being a slave to men in St. Paul’s sense, which is a worse sort of slavery than any I have yet mentioned. That is of being subservient to, and an instrument of lusts of his master the tyrant: since if he refuse slavishly to obey, he must lose his office, and perhaps his life. And indeed men of all ranks living under arbitrary government (so much preached and recommended by the far greater part of churchmen) being really under the protection of no law (whatever may be pretended) are not only slaves, as I have defined before, but by having no other certain remedy in anything against the lust and passions of their superiors, except suffering or compliance, lie under the most violent temptations of being slaves in the worst sense, and of the only sort that is inconsistent with the Christian religion. A condition (whatever men may imagine) so much more miserable than that of servants protected by the laws in all things necessary for the subsistence of them and their posterity, that there is no comparison.

I shall now proceed to the great advantages the ancients received from this sort of servants. By thus providing for their poor, and making every man useful to the commonwealth, they were not only able to perform those great and stupendous public works, highways, aqueducts, common-shores, walls of cities, seaports, bridges, monuments for the dead, temples, amphitheatres, theatres, places for all manner of exercises and education, baths, courts of justice, market-places, public walks, and other magnificent works for the use and conveniency of the public, with which Egypt, Asia, Greece, Italy and other countries were filled; and to adorn them with stately pillars and obelisks, curious statues, most exquisite sculpture and painting: but every particular man might indulge himself in any kind of finery and magnificence; not only because he had slaves to perform it according to his fancy, but because all the poor being provided for, there could be no crime in making unnecessary expenses, which are always contrary, not only to Christian charity, but common humanity, as long as any poor man wants bread. For though we think that in making those expenses, we employ the poor; and that in building costly houses, and furnishing them, making fine gardens, rich stuffs, laces and embroideries for apparel, the poor are set to work; yet so long as all the poor are not provided for (though a man cannot reproach himself in particular why it is not done) and that there is any poor family in a starving condition, it is against common humanity (and no doubt would have been judged to be so by the ancients) for any man to indulge himself in things unnecessary, when others want what is absolutely necessary for life, especially since the furnishing of those things to them does employ workmen as well as our unnecessary expenses. So that the ancients, without giving the least check to a tender compassion for the necessities of others (a virtue so natural to great minds, so nicely to be preserved and cherished) might not only adorn their public buildings with all the refinements of art, but likewise beautify their private houses, villas, and gardens with the greatest curiosity. But we by persisting in the like, and other unnecessary expenses, while all the poor are not provided for (example, vanity, and the love of pleasure, being predominant in us) have not only effaced all the vestiges of Christian charity, but banished natural compassion from amongst us, that without remorse we might continue in them.

This explains to us by what means so much virtue and simplicity of manners could subsist in the cities of Greece, and the lesser Asia, in the midst of so great curiosity and refinement in the arts of magnificence and ornament. For in ancient times great riches, and consequently bad arts to acquire them, were not necessary for those things; because if a man possessed a moderate number of slaves, he might choose to employ them in any sort of magnificence, either private or public, for use or ornament, as he thought fit, whilst he himself lived in the greatest simplicity, having neither coaches nor horses to carry him, as in triumph, through the city; nor a family in most things composed like that of a prince, and a multitude of idle servants to consume his estate. Women were not then intolerably expensive, but wholly employed in the care of domestic affairs. Neither did the furniture of their houses amount to such vast sums as with us, but was for the most part wrought by their slaves.

Another advantage which the ancients had by this sort of servants, was, that they were not under that uneasiness, and unspeakable vexation which we suffer by our hired servants, who are never bred to be good for anything, though most of the slaves amongst the ancients were. And though we bestow the greatest pains or cost to educate one of them form his youth, upon the least cross word he leaves us. So that it is more than probable this sort of servants growing every day worse, the unspeakable trouble arising from them, without any other consideration, will force the world to return to the former.

Among the ancients, any master who had the least judgment or discretion, was served with emulation by all his slaves, that those who best performed their duty might obtain their liberty from him. A slave, though furnished with everything necessary, yet possessing nothing, had no temptation to cheat his master; whereas a hired servant, whilst he remains unmarried, will cheat his master of what may be a stock to him when married; and if after his marriage he continue to serve his master, he will be sure to cheat him much more. When the ancients gave freedom to a slave, they were obliged to give him wherewithal to subsist, or to put him into a way of living. And how well and faithfully they were served by those they had made free (whom from a long experience of their probity and capacity, they often made stewards of their estates) all ancient history does testify. Now, we having no regular way to enable a servant to provide sufficient maintenance for his family, when he becomes independent on his master, his bare wages (out of which he is for the most part to provide himself with many necessaries for daily use) not being enough for that purpose, and no way left but to cheat his master, we ought not to expect any probity or fidelity in our servants, because, for want of order in this point, we subject them to such strong temptation.

I might insist upon many other advantages the ancients had in the way they were served, if to persuade the expedient I propose, I were not to make use of stronger arguments than such as can be drawn from any advantages; I mean those of necessity.

There are at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families very meanly provided for by the church-boxes, with others, who by living upon bad food fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country. And though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature; fathers incestuously accompanying with their own daughters, the son with the mother, and the brother with the sister. No magistrate could ever discover or be informed which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who if they give not bread, or some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them) but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they are to be seen both men and women perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.

These are such outrageous disorders, that it were better for the nation they were sold to the galleys or West Indies, than that they should continue any longer to be a burden and curse upon us. But numbers of people being great riches, every government is to blame that makes not a right use of them. The wholesomeness of our air, and healthfulness of our climate, affords us great numbers of people, which in so poor a country can never be all maintained by manufactures, or public work-houses, or any other way, but that which I have mentioned.

And to show that former parliaments struggling with this, otherwise insuperable, difficulty, have by the nature of the thing been as it were forced upon remedies tending towards what I have proposed: by an act of parliament in the year 1579, any subject of sufficient estate is allowed to take the child of any beggar, and educate him for his service, which child is obliged to serve such a master for a certain term of years; and that term of years extended by another act made in the year 1597, for life. So that here is a great advance towards my proposition; but either from some mistake about Christian or civil liberty, they did not proceed to consider the necessity of continuing that service in the children of such servants, and giving their masters a power of alienating that service to whom they should think fit. The reason for the first of these is, that being married in that sort of service, their masters must of necessity maintain their wife and children, and so ought to have the same right to the service of the children as of the father. And the reason for the power of alienation is, that no man is sure of continuing always in one sort of employment; and having educated a great many such children when he was in an employment that required many servants, if afterwards he should be obliged to quit it for one that required few or none, he could not without great injustice be deprived of the power of alienating their service to any other man, in order to reimburse to himself the money he had bestowed upon them; especially since the setting them at liberty would only bring a great burden on the public.

Now what I would propose upon the whole matter is, that for some present remedy of so great a mischief, every man of a certain estate in this nation should be obliged to take a proportionable number of those vagabonds, and either employ them in hedging and ditching his grounds, or any other sort of work in town and country; or if they happen to be children and young, that he should educate them in the knowledge of some mechanical art, that so every man of estate might have a little manufacture at home which might maintain those servants, and bring great profit to the master, as they did to the ancients, whose revenue by the manufactures of such servants was much more considerable than that of their lands. Hospitals and alms-houses ought to be provided for the sick, lame, and decrepit, either by rectifying old foundations or instituting new. And for example and terror three or four hundred of the most notorious of those villains which we call jockys, might be presented by the government to the state of Venice, to serve in their galleys against the common enemy of Christendom.

But these things, when once resolved, must be executed with great address, diligence, and severity; for that sort of people is so desperately wicked, such enemies of all work and labour, and, which is yet more amazing, so proud, in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call slavery; that unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence, upon the first publication of any orders necessary for putting in execution such a design, they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children, than appear abroad to have them and themselves taken into such a kind of service. And the Highlands are such a vast and unsearchable retreat for them, that if strict and severe order be not taken to prevent it, upon such an occasion these vagabonds will only rob as much food as they can out of the low-country, and retire to live upon it in those mountains, or run into England till they think the storm of our resolutions is over, which in all former times they have seen to be vain.

Nor indeed can there be a thorough reformation in this affair, so long as the one half of our country, in extent of ground, is possessed by a people who are all gentlemen only because they will not work; and who in everything are more contemptible than the vilest slaves, except that they always carry arms, because for the most part they live upon robbery. This part of the country being an inexhaustible source of beggars, has always broke all our measures relating to them. And it were to be wished that the government would think fit to transplant that handful of people, and their masters (who have always disturbed our peace) into the low-country, and people the Highlands from hence, rather than they should continue to be a perpetual occasion of mischief to us. It is in vain to say, that whatever people are planted in those mountains, they will quickly turn as savage, and as great beggars as the present inhabitants; for the mountains of the Alps are greater, more desert, and more condemned to snows that those of the Highlands of Scotland, which are everywhere cut by friths and lakes, the the richest in fishing of any in the world, affording great conveniences for transportation of timber and any other goods; and yet the Alps which have no such advantages are inhabited everywhere by a civilized, industrious, honest, and peaceable people: but they had no lords to hinder them from being civilized, to discourage industry, encourage thieving, and to keep them beggars that they might be the more dependent; or when they had any that oppressed them, as in that part of the mountains that belongs to the Swiss, they knocked them on the head.

Let us now compare the condition of our present vagabonds with that of servants under the conditions which I have proposed, and we shall see the one living under no law of God, man, or nature, polluted with all manner of abominations; and though in so little expectation of the good things of another life, yet in the worst condition of this, and sometimes starved to death in time of extraordinary want. The other, though sometimes they may fall under a severe master (who nevertheless may neither kill, mutilate, nor torture them, and may be likewise restrained from using them very ill by the magistrate I mentioned) are always sure to have food, clothes, and lodging; and have this advantage above other men, that without any care or pains taken by them, these necessaries are likewise secured to their wives and children. They are provided for in sickness, their children are educated, and all of them under all the inducements, encouragements, and obligations possible to live quiet, innocent, and virtuous lives. They may also hope, if they show an extraordinary affection, care, and fidelity in the service of their master, that not only they and their families shall have their entire freedom, but a competency to live, and perhaps the estate of the master entrusted to their care. Now if we will consider the advantages to the nation by the one, and the disadvantages arising from the other sort of men, we shall evidently see, that as the one is an excessive burden, curse, and reproach to us, so the other may enrich the nation, and adorn this country with public works beyond any in Europe, which shall not take the like methods of providing for their poor.

This proposal I hope may be a remedy, not only to that intolerable plague of idle vagabonds who infest the nation; but by providing a more regular maintenance for them, go a great way towards the present relief of other poor people who have been oppressed by them. That which follows is calculated to remove the principal and original cause of the poverty which all the commons of this nation lie under, as well as those straitening difficulties in which men of estates are by our present method of husbandry inevitably involved.

The causes of the present poverty and misery in which the commonalty of Scotland live, are many, yet they are all to be imputed to our own bad conduct and mismanagement of our affairs. It is true, trade being of late years vastly increased in Europe, the poverty of any nation is always imputed to their want of that advantage. And though our soil be barren, yet our seas being the richest of any in the world, it may be thought that the cause of all our poverty has been the neglect of trade, and chiefly of our own fishing: nevertheless were I to assign the principal and original source of our poverty, I should place it in the letting of our lands at so excessive a rate as makes the tenant poorer even than his servant whose wages he cannot pay; and involves in the same misery day-labourers, tradesmen, and the lesser merchants who live in the country villages and towns; and thereby influences no less the great towns and wholesale merchants, makes the master have a troublesome and ill-paid rent, his lands not improved by enclosure or otherwise, but for want of horses and oxen fit for labour, everywhere, run out and abused.

The condition of the lesser freeholders or heritors (as we call them) is not much better than that of our tenants; for they have no flocks to improve their lands, and living not as husbandmen but as gentlemen, they are never able to attain any: besides this, the unskilfulness of their wretched and half-starved servants is such, that their lands are no better cultivated than those laboured by beggarly tenants. And though a gentleman of estate take a farm into his own hands, yet servants are so unfaithful or lazy, and the country people such enemies of all manner of enclosure, that after having struggled with innumerable difficulties, he at last finds it impossible for him to alter the ordinary bad methods, whilst the rest of the country continues in them.

The places in this country which produce sheep and black cattle have no provision for them in winter during the snows, having neither hay nor straw, nor any enclosure to shelter them or the grass from the cold easterly winds in the spring; so that the beasts are in a dying condition, and the grass consumed by those destructive winds, till the warm weather, about the middle of June, come to the relief of both. To all this may be added the letting of farms in most part of those grazing countries every year by roop or auction. But our management in the countries cultivated by tillage is much worse, because the tenant pays his rent in grain, wheat, barley, or oats: which is attended with many inconveniences, and much greater disadvantages than a rent paid in money.

Money rent has a yearly balance in it; for if the year be scarce, all sorts of grain yield the greater price; and if the year be plentiful, there is the greater quantity of them to make money. Now a rent paid in corn has neither a yearly, nor any balance at all; for if a plentiful year afford a superplus, the tenant can make but little of it; but if they year be scarce, he falls short in the payment of his corn, and by reason of the price it bears, can never clear that debt by the rates of a plentiful year, by which means he breaks, and contributes to ruin his master. The rent being altogether in corn, the grounds must be altogether in tillage; which has been the ruin of all the best countries in Scotland. The carriage of corn paid for rent, to which many tenants are obliged, being often to remote places, and at unseasonable times, destroys their horses, and hinders their labour. And the hazard of sending the corn by sea to the great towns, endangers the loss of the whole. The master runs a double risk for his rent, from the merchant as well as the tenant; and the merchant making a thousand difficulties at the delivering of the corn if the price be fallen, the bargain sometimes ends in a suit at law. The selling of corn is become a thing so difficult, that besides the cheats used in that sort of commerce, sufficient to disgust any honest man, the brewers, bakers, and sometimes the merchants who send it abroad do so combine together, that the gentleman is obliged to lay it up, of which the trouble as well as loss is great. This causes him to borrow money for the supply of his present occasions, and is the beginning of most men’s debts. We may add to this, that by a rent in corn, a man comes to have one year a thousand-pound rent, and the next perhaps but six hundred, so that he never can make any certain account for his expense or way of living; that having one year a thousand pound to spend, he cannot easily restrain himself to six hundred the next; that he spends the same quantity of corn (and in some places where such things are delivered instead of rent), hay, straw, poultry, sheep, and oxen in a dear, as in a plentiful year, which he would not do if he was obliged to buy them. Now the tenant in a plentiful year wastes, and in a scarce year starves: so that no man of any substance will take a farm in Scotland; but every beggar, if he have got half a dozen wretched horses, and as many oxen, and can borrow corn to sow, pretends to be a tenant in places where they pay no other rent than corn.

I know there are many objections made to what has been said concerning the advantages which a rent paid in money has above one paid in corn; but certainly they are all so frivolous, that every man upon a little reflection may answer them to himself. For the chief of them are, either that the tenant will squander away money when he gets it into his hands; or that the master can get a better price for the corn by selling it in gross to merchants in the adjacent towns, or else by sending it to be sold at a great distance. To the first I answer, that no substantial man will squander away money because he has got it into his hands, though such beggars as we now have for tenants might be apt to do so. And to the second, that the hazard of sending corn from one place of the kingdom to another by sea, and the prejudice the tenants suffer from long carriages by land, do in part balance the supposed advantage; besides, if those wholesale bargains were not so frequently made, nor the corn so often carried to be sold at the great towns, the merchants would be obliged to send to the country markets to buy, and the prices in them would rise. In short, the changing of money-rent into corn has been the chief cause of racking all the rents to that excessive rate they are now advanced. And upon reflection it will soon appear that the turning of money-rents into rents of corn has been the invention of some covetous wretches, who have been the occasion that all masters now live under the same uneasiness, and constant care, which they at first out of covetousness created to themselves; and all to get as much as was possible from poor tenants, who by such means are made miserable, and are so far from improving, that they only run out and spoil the ground, ruin their neighbours by borrowing, and at length break for considerable sums, though at first they were no better than beggars.

The method of most other countries is: that all rents are paid in money; that masters receiving a fine, grant long leases of their grounds at easy rents: but this supposes the tenant a man of considerable substance, who cannot only give a fine, but has wherewithal to stock, and also to improve his farm. But in Scotland no such men are willing to take farms; nor in truth are the masters willing to let them, as they do in other countries. And though the masters may pretend, that if they could find substantial tenants, they would let their grounds as they do in other places; and men of substance, that if they could have farms upon such conditions, they would turn tenants; yet we see evident marks of the little probability there is that any such thing can be brought about without a general regulation. For in the west and north countries where they let land in feu (or fee) the superiors are so hard, that besides the yearly feu-duty, they make the feuer pay at his first entrance the whole intrinsic value of the land; and the people, though substantial men, are fools and slaves enough to make such bargains. And in the same countries, when they let a small parcel of land to a tradesman, they let it not for what the land is worth, but what both the land and his trade is worth. And indeed it is next to an impossibility to alter a general bad custom in any nation, without a general regulation, because of inveterate bad dispositions and discouragements, with which the first beginnings of reformations are always attended. Besides, alterations that are not countenanced by the public authority proceed slowly; and if they chance to meet with any check, men soon return to their former bad methods.

The condition then of this nation, chiefly by this abuse of racking the lands, is brought to such extremity, as makes all the commonalty miserable, and the landlords, if possible, the greater slaves, before they can get their rents and reduce them into money. And because this evil is arrived to a greater height with us, than I believe was ever known in any other place; and that, as I have said, we are in no disposition to practise the methods of most other countries, I think we ought to find out some new one which may surmount all difficulties, since in things of this nature divers methods may be proposed very practicable, and much better than any that hitherto have been in use.

I know that if to a law prohibiting all interest for money, another were joined, that no man should possess more land than so much as he should cultivate by servants, the whole money, as well as people of this nation, would be presently employed, either in cultivating lands or in trade and manufactures; that the country would be quickly improved to the greatest height of which the soil is capable, since it would be cultivated by all the rich men of the nation; and that there would still be vast stocks remaining to be employed in trade and manufactures. But to oblige a man of a great estate in land to sell all, except perhaps two hundred pounds sterling a year (which he might cultivate by his servants) and to employ the whole money produced by the sale of the rest, in a thing so uncertain as he would judge trade to be, and for which it is like he might have no disposition or genius, being a thing impracticable: and also to employ the small stocks of minors, widows, and other women unmarried, in trade or husbandry, a thing of too great hazard for them; I would propose a method for our relief, by joining to the law prohibiting all interest of money, and to the other, that no man should possess more land than so much as he cultivates by his servants, a third law, obliging all men that possess lands under the value of two hundred pounds sterling clear profits yearly, to cultivate them by servants, and pay yearly the half of the clear profits to such persons as cultivating land worth two hundred pounds’ sterling a year, or above, shall buy such rents of them at twenty years’ purchase. The project in its full extent may be comprehended in these following articles.

All interest of money to be forbidden.

No man to possess more land than he cultivates by servants.

Every man cultivating land under the value of two hundred pounds’ sterling clear profits a year, to pay yearly the half of the clear profits to some other man who shall buy that rent at twenty years’ purchase; and for his security shall be preferred to all other creditors.

No man to buy or possess those rents, unless he cultivate land to the value at least of two hundred pounds’ sterling clear profits yearly.

Minors, women unmarried, and persons absent upon a public account, may buy or possess such rents, though they cultivate no lands.

By the first article, discharging all interest of money, most men who have small sums at interest, will be obliged to employ it in trade, or the improvement of land.

By the second, that no man is to possess more land, than so much as he cultivates by his servants, the whole land of the kingdom will come into the hands of the richest men; at least there will be no land cultivated by any man who is not the possessor of it. And if he have a greater estate than what he cultivates, he may lay out money upon improvements; or if he have bought a small possession, though he may have no more money left, he may, by selling one half of the rent, procure a sum considerable enough, both to stock and improve it. So that in a few years the country will be everywhere enclosed and improved to the greatest height, the plough being everywhere in the hand of the possessor. Then servants, day-labourers, tradesmen, and all sorts of merchants will be well paid, and the whole commons live plentifully, because they will all be employed by men of substance: the ground by enclosure, and other improvements, will produce the double of what it now does; and the race of horses and black cattle will be much mended.

By the other articles: that no man cultivating land under the value of two hundred pounds’ sterling clear profits yearly, can purchase rents upon land from any other man, but is obliged to pay yearly the half of the clear profits to such persons as shall buy them at twenty years’ purchase; and that only those who cultivate land worth at least two hundred pounds’ sterling a year can buy such rents; the men of great land estates having sold all their lands, except so much as may yield two hundred pounds’ sterling yearly, or so much above that value as they shall think fit to cultivate, may secure, if they please, the whole money they receive for their lands, upon those rents which the lesser possessors are obliged to sell. And so those who had formerly their estates in lands ill cultivated, and corn-rents ill paid, as well as the other three sorts of persons excepted from the general rule, and mentioned in the last article, will have a clear rent in money coming in without trouble, for payment of which they are to be secured in the lands of the said lesser possessors before all creditors. The reason of excepting three sorts of persons before-mentioned from the general rule is evident; because (as has been said) it were unreasonable to oblige minors, or women unmarried, to venture their small stocks in trade or husbandry: and much more than those who are absent upon a public account, should be obliged to have any stock employed that way, since the cannot inspect either.

The small possessors by this project are not wronged in anything; for if they are obliged to pay a rent to others, they receive the value of it. And this rent will put them in mind, not to live after the manner of men of great estates, but as husbandmen, which will be no way derogatory to their quality, however ancient their family may be.

The method to put this project in execution is, first to enact; that interest for money should fall next year from six per cent. to five, and so on, falling every year one per cent. till it cease: and to make a law, that all those who at present possess lands under the value of two hundred pounds’ sterling clear profits yearly, should cultivate them by servants, and sell the half of the clear profits at twenty years’ purchase to the first minor, woman unmarried, or person absent upon a public account who should offer money for them; and in default of such persons presenting themselves to buy, they should be obliged to sell such rents to any other persons qualified as above: and likewise to make another law, that whoever possesses lands at present to the value of two hundred pounds’ sterling clear profits yearly, or more, should at least take so much of them as may amount to that value, into their own hands. This being done, the yearly falling of the interest of money would force some of those who might have money at interest, to take land for it: others calling for their money would buy estates of the landed men, who are to sell all except so much as they cultivate themselves: and the prohibition of interest producing many small possessors would afford abundance of rents upon land to be bought by rich men; of which many might probably be paid out of those very lands they themselves formerly possessed. So that all sorts of men would in a little time fall into that easy method for their affairs, which is proposed by the project.

What the half of the yearly clear profits of any small possessors may be, the usual valuation of lands, in order to public taxes, which because of improvements must be frequently made, will ascertain.

But it will be said, that before any such thing can everywhere take place in this nation, all teinds (or tithes) and all sorts of superiorities, must be transacted for, and sold; that the tenures of all lands must be made allodial, to the end that every man may be upon an equal foot with another; that this project, in order to its execution, does suppose things, which though perhaps they would be great blessings to the nation upon many accounts, and in particular by taking away the seeds of most law-suits, and the obstructions to all sorts of improvements; yet are in themselves as great and considerable as the project itself.

Indeed I must acknowledge that anything calculated for a good end is (since we must express it so) almost always clogged with things of the same nature: for as all bad, so all good things are chained together, and do support one another. But that there is any difficulty, to a legislative power (that is willing to do good) of putting either this project, or the things last named in execution, I believe no man can show. Sure I am, that it never was nor can be the interest of any prince or commonwealth, that any subject should in any manner depend upon another subject: and that it is the interest of all good governments at least to encourage a good sort of husbandry.

I know these proposals, by some men who aim at nothing but private interest, will be looked upon as visionary: it is enough for me, that in themselves, and with regard to the nature of the things, they are practicable; but if on account of the indisposition of such men to receive them, they be thought impracticable, it is not to be accounted strange; since if that indisposition ought only to be considered, everything directed to a good end is such.

Many other proposals might be made to the parliament for the good of this nation, where everything is so much amiss, and the public good so little regarded. Amongst other things, to remove the present seat of the government, might deserve their consideration: for as the happy situation of London has been the principal cause of the glory and riches of England, so the bad situation of Edinburgh has been one great occasion of the poverty and uncleanliness in which the greater part of the people of Scotland live.

A proposal likewise for the better education of our youth would be very necessary: and I must confess I know no part of the world where education is upon any tolerable foot. But perhaps I have presumed too much in offering my opinion upon such considerable matters as those which I have treated.

Since I finished the preceding discourse I am informed, that if the present parliament will not comply with the design of continuing the army, they shall immediately by dissolved, and a new one called. At least those of the presbyterian persuasion, who expect no good from a new parliament, are to be frightened with the dissolution of the present (which has established their church-government) and by that means induced to use their utmost endeavours with the members for keeping up the army, and promoting the designs of ill men: but I hope no presbyterian will ever be for evil things that good may come of them; since thereby they may draw a curse upon themselves instead of a blessing. They will certainly consider that the interest which they ought to embrace, as well upon the account of prudence, as of justice and duty, is that of their country; and will not hearken to the insinuations of ill men who may abuse them, and when they have obtained the continuation of the army, endeavour to persuade his majesty and the parliament, to alter the present government of the church, by telling them that presbyterian government is in its nature opposite to monarchy, that they maintain a rebellious principle of defensive arms, and that a church-government most suitable and subservient to monarchy ought to be established.

Now if at this time the presbyterians be true to the interest of their country, all those who love their country, though they be not of that persuasion, will stand by them in future parliaments, when they shall see that they oppose all things tending to arbitrary power: but if they abandon and betray their country, they will fall unpitied. They must not tell me that their church can never fall, since it is the true church of God. If it be the true church of God, it needs no crooked arts to support it. But I hope they will not deny that it may fall under persecution; which they will deserve, if they go along with the least ill thing to maintain it.

SPEECHES by a Member of the Parliament which Began at Edinburgh the 6th of May, 1703

Edinburgh;
Printed in the Year MDCCIII.
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5: 5. Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, Cato’s Letters (1721)

Cato’s Letters were written by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. Gordon was born in Scotland of obscure origins in the late seventeenth century. He may have acquired a law degree, perhaps at Edinburgh in 1716, but he earned his early living as a tutor in languages. Shortly after moving to London, he met the older Trenchard, who had been born in Somerset in 1662 and educated in the law at Trinity College in Dublin. Leaving law for a government position in 1690, Trenchard acquired a sizable enough fortune from an advantageous marriage and from inheritances to be able to devote himself to political writing. He became an MP from Taunton in 1722, which he remained until his death the next year. Among the topics on which he earned his early reputation were standing armies (1690s), church authority, and political liberty. His writings include The Natural History of Superstition (1709) and The Independent Whig, a journal that began publication in 1720. The occasion for the publication of Cato’s Letters was the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. The work became one of the chief vehicles for conveying Lockean and radical Whig ideas on liberty throughout the English-speaking world in the eighteenth century. It began publication in The London Journal in late 1720 and continued toward the end of 1722. The selection reproduced here comes from John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, “Trade and Naval Power the Offspring of Civil Liberty only, and cannot subsist without it” (Feb. 3, 1721).

John Trenchard, Cato’s Letters, or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects. Four volumes in Two, edited and annotated by Ronald Hamowy (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995). Vol. 2. Chapter: NO. 64. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1722. Trade and Naval Power the Offspring of Civil Liberty only, and cannot subsist without it. (Trenchard)

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1238/64487 on 2009-04-23

The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

NO. 64. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1722. Trade and Naval Power the Offspring of Civil Liberty only, and cannot subsist without it. (Trenchard)

Sir,

I have in former letters begun to shew, by an induction of particulars, and shall hereafter more fully shew, that population, riches, true religion, virtue, magnanimity, arts, sciences, and learning, are the necessary effects and productions of liberty; and shall spend this paper in proving, that an extensive trade, navigation, and naval power, entirely flow from the same source: In this case, if natural advantage and encouragements be wanting, art, expence, and violence, are lost and thrown away. Nothing is more certain, than that trade cannot be forced; she is a coy and humorous dame, who must be won by flattery and allurements, and always flies force and power; she is not confined to nations, sects, or climates, but travels and wanders about the earth, till she fixes her residence where she finds the best welcome and kindest reception; her contexture is so nice and delicate, that she cannot breathe in a tyrannical air; will and pleasure are so opposite to her nature, that but touch her with the sword, and she dies: But if you give her gentle and kind entertainment, she is a grateful and beneficent mistress; she will turn deserts into fruitful fields, villages into great cities, cottages into palaces, beggars into princes, convert cowards into heroes, blockheads into philosophers; will change the coverings of little worms into the richest brocades, the fleeces of harmless sheep into the pride and ornaments of kings, and by a further metamorphosis will transmute them again into armed hosts and haughty fleets.

Now it is absolutely impossible, from the nature of an arbitrary government, that she should enjoy security and protection, or indeed be free from violence, under it. There is not one man in a thousand that has the endowments and abilities necessary to govern a state, and much fewer yet that have just notions how to make trade and commerce useful and advantageous to it; and, amongst these, it is rare to find one who will forego all personal advantages, and devote himself and his labours wholly to his country's interest: But if such a phoenix should arise in any country, he will find it hard to get access to an arbitrary court, and much harder yet to grapple with and stem the raging corruptions in it, where virtue has nothing to do, and vice rides triumphant; where bribery, servile flattery, blind submission, riotous expence, and very often lust and unnatural prostitutions, are the ladders to greatness; which will certainly be supported by the same methods by which it is obtained.

What has a virtuous man to do, or what can he do, in such company? If he pity the people's calamities, he shall be called seditious; if he recommend any publick good, he shall be called preaching fool; if he should live soberly and virtuously himself, they will think him fit only to be sent to a cloister; if he do not flatter the prince and his superiors, he will be thought to envy their prosperity; if he presume to advise his prince to pursue his true interest, he will be esteemed a formidable enemy to the whole court, who will unite to destroy him: In fine, his virtues will be crimes, reproaches, and of dangerous consequence to those who have none. As jails pick up all the little pilfering rogues of a country, so such courts engross all the great ones; who have no business there but to grow rich, and to riot upon the publick calamities, to use all the means of oppression and rapine, to make hasty fortunes before the bow-string overtakes them, or a sudden favourite supplants them.

Now what encouragement or security can trade and industry receive from such a crew of banditti? No privileges and immunities, or even protection, can be obtained but for money, and are always granted to such who give most; and these again shall be curtailed, altered, abrogated, and cancelled, upon the change of a minister, or of his inclinations, interest, and caprices: Monopolies, exclusive companies, liberties of pre-emption, &c. shall be obtained for bribes or favour, or in trust for great men, or vile and worthless women. Some merchants shall be openly encouraged and protected, and get exemptions from searches and duties, or shall be connived at in escaping them; others shall be burdened, oppressed, manacled, stopped, and delayed, to extort presents, to wreak revenge, or to give preference of markets to favourites. Governors of port-towns, or of colonies, who have purchased their employments at court, shall be indulged and countenanced in making reprisals upon the traders, and to enable them to satisfy the yearly presents due to minions: Admirals and commanders of men of war shall press their sailors, to be paid for not doing it; and military officers and soldiers shall molest and interrupt them in the course of their commerce and honest industry.

Nor shall it be in the power of the most vigilant, active and virtuous prince, to prevent these and a thousand other daily oppressions; he must see with his ministers' eyes, and hear with their ears; nor can there be any access to him but by their means, and by their leave: Constant spies shall watch and observe the first intentions, or least approaches to a complaint; and the person injured shall be threatened, way-laid, imprisoned, perhaps murdered; but if he escape all their treacheries, and can get to the ear of his prince, it is great odds but he will be treated and punished as a calumniator, a false accuser, and a seditious disturber of his Majesty's government: No witness will dare to appear for him, many false ones will be suborned against him; and the whole posse of ministers, officers, favourites, parasites, pathicks, strumpets, buffoons, fiddlers, and pimps, will conspire to ruin him, as a common enemy to their common interests.

But if all these mischiefs could be avoided, the necessities of such a prince, arising from the profusion and vast expence of his court, from his foolish wars, and the depredations, embezzlements, and various thefts of his ministers and servants, will be always calling for new supplies, for new extortions, which must be raised by all the means by which they can be raised: New and sudden impositions shall be put upon trade, new loans be exacted from merchants; commodities of general use shall be bought up by the prince's order, perhaps upon trust, and afterwards retailed again at extravagant advantages: Merchants shall be encouraged to import their goods, upon promises of easy and gentle usage; these goods when imported shall be subjected to exorbitant impositions and customs, perhaps confiscated upon frivolous pretences. But if these, and infinite other oppressions, could be prevented for some time, by the vigilance of a wise prince, or the care of an able minister; yet there can be no probable security, or even hopes of the continuance of honest and prudent measures in such a government: For one wise prince so educated, there will be twenty foolish ones; and for one honest minister, there will be a thousand corrupt ones.

Under such natural disadvantages, perpetual uncertainties, or rather certain oppressions, no men will embark large stocks and extensive talents for business, breed up their children to precarious employments, build forts, or plant colonies, when the breath of a weak prince, or the caprice of a corrupt favourite, shall dash at once all their labours and their hopes; and therefore it is impossible that any trade can subsist long in such a government, but what is necessary to support the luxury and vices of a court; and even such trade is, for the most part, carried on by the stocks, and for the advantage of free countries, and their own petty merchants are only factors to the others. True merchants are citizens of the world, and that is their country where they can live best and most secure; and whatever they can pick up and gather together in tyrannical governments, they remove to free ones. Tavernier invested all the riches he had amassed by his long ramble over the world, in the barren rocks of Switzerland: And being asked by the last king of France, how it came to pass that he, who had seen the finest countries on the globe, came to lay out his fortune in the worst? He gave his haughty Majesty this short answer, that he was willing to have something which he could call his own.

As I think it is evident, by what I have said before, that trade cannot long subsist, much less flourish, in arbitrary governments; so there is so close and inseparable a connection between that and naval power, that I dare boldly affirm, that the latter can never arrive to any formidable height, and continue long in that situation, under such a state. Where there is an extensive trade; great numbers of able-bodied and courageous sailors, men bred up to fatigues, hardships, and hazards, and consequently soldiers by profession, are kept in constant pay; not only without any charge to the publick, but greatly to its benefit; not only by daily adding to its wealth and power, but by venting and employing abroad, to their country's honour and safety, those turbulent and unruly spirits that would be fuel for factions, and the tools and instruments of ambitious or discontented great men at home. These men are always ready at their country's call, to defend the profession which they live by, and with it the publick happiness: They are, and ever must be, in the publick interest, with which their own is so closely united; for they subsist by exporting the productions of the people's industry, which they constantly increase by so doing: They receive their pay from the merchants, a sort of men always in the interests of liberty, from which alone they can receive protection and encouragement. And as this race of men contribute vastly to the publick security and wealth, so they take nothing from it: They are not quartered up and down their native country, like the bands of despotick princes, to oppress their subjects, interrupt their industry, debauch their wives and daughters, insult their persons, to be examples of lewdness and prodigality, and to be always ready at hand to execute the bloody commands of a tyrant.

No monarch was ever yet powerful enough to keep as many seamen in constant pay at his own expence, as single cities have been able to do without any at all: The pay of a sailor, with his provision, is equal to that of a trooper in arbitrary governments; nor can they learn their trade, by taking the sea-air for a few summer months, and wafting about the coasts of their own country: They gain experience and boldness, by various and difficult voyages, by being constantly inured to hardships and dangers. Nor is it possible for single princes, with all their power and vigilance, to have such regular supplies of naval provisions, as trading countries must have always in store. There must be a regular and constant intercourse with the nations from whom these supplies come; a certain and regular method of paying for them; and constant demands will produce constant supplies. There are always numerous magazines in the hands of private merchants, ready for their own use or sale. There must be great numbers of shipwrights, anchor-smiths, rope and sail-makers, and infinite other artificers, sure always of constant employment; and who, if they are oppressed by one master, may go to another. There must be numbers of ships used for trade, that, upon occasions, may be employed for men of war, for transports, for fireships, and tenders. Now all these things, or scarce any of them, can ever be brought about by arbitrary courts; stores will be embezzled, exhausted, and worn out, before new ones are supplied; payments will not be punctually made; artificers will be discouraged, oppressed, and often left without employ: Every thing will be done at an exorbitant expence, and often not done when it is paid for; and when payments are made, the greatest part shall go in fees, or for bribes, or in secret trusts.

For these reasons, and many others, despotick monarchs, though infinitely powerful at land, yet could never rival Neptune, and extend their empire over the liquid world; for though great and vigorous efforts have been often made by these haughty tyrants of mankind, to subject that element to their ambition and their power, being taught by woeful experience, arising from perpetual losses and disappointments, of what vast importance that dominion was to unlimited and universal sovereignty; yet all their riches, applications, and pride, have never been able, in one instance, to effect it. Sometimes, indeed, trade, like a phantom, has made a faint appearance at an arbitrary court, but disappeared again at the first approach of the morning light: She is the portion of free states, is married to liberty, and ever flies the foul and polluted embraces of a tyrant.

The little state of Athens was always able to humble the pride, and put a check to the growing greatness, of the towering Persian monarchs, by their naval power; and when stripped of all their territories by land, and even their capital city, the seat of their commonwealth, yet had strength enough left to vanquish numerous fleets, which almost covered the sea, and to defeat an expedition carried on by armies that drank up rivers, and exhausted all the stores of the land.

The single city of Venice has proved itself an over-match in naval power to the great Ottoman Empire, though possessed of so many islands, useful ports, environed with so many sea-coasts, and abounding with all sorts of stores necessary to navigation; and in the year fifty-six gave the Turks so signal an overthrow at the Dardanelles, as put that state in such a consternation, that they believed their empire at an end; and it is thought if the Venetians had pursued their victory, they had driven them out of Constantinople, and even out of Europe; for the Grand Seignior himself was preparing to fly into Asia. The little island of Rhodes defended itself for some ages against the whole power of the Sultan, though encompassed by his dominions; and it was with great difficulty, hazard, and expence, that he at last overcame them, and drove the inhabitants to Malta, where they have ever since braved his pride, and live upon the plunder of his subjects: And notwithstanding all his numerous and expensive efforts to share with the Christians the dominion of the sea; yet there are no other seeds or traces of it left through his great and extensive territories, but what are found in the free piratical states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

Neither the Sophi of Persia, the Great Mogul, the many kings who command the banks of the Ganges, nor all the haughty potentates of Asia and Africa, are able to contend at sea with the English or Dutch East-India Companies, or even to defend their subjects against but a few pirates, with all their population, and their mines of gold and diamonds.

Spain in all her pride, with the wealth of both Indies, with dominions so vast and extensive, that the sun rises and sets within them, and a sea-line, which if extended would environ the earth, yet was not able to dispute their title to that element with a few revolted provinces, who grew up through the course of an expensive war to that amazing greatness, that in less than a century they saw themselves, from a few fisher-towns encompassed with bogs and morasses, become a most formidable state, equal to the greatest potentates at sea, and to most at land; to have great kings in a distant world submit to be their vassals; and, in fine, to be protectors of that mighty nation from whom they revolted. Here is a stupendous instance of the effects of liberty, which neighbouring monarchs with twenty times the territory tremble at, and posterity will hardly believe.

France, with all its oeconomy, address, and power, with its utmost and most expensive efforts, and the assistance of neighbouring and even rival kings, has not been able to establish an empire upon that coy element. She saw it, like a mushroom, rise in a night, and wither again the next day. It is true, that at an immense expence and infinite labour, she got together a formidable fleet, and with it got victories, and took thousands of rival ships; yet every day grew weaker as her enemies grew stronger, and could never recover a single defeat, which in Holland would have been repaired in a few more weeks than the battle was days in fighting: So impossible is it for art to contend with nature, and slavery to dispute the naval prize with liberty.

Sweden and Denmark, though possessed of the naval stores of Europe, nations who subsist by that commerce, and are constantly employed to build ships for their neighbours; yet are not able, with their united force, to equip, man out, and keep upon the sea for any considerable time, a fleet large enough to dispute with an English or Dutch squadron: And I dare venture my reputation and skill in politicks, by boldly asserting, that another vain and unnatural northern apparition will soon vanish and disappear again, like the morning-star at the glimmering of the sun, and every one shall ask, Where is it?

T I am, &c.
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6: 6. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1723)

Bernard Mandeville was born in Holland in 1670 into a family of physicians and naval officers. He received his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Leiden in 1691 and began to practice as a specialist in nerve and stomach disorders, his father’s specialty. Perhaps after a tour of Europe, he ended up in London, where he soon learned the language and decided to stay. He married in 1699, fathered at least two children, and brought out his first English publication in 1703 (a book of fables in the La Fontaine tradition). He wrote works on medicine (A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions, 1711), poetry (Wishes to a Godson, with Other Miscellany Poems, 1712), and religious and political affairs (Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness, 1720). He died in 1733. His most famous work, The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, from which the present poem is taken (“The Grumbling Hive”), came out in more than half a dozen editions beginning in 1705 and became one of the most enduringly controversial works of the eighteenth century for its claims about the moral foundations of modern commercial society.

Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, 2 vols. With a Commentary Critical, Historical, and Explanatory by F.B. Kaye (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988). Vol. 1. Chapter: [1]The Grumbling Hive: o r, Knaves turn’d Honest. a

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/846/66863 on 2009-04-23

The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

[1]The Grumbling Hive: o r, Knaves turn’d Honest.a
- A Spacious Hive well stockt with Bees,
- That liv’d in Luxury and Ease;
- And yet as fam’d for Laws and Arms,
- As yielding large and early Swarms;
- Was counted the great Nursery
- Of Sciences and Industry.
- No Bees had better Government,
- More Fickleness, or less Content:
- They were not Slaves to Tyranny,
- Nor rul’d by wild Democracy;
- [2]But Kings, that could not wrong, because
- Their Power was circumscrib’d by Laws.
- T h e s e Insects liv’d like Men, and all
- Our Actions they perform’d in small:
- They did whatever’s done in Town,
- And what belongs to Sword or Gown:
- Tho’ th’ Artful Works, by nimble Slight
- Of minute Limbs, ’scap’d Human Sight;
- Yet we’ve no Engines, Labourers,
- Ships, Castles, Arms, Artificers,
- Craft, Science, Shop, or Instrument,
- But they had an Equivalent:
- Which, since their Language is unknown,
- Must be call’d, as we do our own.
- As grant, that among other Things,
- They wanted Dice, yet they had Kings;
- And those had Guards; from whence we may
- Justly conclude, they had some Play;
- Unless a Regiment be shewn
- Of Soldiers, that make use of none.
- [3]Va s t Numbers throng’d the fruitful Hive;
- Yet those vast Numbers made ’em thrive;
- Millions endeavouring to supply
- Each other’s Lust and Vanity;
- While other Millions were employ’d,
- To see their Handy-works destroy’d;
- They furnish’d half the Universe;
- Yet had more Work than Labourers.
- Some with vast Stocks, and little Pains,
- Jump’d into Business of great Gains;
- And some were damn’d to Sythes and Spades,
- And all those hard laborious Trades;
- Where willing Wretches daily sweat,
- And wear out Strength and Limbs to eat:
- (A.)a While others follow’d Mysteries,
- To which few Folks bind ’Prentices;
- That want no Stock, but that of Brass,
- And may set up without a Cross;1
- As Sharpers, Parasites, Pimps, Players,
- Pick-pockets, Coiners, Quacks, South-sayers, 2
- [4]And all those, that in Enmity,
- With downright Working, cunningly
- Convert to their own Use the Labour
- Of their good-natur’d heedless Neighbour.
- (B.) These were call’d Knaves, but bar the Name,
- The grave Industrious were the same:
- All Trades and Places knew some Cheat,
- No Calling was without Deceit.
- T h e Lawyers, of whose Art the Basis
- Was raising Feuds and splitting Cases,
- Oppos’d all Registers, that Cheats
- Might make more Work with dipt Estates; 1
- As wer’t unlawful, that one’s own,
- Without a Law-Suit, should be known.
- They kept off Hearings wilfully,
- To finger the refreshinga Fee;
- And to defend a wicked Cause,
- Examin’d and survey’d the Laws,
- As Burglars Shops and Houses do,
- To find out where they’d best break through.
- [5]P h y s i c i a n s valu’d Fame and Wealth
- Above the drooping Patient’s Health,
- Or their own Skill: The greatest Part
- Study’d, instead of Rules of Art,
- Grave pensive Looks and dull Behaviour,
- To gain th’ Apothecary’s Favour;
- The Praise of Midwives, Priests, and all
- That serv’d at Birth or Funeral.
- To bear with th’ ever-talking Tribe,
- And hear my Lady’s Aunt prescribe;
- With formal Smile, and kind How d’ye,
- To fawn on all the Family;
- And, which of all the greatest Curse is,
- T’ endure th’ Impertinence of Nurses.
- A m o n g the many Priests of Jove,
- Hir’d to draw Blessings from Above,
- Some few were Learn’d and Eloquent,
- But thousands Hot and Ignorant:
- Yet all pass’d Muster that could hide
- Their Sloth, Lust, Avarice and Pride;
- [6]For which they were as fam’d as Tailors
- For Cabbage, or for Brandy Sailors:a
- Some, meagre-look’d, and meanly clad,
- Would mystically pray for Bread,
- Meaning by that an ample Store,
- Yet lit’rally received no more;
- And, while these holy Drudges starv’d,
- The b lazy Ones, for which they serv’d,
- Indulg’d their Ease, with all the Graces
- Of Health and Plenty in their Faces.
- (C.) T h e Soldiers, that were forc’d to fight,
- If they surviv’d, got Honour by’t;
- Tho’ some, that shunn’d the bloody Fray,
- Had Limbs shot off, that ran away:
- Some valiant Gen’rals fought the Foe;
- Others took Bribes to let them go:
- Some ventur’d always where ’twas warm,
- Lost now a Leg, and then an Arm;
- Till quite disabled, and put by,
- They liv’d on half their Salary;
- [7]While others never came in Play,
- And staid at Home for double Pay.
- T h e i r Kings were serv’d, but Knavishly,
- Cheated by their own Ministry;
- Many, that for their Welfare slaved,
- Robbing the very Crown they saved:
- Pensions were small, and they liv’d high,
- Yet boasted of their Honesty.
- Calling, whene’er they strain’d their Right,
- The slipp’ry Trick a Perquisite;
- And when Folks understood their Cant,
- They chang’d that for Emolument;
- Unwilling to be short or plain,
- In any thing concerning Gain;
- (D.) For there was not a Bee but would
- Get more, I won’t say, than he should;
- But than he dar’d to let them know,
- (E.) That pay’d for’t; as your Gamesters do,
- That, tho’ at fair Play, ne’er will own
- Before the Losers what they’ve won.
- [8]B u t who can all their Frauds repeat?
- The very Stuff, which in the Street
- They sold for Dirt t’enrich the Ground,
- Was often by the Buyers found
- Sophisticated with a quarter
- Of good-for-nothing Stones and Mortar;
- Tho’ Flail had little Cause to mutter,
- Who sold the other Salt for Butter.
- J u s t i c e her self, fam’d for fair Dealing,
- By Blindness had not lost her Feeling;
- Her Left Hand, which the Scales should hold,
- Had often dropt ’em, brib’d with Gold;
- And, tho’ she seem’d Impartial,
- Where Punishment was corporal,
- Pretended to a reg’lar Course,
- In Murther, and all Crimes of Force;
- Tho’ some, first pillory’d for Cheating,
- Were hang’d in Hemp of their own beating;
- Yet, it was thought, the Sword she bore
- Check’d but the Desp’rate and the Poor;
- [9]That, urg’d by meer Necessity,
- Were ty’d up to the wretched Tree1
- For Crimes, which not deserv’d that Fate,
- But to secure the Rich and Great.
- T h u s every Part was full of Vice,
- Yet the whole Mass a Paradise;
- Flatter’d in Peace, and fear’d in Wars,
- They were th’ Esteem of Foreigners,
- And lavish of their Wealth and Lives,
- The Balance of all other Hives.
- Such were the Blessings of that State;
- Their Crimes conspir’d to make them a Great:
- (F.) And Virtue, who from Politicks
- Had learn’d a Thousand Cunning Tricks,
- Was, by their happy Influence,
- Made Friends with Vice: And ever since,
- (G.) The worst of all the Multitude
- Did something for the Common Good.
- [10]T h i s was the States Craft, that maintain’d
- The Whole of which each Part complain’d:
- This, as in Musick Harmony,b
- Made Jarrings in the main agree;c
- (H.) Parties directly opposite,
- Assist each other a , as ’twere for Spight;
- And Temp’rance with Sobriety,
- Serve Drunkenness and Gluttony.
- ( I.) T h e Root of Evil, Avarice,
- That damn’d ill-natur’d baneful Vice,
- Was Slave to Prodigality,
- (K.) That noble Sin; (L.) whilst Luxury
- Employ’d a Million of the Poor,
- (M.) And odious Pride a Million more:
- (N.)b Envy it self, and Vanity,
- Were Ministers of Industry;
- Their darling Folly, Fickleness,
- In Diet, Furniture and Dress,
- That strange ridic’lous Vice, was made
- The very Wheel that turn’d the Trade.
- [11]Their Laws and Clothes were equally
- Objects of Mutability;
- For, what was well done for a time,
- In half a Year became a Crime;
- Yet while they alter’d thus their Laws,
- Still finding and correcting Flaws,
- They mended by Inconstancy
- Faults, which no Prudence could foresee.
- T h u s Vice nurs’d Ingenuity,
- Which join’d with Time and Industry,
- Had carry’d Life’s Conveniencies a ,
- (O.)b It’s real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease,
- (P.) c To such a Height, the very Poor
- Liv’d better than the Rich before,1
- And nothing could be added more.
- H o w Vain is Mortal Happiness!
- Had they but known the Bounds of Bliss;
- And that Perfection here below
- Is more than Gods can well bestow;
- [12]The Grumbling Brutes had been content
- With Ministers and Government.
- But they, at every ill Success,
- Like Creatures lost without Redress,
- Curs’d Politicians, Armies, Fleets;
- While every one cry’d, Damn the Cheats,
- And would, tho’ conscious of his own,
- In others barb’rously bear none.
- O n e, that had got a Princely Store,
- By cheating Master, King and Poor,
- Dar’d cry aloud, The Land must sink
- For all its Fraud; And whom d’ye think
- The Sermonizing Rascal chid?
- A Glover that sold Lamb for Kid.
- The least thing was not done amiss,
- Or cross’d the Publick Business;
- But all the Rogues cry’d brazenly,
- Good Gods, Had we but Honesty!
- [13]Merc’ry smil’d at th’ Impudence,
- And others call’d it want of Sense,
- Always to rail at what they lov’d:
- But Jove with Indignation mov’d,
- At last in Anger swore, He’d rid
- The bawling Hive of Fraud; and did.
- The very Moment it departs,
- And Honesty fills all their Hearts;
- There shews ’em, like th’ Instructive Tree,
- Those Crimes which they’re asham’d to see;
- Which now in Silence they confess,
- By blushing at their Ugliness:
- Like Children, that would hide their Faults,
- And by their Colour own their Thoughts:
- Imag’ning, when they’re look’d upon,
- That others see what they have done.
- B u t, Oh ye Gods! What Consternation,
- How vast and sudden was th’ Alteration!
- In half an Hour, the Nation round,
- Meat fell a Peny in the Pound.
- [14]The Mask Hypocrisy’s flung down,
- From the great Statesman to the Clown:
- And some in borrow’d Looks well known,
- Appear’d like Strangers in their own.
- The Bar was silent from that Day;
- For now the willing Debtors pay,
- Ev’n what’s by Creditors forgot;
- Who quitted them that had it not.
- Those, that were in the Wrong, stood mute,
- And dropt the patch’d vexatious Suit:
- On which since nothing lessa can thrive,
- Than Lawyers in an honest Hive,
- All, except those that got enough,
- With Inkhorns by their sides troop’d off.
- J u s t i c e hang’d some, set others free;
- And after Goal delivery,
- Her Presence beingb no more requir’d,
- With all her Train and Pomp retir’d.
- First march’d some Smiths with Locks and Grates,
- Fetters, and Doors with Iron Plates:
- [15]Next Goalers, Turnkeys and Assistants:
- Before the Goddess, at some distance,
- Her chief and faithful Minister,
- ’Squire Ca t c h,1 the Law’s great Finisher,
- Bore not th’ imaginary Sword,2
- But his own Tools, an Ax and Cord:
- Then on a Cloud the Hood-wink’d Fair,
- J u s t i c e her self was push’d by Air:
- About her Chariot, and behind,
- Were Serjeants, Bums3 of every kind,
- Tip-staffs, and all those Officers,
- That squeeze a Living out of Tears.
- T h o’ Physick liv’d, while Folks were ill,
- None would prescribe, but Bees of skill,
- Which through the Hive dispers’d so wide,
- That none of thema had need to ride;
- Wav’d vain Disputes, and strove to free
- The Patients of their Misery;
- Left Drugs in cheating Countries grown,
- And us’d the Product of their own;
- [16]Knowing the Gods sent no Disease
- To Nations without Remedies.
- T h e i r Clergy rous’d from Laziness,
- Laid not their Charge on Journey-Bees;1
- But serv’d themselves, exempt from Vice,
- The Gods with Pray’r and Sacrifice;
- All those, that were unfit, or knew
- Their Service might be spar’d, withdrew:
- Nor was there Business for so many,
- (If th’ Honest stand in need of any,)
- Few only with the High-Priest staid,
- To whom the rest Obedience paid:
- Himself employ’d in Holy Cares,a
- Resign’d to others State-Affairs.
- He chas’d no Starv’ling from his Door,
- Nor pinch’d the Wages of the Poor;
- But at his House the Hungry’s fed,
- The Hireling finds unmeasur’d Bread,
- The needy Trav’ler Board and Bed.
- [17]A m o n g the King’s great Ministers,
- And all th’ inferior Officers
- The Change was great; (Q)a for frugally
- They now liv’d on their Salary:
- That a poor Bee should ten times come
- To ask his Due, a trifling Sum,
- And by some well-hir’d Clerk be made
- To give a Crown, or ne’er be paid,
- Would now be call’d a downright Cheat,
- Tho’ formerly a Perquisite.
- All Places manag’d first by Three,
- Who watch’d each other’s Knavery,
- And often for a Fellow-feeling,
- Promoted one another’s stealing,
- Are happily supply’d by One,
- By which some thousands more are gone.
- (R.)b No Honour now could be content,
- To live and owe for what was spent;
- Liv’ries in Brokers Shops are hung,
- They part with Coaches for a Song;
- [18]Sell stately Horses by whole Sets;
- And Country-Houses, to pay Debts.
- V a i n Cost is shunn’d as much as Fraud;
- They have no Forces kept Abroad;
- Laugh at th’ Esteem of Foreigners,
- And empty Glory got by Wars;
- They fight, but for their Country’s sake,
- When Right or Liberty’s at Stake.
- N o w mind the glorious Hive, and see
- How Honesty and Trade agree.
- The Shew is gone, it thins apace;
- And looks with quite another Face.
- For ’twas not only that They went,
- By whom vast Sums were Yearly spent;
- But Multitudes that liv’d on them,
- Were daily forc’d to do the same.
- In vain to other Trades they’d fly;
- All were o’er-stock’d accordingly.
- [19]T h e Price of Land and Houses falls;
- Mirac’lous Palaces, whose Walls,
- Like those of Thebes, were rais’d by Play,1
- Are to be let; while the once gay,
- Well-seated Houshold Gods would be
- More pleas’d to expirea in Flames, than see
- The mean Inscription on the Door
- Smile at the lofty ones they bore.
- The building Trade is quite destroy’d,
- Artificers are not employ’d;
- (S.)b No Limner for his Art is fam’d,
- Stone-cutters, Carvers are not nam’d.
- T h o s e, that remain’d, grown temp’rate, strive,
- Not how to spend, but how to live,
- And, when they paid their Tavern Score,
- Resolv’d to enter it no more:
- No Vintner’s Jilt in all the Hive
- Could wear now Cloth of Gold, and thrive;
- Nor Torcol such vast Sums advance,
- For Burgundy and Ortelans;
- [20]The Courtier’s gone, that with his Miss
- Supp’d at his House on Christmas Peas;
- Spending as much in two Hours stay,
- As keeps a Troop of Horse a Day.
- T h e haughty Chloe, to live Great,
- Had made her (T.)c Husband rob the State:
- But now she sells her Furniture,
- Which th’ Indies had been ransack’d for;
- Contracts th’ expensive Bill of Fare,
- And wears her strong Suit a whole Year:
- The slight and fickle Age is past;
- And Clothes, as well as Fashions, last.
- Weavers, that join’d rich Silk with Plate,
- And all the Trades subordinate,
- Are gone. Still Peace and Plenty reign,
- And every Thing is cheap, tho’ plain:
- Kind Nature, free from Gard’ners Force,
- Allows all Fruits in her own Course;
- But Rarities cannot be had,
- Where Pains to get thema are not paid.
- [21]A s Pride and Luxury decrease,
- So by degrees they leave the Seas.
- Not Merchants now, butb Companies
- Remove whole Manufactories.
- All Arts and Crafts neglected lie;
- (V.)c Content, the Bane of Industry,1
- Makes ’em admire their homely Store,
- And neither seek nor covet more.
- S o few in the vast Hive remain,
- The hundredth Part they can’t maintain
- Against th’ Insults of numerous Foes;
- Whom yet they valiantly oppose:
- ’Till some well-fenc’d Retreat is found,
- And here they die or stand their Ground.
- No Hireling in their Army’s known;
- But bravely fighting for their own,
- Their Courage and Integrity
- At last were crown’d with Victory.
- They triumph’d not without their Cost,
- For many Thousand Bees were lost.
- [22]Hard’ned with Toils and Exercise,
- They counted Ease it self a Vice;
- Which so improv’d their Temperance;
- That, to avoid Extravagance,
- They flew into a hollow Tree,
- Blest with Content and Honesty.
[23]THE MORAL.
- THENleave Complaints: Fools only strive
- (X.) aTo make a Great an Honest Hive
- (Y.) bT’ enjoy the World’s Conveniencies,c
- Be fam’d in War, yet live in Ease,
- Without great Vices, is a vain
- Eutopiaseated in the Brain.
- Fraud, Luxury and Pride must live,
- While we the Benefits receive:
- Hunger’s a dreadful Plague, no doubt,
- Yet who digests or thrives without?
- Do we not owe the Growth of Wine
- To the dry shabby crookeddVine?
- Which, while its Shoots neglected stood,
- Chok’d other Plants, and ran to Wood;
- But blest us with its noble Fruit,
- As soon as it was ty’d and cut:
- [24]So Vice is beneficial found,
- When it’s by Justice lopt and bound;
- Nay, where the People would be great,
- As necessary to the State,
- As Hunger is to make ’em eat.
- Bare Virtue can’t make Nations live
- In Splendor; they, that would revive
- A Golden Age, must be as free,
- For Acorns, as for Honesty.1
FINIS.

[a]: or, Knavesturn’d Honest] om. in heading, although present on title-page, 05

[a](A.), (B.), etc.] No reference letters in 05

[1]Without money. A cross was a small coin.

[2]Cf. Butler’s posthumous Upon the Weakness and Misery of Man:
- . . . bawds, whores, and usurers,
- Pimps, scriv’ners, silenc’d ministers,
- That get estates by being undone
- For tender conscience, and have none,
- Like those that with their credit drive
- A trade, without a stock, and thrive . . .
Had Mandeville perhaps seen a MS. of Butler’s poem (published 1759)? The poem, incidentally, stated,
- Our holiest actions have been
- Th’ effects of wickedness and sin . .
[1]Mortgaged estates.

[a]retaining 05

[a]Sailors:] Sailors, 32

[b]Some 05–23

[1]Cf. Livy i. 26: ‘infelici arbori reste suspendito’; also Cicero, Pro C. Rabirio iv. 13.

[a]’em 05

[b]Harmony,] Harmony 25–32

[c]agree;] agree, 32

[a]oth’r 05

[b](N.) om. 14

[a]Conveniences 32

[b](N.) 14

[c](O.) 14

[1]Of these lines and their elaboration in Remark P, I note two anticipations (not necessarily sources): ‘. . . a king of a large and fruitful territory there [America] feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England’ (Locke, Of Civil Government 11. v. 41); and ‘. . . a King of India is not so well lodg’d, and fed, and cloath’d, as a Day-labourer of England’ (Considerations on the East-India Trade, in Select Collection of Early English Tracts on Commerce, ed. Political Economy Club, 1856, p. 594).

[a]else 32

[b]be’ng 14–25

[1]‘Jack Ketch’ had become a generic term for executioners.

[2]Probably the sword of justice, although a note in the French translation explains it differently (ed. 1750, i. 21): ‘On ne se sert dans les executions en Angleterre que de la hache pour trancher la tête, jamais de l’Epée. C’est pour cela qu’il donne le nom d’imaginaire à cette Epée qu’on attribue au Bourreau.’

[3]Bumbailiffs.

[a]’em 05

[1]‘Journeyman parson’ was a slang term for a curate.

[a]Cares,] Cares; 24–32

[a](P.) 14

[b](Q.) 14

[1]A footnote in the French translation (ed. 1750, i. 27) says: ‘L’Auteur veut parler des bâtimens élevés pour l’Opera & la Comèdie. Amphion, après avoir chassé Cadmus & sa Femme du lieu de leur demeure, y bâtit la Ville de Thèbes, en y attirant les pierres avec ordre & mesure, par l’harmonie merveilleuse de son divin Luth.’ It is possible, however, that Mandeville intended a pun on ‘Play’ as meaning both music and gambling.

[a]to expire] t’expire 05–25

[b](R.) 14

[c](T.) om 14

[a]’em 05–29

[b]But 32

[c](S.) 14

[1]Compare Locke’s reflection: ‘When a man is perfectly content with the state he is in—which is when he is perfectly without any uneasiness—what industry, what action, what will is there left, but to continue in it? … And thus we see our all-wise Maker, suitably to our constitution and frame, and knowing what it is that determines the will, has put into man the uneasiness of hunger: and thirst, and other natural desires, that return at their seasons, to move and determine their wills, for the preservation of themselves, and the continuation of their species’ (Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Fraser, 1894, 11. xxi. 34).

[a](T.) 14

[b](V.) 14

[c]Conveniences 32

[d]shabby crooked] crooked, shabby 05

[1]In its use of feminine endings the Grumbling Hive is less Hudibrastic than is Mandeville’s other verse, containing only some seven per cent of these endings as against the twenty per cent of Mandeville’s verse as a whole and the thirty-five per cent of his translations from Scarron in Typhon (1704) and Wishes to a Godson (1712). Perhaps Mandeville consciously imitated this feature of Hudibras, a poem which he twice quoted (Treatise, ed. 1711, p. 94, and Origin of Honour, p. 134) and whose author he called ‘the incomparable Butler’ (Treatise, p. 94).
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7: 7. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws (1748)

Charles de Secondat, Baron of La Brède and of Montesquieu, was born in 1689. He came from a judicial family and became a lawyer in Bordeaux as well as a judge in its local parlement. His 1721 work The Persian Letters, an epistolary novel concerning the travels to France and Europe of some Persian noblemen, was one of the founding literary productions of the French Enlightenment, with its oblique social satire and its comparative exploration of human customs and human nature. It had sufficient impact to secure his entry into the Académie Française in 1728. His Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decline (1734) also made a sizable impact on contemporaries, but it was Esprit des lois (1748) that assured his immortality. That work, on which he labored for twenty years, was an exploration of the history of the law and its relations to social and political systems. It contains, among many other things, an interpretation of the English parliamentary system that was destined to be highly influential on both sides of the Atlantic. He popularized the notion that an English parliamentary system based on checks and balances, and on a systemic separation of powers, was crucial to liberty. The book was condemned, to his great dismay, by the Parlement of Paris. He died in 1755. The excerpt contained here is the full text of book 20, which is devoted to commerce.

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2. Chapter: BOOK XX.: OF LAWS IN RELATION TO COMMERCE, CONSIDERED IN ITS NATURE AND DISTINCTIONS.

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/838/71769 on 2009-04-23

The text is in the public domain.

BOOK XX.

OF LAWS IN RELATION TO COMMERCE, CONSIDERED IN ITS NATURE AND DISTINCTIONS.

CHAP. I.

Of Commerce.

THE following subjects deserve to be treated in a more extensive manner than the nature of this work will permit. Fain would I glide down a gentle river; but I am carried away by a torrent.

Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that whereever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners.

Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than formerly. Commerce has every where diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations; these are compared one with another, and from this comparison arise the greatest advantages.

Commercial laws, it may be said, improve manners, for the same reason as they destroy them. They corrupt the purest morals* ; this was the subject of Plato’s complaints: and we every day see, that they polish and refine the most barbarous.

CHAP. II.

Of the Spirit of Commerce.

PEACE is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.

But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see, that in† countries where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues: the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money.

The spirit of trade produces in the mind of man a certain sense of exact justice, opposite on the one hand to robbery, and on the other to those moral virtues which forbid our always adhering rigidly to the rules of private interest, and suffer us to neglect this for the advantage of others.

The total privation of trade, on the contrary, produces robbery, which Aristotle ranks in the number of means of acquiring: yet it is not at all inconsistent with certain moral virtues Hospitality, for instance, is most rare in trading countries, while it is found in the most admirable perfection among nations of vagabonds.

It is a sacrilege, says Tacitus, for a German to shut his door against any man whomsoever, whether known or unknown. He who has* behaved with hospitality to a stranger, goes to shew him another house where this hospitality is also practised; and he is there received with the same humanity. But when the Germans had founded kingdoms, hospitality was become burthensome. This appears by two laws of the† code of the Burgundians; one of which inslicted a penalty on every barbarian, who presumed to shew a stranger the house of a Roman; and the other decreed, that whoever received a stranger should be indemnified by the inhabitants, every one being obliged to pay his proper proportion.

CHAP. III.

Of the Poverty of the People.

THERE are two sorts of poor; those who are rendered such by the severity of the government; these are indeed incapable of performing almost any great action, because their indigence is a consequence of their slavery. Others are poor, only because they either despise, or know not the conveniencies of life; and these are capable of accomplishing great things, because their poverty constitutes a part of their liberty.

CHAP. IV.

Of Commerce in different Governments.

TRADE has some relation to forms of government. In a monarchy it is generally founded on luxury; and though it be also founded on real wants, yet the principal view with which it is carried on, is to procure every thing that can contribute to the pride, the pleasure, and the capricious whimsies of the nation. In republics, it is commonly founded on œconomy. Their merchants having an eye to all the nations of the earth, bring from one what is wanted by another. It is thus that the republics of Tyre, Carthage, Athens, Marseilles, Florence, Venice, and Holland, engaged in commerce.

This kind of traffic has a natural relation to a republican government; to monarchies it is only occasional. For as it is founded on the practice of gaining little, and even less than other nations, and of remedying this by gaining incessantly; it can hardly be carried on by a people swallowed up in luxury; who spend much, and see nothing but objects of grandeur.

Cicero was of this opinion, when he so justly said* , “that he did not like that the same people should be at once both the lords and factors of the whole earth.” For this would indeed be to suppose, that every individual in the state, and the whole state collectively, had their heads constantly filled with grand views, and at the same time with small ones; which is a contradiction.

Not but that the most noble enterprises are compleated also in those states which subsist by œconomical commerce: they have even an intrepidity not to be found in monarchies. And the reason is this:

One branch of commerce leads to another; the small to the moderate, the moderate to the great; thus he who has gratified his desire of gaining a little, raises himself to a situation in which he is not less desirous of gaining a great deal.

Besides, the grand enterprises of merchants are always necessarily connected with the affairs of the public. But in monarchies, these public affairs give as much distrust to the merchants, as in free states they appear to give safety. Great enterprises therefore, in commerce, are not for monarchical, but for republican governments.

In short, an opinion of greater certainty, as to the possession of property in these states, makes them undertake every thing. They flatter themselves with the hopes of receiving great advantages from the smiles of fortune, and thinking themselves sure of what they have already acquired, they boldly expose it, in order to acquire more; risking nothing but as the means of obtaining.

I do not pretend to say that any monarchy is entirely excluded from an œconomical commerce; but of its own nature it has less tendency towards it: neither do I mean that the republics, with which we are acquainted, are absolutely deprived of the commerce of luxury; but it is less connected with their constitution.

With regard to a despotic state, there is no occasion to mention it. A general Rule: A nation in slavery labours more to preserve than to acquire; a free nation, more to acquire than to preserve.

CHAP. V.

Of Nations that have entered into an œconomical Commerce.

MARSEILLES, a necessary retreat in the midst of a tempestuous sea; Marseilles, a harbour which all the winds, the shelves of the sea, the disposition of the coasts, point out for a landing-place, became frequented by mariners! while the sterility* of the adjacent country determined the citizens to an œconomical commerce. It was necessary that they should be laborious, to supply what nature had refused; that they should be just, in order to live among barbarous nations, from whom they were to derive their prosperity; that they should be moderate, to the end that they might always taste the sweets of a tranquil government; in fine, that they should be frugal in their manners, to enable them to subsist by trade, a trade the more certain, as it was less advantageous.

We every where see violence and oppression give birth to a commerce founded on œconomy, while men are constrained to take refuge in marshes, in isles, in the shallows of the sea, and even on rocks themselves. Thus it was, that Tyre, Venice, and the cities of Holland, were founded. Fugitives found there a place of safety. It was necessary that they should subsist; they drew therefore their subsistence from all parts of the world.

CHAP. VI.

Some Effects of an extensive Navigation.

IT sometimes happens that a nation, when engaged in an œconomical commerce, having need of the merchandizes of one country, which serve as a capital or stock for procuring the commodities of another, is satisfied with making very little profits, and frequently none at all, in trading with the former, in expectation of gaining greatly by the latter. Thus, when the Dutch were almost the only nation that carried on the trade from the South to the North of Europe; the French wines, which they imported to the North, were in some measure only a capital or stock for conducting their commerce in that part of the world.

It is a known fact, that there are some kinds of merchandize in Holland, which, though imported from afar, sell for very little more than they cost upon the spot. They account for it thus: a captain who has occasion to ballast his ship, will load it with marble; if he wants wood for stowage, he will buy it; and provided he loses nothing by the bargain, he will think himself a gainer. Thus it is that Holland has its quarries and its forests.

Further, it may happen so, that not only a commerce which brings in nothing, shall be useful; but even a losing trade shall be beneficial. I have heard it affirmed in Holland, that the whale-fishery in general does not answer the expence: but it must be observed, that the persons employed in building the ships, as also those who furnish the rigging and provisions, are jointly concerned in the fishery. Should they happen to lose in the voyage, they have had a profit in fitting out the vessel. This commerce, in short, is a kind of lottery, and every one is allured with the hopes of a prize. Mankind are generally fond of gaming; and even the most prudent have no aversion to it, when the disagreeable circumstances attending it, such as dissipation, anxiety, passion, loss of time, and even of life and fortune, are concealed from their view.

CHAP. VII.

The Spirit of England, with respect to Commerce.

THE tariff, or customs of England, are very unsettled, with respect to other nations; they are changed, in some measure, with every parliament, either by taking off particular duties, or by imposing new ones. They endeavour by these means still to preserve their independence. Supremely jealous with respect to trade, they bind themselves but little by treaties, and depend only on their own laws.

Other nations have made the interests of commerce yield to those of politics; the English, on the contrary, have ever made their political interests give way to those of commerce.

They know better than any other people upon earth, how to value at the same time these three great advantages, religion, commerce and liberty.

CHAP. VIII.

In what manner the œconomical Commerce has been sometimes restrained.

IN several kingdoms laws have been made, extremely proper to humble the states that have entered into the œconomical commerce. They have forbid their importing any merchandises, except the product of their respective countries; and have permitted them to traffic only in vessels built in the kingdom to which they brought their commodities.

It is necessary that the kingdom which imposes these laws should itself be able easily to engage in commerce; otherwise it will, at least, be an equal sufferer. It is much more advantageous to trade with a commercial nation, whose profits are moderate, and who are rendered in some sort dependent by the affairs of commerce; with a nation, whose larger views, and whose extended trade enables them to dispose of their superfluous merchandises; with a wealthy nation, who can take off many of their commodities, and make them a quicker return in specie; with a nation under a kind of necessity to be faithful, pacific from principle, and that seeks to gain, and not to conquer; it is much better, I say, to trade with such a nation, than with others, their constant rivals, who will never grant such great advantages.

CHAP. IX.

Of the Prohibition of Commerce.

IT is a true maxim, that one nation should never exclude another from trading with it, except for very great reasons. The Japanese trade only with two nations, the Chinese and the Dutch. The * Chinese gain a thousand per cent. upon sugars, and sometimes as much by the goods they take in exchange. The Dutch make nearly the same profits. Every nation that acts upon Japanese principles must necessarily be deceived; for it is competition which sets a just value on merchandises, and establishes the relation between them.

Much less ought a state to lay itself under an obligation of selling its manufactures only to a single nation, under a pretence of their taking all at a certain price. The Poles, in this manner, dispose of their corn to the city of Dantzic; and several Indian princes have made a like contract for their spices with the Dutch† . These argreements are proper only for a poor nation, whose inhabitants are satisfied to forego the hopes of enriching themselves provided they can be secure of a certain subsistence; or for nations, whose slavery consists either in renouncing the use of those things which nature has given them, or in being obliged to submit to a disadvantageous commerce.

CHAP. X.

An Institution adapted to œconomical Commerce.

IN states that carry on an œconomical commerce, they have luckily established banks, which by their credit have formed a new species of wealth; but it would be quite wrong to introduce them into governments, whose commerce is founded only in luxury. The erecting of banks in countries governed by an absolute monarch, supposes money on the one side, and on the other power; that is, on the one hand, the means of procuring every thing without any power, and on the other the power, without any means of procuring at all. In a government of this kind, none but the prince ever had, or can have a treasure; and wherever there is one, it no sooner becomes great, than it becoms the treasure of the prince.

For the same reason, all associations of merchants, in order to carry on a particular commerce, are seldom proper in absolute governments. The design of these companies is to give to the wealth of private persons the weight of public riches. But, in those governments, this weight can be found only in the prince. Nay, they are not even always proper in states engaged in œconomical commerce; for, if the trade be not so great as to surpass the management of particular persons, it is much better to leave it open, than by exclusive privileges, to restrain the liberty of commerce.

CHAP. XI.

The same Subject continued.

A FREE port may be established in the dominions of states whose commerce is œconomical. That œconomy in the government, which always attends the frugality of individuals, is, if I may so express myself, the soul of its œconomical commerce. The loss it sustains with respect to customs, it can repair by drawing from the wealth and industry of the republic. But in a monarchy, a step of this kind must be opposite to reason; for it could have no other effect, than to ease luxury of the weight of taxes. This would be depriving itself of the only advantage that luxury can procure, and of the only curb which, in a constitution like this, it is capable of receiving.

CHAP. XII.

Of the Freedom of Commerce.

THE freedom of commerce is not a power granted to the merchants to do what they please: This would be more properly its slavery. The constraint of the merchant is not the constraint of commerce. It is in the freest countries that the merchant finds innumerable obstacles; and he is never less crossed by laws, than in a country of slaves.

England prohibits the exportation of her wool; coals must be brought by sea to the capital; no horses, except geldings, are allowed to be exported; and the vessels* of her colonies, trading to Europe, must take in water in England. The English constrain the merchant, but it is in favour of commerce.

CHAP. XIII.

What it is that destroys this Liberty.

WHEREVER commerce subsists, customs are established. Commerce is the exportation and importation of merchandises, with a view to the advantage of the state: Customs are a certain right over this same exportation and importation, founded also on the advantage of the state. From hence it becomes necessary, that the state should be neuter between its customs and its commerce, that neither of these two interfere with each other; and then the inhabitants enjoy a free commerce.

The farming of the customs destroys commerce by its injustice and vexations, as well as by the excess of the imposts; but, independent of this, it destroys it even more by the difficulties that arise from it, and by the formalities it exacts. In England, where the customs are managed by the king’s officers, business is negotiated with a singular dexterity: one word of writing accomplishes the greatest affairs. The merchant need not lose an infinite deal of time; he has no occasion for a particular commissioner, either to obviate all the difficulties of the farmers, or to submit to them.

CHAP. XIV.

The Laws of Commerce concerning the Confiscation of Merchandises.

THE Magna Charta of England forbids the seizing and confiscating, in case of war, the effects of foreign merchants, except by way of reprisals. It is an honour to the English nation, they have made this one of the articles of their liberty.

In the late war between Spain and England, the former made a * law, which punished with death those who brought English merchandises into the dominions of Spain; and the same penalty on those who carried Spanish merchandises into England. An ordinance like this cannot, I believe, find a precedent in any laws but those of Japan. It equally shocks humanity, the spirit of commerce, and the harmony which ought to subsist in the proportion of penalties; it confounds all our ideas, making that a crime against the state, which is only a violation of civil polity.

CHAP. XV.

Of seizing the Persons of Merchants.

SOLON † made a law, that the Athenians should no longer seize the body for civil debts. This law he‡ received from Egypt. It had been made by Boccoris, and renewed by Sesostris.

This law is extremely good, with respect to the generality of civil § affairs; but there is sufficient reason for its not being observed in those of commerce. For, as merchants are obliged to entrust large sums, frequently for a very short time, and to pay money as well as to receive it, there is a necessity, that the debtor should constantly fulfil his engagements at the time prefixed; and hence it becomes necessary to lay a constraint on his person.

In affairs relating to common civil contracts, the law ought not to permit the seizure of the person; because the liberty of one citizen is of greater importance to the public, than the ease or prosperity of another. But in conventions derived from commerce, the law ought to consider the public prosperity as of greater importance than the liberty of a citizen; which, however, does not hinder the restrictions and limitations that humanity and good policy demand.

CHAP. XVI.

An excellent Law.

ADMIRABLE is that law of Geneva, which excludes from the magistracy, and even from the admittance into the great council, the children of those who have lived or died insolvent, except they have discharged their father’s debts. It has this effect; it gives a confidence in the merchants, in the magistrates, and in the city itself. There the credit of the individual has still all the weight of public credit.

CHAP. XVII.

A Law of Rhodes.

THE inhabitants of Rhodes went further. Sextus Empiricus* observes, that among those people, a son could not be excused from paying his father’s debts, by renouncing the succession. This law of Rhodes was calculated for a republic, founded on commerce. Now I am inclined to think, that reasons drawn from commerce itself should make this limitation, that the debts contracted by the father, since the son’s entering into commerce, should not affect the estate or property acquired by the latter. A merchant ought always to know his obligations, and to square his conduct by his circumstances and present fortune.

CHAP. XVIII.

Of the Judges of Commerce.

XENOPHON, in his book of revenues, would have rewards given to those overseers of commerce, who dispatched the causes brought before them with the greatest expedition. He was sensible of the need of our modern jurisdiction of a consul.

The affairs of commerce are but little susceptible of formalities. They are the actions of a day, and are every day followed by others of the same nature. Hence it becomes necessary, that every day they should be decided. It is otherwise with those actions of life which have a principal influence on futurity, but rarely happen. We seldom marry more than once; deeds and wills are not the work of every day: we are but once of age.

Plato * says, that in a city where there is no maritime commerce, there ought not to be above half the number of civil laws: This is very true. Commerce brings into the same country different kinds of people; it introduces also a great number of contracts, and of species of wealth, with various ways of acquiring it.

Thus in a trading city, there are fewer judges, and more laws.

CHAP. XIX.

That a Prince ought not to engage himself in Commerce.

THEOPHILUS† seeing a vessel laden with merchandises for his wife Theodora, ordered it to be burnt. “I am Emperor,” said he, “and you make me the master of a galley: By what means shall these poor men gain a livelihood, if we take their trade out of their hands?” He might have added, Who shall set bounds to us, if we monopolize all to ourselves? Who shall oblige us to fulfil our engagements? Our courtiers will follow our example; they will be more greedy, and more unjust than we: The people have some confidence in our justice; they will have none in our opulence: All these numerous duties, which are the cause of their wants, are certain proofs of ours.

CHAP. XX.

The same Subject continued.

WHEN the Portuguese and Castilians bore sway in the East Indies, commerce had such opulent branches, that their princes did not fail to seize them. This ruined their settlements in those parts of the world.

The viceroy of Goa granted exclusive privileges to particular persons. The people had no confidence in these men, and the commerce declined, by the perpetual change of those to whom it was entrusted; nobody took care to improve it, or to leave it entire to his successor. In short, the profit centered in a few hands, and was not sufficiently extended.

CHAP. XXI.

Of the Commerce of the Nobility in a Monarchy.

IN a monarchical government, it is contrary to the spirit of commerce, that any of the nobility should be merchants. “This,” said the Emperors* Honorius and Theodosius, “would be pernicious to cities; and would remove the facility of buying and selling between the merchants and the plebeians.”

It is contrary to the spirit of monarchy, to admit the nobility into commerce. The custom of suffering the nobility of England to trade, is one of those things which has there mostly contributed to weaken the monarchical government.

CHAP. XXII.

A singular Reflection.

PERSONS, struck with the practice of some states, imagine, that in France they ought to make laws to engage the nobility to enter into commerce. But these laws would be the means of destroying the nobility, without being of any advantage to trade. The practice of this country is extremely wise; merchants are not nobles, though they may become so: they have the hopes of obtaining a degree of nobility, unattended with its actual inconveniencies. There is no surer way of being advanced above their profession, than to manage it well, or with success; the consequence of which is generally an affluent fortune.

Laws which oblige every one to continue in his profession, and to devolve it to his children, neither are nor can be of use in any but* despotic kingdoms, where no body either can, or ought to have, emulation.

Let none say, that every one will succeed better in his profession, when he cannot change it for another. I say, that a person will succeed best, when those who have excelled hope to arise to another.

The possibility of purchasing honour with gold, encourages many merchants to put themselves in circumstances by which they may attain it. I do not take upon me to examine the justice of thus bartering for money the price of virtue. There are governments where this may be very useful.

In France, the dignity of the long robe, which places those who wear it between the great nobility and the people, and without having such shining honours as the former, has all their privileges; a dignity which, while this body, the depositary of the laws, is encircled with glory, leaves the private members in a mediocrity of fortune; a dignity, in which there are no other means of distinction, but by a superior capacity and virtue, yet which still leaves in view one much more illustrious: The warlike nobility likewise, who conceive that, whatever degree of wealth they are possessed of, they may still increase their fortunes; who are ashamed of augmenting, if they begin not with dissipating their estates; who always serve their prince with their whole capital stock, and, when that is sunk, make room for others who follow their example; who take the field that they may never be reproached with not having been there; who, when they can no longer hope for riches, live in expectation of honours, and, when they have not obtained the latter, enjoy the consolation of having acquired glory: all these things together have necessarily contributed to augment the grandeur of this kingdom; and, if for two or three centuries it has been incessantly increasing in power, this must be attributed not to fortune, who was never famed for constancy, but to the goodness of its laws.

CHAP. XXIII.

To what Nations Commerce is prejudicial.

RICHES consist either in lands, or in moveable effects. The soil of every country is commonly possessed by the natives. The laws of most states render foreigners unwilling to purchase their lands; and nothing but the presence of the owner improves them: this kind of riches therefore belongs to every state in particular. But moveable effects, as money, notes, bills of exchange, stocks in companies, vessels, and in fine all merchandises, belong to the whole world in general; in this respect it is composed of but one single state, of which all the societies upon earth are members. The people who possess more of these moveable effects than any other on the globe, are the most opulent. Some states have an immense quantity, acquired by their commodities, by the labour of their mechanics, by their industry, by their discoveries, and even by chance. The avarice of nations makes them quarrel for the moveables of the whole universe. If we could find a state so unhappy, as to be deprived of the effects of other countries, and at the same time of almost all its own, the proprietors of the lands would be only planters to foreigners. This state, wanting all, could acquire nothing; therefore it would be much better for the inhabitants not to have the least commerce with any nation upon earth; for commerce, in these circumstances, must necessarily lead them to poverty.

A country, that constantly exports fewer manufactures or commodities than it receives, will soon find the balance sinking; it will receive less and less, until, falling into extreme poverty, it will receive nothing at all.

In trading countries, the specie which suddenly vanishes quickly returns, because those nations that have received it are its debtors; but it never returns into those states of which we have just been speaking, because those who have received it owe them nothing.

Poland will serve us for an example. It has scarcely any of those things which we call the moveable effects of the universe, except corn, the produce of its lands. Some of the lords possess entire provinces; they oppress the husbandmen, in order to have greater quantities of corn, which they send to strangers, to procure the superfluous demands of luxury. If Poland had no foreign trade, its inhabitants would be more happy. The grandees, who would have only their corn, would give it to their peasants for subsistence; as their too extensive estates would become burthensome, they would divide them amongst their peasants; every one would find skins or wool in their herds or flocks, so that they would no longer be at an immense expence in providing cloaths; the great, who are ever fond of luxury, not being able to find it but in their own country, would encourage the labour of the poor. This nation, I affirm, would then become more flourishing, at least, if it did not become barbarous; and this the laws might easily prevent.

Let us next consider Japan. The vast quantity of what they receive, is the cause of the vast quantity of merchandises they send abroad. Things are thus in as nice an equilibrium, as if the importation and exportation were but small. Besides, this kind of exuberance in the state is productive of a thousand advantages: there is a greater consumption, a greater quantity of those things on which the arts are exercised; more men employed, and more numerous means of acquiring power: exigencies may also happen, that require a speedy assistance, which so opulent a state can better afford than any other. It is difficult for a country to avoid having superfluities: but it is the nature of commerce to render the superfluous useful, and the useful necessary. The state will be therefore able to afford necessaries to a much greater number of subjects.

Let us say then, that it is not those nations who have need of nothing, that must lose by trade; it is those who have need of every thing. It is not such people as have a sufficiency within themselves, but those who are most in want, that will find an advantage in putting a stop to all commercial intercourse.

[* ]Cæsar said of the Gauls, that they were spoiled by the neighbourhood and the commerce of Marseilles; insomuch that they who formerly always conquered the Germans, were now become inferior to them. War of the Gauls, lib. 6.

[† ]Holland.

[* ]Et qui modo hospes fuerat, monstrator hospitii. De morib. Germ. Vid. Cæsar, de bello Gal. lib. 6.

[† ]Tit. 38.

[* ]Nolo eundum populum imperatorem & portitorem effe terrarum.

[* ]Justin, l. 43, c. 3.

[* ]Du Halde, vol. 2. p. 70.

[† ]This was first established by the Portuguese. Fr. Pirard’s voyages, chap. 15. part 2.

[* ]Act of navigation, 1660. It is only in the time of war, that the merchants of Boston and Philadelphia send their vessels directly to the Mediterranean.

[* ]Published at Cadiz, in March 1740.

[† ]Plutarch, in his treatise against lending upon usury.

[‡ ]Diodorus, book i. part 2. chap. 3.

[§ ]The Greek legislators were to blame in preventing the arms and plough of any man from being taken in pledge, and yet permitting the taking of the man himself. Diodorus, book i. part 2. chap. 3.

[* ]Hypotiposes, book 1. chap. 14.

[* ]On Laws, book 8.

[† ]Zonaras.

[* ]Leg. nobiliores cod. de comm. et leg. ult. de rescind. vendit.

[* ]This is actually very often the case in such governments.
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8: 8. David Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts” (1752)

David Hume was born in 1711 into a family of modest landed wealth. After writing his masterpiece, Treatise on Human Nature, in 1739, which he complained “fell dead-born from the press,” Hume turned his talents to writings that would be more accessible to worldly as well as philosophical audiences. Thus, in the 1740s, he came out with a very successful and influential collection of Essays Moral, Political and Literary, from which the present essay is taken, which he continued to revise and expand in the 1750s. In 1752, he became librarian for the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. Hume was a friend of Adam Smith, who was twelve years his junior and who acknowledged his debt both to Hume’s general philosophy and to his essays on economic subjects, such as the one chosen here. Hume also wrote a justly influential History of England (beginning in 1754) as well as important philosophical works such as Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously). A notorious atheist, he died without recanting his religious views and was publicly eulogized by Adam Smith in 1776. “Of Refinement in the Arts” is the later title of an essay originally published in 1752 under the title “Of Luxury.” It contains some of his most far-reaching observations on the character of “commercial society.”

David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, Literary, edited and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1987). Chapter: ESSAY II: OF REFINEMENT IN THE ARTS

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137528 on 2009-04-23

The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

ESSAY II

OF REFINEMENT IN THE ARTSa

Luxury is a word of an uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as well as in a bad sense. In general, it means great refinement in the gratification of the senses; and any degree of it may be innocent or blameable, according to the age, or country, or condition of the person. The bounds between the virtue and the vice cannot here be exactly fixed, more than in other moral subjects. To imagine, that the gratifying of any sense, or the indulging of any delicacy in meat, drink, or apparel, is of itself a vice, can never enter into a head, that is not disordered by the frenzies of enthusiasm. I have, indeed, heard of a monk abroad, who, because the windows of his cell opened upon a noble prospect, made a covenant with his eyes never to turn that way, or receive so sensual a gratification. And such is the crime of drinking Champagne or Burgundy, preferably to small beer or porter.° These indulgences are only vices, when they are pursued at the expence of some virtue, as liberality or charity; in like manner as they are follies, when for them a man ruins his fortune, and reduces himself to want and beggary. Where they entrench upon no virtue, but leave ample subject° whence to provide for friends, family, and every proper object of generosity or compassion, they are entirely innocent, and have in every age been acknowledged such by almost all moralists. To be entirely occupied with the luxury of the table, for instance, without any relish for the pleasures of ambition, study, or conversation, is a mark of stupidity, and is incompatible with any vigour of temper or genius. To confine one’s expence° entirely to such a gratification, without regard to friends or family, is an indication of a heart destitute of humanity or benevolence. But if a man reserve time sufficient for all laudable pursuits, and money sufficient for all generous purposes, he is free from every shadow of blame or reproach.

Since luxury may be considered either as innocent or blameable, one may be surprized at those preposterous opinions, which have been entertained concerning it; while men of libertine° principles bestow praises even on vicious luxury, and represent it as highly advantageous to society; and on the other hand, men of severe morals blame even the most innocent luxury, and represent it as the source of all the corruptions, disorders, and factions, incident to civil government. We shall here endeavour to correct both these extremes, by proving, first, that the ages of refinement are both the happiest and most virtuous; secondly, that wherever luxury ceases to be innocent, it also ceases to be beneficial; and when carried a degree too far, is a quality pernicious, though perhaps not the most pernicious, to political society.

To prove the first point, we need but consider the effects of refinement both on private and on public life. Human happiness, according to the most received notions, seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure, and indolence: And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the particular disposition of the person; yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting, without destroying, in some measure, the relish of the whole composition. Indolence or repose, indeed, seems not of itself to contribute much to our enjoyment; but, like sleep, is requisite as an indulgence to the weakness of human nature, which cannot support an uninterrupted course of business or pleasure. That quick march of the spirits, which takes a man from himself, and chiefly gives satisfaction, does in the end exhaust the mind, and requires some intervals of repose, which, though agreeable for a moment, yet, if prolonged, beget a languor and lethargy, that destroys all enjoyment. Education, custom, and example, have a mighty influence in turning the mind to any of these pursuits; and it must be owned, that, where they promote a relish for action and pleasure, they are so far favourable to human happiness. In times when industry and the arts flourish, men are kept in perpetual occupation, and enjoy, as their reward, the occupation itself, as well as those pleasures which are the fruit of their labour. The mind acquires new vigour; enlarges its powers and faculties; and by an assiduity in honest industry, both satisfies its natural appetites, and prevents the growth of unnatural ones, which commonly spring up, when nourished by ease and idleness. Banish those arts from society, you deprive men both of action and of pleasure; and leaving nothing but indolence in their place, you even destroy the relish of indolence, which never is agreeable, but when it succeeds to labour, and recruits° the spirits, exhausted by too much application and fatigue.

Another advantage of industry and of refinements in the mechanical arts, is, that they commonly produce some refinements in the liberal; nor can one be carried to perfection, without being accompanied, in some degree, with the other. The same age, which produces great philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skilful weavers, and ship-carpenters. We cannot reasonably expect, that a piece of woollen cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation, which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected. The spirit of the age affects all the arts; and the minds of men, being once roused from their lethargy, and put into a fermentation, turn themselves on all sides, and carry improvements into every art and science. Profound ignorance is totally banished, and men enjoy the privilege of rational creatures, to think as well as to act, to cultivate the pleasures of the mind as well as those of the body.

The more these refined arts advance, the more sociable men become: nor is it possible, that, when enriched with science, and possessed of a fund° of conversation, they should be contented to remain in solitude, or live with their fellow-citizens in that distant manner, which is peculiar to ignorant and barbarous nations. They flock into cities; love to receive and communicate knowledge; to show their wit or their breeding; their taste in conversation or living, in clothes or furniture. Curiosity allures the wise; vanity the foolish; and pleasure both. Particular clubs and societies are every where formed: Both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace.° So that, beside the improvements which they receive from knowledge and the liberal arts, it is impossible but they must feel an encrease of humanity, from the very habit of conversing together, and contributing to each other’s pleasure and entertainment. Thus industry, knowledge, and humanity, are linked together by an indissoluble chain, and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, what are commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages.

Nor are these advantages attended with disadvantages, that bear any proportion to them. The more men refine upon pleasure, the less will they indulge in excesses of any kind; because nothing is more destructive to true pleasure than such excesses. One may safely affirm, that the Tartars1 are oftener guilty of beastly gluttony, when they feast on their dead horses, than European courtiers with all their refinements of cookery. And if libertine love, or even infidelity to the marriage-bed, be more frequent in polite ages, when it is often regarded only as a piece of gallantry; drunkenness, on the other hand, is much less common: A vice more odious, and more pernicious both to mind and body. And in this matter I would appeal, not only to an Ovid or a Petronius,2 but to a Seneca or a Cato. We know, that Cæsar, during Catiline’s conspiracy, being necessitated to put into Cato’s hands a billet-doux,° which discovered° an intrigue with Servilia, Cato’s own sister, that stern philosopher threw it back to him with indignation; and in the bitterness of his wrath, gave him the appellation of drunkard, as a term more opprobrious than that with which he could more justly have reproached him.3

But industry, knowledge, and humanity, are not advantageous in private life alone: They diffuse their beneficial influence on the public, and render the government as great and flourishing as they make individuals happy and prosperous. The encrease and consumption of all the commodities, which serve to the ornament and pleasure of life, are advantageous to society; because, at the same time that they multiply those innocent gratifications to individuals, they are a kind of storehouse of labour, which, in the exigencies of state, may be turned to the public service. In a nation, where there is no demand for such superfluities, men sink into indolence, lose all enjoyment of life, and are useless to the public, which cannot maintain or support its fleets and armies, from the industry of such slothful members.

The bounds of all the European kingdoms are, at present, nearly the same they were two hundred years ago: But what a difference is there in the power and grandeur of those kingdoms? Which can be ascribed to nothing but the encrease of art and industry. When Charles VIII. of France invaded Italy, he carried with him about 20,000 men: Yet this armament so exhausted the nation, as we learn from Guicciardin, that for some years it was not able to make so great an effort.4 The late king of France, in time of war, kept in pay above 400,000 men;5 though from Mazarine’s death to his own, he was engaged in a course of wars that lasted near thirty years.

This industry is much promoted by the knowledge inseparable from ages of art and refinement; as, on the other hand, this knowledge enables the public to make the best advantage of the industry of its subjects. Laws, order, police, discipline; these can never be carried to any degree of perfection, before human reason has refined itself by exercise, and by an application to the more vulgar arts, at least, of commerce and manufacture. Can we expect, that a government will be well modelled by a people, who know not how to make a spinning-wheel, or to employ a loom to advantage? Not to mention, that all ignorant ages are infested with superstition, which throws the government off its bias,° and disturbs men in the pursuit of their interest and happiness.

Knowledge in the arts of government naturally begets mildness and moderation, by instructing men in the advantages of humane maxims above rigour and severity, which drive subjects into rebellion, and make the return to submission impracticable, by cutting off all hopes of pardon. When the tempers of men are softened as well as their knowledge improved, this humanity appears still more conspicuous, and is the chief characteristic which distinguishes a civilized age from times of barbarity and ignorance. Factions are then less inveterate,° revolutions less tragical,° authority less severe, and seditions less frequent. Even foreign wars abate of their cruelty; and after the field of battle, where honour and interest steel men against compassion as well as fear, the combatants divest themselves of the brute, and resume the man.

Nor need we fear, that men, by losing their ferocity, will lose their martial spirit, or become less undaunted° and vigorous in defence of their country or their liberty. The arts have no such effect in enervating either the mind or body. On the contrary, industry, their inseparable attendant, adds new force to both. And if anger, which is said to be the whetstone of courage, loses somewhat of its asperity, by politeness and refinement; a sense of honour, which is a stronger, more constant, and more governable principle, acquires fresh vigour by that elevation of genius which arises from knowledge and a good education. Add to this, that courage can neither have any duration, nor be of any use, when not accompanied with discipline and martial skill, which are seldom found among a barbarous people. The ancients remarked, that Datames was the only barbarian that ever knew the art of war.6 And Pyrrhus, seeing the Romans marshal their army with some art and skill, said with surprize, These barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline!7 It is observable, that, as the old Romans, by applying themselves solely to war, were almost the only uncivilized people that ever possessed military discipline; so the modern Italians are the only civilized people, among Europeans, that ever wanted courage and a martial spirit. Those who would ascribe this effeminacy of the Italians to their luxury, or politeness, or application to the arts, need but consider the French and English, whose bravery is as uncontestable, as their love for the arts, and their assiduity in commerce. The Italian historians give us a more satisfactory reason for this degeneracy of their countrymen. They shew us how the sword was dropped at once by all the Italian sovereigns; while the Venetian aristocracy was jealous of its subjects, the Florentine democracy applied itself entirely to commerce; Rome was governed by priests, and Naples by women. War then became the business of soldiers of fortune, who spared one another, and to the astonishment of the world, could engage a whole day in what they called a battle, and return at night to their camp, without the least bloodshed.

What has chiefly induced severe moralists to declaim against refinement in the arts, is the example of ancient Rome, which, joining, to its poverty and rusticity, virtue and public spirit, rose to such a surprizing height of grandeur and liberty; but having learned from its conquered provinces b the Asiatic luxury, fell into every kind of corruption; whence arose sedition and civil wars, attended at last with the total loss of liberty. All the Latin classics, whom we peruse in our infancy, are full of these sentiments, and universally ascribe the ruin of their state to the arts and riches imported from the East: Insomuch that Sallust represents a taste for painting as a vice, no less than lewdness and drinking. And so popular were these sentiments, during the later ages of the republic, that this author abounds in praises of the old rigid Roman virtue, though himself the most egregious instance of modern luxury and corruption; speaks contemptuously of the Grecian eloquence, though the most elegant writer in the world; nay, employs preposterous digressions and declamations to this purpose, though a model of taste and correctness.8

But it would be easy to prove, that these writers mistook the cause of the disorders in the Roman state, and ascribed to luxury and the arts, what really proceeded from an ill modelled government, and the unlimited extent of conquests. c Refinement on the pleasures and conveniencies of life has no natural tendency to beget venality and corruption. The value, which all men put upon any particular pleasure, depends on comparison and experience; nor is a porter less greedy of money, which he spends on bacon and brandy, than a courtier, who purchases champagne and ortolans.° Riches are valuable at all times, and to all men; because they always purchase pleasures, such as men are accustomed to, and desire: Nor can any thing restrain or regulate the love of money, but a sense of honour and virtue; which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

Of all European kingdoms, Poland seems the most defective in the arts of war as well as peace, mechanical as well as liberal; yet it is there that venality and corruption do most prevail. The nobles seem to have preserved their crown elective for no other purpose, than regularly to sell it to the highest bidder. This is almost the only species of commerce, with which that people are acquainted.

The liberties of England, so far from decaying since the improvements in the arts, have never flourished so much as during that period. And though corruption may seem to encrease of late years; this is chiefly to be ascribed to our established liberty, when our princes have found the impossibility of governing without parliaments, or of terrifying parliaments by the phantom of prerogative.9 Not to mention, that this corruption or venality prevails much more among the electors than the elected; and therefore cannot justly be ascribed to any refinements in luxury.

If we consider the matter in a proper light, we shall find, that a progress in the arts is rather favourable to liberty, and has a natural tendency to preserve, if not produce a free government. In rude unpolished nations, where the arts are neglected, all labour is bestowed on the cultivation of the ground; and the whole society is divided into two classes, proprietors of land, and their vassals or tenants. The latter are necessarily dependent, and fitted for slavery and subjection; especially where they possess no riches, and are not valued for their knowledge in agriculture; as must always be the case where the arts are neglected. The former naturally erect themselves into petty tyrants; and must either submit to an absolute master, for the sake of peace and order; or if they will preserve their independency, like the d ancient barons, they must fall into feuds and contests among themselves, and throw the whole society into such confusion, as is perhaps worse than the most despotic government. But where luxury nourishes commerce and industry, the peasants, by a proper cultivation of the land, become rich and independent; while the tradesmen and merchants acquire a share of the property, and draw authority and consideration to that middling rank of men, who are the best and firmest basis of public liberty. These submit not to slavery, like the peasants, from poverty and meanness of spirit; and having no hopes of tyrannizing over others, like the barons, they are not tempted, for the sake of that gratification, to submit to the tyranny of their sovereign. They covet equal laws, which may secure their property, and preserve them from monarchical, as well as aristocratical tyranny.

The lower house is the support of our popular government; and all the world acknowledges, that it owed its chief influence and consideration to the encrease of commerce, which threw such a balance of property into the hands of the commons. How inconsistent then is it to blame so violently a refinement in the arts, and to represent it as the bane of liberty and public spirit!

To declaim against present times, and magnify the virtue of remote ancestors, is a propensity almost inherent in human nature: And as the sentiments and opinions of civilized ages alone are transmitted to posterity, hence it is that we meet with so many severe judgments pronounced against luxury, and even science; and hence it is that at present we give so ready an assent to them. But the fallacy is easily perceived, by comparing different nations that are contemporaries; where we both judge more impartially, and can better set in opposition those manners, with which we are sufficiently acquainted. Treachery and cruelty, the most pernicious and most odious of all vices, seem peculiar to uncivilized ages; and by the refined Greeks and Romans were ascribed to all the barbarous nations, which surrounded them. They might justly, therefore, have presumed, that their own ancestors, so highly celebrated, possessed no greater virtue, and were as much inferior to their posterity in honour and humanity, as in taste and science. An ancient Frank or Saxon may be highly extolled: But I believe every man would think his life or fortune much less secure in the hands of a Moor or Tartar, than in those of a French or English gentleman, the rank of men the most civilized in the most civilized nations.

We come now to the second position which we proposed to illustrate, to wit, that, as innocent luxury, or a refinement in the arts and conveniencies of life, is advantageous to the public; so wherever luxury ceases to be innocent, it also ceases to be beneficial; and when carried a degree farther, begins to be a quality pernicious, though, perhaps, not the most pernicious, to political society.

Let us consider what we call vicious luxury. No gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious. A gratification is only vicious, when it engrosses all a man’s expence, and leaves no ability for such acts of duty and generosity as are required by his situation and fortune. Suppose, that he correct the vice, and employ part of his expence in the education of his children, in the support of his friends, and in relieving the poor; would any prejudice result to society? On the contrary, the same consumption would arise; and that labour, which, at present, is employed only in producing a slender gratification to one man, would relieve the necessitous, and bestow satisfaction on hundreds. The same care and toil that raise a dish of peas at Christmas, would give bread to a whole family during six months. To say, that, without a vicious luxury, the labour would not have been employed at all, is only to say, that there is some other defect in human nature, such as indolence, selfishness, inattention to others, for which luxury, in some measure, provides a remedy; as one poison may be an antidote to another. But virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected.

Suppose the same number of men, that are at present in Great Britain, with the same soil and climate; I ask, is it not possible for them to be happier, by the most perfect way of life that can be imagined, and by the greatest reformation that Omnipotence itself could work in their temper and disposition? To assert, that they cannot, appears evidently ridiculous. As the land is able to maintain more than all its present inhabitants, they could never, in such a Utopian state, feel any other ills than those which arise from bodily sickness; and these are not the half of human miseries. All other ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices, and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men’s charity or their generosity. Let us, therefore, rest contented with asserting, that two opposite vices in a state may be more advantageous than either of them alone; but let us never pronounce vice in itself advantageous. Is it not very inconsistent for an author to assert in one page, that moral distinctions are inventions of politicians for public interest; and in the next page maintain, that vice is advantageous to the public?10 And indeed it seems upon any system of morality, little less than a contradiction in terms, to talk of a vice, which is in general beneficial to society.e

I thought this reasoning necessary, in order to give some light to a philosophical question, which has been much disputed in England. I call it a philosophical question, not a political one. For whatever may be the consequence of such a miraculous transformation of mankind, as would endow them with every species of virtue, and free them from every species of vice; this concerns not the magistrate, who aims only at possibilities. He cannot cure every vice by substituting a virtue in its place. Very often he can only cure one vice by another; and in that case, he ought to prefer what is least pernicious to society. Luxury, when excessive, is the source of many ills; but is in general preferable to sloth and idleness, which would commonly succeed in its place, and are more hurtful both to private persons and to the public. When sloth reigns, a mean uncultivated way of life prevails amongst individuals, without society, without enjoyment. And if the sovereign, in such a situation, demands the service of his subjects, the labour of the state suffices only to furnish the necessaries of life to the labourers, and can afford nothing to those who are employed in the public service.

[1. ][The name Tartars was applied generally to nomads of the Asian steppes and deserts, including Mongols and Turks.]

[2. ][Petronius (died ad 65), an intimate of Nero and his official “arbiter of taste,” is probably author of the satirical novel known as the Satyricon, a surviving portion of which describes the absurd conduct of a wealthy freedman, Trimalchio, as he becomes increasingly drunk at a banquet.]

[3. ][See Plutarch, Lives, in the life of Cato the Younger, sec. 24. Cato threw the note back to Caesar with the words “Take it, thou sot” (Loeb translation by Bernadotte Perrin).]

[4. ][Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), Storia d’Italia (History of Italy), bks. 1–3.]

[5. ]The inscription on the Place-de-Vendome says 440,000. [Hume refers in the text to Louis XIV, who died in 1715. Louis had assumed absolute power upon the death of his minister, the Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis-Joseph, duc de Vendôme, was one of the king’s leading generals during the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) and the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). England was allied against France in both wars.]

[6. ][Datames was a Persian commander and satrap who led a rebellion against Artaxerxes II around 362 bc He is praised by Cornelius Nepos (100?–24? bc) as the bravest and most prudent of all the barbarian commanders, except for the two Carthaginians Hamilcar and Hannibal. See De Viris Illustribus (Lives of illustrious men), in the life of Datames.]

[7. ][Pyrrhus, the greatest king of Epirus (the “mainland” north and west of Greece, in present-day Albania), fought against the Romans between 280 and 275 bc The statement quoted by Hume was made before the battle of Heraclea. See Plutarch, Lives, in the life of Pyrrhus, sec. 16. After winning the battle at high cost, Pyrrhus remarked, “If I win a victory in one more battle with the Romans, I shall not have left a single soldier of those who crossed over with me” (Diodorus, Library of History 22.6.2; Loeb translation by Francis R. Walton). Hence the phrase Pyrrhic victory.]

[8. ][See Sallust, The War with Catiline, secs. 6–12. Sallust took advantage of his position as provincial governor of Nova Africa to amass great riches, and he escaped prosecution only by bribery. After retiring to his luxurious gardens in Rome to write history, he admitted in his works that he had once been driven to vice by ambition.]

[9. ][Prerogative refers to the executive powers of the Crown and, more broadly, to its supposed right even to disobey the law if this is required for the public safety. The royal prerogative was brought under parliamentary control by constitutional developments of the seventeenth century.]

[10. ]Fable of the Bees. [Bernard de Mandeville (1670–1733), The Fable of the Bees: or,Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714; enlarged editions in 1723 and 1728–29). See especially the section entitled “An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue.”]

[a]In Editions H to M this Essay is headed: Of Luxury.

[b]The Grecian and Asiatic luxury: Editions H to K.

[c]Luxury or refinement on pleasure has, &c.: Editions H to M.

[d]The Gothic barons: Editions H to N.

[e]Prodigality is not to be confounded with a refinement in the arts. It even appears, that that vice is much less frequent in the cultivated ages. Industry and gain beget this frugality, among the lower and middle ranks of men; and in all the busy professions. Men of high rank, indeed, it may be pretended, are more allured by the pleasures, which become more frequent. But idleness is the great source of prodigality at all times; and there are pleasures and vanities in every age, which allure men equally when they are unacquainted with better enjoyments. Not to mention, that the high interest, payed in rude times, quickly consumes the fortunes of the landed gentry, and multiplies their necessities.—Edition P in the text.

[Porter:]a kind of beer, dark brown in color and bitter in taste, which originally was drunk chiefly by porters and the lower class of laborers.

[Subject:]that which can be drawn upon or utilized; means of doing something.

[Expense:]expenditures.

[Libertine:]licentious.

[Recruits:]resupplies; replenishes.

[Fund:]stock that can be drawn upon; supply.

[Apace:]speedily.

[Billet-doux:]a love letter.

[Discovered:]revealed; divulged.

[Bias:]regular course; inclination.

[Inveterate:]obstinate by long continuance.

[Tragical:]calamitous; dreadful.

[Undaunted:]unsubdued by fear; bold; intrepid.

[Ortolans:]small birds accounted very delicious.
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9: 9. Turgot, Reflections on the Formation and the DistributionWealth (1766)

Anne -Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron of Aulne, hailed from one of France’s oldest and most prestigious families. Born in Paris in 1727, Turgot distinguished himself at the Sorbonne and became one of the leading protégés of the liberal intendant of commerce of the time, Vincent de Gournay. In the 1750s, he drafted a number of highly original works on the historical evolution of the human mind and on economic development, among other things, and acquired the reputation as a polymath genius. After composing several articles for the Encyclopédie in the 1750s on topics as varied as etymology and market-fairs, he dissociated himself from the project in the aftermath of the controversy of 1758 that led to its temporary suppression. In 1761, he became provincial intendant for Limousin, where he remained for thirteen years, developing a reputation for reformist vigor and effectiveness in an undynamic province. During that period, he became the leading exponent of free trade in grain, though his relations with the Physiocrat school that made that position a matter of dogma were cool. In 1774, he was elevated to controller-general of France, in which position he attempted to implement on a national scale the reforms he had reflected on, described, and attempted locally for many years. His far-reaching reforms, such as the abolition of the guilds, met with a backlash, and he was disgraced and forced from office nineteen months later in early 1776. He died in 1781. The work excerpted here, Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Wealth, is as close as Turgot came to writing a polished masterpiece. Written in the 1760s, it contains far-reaching discussions of topics such as money, exchange, value, and capital investment in agriculture, all set in a distinctive historical framework not dissimilar to that of Scottish historians such as Robertson and Millar. It is known that Turgot discussed economic matters with Adam Smith during the latter’s sojourn in France in the 1760s and that he corresponded with Hume, who was in Paris from late 1763 to 1766, during the same decade. He also wrote the work during the Physiocrats’ period of greatest creativity and influence. Though the work was completed by the end of 1766, it did not appear in print until 1770. The excerpt chosen begins just before section XXXI on the “birth of commerce” and ends with a general statement on the wealth of a nation (sections 28-91).

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches, trans. William J. Ashley (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1898).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/122 on 2009-04-23

The text is in the public domain.

1. The impossibility of the existence of Commerce upon the supposition of an equal division of lands, where every man should possess only what is necessary for his own support.

If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.

2. The above hypothesis neither has existed nor could continue. The diversity of soils and multiplicity of wants, compel an exchange of the productions of the earth, against other productions.

This hypothesis never can have existed, because the earth has been cultivated before it has been divided; the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a division, and for that law which secures to every one his property. For the first persons who have employed themselves in cultivation, have probably worked as much land as their strength would permit, and, consequently, more than was necessary for their own nourishment.

If this state could have existed, it could not possibly be durable; each one gathering from his field only a subsistence, and not having wherewith to pay others for their labour, would not be enabled to supply his other wants of lodging, cloathing, &c. &c., except by the labour of his hands, which would be nearly impossible, as every soil does not produce every material.

The man whose land was only fit to produce grain, and would neither bring forth cotton or flax, would want linen to cloath him. Another would have ground proper for cotton, which would not yield grain. One would want wood for his fire, and another be destitute of corn to support him. Experience would soon teach every one what species of productions his land was best adapted to, and he would confine himself to the cultivation of it; in order to procure himself those things he stood in need of, by an exchange with his neighbours, who, having on their part acquired the same experience, would have cultivated those productions which were best suited to their fields, and would have abandoned the cultivation of any other.

3. The productions of the earth require long and difficult preparations, before they are rendered fit to supply the wants of men.

The productions which the earth supplies to satisfy the different wants of man, will not, for the most part, administer to those wants, in the state nature affords them; it is necessary they should undergo different operations, and be prepared by art. Wheat must be converted into flour, then into bread; hides must be dressed or tanned; wool and cotton must be spun; silk must be taken from the cod; hemp and flax must be soaked, peeled, spun, and wove into different textures; then cut and sewed together again to make garments, &c. If the same man who cultivates on his own land these different articles, and who raises them to supply his wants, was obliged to perform all the intermediate operations himself, it is certain he would succeed very badly. The greater part of these preparations require care, attention, and a long experience; all which are only to be acquired by progressive labour, and that on a great quantity of materials. Let us refer, for example, to the preparation of hides: what labourer can pursue all the particular things necessary to those operations, which continue several months, sometimes several years? If he is able to do it, can he do it with a single hide? What a loss of time, of room, and of materials, which might be employed, either at the same time or successively, to tan a large quantity of skins! But should he even succeed in manning a single skin, and wants one pair of shoes, what will he do with the remainder? Will he kill an ox to make this pair of shoes? Will he cut down a tree to make a pair of wooden shoes? We may say the same thing of every other want of every other man, who, if he was reduced to his field, and the labour of his own hands, would waste much time, take much trouble, be very badly equipped in every respect, and would also cultivate his lands very ill.

4. The necessity of these preparations, bring on the exchange of productions for labour.

The same motive which has established the exchange of commodity for commodity, between the cultivators of lands of different natures, has also necessarily brought on the exchange of commodities for labour, between the cultivators and another portion of society, who shall have preferred the occupation of preparing and completing the productions of the earth, to the cultivation of it. Every one profits by this arrangement, for every one attaching himself to a peculiar species of labour, succeeds much better therein. The husbandman draws from his field the greatest quantity it is able to produce, and procures to himself, with greater facility, all the other objects of his wants, by an exchange of his superflux, than he could have done by his own labour. The shoemaker, by making shoes for the husbandman, secures to himself a portion of the harvest of the latter. Every workman labours for the wants of the workmen of every other trade, who, on their side, toil also for him.

5. Pre-eminence of the husbandman who produces, over the artificer who prepares. The husbandman is the first mover in the circulation of labour: it is he who causes the earth to produce the wages of every artificer.

It must, however, be observed that the husbandman, finishing every one with the most important and the most considerable objects of their consumption (I mean their food, and the materials of almost all manufactures) has the advantage of a greater degree of independence. His labour, among the different species of labour, appropriated to the different members of society, supports the same pre-eminence and priority, as the procuring of food did among the different works he was obliged, in his solitary state, to employ himself in, in order to minister to his wants of every kind. This is not a pre-eminence of honour or of dignity, but of physical necessity. The husbandman can, generally speaking, subsist without the labour of other workmen; but no other workmen can labour, if the husbandman does not provide him wherewith to exist. It is this circulation, which, by a reciprocal exchange of wants, renders mankind necessary to each other, and which forms the bond of society: it is therefore the labour of the husbandman which gives the first movement. What his industry causes the earth to produce beyond his personal wants, is the only fund for the wages, which all the other members of society receive in recompence for their toil. The latter, by availing themselves of the produce of this exchange, to purchase in their turn the commodities of the husbandman, only return to him precisely what they have received. There is here a very essential difference between these two species of labour, on which it is necessary to reflect, and to be well assured of the ground on which they stand, before we trust to the innumerable consequences which flow from them.

6. The wages of the workman is limited by the competition among those who work for a subsistence. He only gains a livelihood.

The mere workman, who depends only on his Lands and his industry, has nothing but such part of his labour as he is able to dispose of to others. He sells it at a cheaper or a dearer price; but this high or low price does not depend on himself alone; it results from the agreement he has made with the person who employs him. The latter pays him as little as he can help, and as he has the choice from among a great number of workmen, he prefers the person who works cheapest. The workmen are therefore obliged to lower their price in opposition to each other. In every species of labour it must, and, in effect, it does happen, that the wages of the workman is confined merely to what is necessary to procure him a subsistence.

7. The husbandman is the only one whose industry produces more than the wages of his labour. He, therefore, is the only source of all Wealth.

The situation of the husbandman is materially different. The soil, independent of any other man, or of any agreement, pays him immediately the price of his toil. Nature does not bargain with him, or compel him to content himself with what is absolutely necessary. What she grants is neither limited to his wants, nor to a conditional valuation of the price of his day's work. It is a physical consequence of the fertility of the soil, and of justice, rather than of the difficulty of the means, which he has employed to render the soil fruitful. As soon as the labour of the husbandman produces more than sufficient for his necessities, he can, with the excess which nature affords him of pure freewill beyond the wages of his toil, purchase the labour of other members of society, The latter, in selling to him, only procures a livelihood; but the husbandman, besides his subsistence, collects an independent wealth at his disposal, which he has not purchased, but which he can sell. He is, therefore, the only source of all those riches which, by their circulation, animates the labours of society: because he is the only one whose labour produces more than the wages of his toil.

8. First division of society into two classes, the one productive, or the cultivators, the other stipendiary, or the artificers.

Here then is the whole society divided, by a necessity founded on the nature of things, into two classes, both industrious, one of which, by its labour, produces, or father draws from the earth, riches continually renewing, which supply the whole society with subsistence, and with materials for all its wants; while the other is employed in giving to the said materials such preparations and forms as render them proper for the use of man, sells his labour to the first, and receives in return a subsistence. The first may be called the productive, the latter the stipendiary class.

9. In the first ages of society, the proprietors could not be distinguished from the cultivators.

Hitherto we have not distinguished the husbandman from the proprietor of the land; and in the first origin they were not in fact so distinguished. It is by the labour of those who have first cultivated the fields, and who have inclosed them to secure their harvest, that all land has ceased to be common, and that a property in the soil has been established. Until societies have been formed, and until the pubic strength, or the laws, becoming superior to the force of individuals, have been able to guarantee to every one the tranquil possession of his property, against all invasion from without; the property in a field could only be secured as it had been acquired, by continuing to cultivate it; the proprietor could not be assured of having his field cultivated by the help of another; and that person taking all the trouble, could not easily have comprehended that the whole harvest did not belong to him. On the other hand, in this early age, when every industrious man would find as much land as he wanted, he would not be tempted to labour for another. It necessarily follows, that every proprietor must cultivate his own field or abandon it entirely.

10. Progress of society; all lands have an owner.

But the land begins to people, and to be cleared more and more. The best lands are in process of time fully occupied. There remains only for those who come last, nothing but barren land, rejected by the first occupants. But at last, every spot has found a master, and those who cannot gain a property therein, have no other resource but to exchange the labour of their hands in some of the employments of the stipendiary clasS, for the excess of commodities possessed by the cultivating proprietor.

11. The proprietors begin to be able to ease themselves of the labour of cultivation, by the help of hired cultivators.

Mean time, since the earth produces to the proprietor who cultivates it, not a subsistence only, not only wherewith to procure himself by way of exchange, what he otherwise wants, but also a considerable superfluity; he is enabled with this superfluity, to pay other men to cultivate his land. For among those who live by wages, as many are content to labour in this employment as in any other. The proprietor, therefore, might then be eased of the labour of culture, and he soon was so.

12. Inequality in the division of property: causes which render that inevitable.

The original proprietors would (as I have already mentioned) occupy as much land as their strength would permit them with their families to cultivate. A man of greater strength, more laborious, more attentive about the future, would occupy more than a man of a contrary character. He, whose family is the most numerous having greater wants and more hands, extends his possessions further; this is a first cause of inequality.—Every piece of ground is not equally fertile; two men with the same extent of land, may reap a very different harvest; this is a second source of inequality. Property in descending from fathers to their children, divides into greater or less portions, according as the descendants are more or less numerous, and as one generation succeeds another, sometimes the inheritances again subdivide, and sometimes re-unite again by the extinction of some of the branches; this is a third source of inequality. The difference of knowledge, of activity, and, above all, the oeconomy of some, contrasted with the indolence, inaction, and dissipation of others, is a fourth principle of inequality, and the most powerful of all: the negligent and inattentive proprietor, who cultivates badly, who in a fruitful year consumes in frivolous things the whole of his superfluity, finds himself reduced on the least accident to request assistance from his more provident neighbour, and to live by borrowing. If by any new accident, or by a continuation of his negligence, he finds himself not in a condition to repay, he is obliged to have recourse to new loans, and at last has no other resource but to abandon a part, or even the whole of his property to his creditor, who receives it as an equivalent; or to assign it to another, in exchange for other valuables with which he discharges his obligation to his creditor.

13. Consequences of this inequality: The cultivator distinguished from the proprietor.

Thus is the property in the soil made subject to purchase and sale. The portion of the dissipating or unfortunate, increases the share of the more happy or industrious proprietor; and in this infinite variety of possessions, it is not possible but a great number of proprietors must possess more than they can cultivate. Besides, it is very natural for a rich man to wish for a tranquil enjoyment of his property, and instead of employing his whole time in toilsome labour, he rather prefers giving a part of his superfluity to people to work for him.

14. Division of the produce between the cultivator and the proprietor. Net Produce, or revenue.

By this new arrangement, the produce of the land divides into two parts. The one comprehends the subsistence and the profits of the husbandman, which are the rewards for his labour, and the conditions on which he agrees to cultivate the field of the proprietor; the other which remains, is that independent and disposable part, which the earth produces as a free gift to the proprietor over and above what he has disbursed; and it is out of this share of the proprietor's, or what is called the revenue, that he is enabled to live without labour, and which he can carry wherever he will.

15. A new division of society into three classes. Cultivators, Artificers, and Proprietors, or the productive, stipendiary, and disposible classes.

We now behold society divided into three branches; the class of husbandmen, whom we may denominate cultivators; the class of artificers and others, who work for hire upon the productions of the earth; and the class of proprietors, the only one which, not being confined by a want of support to a particular species of labour, may be employed in the general service of society, as for war, and the administration of justice, either by a personal service, or by the payment of a part of their revenue, with which the state may hire others to fill these employments. The appellation which suits the best with this division, for this reason, is that of the disposable class.

16. Resemblance between the two laborious classes.

The two classes of cultivators and artificers, resemble each other in many respects, and particularly that those who compose them do not possess any revenue, and both equally subsist on the wages which are paid them out of the productions of the earth. Both have also this circumstance in common, that they only gain the price of their labour and their disbursements, and that this price is nearly the same in the two classes. The proprietor agreeing with those who cultivate his ground to pay them as small a part as possible of its produce, in the same manner as he bargains with the shoemaker to buy his shoes as cheap as he can. In a word, neither the cultivator, nor the artificer receives more than a bare recompense for his labour.

17. Essential difference between the two laborious classes.

But there is this difference between the two species of labour; that the work of the cultivator produces not only his own wages, but also that revenue which serves to pay all the different classes of artificers, and other stipendiaries their salaries: whereas the artificers receive simply their salary, that is to say, their part of the productions of the earth, in exchange for their labour, and which does not produce any increase. The proprietor enjoys nothing but by the labour of the cultivator. He receives from him his subsistence, and wherewith to pay for the labour of the other stipendiaries. He has need of the cultivator by the necessity arising from the physical order of things, by which necessity the earth is not fruitful without labour; but the cultivator has no need of the proprietor but by virtue of human conventions, and of those civil laws which have guaranteed to the first cultivators and their heirs, the property in the lands they had occupied, even after they ceased to cultivate them. But these laws can only secure to the idle man, that part of the production of his land which it produces beyond the retribution due to the cultivators. The cultivator, confined as he is to a stipend for his labour, still preserves that natural and physical priority which renders him the first mover of the whole machine of society, and which causes both the subsistence and wealth of the proprietor, and the salaries paid for every other species of labour, to depend on his industry. The artificer, on the contrary, receives his wages either of the proprietor or of the cultivator, and only gives them in exchange for his stipend, an equivalent in labour, and nothing more.

Thus, although neither the cultivator and artificer gain more than a recompence for their toil; yet the labour of the cultivator produces besides that recompense, a revenue to the proprietor, while the artificer does not produce any revenue either for himself or others.

18. This difference authorises another distinction into the productive and barren classes.

We may then distinguish the two classes not disposable into the productive class, which is that of the cultivators, or the barren class, which comprehends all the other stipendiary members of society.

19. How the proprietors may draw a revenue from their lands

The proprietors who do not cultivate their lands themselves, may adopt different methods of cultivating them, or make different agreements with those who cultivate them.

20. First method, or cultivation by labourers on wages.

They may, in the first place, pay men by the day or the year, to work their fields, and reserve to themselves the whole of the produce; this includes a supposition that the proprietor pays all advances, both for seed, and the wages of the labourers, until after the harvest. But this method requires great labour and assiduity on the part of the proprietor, who alone can direct his men in their labour, see that they employ their time well, and watch over their fidelity, that they shall not carry away any part of the produce. It is true that he may pay a man of more knowledge, and whose fidelity he knows, who, in quality of manager and conductor, may direct the workmen, and keep an account of the produce; but he will be always subject to fraud. Besides, this method is extremely expensive, unless a large population, or want of employ in other species of labour, forces the workmen to content themselves with very low salaries.

21. Second method, cultivation by slaves

In times not very distant from the origin of society, it was almost impossible to find men willing to work on the lands of another, because all the land not being as yet occupied, those who were willing to labour, preferred the clearing of new lands, and the cultivating them on their own account; this is pretty much the case in all new colonies.

In this situation violent men then conceived the expedient of obliging other men by force to labour for them. They employed slaves. These latter have had no justice to look for, from the hands of people, who have not been able to reduce them to slavery without violating all the laws of humanity. Meantime, the physical law of nature secures to them their part of the productions which they have raised; for the master must necessity nourish them, in order to profit by their labour. But this species of recompence is confined to mere necessaries for their subsistence.

This abominable custom of slavery has formerly been universal, and has spread over the greatest part of the globe. The principal object of the wars carried on by the ancients was, to carry off slaves, whom the conquerors either compelled to work for them, or sold to others. This species of thieving, and this trade, still continues, attended with all its cruel circumstances, on the coast of Guinea, where the Europeans encourage it by going thither to purchase negroes for the cultivation of their American colonies.

The excessive labour to which avaricious masters force their slaves, causes many of them to perish; and it becomes necessary, to keep up the number requisite for cultivation, that this trade should supply annually a very large number. And as war is the principal source which supplies this commerce, it is evident that it can subsist no longer than the people continue divided into very small nations, who are incessantly plundering each other, and every district is at continued war with its neighbours. Let England, France, and Spain carry on the most cruel hostilities, the frontiers alone of each state will be the only parts invaded, and that in a few places only. All the rest of the country will be quiet, an d the small number of prisoners they could make on either side, would be but a weak resource for the cultivation of each of the three nations.

22. Cultivation by slaves cannot exist in great societies.

Thus when men are formed into great societies, the recruits of slaves are not sufficiently numerous to support the consumption which the cultivation requires. And although they supply the labour of men by that of beasts, a time will come, when the lands can no longer be worked by slaves. The practice is then continued only for the interior work of the house, and in the end it is totally abolished; because in proportion as nations become polished, they form conventions for the exchange of prisoners of war. These conventions are the more readily made, as every individual is very much interested to be free from the danger of falling into a state of slavery.

23. Slavery annexed to the land, succeeds to slavery properly so called.

The descendants of the first slaves, attached at first to the cultivation of the ground, change their condition. The interior peace among nations, not leaving wherewithal to supply the consumption of slaves, the masters are obliged to take greater care of them. Those who were born in the house, accustomed from their infancy to their situation, revolt the less at it, and their masters have less need to employ rigour to restrain them. By degrees the land they cultivate becomes their country, they become a part of the nation, and in the end, they experience confidence and humanity on the part of their masters.

24. Vassalage succeeds to slavery, annexed to the land, and the slave becomes a proprietor. Third method; alienation of the land for a certain service.

The administration of an estate, cultivated by slaves, requires a careful attention, and an irksome residence. The master secures to himself a more free, more easy, and more secure enjoyment of his property, by interesting his slaves in the cultivation of it, and by abandoning to each of them a certain portion of land, on condition of their paying him a portion of the produce. Some have made this agreement for a time, and have only left their serfs, or slaves, a precious and revocable possession. Others have assigned them lands in perpetuity, refining an annual rent payable either in provisions or in money, and requiring from the possessors certain services. Those who received these lands, under the condition prescribed, became proprietors and free, under the name of tenant, or vassal; and the ancient proprietors, under the title of lords, reserved only the right of exacting payment of the rent, and other stipulated duties. Thus it has happened in the greater part of Europe.

25. Fourth Method. Partial colonization

These lands, rendered free at the expence of rent, may yet change masters, may divide or reunite by means of succession and sale; and such a vassal may in his turn have more than he can cultivate himself. In general the rent to which those lands are subject, is not so large, but that, by cultivating them well, the cultivator is enabled to pay all advances, and expences, procure himself a subsistence, and besides, an excess of productions which form a revenue. Henceforth the proprietary vassal becomes desirous of enjoying this revenue without labour, and of having his lands also cultivated by others. On the other hand, the greater part of the lords grant out those parts of their possessions only, which are the least within their reach, and retain those they can cultivate with the least expence. The cultivation by slaves not being practicable, the first method that offers, and the most simple to engage free men to cultivate lands which do not belong to them, was to resign to them such a portion of the produce, as would engage them to cultivate better than those husbandmen who are employed at a fixed salary. The most common method has been to divide it into equal parts, one of which belonged to the cultivator and the other to the proprietor. This has given place to the name (in France) of metayer (medietarius) or cultivator for half produce. In arrangements of this kind, which take place throughout the greatest part of France, the proprietor pays all contingencies; that is to say, he provides at his expence, the cattle for labour, ploughs, and other utensils of husbandry, seed, and the support of the cultivator and his family, from the time the latter enters into the metairie until the first harvest.

26. Fifth method. Renting, or letting out the land

Rich and intelligent cultivators, who saw to what perfection an active and well directed cultivation, for which neither labour nor expence was spared, would raise the fruitfulness of land, judged with reason that they would gain more, if the proprietors should consent to abandon, for a certain number of years, the whole of the harvest, on condition of receiving annually a certain revenue, and to be free of all expences of cultivation. By that they would be assured that the increase of productions, which their disbursements and their labour procured, would belong entirely to themselves. The proprietor, on his side, would gain thereby, 1st, a more tranquil enjoyment of his revenue, being freed from the care of advances, and of keeping an account of the produce; 2nd, a more equal enjoyment, since he would receive every year the same and a more certain price for his farm: because he would run no risk of losing his advances; and the cattle and other effects with which the farmers had stocked it, would become a security for his payment. On the other hand, the lease being only for a small number of years, if his tenant paid him too little, he could augment it at the expiration thereof.

27. The last method is the most advantageous, but it supposes the country already rich.

This method of securing lands is the most advantageous both to proprietors and cultivators. It is universally established where there are any rich cultivators, in a condition to make the advances necessity for the cultivation. And as the rich cultivators are in a situation to bestow more labour and manure upon the ground, there results from thence a prodigious augmentation in the productions, and in the revenue of the land.

In Picardy, Normandy, the environs of Paris, and in most of the provinces in the north of France, the lands are cultivated by farmers; in those of the south, by the metayers. Thus the northern are incomparably richer and better cultivated than the southern provinces.

28. Recapitulation of the several methods of making lands productive.

I have just mentioned five different methods by which proprietors are enabled to ease themselves of the labour of the cultivation, and to make their land productive, by the hands of others.
- 1. By workmen paid at a fixed salary.
- 2. By slaves.
- 3. By ceding their lands for rent.
- 4. By granting to the cultivator a determined portion, which is commonly half the produce, the proprietor paying the advances necessary for the cultivation.
- 5. By letting their land to farmers, who undertake to make all the necessary advances, and who engage to pay to the proprietors, during the number of years agreed on, a revenue equal to its value.
Of these five methods, the first is too expensive, and very seldom practised; the second is only used in countries as yet ignorant and barbarous; the third is rather a means of procuring a value for, than abandoning of the property for money, so that the ancient proprietor is no longer any thing more than a mere creditor.

The two last methods of cultivation are the most common, that is, the cultivation by metayers in the poor, and by farmers in the richer countries.

29. Of capitals in general, and of the revenue of money.

There is another way of being rich, without labour, and without possessing lands, of which I have not yet spoken, and of which it is necessary to explain the origin and connection, with other parts of the system of the distribution of riches in society, of which I have just drawn the outlines. This consists in living by what is called the revenue of money, or of the interest which is paid for the loan thereof.

30. Of the use of gold and silver in commerce.

Gold and silver are two species of merchandize, like others, and less valuable than many of them, because they are of no use for the real wants of life. To explain how these two metals are become the representative pledges of every species of riches; how they influence the commercial markets, and how they enter into the composition of fortunes, it is necessary to go back again and return to our first principles.

31. Rise of Commerce. Principle of the valuation of commercial things.

Reciprocal wants first introduced exchanges of what we possessed, for what we stood in need of one species of provision was bartered for another, or for, labour. In exchanging, it is necessary that each party is convinced of the quality and quantity of every thing exchanged. In this agreement it is natural that every one should desire to receive as much as he can, and to give as little; and both being equally masters of what they have to barter, it is in a man's own breast to balance the attachment he has to the thing he gives, with the desire he feels to possess that which he is willing to receive, and consequently to fix the quantity of each of the exchanged things. If the two persons do not agree, they must relax a little on one side or the other, either by offering more or being content with less. I will suppose that one is want of corn and the other of wine; and that they agree to exchange a bushel of corn for six pints of wine. It is evident that by both of them, one bushel of corn and six pints of wine are looked upon as exactly equivalent, and that in this particular exchange, the price of a bushel of corn is six pints of wine, and the price of six pints of wine is one bushel of corn. But in another exchange between other men, this price will be different, accordingly as one or the other of them shall have a more or less pressing want of one commodity or the other; and a bushel of corn may be exchanged against eight pints of wine, while another bushel shall be bartered for four pints only.) Now it is evident, that not one of these three prices can be looked on as the true price of a bushel of corn, rather than the others; to each of the dealers, the wine he has received was equivalent to the corn he had given. In a word, so long as we consider each exchange independent of any other, the value of each thing exchanged has no other measure than the wants or desires of one party weighed with those of the other, and is fixed only by their agreement.

32. How the current value of the exchange of merchandize is established.

Meantime it happens that many individuals have wine to dispose of to those who possess corn. If one is not willing to give more than four pints for a bushel, the proprietor of the corn will not exchange with him, when he shall know that another will give six or eight pints for the same bushel. If the former is determined to have the corn, he will be obliged to raise his price equal to what is offered by others. The sellers of wine profit on their side by the competition among the sellers of corn. No one resolves part with his property, before he has compared the different offers which are made to him, of the commodity he stands in need of, and then he accepts of the best offer. The value of the wine and corn is not fixed by the two proprietors with respect to their own wants and reciprocal abilities, but by a general balance of the wants of all the sellers of corn, with those of all the sellers of wine. For those who will willingly give eight pints of wine for a bushel of corn, will give but four when they shall know that a proprietor of corn is willing to give two bushels for eight pints. The medium price between the different offers and the different demands, will become the current price to which all the buyers and sellers will conform in their exchanges; and it will be true if we say, that six pints of wine will be to every one the equivalent for a bushel of corn, that is, the medium price, until a diminution of supply on one side, or of demand on the other, causes a variation.

33. Commerce gives in all merchandize a current value with respect to any other merchanize; from whence it follows that all merchandize is the equivalent for a certain quantity of any other merchandize, and may be looked on as a pledge to represent it.

Corn is not only exchanged for wine, but also for any object which the proprietors of the corn may stand in need of as wood, leather, woollen, cotton, &c. it is the same with wine and every other particular species. If a bushel of corn is equivalent to six pints of wine, and a sheep is equivalent to three bushels of corn, the same sheep will be equivalent to eighteen pints of wine. He who having the corn, wants the wine, may, without inconvenience, exchange his corn for a sheep, in order afterwards to exchange the sheep for the wine he stands in need of.

34. Every merchandize may serve as a scale or common measure, by which to compare the value of any other.

It follows from hence, that in a country where the commerce is very brisk, where there are many productions and much consumption, where there are great supplies and a great demand for all sorts of commodities, every sort will have a current price, having relation to every other species; that is to say, that a certain quantity of one will be of equal value to a certain quantity of any others. Thus the same quantity of corn which is worth eighteen pints of wine, is also the value of a sheep, a piece of leather, or a certain quantity of iron; and all these things have, in the transactions of trade an equal value. To express or make known the value of any particular thing, it is evident, that it is sufficient to announce the quantity of any other known production, which will be looked on as an equivalent for it. Thus, to make known what a piece of leather of a certain size is worth, we may say indifferently, that it is worth three bushels of corn, or eighteen pints of wine. We may by the same method express the value of a certain quantity of wine, by the number of sheep, or bushels of corn it will bring in trade.

We see by this, that every species of commodity that can be an object of commerce, may be measured, as I may say, by each other, that every one may serve as a common measure, or scale of comparison to describe the value of every other species, and in like manner every merchandize becomes in the hands of him who possesses it, a means to procure all others—a sort of universal pledge.

35. Every species of merchandize does not present a scale equally commodious. It is proper to prefer the use of such as are not susceptible of any great alteration in quality, and have a value principally relative to the number and quantity.

But although all merchandize has essentially this property of representing any other, is able to serve as a common measure, to express its value, and to become a universal pledge to procure any of them by way of exchange, yet all cannot be employed with the same degree of facility for these two uses. The more susceptible any merchandize is to change its value by an alteration in its quality, the more difficult it is to make it a scale of reference for the value of others. For example, if eighteen pints of wine of Anjou are equivalent in value to a sheep, eighteen pints of Cape wine may be equivalent to eighteen sheep. Thus he who to express the value of a sheep, would say it is worth eighteen pints of wine, would employ an equivocal language, and would not communicate any precise idea, at least until he added some explanation, which would be very inconvenient. We are, therefore, obliged to choose for a scale of comparison, such commodities as being more commonly in use, and consequently of a value more generally known, are more like each other, and of which consequently the value has more relation to the quantity than the quality.

36. For want of an exact correspondence between the value and the number or quantity, it is supplied by a mean valuation, which becomes a species of real money.

In a country where there are only one race of sheep, we may easily take the value of a fleece or of a sheep by the common method of valuation, and we may say that a barrel of wine, or a piece of stuff, is worth a certain number of fleeces or of sheep. There is in reality some inequality in sheep, but when we want to sell them, we take care to estimate that inequality, and to reckon (for example) two lambs for one sheep. When it is necessary to treat of the relative value of other merchandize, we fix the common value of a sheep of middling age and quality, as the symbol of unity. In this view the enunciation of the value of sheep, becomes an agreed language, and this word one sheep, in the language of commerce, signifies only a certain value, which, in the mind of him who understands it, carries the idea not only of a sheep, but as a certain quantity of every other commodity, which is esteemed equivalent thereto, and this expression is more applicable to a fictitious and abstract value, than to the value of a real sheep; that if by chance a mortality happens among the sheep, and that to purchase one of them, you must give double the quantity of corn or wine that was formerly given, we shall rather say, that one sheep is worth two sheep, than change the expression we have been accustomed to for all other valuations.

37. Example of those mean valuations which become an ideal expression for value.

There exists, in the commerce of every nation, many examples of fictitious valuations of merchandize, which are, as we may say, only a conventional language to express their value. Thus the cooks of Paris, and the fishmongers who furnish great houses, generally sell by the piece. A fat pullet is esteemed one piece, a chicken half a piece, more or less, according to the season: and so of the rest. In the negro trade in the American colonies, they sell a cargo of negroes at the rate of so much per negro, an Indian piece. The women and children are valued, so that, for example, three children, or one woman and two children are reckoned as one head of negro. They increase or diminish the value on account of the strength or other quality of the slaves, so that certain slaves are reckoned as two heads of negroes.

The Mandingo negroes, who carry on a trade for gold dust with the Arabian merchants, bring all their commodities to a fictitious scale, which both parties call macutes, so that they tell the merchants they will give so many macutes in gold. They value thus in macutes the merchandize they receive; and bargain with the merchants upon that valuation. Thus in Holland they reckon by bank florins, which is only a fictitious money, and which in commerce is sometimes of a greater, sometimes of a less value than the coin which is denominated a florin.

38. All merchandize is a representative pledge of every object of commerce, but more or less commodities for use, as it possesses a greater or less facility to be transported, and to be preserved without alteration.

The variation in the quality of merchandize, and in the different prices in proportion to that quality, which renders them more or less proper than others to serve as a common measure, is also more or less an impediment to their being a representative pledge of every other merchandize of equal value. Nevertheless there is also, as to this last property, a very essential difference between the different species of merchandize. It is (for example) evident, that a man who possesses a piece of linen, is more certain of procuring for it, when he pleases, a certain quantity of corn, than if he had a barrel of wine of equal value: the wine being subject to a variety of accidents, which may in a moment deprive him of the whole property.

39. All merchandize has the two essential properties of money, to measure and to represent all value: and in this sense all merchandize is money.

These two properties of serving as a common measure of all value, and of being a representative pledge of all other commodities of equal value, comprehend all that constitute the essence and use of what is called money; and it follows from the details which I have just now given, that all merchandize is, in some respect, money; and participates more or less, according to its particular nature, of these two essential properties. All is more or less proper to serve as a common measure, in proportion as it is more or less in general use, of a more similar quality, and more easy to be divided into aliquot parts. All is more or less applicable for the purpose of a general pledge of exchange, in proportion as it is less susceptible of decay or alteration in quantity or quality.

40. Reciprocally all money is essentially merchandize.

We can take only that which has a value for a common measure of value, that which is received in commerce in exchange for other properties; and there is no universal representative pledge of value, but something of equal value. A money of convention is therefore a thing impossible.

41. Different matters are able to serve and have served for current money.

Many nations have adopted in their language and in. their trade, as a common measure of value, different matters more or less precious. There are at this day, some barbarous nations, who make use of a species of little shells, called cowries. I remember to have seen when at college, some apricot stones exchanged and passed as a species of money among the scholars, who made use of them at certain games. I have already spoken of a valuation by heads of cattle; some of these are to be found in the vestiges of the laws of the ancient German nations, who over-ran the Roman empire. The first Romans, or at least the Latins, their ancestors, made use of them also. It is pretended that the first money they struck in brass, represented the value of a sheep, and bore the image of that animal, and that the name of Pecunia has obtained from pecus. This conjecture carries with it a great probability.

42. Metals, and particularly gold and silver, are the most proper for that purpose, and why.

We are now arrived at the introduction of the precious metals into trade. All metals, as they have been discovered, have been admitted into exchange, on account of their real utility. Their splendor has caused them to be sought for, to serve as ornaments; their ductility and their solidity have rendered them proper for utensils, more durable and lighter than those of clay. But these substances cannot be brought into commerce without becoming almost immediately a universal money. A piece of any metal, of whatever sort, has exactly the same qualities as another piece of the same metal provided they are both equally pure. Now the ease with which we can separate, by different chemical operations, a metal from other metals with which it is incorporated, enables us to bring it to a degree of purity, or, as they call it, to what standard we please; then the value of metal differs only as to its weight. In expressing, therefore, the value of any merchandize by the weight of metal which may be had in exchange, we shall then have the clearest, the most commodious, and most precise expression of value; and hence it is impossible but it must be preferred in practice to all other things. Nor are metals less proper than other merchandize for becoming the universal token of all value that can be measured: as they are susceptible of all imaginable divisions, there is not any object of commerce, great or small, whose value cannot be exactly paid by a certain quantity of metal. To this advantage of accommodating itself to every species of division, they join that of being unalterable, and those which are scarce, as gold and silver, have a great value, although of a weight and size little considerable.

These two metals are then, of all merchandize, the most easy to ascertain their quality, to divide their quantity, and to convey to all places at the easiest expence. Every one, therefore, who has a superfluity, and who is not at the time in want of another useful commodity, will hasten to exchange it for silver, with which he is more certain, than with any thing else, to procure himself the commodity he shall wish for at the time he is in want.

43. Gold and silver are constituted, by the nature of things, money, and universal money, independent of all convention, and of all laws.

Here then is gold and silver constituted money, and universal money, and that without any arbitrary agreement among men, without the intervention of any law, but only by the nature of things. They are not, as many people imagine, signs of value; they have an intrinsic value in themselves, if they are capable of being the measure and the token of other values. This property they have in common with all other commodities which have a value in commerce. They only differ in being at the same time more divisible, more unchangeable, and of more easy conveyance than other merchandize, by which they are more commodiously employed to measure and represent the value of others.

44. Other metals are only employed for these uses, in a secondary manner.

All metals are capable of being employed as money. But those which are too common have too little value in a large bulk to be employed in the current uses of commerce. Copper, silver, and gold, are the only ones which have been brought into constant use. And even copper, except among people to whom neither mines nor commerce have supplied a sufficient quantity of gold or silver, has never been used but in exchanges of small value.

45. The use of gold and silver, as money, has augmented their value as materials.

It is not possible, but the eagerness with which every one has sought to exchange their superfluous commodities for gold and silver, rather than for any other commodity, must have augmented the value of these two materials in commerce. These are only thereby rendered more commodious for their employment as tokens, or common measure.

46. Variations in the value of gold and silver, compared with the other objects of commerce, and with each other.

This value is susceptible of change, and in truth is continually changing; so that the same quantity of metal which answered to a certain quantity of such or such a commodity, becomes no longer equal thereto, and it requires a greater or less quantity of silver to represent the same commodity. When it requires more, it is said the commodity is dearer. when it requires less, that it is become cheaper; but they may as well say, that the silver is in the first case become cheaper, and in the latter dearer. Silver and gold not only vary in price, compared with all other commodities, but they vary also with each other, in proportion as they are more or less abundant. It is notorious, that we now give in Europe from fourteen to fifteen ounces of silver for one ounce of gold; and that in former times we gave only ten or eleven ounces.

Again, that at present in China, they do not give more than twelve ounces of silver for one ounce of gold, so that there is a very great advantage in carrying silver to China, to exchange for gold, to bring back to Europe. It is visible, that, in process of time, this commerce will make gold more common in Europe, and less common in China, and that the value of these two materials must finally come in both places to the same proportion.

A thousand different causes concur, to fix and to change incessantly the comparative value of commodities, either with respect to each other, or with respect to silver. The same causes conspire to fix and vary the comparative value, whether in respect to the value of each commodity in particular, or with respect to the totality of the other values which are actually in commerce. It is not possible to investigate these different causes, or to unfold their effects, without entering into very extensive and very difficult details, which I shall decline in this discussion.

47. The use of payments in money, has given room for the distinction of seller and buyer.

In proportion as mankind became familiarized to the custom of valuing all things in silver, of exchanging all their superfluous commodities for silver, and of not parting with that money but for things which are useful or agreeable to them at the moment, they become accustomed to consider the exchanges of commerce in a different point of view. They have made a distinction of two persons, the buyer and the seller: the seller is him who gives commodities for money; and the buyer is him who gives money for commodities.

48. The use of money has much facilitated the separation of different labours among the different orders of society.

The more money becomes a universal medium, the more every one is enabled, by devoting himself solely to that species of cultivation and industry, of which he has made choice, to divest himself entirely of every thought for his other wants, and only to think of providing the most money he can, by the sale of his fruits or his labour, being sure with that money to possess all the rest. It is thus, that the use of money has prodigiously hastened the progress of society.

49. Of the excess of annual produce accumulated to form capitals.

As soon as men are found, whose property in land assures them an annual revenue more than sufficient to satisfy all their wants, among them there are some, who, either uneasy respecting the future, or, perhaps, only provident, lay by a portion of what they gather every year, either with a view to guard against possible accidents, or to augment their enjoyments. When the commodities they have gathered are difficult to preserve, they ought to procure themselves in exchange, such objects of a more durable nature, and such as will not decrease in their value by time, or those that may be employed in such a manner, as to procure such profits as will make good the decrease with advantage.

50. Personal property, accumulation of money.

This species of possession, resulting from the accumulation of annual produce, not consumed, is known by the name of personal property. Household goods, houses, merchandize in store, utensils of trade, and cattle are under this denomination. It is evident men must have toiled hard to procure themselves as much as they could of this kind of wealth, before they became acquainted, but it is not less evident that, as with the use of money, soon as it was known, that it was the least liable to alteration of all the objects of commerce, and the most easy to preserve without trouble, it would be principally sought after by whoever wished to accumulate. It was not the proprietors of land only who thus accumulated their superfluity. Although the profits of industry are not, like the revenue of lands, a gift of nature; and the industrious man draws from his labour only the price which is given him by the persons who pay him his wages; although the latter is as frugal as he can of his salary, and that a competition obliges an industrious man to content himself with a less price than he otherwise would do, it is yet certain that these competitions have neither been so numerous or strong in any species of labour, but that a man more expert, more active, and who practises more oeconomy than others in his personal expences, has been able, at all times, to gain a little more than sufficient to support him and his family, and reserve his surplus to form a little hoard.

51. Circulating wealth is an indispensible requisite for all lucrative works.

It is even necessary, that in every trade the workmen, or those who employ them, possess a certain quantity of circulating wealth, collected before-hand. We here again are obliged to go back to a retrospect of many things which have been as yet only hinted at, after we have spoken of the division of different professions, and of the different methods by which the proprietors of capitals may render them of value; because, otherwise, we should not be able to explain them properly, without interrupting the connection of our ideas.

52. Necessity of advances for cultivation.

Every species of labour, of cultivation, of industry, or of commerce, require advances. When people cultivate the ground, it is necessary to sow before they can reap; they must also support themselves until after the harvest. The more cultivation is brought to perfection and enlivened, the more considerable these advances are. Cattle, utensils for farming, buildings to hold the cattle, to store the productions, a number of persons, in proportion to the extent of the undertaking, must be paid and subsisted until the harvest. It is only by means of considerable advances, that we obtain rich harvests, and that lands produce a large revenue. In whatever business they engage, the workman must be provided with tools, must have a sufficient quantity of such materials as the object of his labour requires: and he must subsist until the sale of his goods.

53. First advance furnished by the land although uncultivated.

The earth was ever the first and the only source of all riches: it is that which by cultivation produces all revenue; it is that which has afforded the first fund for advances, anterior to all cultivation. The first cultivator has taken the grain he has sown from such productions as the land had spontaneously produced; while waiting for the harvest, he has supported himself by hunting, by fishing, or upon wild fruits. His tools have been the branches of trees, procured in the forests, and cut with stones sharpened upon other stones; the animals wandering in the woods he has taken in the chace, caught them in his traps, or has subdued them unawares. At first he has made use of them for food, afterwards to help him in his labours. These first funds or capital have increased by degrees. Cattle were in early times the most sought after of all circulating property; and were also the easiest to accumulate; they perish, but they also breed, and this sort of riches is in some respects unperishable. This capital augments by generation alone, and affords an annual produce, either in milk, wool, leather, and other materials, which, with wood taken in the forest, have effected the first foundations for works of industry.

54. Cattle a circulating wealth, even before the cultivation of the earth.

In times when there was yet a large quantity of uncultivated land, and which did not belong to any individual, cattle might be maintained without having a property in land. It is even probable, that mankind have almost every where began to collect flocks and herds, and to live on what they produced, before they employed themselves in the more laborious occupation of cultivating the ground. It seems that those nations who first cultivated the earth, are those who found in their country such sorts of animals as were the most susceptible of being tamed, and that they have by this been drawn from the wandering and restless life of hunters and fishers, to the more tranquil enjoyment of pastoral pursuits. Pastoral life requires a longer residence in the same place, affords more leisure, more opportunities to study the difference of lands, to observe the ways of nature in the productions of such plants as serve for the support of cattle. Perhaps it is for this reason, that the Asiatic nations have first cultivated the earth, and that. the inhabitants of America have remained so long in a savage state.

55. Another species of circulating wealth, and advances necessary for cultivation, slaves.

The slaves were another kind of personal property, which at first were procured by violence, and afterwards by way of commerce and exchange. Those that had many, employed them not only in the culture of land, but in various other channels of labour. The facility of accumulating, almost without measure, those two sources of riches, and of making use of them abstractedly from the land, caused the land itself to be estimated, and the value compared to moveable riches.

56. Personal property has an exchangeable value, even for land itself.

A man that would have been possessed of a quantity of lands without cattle or slaves, would undoubtedly have made an advantageous bargain, in yielding a part of his land, to a person that would have offered him in exchange, cattle and slaves to cultivate the rest. It is chiefly by this principle that property in land entered likewise into commerce, and had a comparative value with that of all the other goods. If four bushels of corn, the net produce of an acre of land, was worth six sheep, the acre itself that feeds them could have been given for a certain value, greater indeed, but always easy to settle by the same way, as the price of other wares. Namely, at first by debates among the two contractors, next, by the current price established by the agreement of those who exchange land for cattle, or the contrary. It is by the scale of this current specie that lands are appraised, when a debtor is prosecuted by his creditor, and is constrained to yield up his property.

57. Valuations of lands by the proportion of their revenue, with the sum of personal property, or the value for which they are exchanged: this proportion is called the price of lands.

It is evident, that if land, which produces a revenue equivalent to six sheep, can be sold for a certain value, which may always be expressed by a number of sheep equivalent to that value; this number will bear a fixed proportion with that of six, and will contain it a certain number of times. Thus the price of an estate is nothing else but its revenue multiplied a certain number of times; twenty times if the price is a hundred and twenty sheep; thirty times if one hundred and eighty sheep. And so the current price of land is reckoned by the proportion of the value of the revenue; and the number of times, that the price of the sale contains that of the revenue, is called so many years purchase of the land. They are sold at the price of twenty, thirty, or forty years purchase, when on purchasing them we pay twenty, thirty, or forty times. their revenue. It is also not less evident, that this price must vary according to the number of purchasers, or sellers of land, in the same manner as other goods vary in a ratio to the different proportion between the offer and the demand.

58. All capital in money, and all amounts of value, are equivalent to land producing a revenue equal to some portion of that capital or value. First employment of capitals. Purchase of lands.

Let us now go back to the time after the introduction of money. The facility of accumulating it has soon rendered it the most desirable part of personal property, and has afforded the means of augmenting, by economy, the quantity of it without limits. Whoever, either by the revenue of his land. or by the salary of his labour or industry, receives every year a higher income than he needs to spend, may lay up the residue and accumulate it: these accumulated values are what we name a capital. The pusillanimous miser, that keeps his money with the mere view of soothing his imagination against apprehension of distress in the uncertainty of futurity, keeps his money in a hoard. If the dangers he had foreseen should eventually take place, and he in his poverty be reduced to live every year upon the treasure, or a prodigal successor lavish it by degrees, this treasure would soon be exhausted, and the capital totally lost to the possessor. The latter can draw a far greater advantage from it; for an estate in land of a certain revenue, being but an equivalent of a sum of value equal to the revenue, taken a certain number of times, it follows, that any sum whatsoever of value is equivalent to an estate in land, producing a revenue equal to a fixed proportion of that sum. It is perfectly the same whether the amount of this capital consists in a mass of metal, or any other matter, since money represents all kinds of value. as well as all kinds of value represent money. By these means the possessor of a capital may at first employ it in the purchase of lands; but he is not without other resources.

59. Another employment for money in advances for enterprises of manufacture or industry.

I have already observed, that all kinds of labour, either of cultivation or industry, required advances. And I have shewn how the earth, by the fruits and herbages it spontaneously produces for the nourishment of men and animals, and by the trees, of which man has first formed his utensils, had furnished the first advances for cultivation; and even of the first manual works a man can perform for his own service. For instance, it is the earth that provides the stone, clay, and wood, of which the first houses were built; and, before the division of professions, when the same man that cultivated the earth provided also for his other wants by his own labour, there was no need of other advances. But when a great part of society began to have no resource but in their hands, it was necessary that those who lived thus upon salaries, should have somewhat before hand, that they might either procure themselves the materials on which they laboured, or subsist during the time they were waiting for their salary.

60. Explanation of the use of the advances of capitals in enterprises of industry; on their returns and the profits they ought to produce.

In early times, he that employed labouring people under him, furnished the materials himself, and paid from day to day the salaries of the workmen. It was the cultivator or the owner himself that gave to the spinner the hemp he had gathered, and he maintained her during the time of her working. Thence he passed the yarn to a weaver, to whom he gave every day the salary agreed upon. But those slight daily advances can only take place in the coarsest works. A vast number of arts, and even of those arts indispensable for the use of the most indigent members of society, require that the same materials should pass through many different hands, and undergo, during a considerable space of time, difficult and various operations. I have already mentioned the preparation of leather, of which shoes are made. Whoever has seen the workhouse of a tanner, cannot help feeling the absolute impossibility of one, or even several indigent persons providing themselves with leather, lime, tan, utensils, &c. and causing the requisite buildings to be erected to put the tan house to work, and of their living during a certain space of time, till their leather can be sold. In this art, and many others, must not those that work on it have learned the craft before they presume to touch the materials, lest they should waste them in their first trials? Here then is another absolute necessity of advances. Who shall now collect the materials for the manufactory, the ingredients, the requisite utensils for their preparation? Who is to construct canals, markets, and buildings of every denomination? How shall that multitude of workmen subsist till the time of their leather being sold, and of whom none individually would be able to prepare a single skin; and where the emolument of the sale of a single skin could not afford subsistence to any one of them? Who shall defray the expences for the instruction of the pupils and apprentices? Who shall maintain them until they are sufficiently instructed, guiding them gradually from an easy labour proportionate to their age, to works that demand more vigour and ability? It must then be one of those proprietors of capitals, or moveable accumulated property that must employ them, supplying them with advances in part for the construction and purchase of materials, and partly for the daily salaries of the workmen that are preparing them. It is he that must expect the sale of the leather, which is to return him not only his advances, but also an emolument sufficient to indemnify him for what his money would have procured him, had he turned it to the acquisition of lands, and moreover of the salary due to his troubles and care, to his risque, and even to his skill; for surely, upon equal profits, he would have preferred living without solicitude, on the revenue of land, which he could have purchased with the same capital. In proportion as this capital returns to him by the sale of his works, he employs it in new purchases for supporting his family and maintaining his manufactory; by this continual circulation, he lives on his profits, and lays by in store what he can spare to increase his stock, and to advance his enterprize by augmenting the mass of his capital, in order proportionably to augment his profits.

61. Subdivisions of the industrious stipendiary class, in undertaking capitalists and simple workmen.

Thus the whole class-employed in supplying the different wants of society, with an immense variety of works of industry, is, if I may speak thus, subdivided into two classes. The one, of the undertakers, manufacturers and masters, all proprietors of large capitals, which they avail themselves of, by furnishing work to the other class, composed of artificers, destitute of any property but their hands, who advance only their daily labour, and receive no profits but their salaries.

62. Another employment of capitals, in advances towards undertakings of agriculture. Observations on the use, and indispensable profits of capitals in undertakings of agriculture.

In speaking first of the placing of capitals in manufacturing enterprizes, I had in view to adduce a more striking example, of the necessity and effect of large advances, and of the course of their circulation. But I have reversed the natural order, which seemed to require that I should rather begin to speak of enterprizes of agriculture, which also can neither be performed, nor extended, nor afford any profit, but by means of considerable advances. It is the proprietors of great capitals, who, in order to make them productive in undertakings of agriculture, take leases of lands, and pay to the owners large rents, taking on themselves the whole burthen of advances. Their case must necessarily be the same as that of the undertakers of manufactures. Like them, they are obliged to make the first advances towards the undertaking, to provide themselves with cattle, horses, utensils of husbandry, to purchase the first seeds; like them they must maintain and nourish their carters, reapers, threshers, servants, and labourers, of every denomination, who subsist only by their hands, who advance only their labour, and reap only their salaries. Like them, they ought to have not only their capital, I mean, all their prior and annual advances returned, but, 1st, a profit equal to the revenue they could have acquired with their capital, exclusive of any fatigue; 2ndly. The salary, and the price of their own trouble, of their risk, and their industry; 3rdly. An emolument to enable them to replace the effects employed in their enterprise, and the loss by waste, cattle dying, and utensils wearing out, &c., all which ought to be first charged on the products of the earth. The over-plus will serve the cultivator to pay to the proprietor, for the permission he has given him to make use of his field in the accomplishing of his enterprize; that is, the price of the leasehold, the rent of the proprietor and the clear product: for all that the land produces, until reimbursement of the advances, and profits of every kind to him that has made these advances, cannot be looked upon as a revenue, but only as a reimbursement of the expences of the cultivation, since if the cultivator could not obtain them, he would be loath to risk his wealth and trouble in cultivating the field of another.

63. The competition between the capitalists, undertakers of cultivation, fixes the current price of leases of lands.

The competition between rich undertakers of cultivation fixes the current price of leases, in proportion to the fertility of the soil, and of the rate at which its productions are sold, always according to the calculation which farmers make both of their expenditures, and of the profits they ought to draw from their advances. They cannot give to the owners more than the overplus. But when the competition among them happens to be more animated, they sometimes render him the whole overplus, the proprietor leasing his land to him that offers the greatest rent.

64. The default of capitalists, undertakers, limits the cultivation of lands to a small extent.

When, on the contrary, there are no rich men that possess capitals large enough to embark in enterprizes of agriculture; when, through the low rate of the productions of the earth, or any other cause, the crops are not sufficient to ensure to the undertakers, besides the reimbursement of their capital, emoluments adequate at least to those they would derive from their money, by employing it in some other channel; there are no farmers that offer to lease lands, the proprietors are constrained to hire mercenaries or metayers, which are equally unable to make any advances, or duly to cultivate it. The proprietor himself makes moderate advances, which only produce him an indifferent revenue: If the land happens to belong to an owner, poor, negligent, and in debt, to a widow, or a minor, it remains unmanured; such is the principle of the difference I have observed between provinces, where the lands are cultivated by opulent farmers, as in Normandy and the Isle de France, and those where they are cultivated only by indigent mercenaries, as in Limousin, Angoumois, Bourbonnois, and several others.

65. Subdivisions of the class of cultivators into undertakers, or farmers, and hired persons, servants, and day-labourers.

Hence it follows, that the class of cultivators may be divided, like that of manufacturers, into two branches, the one of undertakers or capitalists, who make the advances, the other of simple stipendiary workmen. It results also, that capitals alone can form and support great enterprizes of agriculture, that give to the lands an unvariable value, if I may use the expression, and that secure to the proprietors a revenue always equal, and the largest possible.

66. Fourth employment of capitals, in advances for enterprises of commerce. Necessity of the interposition of merchants, properly so called, between the producers of the commodities and the consumers.

The undertakers either in cultivation or manufacture, draw their advances and profits only from the sale of the fruits of the earth, or the commodities fabricated. It is always the wants and the ability of the consumer that sets the price on the sale; but the consumer does not want the produce prepared or fitted up at the moment of the crop, or the perfection of the work. However, the undertakers want their stocks immediately and regularly reimbursed, to embark in fresh enterprises: the manuring and the seed ought to succeed the crops without interruption. The workmen of a manufacture are unceasingly to be employed in beginning other works, in proportion as the first are distributed, and to replace the materials in proportion as they are consumed. It would not be advisable to stop short in an enterprize once put in execution, nor is it to be presumed that it can be begun again at any time. It is then the strictest interest of the undertaker, to have his capital quickly reimbursed by the sale of his crop or commodities. On the other hand, it is the consumers interest to find, when and where he wishes it, the things he stands in need of it would be extremely inconvenient for him to be necessitated to make, at the time of the crop, his provision for the whole course of a year. Among the objects of usual consumption, there are many that require long and expensive labours, labours that cannot be undertaken with profit, except on a large quantity of materials, and on such as the consumption of a small number of inhabitants of a limited district, may not be sufficient for even the sale of the work of a single manufactory. Undertakings of this kind must then necessarily be in a reduced number, at a considerable distance from each other, and consequently very distant from the habitations of the greater number of consumers. There is no man, not oppressed under the extremest misery, that is not in a situation to consume several things, which are neither gathered nor fabricated, except in places considerably distant from him, and not less distant from each other. A person that could not procure himself the objects of his consumption but in buying it directly from, the hand of him that gathers or works it, would be either unprovided with many commodities, or pass his life in wandering after them.

This double interest which the person producing and the consumer have, the former to find a purchaser, the other to find where to purchase, and yet not to waste useful time in expecting a purchaser, or in finding a seller, has given the idea to a third person to stand between the one and the other. And it is the object of the mercantile profession, who purchase goods from the hands of the person who produces them, to store them in warehouses, whither the consumer comes to make his purchase. By these means the undertaker, assured of the sale and the re-acquisition of his funds, looks undisturbed and indefatigably out for new productions, and the consumer finds within his reach and at once, the objects of which he is in want.

67. Different orders of merchants. They all have this in common, that they purchase to sell again; and that their traffic is supported by advances which are to revert with a profit, to be engaged in new enterprizes.

From the green-woman who exposes her ware in a market, to the merchants of Nantz or Cadiz, who traffic even to India and America, the profession of a trader, or what is properly called commerce, divides into an infinity of branches, and it may be said of degrees. One trader confines himself to provide one or several species of commodities which he sells in his shop to those who chuse; another goes with certain commodities to a place where they are in demand, to bring from thence in exchange, such things as are produced there, and are wanted in the place from whence he departed: one makes his exchanges in his own neighbourhood, and by himself, another by means of correspondents, and by the interposition of carriers, whom he pays, employs, and sends from one province to another, from one kingdom to another, from Europe to Asia, and from Asia back to Europe. One sells his merchandize by retail to those who use them, another only sells in large parcels at a time, to other traders who retail them out to the consumers: but all have this in common that they buy to sell again, and that their first purchases are advances which are returned to them only in course of time. They ought to be returned to them, like those of the cultivators and manufacturers, not only within a certain time, to be employed again in new purchases, but also, 1. with an equal revenue to what they could acquire with their capital without any labour; 2. with the value of their labour, of their risk, and of their industry. Without being assured of this return, and of these indispensable profits, no trader would enter into business, nor could any one possibly continue therein: tis in this view he governs himself in his purchases, on a calculation he makes of the quantity and the price of the things, which he can hope to dispose of in a certain time: the retailer learns from experience, by the success of limited trials made with precaution, what is nearly the wants of those consumers who deal with him. The merchant learns from his correspondents, of the plenty or scarcity, and of the price of merchandize in those different countries to which his commerce extends; he directs his speculations accordingly, he sends his goods from the country where they bear a low price to those where they are sold dearer, including the expence of transportation in the calculation of the advances he ought to be reimbursed. Since trade is necessary, and it is impossible to undertake any commerce without advances proportionable to its extent; we here see another method of employing personal property, a new use that the possessor of a parcel of commodities reserved and accumulated, of a sum of money, in a word, of a capital, may make of it to procure himself subsistence, and to augment, his riches.

68. The true idea of the circulation of money.

We see by what has been just now said, how the cultivation of lands, manufactures of all kinds, and all the branches of trade, depend on a mass of capital, or the accumulation of personal property, which, having been at first advanced by the undertakers, in each of these different branches, ought to return to them again every year with a regular profit; that is, the capital to be again invested, and advanced in the continuation of the same enterprizes, and the profits employed for the greater or less subsistence of the undertakers. It is this continued advance and return which constitutes what ought to be called the circulation of money: this useful and fruitful circulation, which animates all the labour of society, which supports all the motion, and is the life of the body politic, and which is with great reason compared to the circulation of the blood in the human body. For, if by any disorder in the course of the expenses of the different orders of society, the undertakers cease to draw back their advances with such profit as they have a right to expect; it is evident they will be obliged to reduce their undertakings; that the total of the labour, of the consumption of the fruits of the earth, of the productions and of the revenue would be equally diminished; that poverty will succeed to riches, and that the common workman, ceasing to find employ, will fall into the deepest misery.

69. All extensive undertakings, particularly those of manufactures and of commerce, must indispensibly have been very confined, before the introduction of gold and silver in trade.

It is almost unnecessary to remark, that undertakings of all kinds, but especially those of manufactures, and above all those of commerce, must, unavoidably be very confined, before the introduction of gold and silver in trade; since it was almost impossible to accumulate considerable capitals, and yet more difficult, to multiply and divide payments so much as is necessary, to facilitate and increase the exchanges to that extent, which a spirited commerce and circulation require. The cultivation of the land only may support itself to a certain degree, because the cattle are the principal cause of the advances required therein, and it is very probable, there is then no other adventurer in cultivation but the proprietor. As to arts of all kinds, they must necessarily have been in the greatest languor before the introduction of money; they were confined to the coarsest works, for which the proprietors supported the advances, by nourishing the workmen, and furnishing them with materials, or they caused them to be made in their own houses by their servants.

70. Capitals being as necessary to all undertakings as labour and industry, the industrious man shares voluntarily the profit of his enterprize with the owner of the capital who furnishes him the funds he is in need of.

Since capitals are the indispensable foundation of all lucrative enterprizes; since with money we can furnish means for culture, establish manufactures, and raise a commerce, the profits of which being accumulated and frugally laid up, will become a new capital: since, in a word, money is the principal means to beget money; those who with industry and the love of labour are destitute of capital, and have not sufficient for the undertaking they wish to embark in, have no difficulty in resolving to give up to the proprietors of such capital or money, who are willing to trust them, a portion of the profits which they are in expectation of gaining, over and above their advances.

71. Fifth employment of capitals, lending on interest; nature of a loan.

The possessors of money balance the risk their capital may run, if the enterprise does not succeed, with the advantage of enjoying a constant profit without toil; and regulate themselves thereby, to require more or less profit or interest for their money, or to consent to lend it for such an interest as the borrower offers. Here another opportunity opens to the possessor of money, viz, lending on interest, or the commerce of money. Let no one mistake me here, lending on interest is only a trade, in which the lender is a man who sells the use of his money, and the borrower one who buys; precisely the same as the proprietor of an estate, or the person who farms it, buys and sells respectively the use of the hired land. The Latin term for a loan of money or interest, expresses it exactly, usura pecuniae, a word which adopted into the French language is become odious, by a consequence of false ideas being adopted on the interest of money.

72. False ideas on lending upon interest.

The rate of interest is by no means founded, as may be imagined, on the profit the borrower hopes to make, with the capital of which he purchases the use. This rate like the price of all other merchandize, is fixed by the circumstances of buyer and seller; by the proportion of the sum offered with the demand. People borrow with every kind of view, and with every sort of motive. One borrows to undertake an enterprize that is to make his fortune, another to buy an estate, another to pay his losses at play, another to supply the loss of his revenue, of which some accident has deprived him, another to exist on, in expectation of what he is able to gain by his labour. but all these motives which determine the borrower, are very indifferent to the lender. He attends to two things only, the interest he is to receive, and the safety of his capital. He never attends to the use the borrower puts it to, as a merchant does not care to what use the buyer applies the commodities he sells him.

73. Errors of the schoolmen refuted.

It is for want of having examined the lending of money on interest in its true point of view that moralists, more rigid than enlightened, would endeavour to make us look on it as a crime. Scholastic theologists have concluded, that as money itself was not prolific, it was unjust to require a premium for the loan of it. Full of these prejudices they have fancied their doctrine was sanctioned by this passage in the Gospel, mutuum date nihil inde sperantes: Those theologians who have adopted more reasonable principles on the subject of interest of money, have been branded with the harshest reproaches from those who adopt the other side of the question.

Nevertheless, there are but few reflections necessary to expose the trifling reasons that are adduced to condemn the taking of interest. A loan of money is a reciprocal contract, free between both parties, and entered into only by reason of its being mutually advantageous. It is evident, if the lender finds an advantage in receiving an interest for his money, the borrower is not less interested in finding that money he stands in need of, since otherwise he would not borrow and submit himself to the payment of interest. Now on this principle, can any one look on such an advantageous contract as a crime, in which both parties are content, and which certainly does no injury to any other person? Let them say the lender takes advantage of the wants of the borrower, to force the payment of interest, this is talking as absurd as if we were to say, that a baker who demands money for the bread he sells, takes advantage of his customer's wants. If in this latter case, the money is an equivalent for the bread the buyer receives, the money which the borrower receives to day, is equally an equivalent for the capital and interest he agrees to pay at the expiration of a certain time; for in fact, it is an advantage to the borrower, to have, during that interval, the use of the money he stands in need of, and it is a disadvantage to the lender to be deprived of it. This disadvantage may be estimated, and it is estimated, the interest is the rate. This rate ought to be larger, if the lender runs a risk of losing his capital by the borrower becoming insolvent. The bargain therefore is perfectly equal on both sides and consequently, fair and honest. Money considered as a physical substance, as a mass of metal, does not produce any thing; but money made use of in advances in cultivation, in manufacture, in commerce, produces a certain profit; with money we can acquire land, and thereby procure a revenue: the person therefore who lends his money, does not only give up the unfruitful possession of such money, but deprives himself of the profit which it was in his power to procure by it, and the interest which indemnifies him from this loss cannot be looked upon as unjust. The schoolmen, compelled to acknowledge the justice of these considerations, have allowed that interest for money may be taken, provided the capital is alienated, that is, provided the lender gave up his right to be reimbursed his money in a certain time, and permitted the borrower to retain it as long as he was inclined to pay the interest thereof only. The reason of this toleration was, that then it is no longer a loan of money for which an interest is paid, but a purchase, which is bought with a sum of money, as we purchase lands. This was a mode to which they had recourse, to comply with the absolute necessity which exists of borrowing money, in the course of the transactions of society, without fairly avowing the fallacy of those principles, upon which they had condemned the practice: but this clause for the alienation of the capital, is not an advantage to the borrower, who remains equally indebted to the lender, until he shall have repaid the capital, and whose property always remains as a security for the safety of such capital;—it is even a disadvantage, as he finds it more difficult to borrow money when he is in want of it; for persons who would willingly consent to lend for a year or two, a sum of money which they had destined for the purchase of an estate, would not lend it for an uncertain time. Besides, if they are permitted to sell their money for a perpetual rent, why may they not lend it for a certain number of years, for a rent which is only to continue for that term? If an interest of 1000 livres per annum is equivalent to the sum of 20000 livres from him to keep such a sum in perpetuity, 1000 livres will be an equivalent for the possession of that sum for one year.

74. True foundation of interest of money.

A man then may lend his money as lawfully as he may sell it; and the possessor of money may either do one or the other, not only because money is equivalent to a revenue, and a means to procure a revenue: not only because the lender loses, during the continuance of the loan, the revenue he might have procured by it; not only because he risks his capital; not only because the borrower can employ it in advantageous acquisitions, or in undertakings from whence he will draw a large profit; the proprietor of money may lawfully receive the interest of it, by a more general and decisive principle. Even if none of these circumstances should take place, he will not have the less right to require an interest for his loan, for this reason only, that his money is his own. Since it is his own, he has a right to keep it, nothing can imply a duty in him to lend it; if then he does lend, he may annex such a condition to the loan as he chuses, in this he does no injury to the borrower, since the latter agrees to the conditions, and has no sort of right over the sum lent. The profit which money can procure the borrower, is doubtless one of the most prevailing motives to determine him to borrow on interest; it is one of the means which facilitates his payment of the interest, but this is by no means that which gives a right to the lender to require it; it is sufficient for him that his money is his own, and this is a right inseparable from property. He who buys bread, does it for his support, but the right the baker has to exact a price is totally independent of the use of bread; the same right he would possess in the sale of a parcel of stones, a right founded on this principle only, that the bread is his own, and no one has any right to oblige him to give it up for nothing.

75. Answer to an objection.

This reflection brings us to the consideration of the application made by an author, of the text, mutuum date nihil inde sperantes, and shews how false that application is, and how distant from the meaning of the Gospel. The passage is clear, as interpreted by modern and reasonable divines as a precept of charity. All mankind are bound to assist each other; a rich man who should see, his fellow creature in distress, and who, instead of gratuitously assisting, should sell him what he needed, would be equally deficient in the duties of christianity and of humanity. In such circumstances, charity does not only require us to lend without interest, she orders us to lend, and even to give if necessary. To convert the precept of charity into a precept of strict justice, is equally repugnant to reason, and the sense of the text. Those whom I here attack do not pretend that it is a duty of justice to lend their money; they must be obliged then to confess, that the first words of the passage, mutuum date, contain only a precept of charity. Now I demand why they extend the latter part of this passage to a principle of justice. What, is the duty of lending not a strict precept, and shall its accessory only, the condition of the loan, be made one; it would have been said to man, “It is free for you to lend or not to lend, but if you do lend, take care you do not require any interest for your money, and even when a merchant shall require a loan of you for an undertaking, in which he hopes to make a large profit, it will be a crime in you to accept the interest he offers you; you must absolutely either lend to him gratuitously, or not lend to him all? You have indeed one method to make the receipt of interest lawful, it is to lend your capital for an indefinite term, and to give up all right to be repaid it, which is to be optional to your debtor, when he pleases, or when he can. If you find any inconvenience on the score of security, or if you foresee you shall want your money in a certain number of years, you have no other course to take but not to lend: It is better for you to deprive this merchant of this most fortunate opportunity, than to commit a sin by assisting him.” This is what they must have seen in these five words, mutuum date nihil inde sperantes, when they have read them under these false prejudices.

Every man who shall read this text unprejudiced, will soon find its real meaning; that is, “as men, as Christians, you are all brothers, all friends; act towards each other as brethren and friends; help each other in your necessities; let your purges he reciprocally open to each other, and do not sell that assistance which you are mutually indebted to each other, in requiring an interest for a loan which charity requires of you as a duty.” This is the true sense of the passage in question. The obligation to lend without interest, and to lend, have evident relation to each other; they are of the same order, and both inculcate a duty of charity, and not a precept of rigorous justice, applicable to all cases of lending.

76. The rate of interest ought to be fixed, as the price of every other merchandize, by the course of trade alone.

I have already said, that the price of money borrowed, is regulated like the price of all other merchandize, by the proportion of the money at market with the demand for it: thus, when there are many borrowers who are in want of money, the interest of money rises; when there are many possessors who are ready to lend, it falls. It is therefore an error to believe that the interest of money in trade ought to be fixed by the laws of princes. It has a current price fixed like that of all other merchandize. This price varies a little, according to the greater or less security which the lender has; but on equal security, he ought to raise and fall his price in proportion to the abundance of the demand, and the law no more ought to fix the interest of money than it ought to regulate the price of any other merchandizes which have a currency in trade.

77. Money has in commerce two different valuations. One expresses the quantity of money or silver we give to procure different sorts of commodities; the other expresses the relation a sum of money has, in the interest it will procure in the course of trade.

It seems by this explanation of the manner in which money is either sold or lent for an annual interest, that there are two ways of valuing money in commerce. In. buying and selling a certain weight of silver represents a certain quantity of labour, or of merchandize of every species; for example, one ounce of silver is equal to a certain quantity of corn, or to the labour of a man for a certain number of days. In lending, and in the commerce of money, a capital is the equivalent of an equal rent, to a determinate portion of that capital; and reciprocally an annual rent represents a capital equal to the amount of that rent repeated a certain number of times, according as interest is at a higher or lower rate.

78. These two valuations are independent of each other, and are governed by quite different principles.

These two different methods of fixing a value, have much less connection, and depend much less on each other than we should be tempted to believe at first sight. Money may be very common in ordinary commerce, may hold a very low value, answer to a very small quantity of commodities, and the interest of money may at the same time be very high.

I will suppose there are one million ounces of silver in actual circulation in commerce, and that an ounce of silver is given in the market for a bushel of corn. I will suppose that there is brought into the country in some manner or other, another million of ounces of silver, and this augmentation is distributed to every one in the same proportion as the first million, so that he who had before two ounces, has now four. The silver considered as a quantity of metal, will certainly diminish in price, or which is the same thing, commodities will be purchased dearer, and it becomes necessary, in order to procure the same measure of corn which he had before with one ounce of silver, to give more silver, perhaps two ounces instead of one. But it does not by any means follow from thence, that the interest of money falls, if all this money is carried to market, and employed in the current expences of those who possess it, as it is supposed the first million of ounces of silver was; for the interest of money falls only when there is a greater quantity of money to be lent, in proportion to the wants of the borrowers, than there was before. Now the silver which is carried to market is not to be lent; it is money which is hoarded up, which forms the accumulated capital for lending; and the augmentation of the money in the market, or the diminution of its price in comparison with commodities in the ordinary course of trade, are very far from causing infallibly, or by a necessary consequence, a decrease of the interest of money; on the contrary, it may happen that the cause which augments the quantity of money in the market, and which consequently increases the price of other commodities by lowering the value of silver, is precisely the same cause which augments the hire of money, or the rate of interest.

In effect, I will suppose for a moment, that all the rich people in a country, instead of saving from their revenue, or from their annual profits, shall expend the whole; that, not satisfied with expending their whole revenue, they dissipate a part of their capital; that a man who has 100,000 livres in money, instead of employing them in a profitable manner, or lending them, consumes them by degrees in foolish expences; it is apparent that on one side there will be more silver employed in common circulation, to satisfy the wants and humours of each individual, and that consequently its value will be lowered; on the other hand there will certainly be less money to be lent; and as many people will in this situation of things ruin themselves, there will clearly be more borrowers. The interest of money will consequently augment, while the money itself will become more plenty in circulation, and the value of it will fall, precisely by the same cause.

We shall no longer be surprised at this apparent inconsistency, if we consider that the money brought into the market for the purchase of corn, is that which is daily circulated to procure the necessaries of life; but that which is offered to be lent on interest, is what is actually drawn out of that circulation to be laid by and accumulated into a capital.

79. In comparing the value of money with that of commodities, we consider silver as a metal, which is an object of commerce. In estimating the interest of money we attend to the use of it during a determinate time.

In the market a measure of corn is purchased with a certain weight of silver, or a quantity of silver is bought with a certain commodity, it is this quantity which is valued and compared with the value of other commodities. In a loan upon interest, the object of the valuation is the use of a certain quantity of property during a certain time. It is in this case no longer a mass of silver, compared with a quantity of corn, but it is a portion of effects compared with a certain portion of the same, which is become the customary price of that mass for a certain time. Let twenty thousand ounces of silver be an equivalent in the market for twenty thousand measures of corn, or only for ten thousand, the use of those twenty thousand ounces of silver for a year is not worth less on a loan than the twentieth part of the principal sum, or one thousand ounces of silver, if interest is at five per cent.

80. The price of interest depends immediately on the proportion of the demand of the borrowers, with the offer of the lenders, and this proportion depends principally on the quantity of personal property, accumulated by an excess of revenue and of the annual produce to form capitals, whether these capitals exist in money or in any other kind of effects having a value in commerce.

The price of silver in circulation has no influence but with respect to the quantity of this metal employed in common circulation; hut the rate of interest is governed by the quantity of property accumulated and laid by to form a capital. It is indifferent whether this property is in metal or other effects, provided these effects, are easily convertible into money. It is far from being the case, that the mass of metal existing in a state, is as large as the amount of the property lent on interest in the course of a year; but all the capitals in furniture, merchandize, tools, and cattle, supply the place of silver and represent it. A paper signed by a man, who is known to be worth 100,000 livres, and who promises to pay 100 marks in a certain time is worth that sum; the whole property of the man who has signed this note is answerable for the payment of it, in whatever the nature of these effects consists, provided they are in value 100,000 livres. It is not therefore the quantity of silver existing as merchandize which causes the rate of interest to rise or fall, or which brings more money in the market to be lent; it is only the capitals existing in commerce, that is to say, the actual value of personal property of every kind accumulated, successively saved out of the revenues and profits to be employed by the possessors to procure them new revenues and new profits. It is these accumulated savings which are offered to the borrowers, and the more there are of them, the lower the interest of money will be, at least if the number of borrowers is not augmented in proportion.

81. The spirit of oeconomy continually augments the amount of capitals, luxury continually tends to destroy them.

The spirit of oeconomy in any nation tends incessantly to augment the amount of the capitals, to increase the number of lenders, and to diminish that of the borrowers. The habit of luxury has precisely a contrary effect, and by what has been already remarked on the use of capitals in all undertakings, whether of cultivation, manufacture, or commerce, we may judge if luxury enriches a nation, or impoverishes it.

82. The lowering of interest proves, that in Europe oeconomy has in general prevailed over luxury.

Since the interest of money has been constantly diminishing in Europe for several centuries, we must conclude, that the spirit of oeconomy has been more general than the spirit of luxury. It is only people of fortune who run into luxury, and among the rich, the sensible part of them confine their expences within their incomes, and pay great attention not to touch their capital. Those who wish to become rich are far more numerous in a nation than those which are already so. Now, in the present state of things, as all the land is occupied, there is but one way to become rich it is either to possess, or to procure in some way or other, a revenue or an annual profit above what is absolutely necessary for subsistence, and to lay up every year in reserve to form a capital, by means of which they may obtain an increase of revenue or annual profit, which will again produce another saving, and become capital. There are consequently a great number of men interested and employed in amusing capitals.

83. Recapituation of the five different methods of employing capitals.

I have reckoned five different methods of employing capitals, or of placing them so as to procure a profit.
- 1st. To buy an estate, which brings in a certain revenue.
- 2d. To employ money in undertakings of cultivation; in leasing lands whose produce should render back, besides the expences of farming, the interest on the advances, and a recompense for the labour of him who employs his property and attention in the cultivation.
- 3d. To place a capital in some undertaking of industry or manufactures. 4th. To employ it in commerce.
- 5th. To lend it to those who want it, for an annual interest.
84. The influence which the different methods of employing money have on each other.

It is evident that the annual returns, which capitals, placed in different employs, will produce, are proportionate to each other, and all have relation to the actual rate of the interest of money.

85. Money invested in land, necessarily produces the least.

The person who invests his money in land let to a solvent tenant, procures himself a revenue which gives him very little trouble in receiving, and which he may dispose of in the most agreeable manner, by indulging all his inclinations. There is a greater advantage in the purchase of this species of property, than of any other, since the possession of it is more guarded against accidents. We must therefore purchase a revenue in land at a higher price, and must content ourselves with a less revenue for an equal capital.

86. Money on interest ought to bring a little more income, than land purchased with an equal capital.

He who lends his money on interest, enjoys it still more peaceably and freely than the possessor of land, but the insolvency of his debtor may endanger the loss of his capital. He will not therefore content himself with an interest equal to the revenue of the land which he could buy with an equal capital. The interest of money lent, must consequently be larger than the revenue of an estate purchased with the same capital; for if the proprietor could find an estate to purchase of an equal income, he would prefer that.

87. Money employed in cultivation, manufactures, or commerce, ought to produce more than the interest of money on loan.

By a like reason, money employed in agriculture, in manufactures, or in commerce, ought to produce a more considerable profit than the revenue of the same capital employed in the purchase of lands, or the interest of money on loan: for these undertakings, besides the capital advanced, requiring much care and labour, and if they were not more lucrative, it would be much better to secure an equal revenue, which might be enjoyed without labour. It is necessary then, that, besides the interest of the capital, the undertaker should draw every year a profit to recompence him for his care, his labour, his talents, the risque he runs, and to replace the wear and tear of that portion of his capital which he is obliged to invest in effects capable of receiving injury, and exposed to all kinds of accidents.

88. Meantime the freedom of these various employments are limited by each other, and maintain, notwithstanding their inequality, a species of equilibrium.

The different uses of the capitals produce very unequal profits; but this inequality does not prevent them from having a reciprocal influence on each other, nor from establishing a species of equilibrium among themselves, like that between two liquors of unequal gravity, and which communicate with each other by means of a reversed syphon, the two branches of which they fill; there can be no height to which the one can rise or fall, but the liquor in the other branch will be affected in the same manner.

I will suppose, that on a sudden, a great number of proprietors of lands are desirous of setting them. It is evident that the price of lands will fall, and that with a less sum we may acquire a larger revenue; this cannot come to pass without the interest of money rising, for the possessors of money would chuse rather to buy lands, than to lend at a lower interest than the revenue of the lands they could purchase. If, then, the borrowers want to have money, they will be constrained to pay a greater rate. If the interest of the money increases, they will prefer lending it, to setting out in a hazardous manner on enterprizes of agriculture, industry, and commerce: and they will be aware of any enterprizes but those that produce, besides the retribution for their trouble, an emolument by far greater than the rate of the lender's produce. In a word, if the profits, springing from an use of money, augment or diminish, the capitals are converted by withdrawing them from other employings, or are withdrawn by converting them to other ends, which necessarily alters, in each of those employments, the proportion of profits on the capital to the annual product. Generally, money converted into property in land, does not bring in so much as money on interest; and money on interest brings less than money used in laborious enterprises: but the produce of money laid out in any way whatever, cannot augment or decree without implying a proportionate augmentation, or decrease in other employments of money.

89. The current interest of money is the standard by which the abundance or scarcity of capitals may be judged; it is the scale on which the extent of a nation's capacity for enterprizes in agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, may be reckoned.

Thus the current interest of money may be considered as a standard of the abundance or scarcity of capitals in a nation, and of the extent of enterprises of every denomination, in which she may embark: it is manifest, that the lower the interest of money is, the more valuable is the land. A man that has an income of fifty thousand livres, if the land is sold but at the rate of twenty years purchase is an owner of only one million; he has two millions, if the land is sold at the rate of forty. If the interest is at five per cent. any land to be brought into cultivation would continue fallow, if, besides the recovery of the advances, and the retribution due to the care of the cultivator, its produce would not afford five per cent. No manufactory, no commerce can exist, that does not bring in five per cent. exclusively of the salary and equivalents for the risque and trouble of the undertaker. If there is a neighbouring nation in which the interest stands only at two per cent. not only it will engross all the branches of commerce, from which the nation where an interest at five per cent. is established, is excluded, but its manufacturers and merchants, enabled to satisfy themselves with a lower interest, will also sell their goods at a more moderate price, and will attract the almost exclusive commerce of all articles, which they are not prevented to sell by particular circumstances of excessive dearth, and expences of carriages, from the nation in which the interest bears five per cent.

90. Influence of the rate of interest of money on all lucrative enterprizes.

The price of the interest may be looked upon as a kind of level, under which all labour, culture, industry, or commerce, acts. It is like a sea expanded over a vast country, the tops of the mountains rise above the surface of the water, and form fertile and cultivated islands. If this sea happens to give way, in proportion as it descends, sloping ground, then plains and vallies appear, which cover themselves with productions of every kind. It wants no more than a foot elevation, or falling, to inundate or to restore culture to unmeasurable tracts of land. It is the abundance of capitals that animates enterprize; and a low interest of money is at the same time the effect and a proof of the abundance of capitals.

91. The total Riches of a nation consists, 1. in the clear revenue of all the real estates, multiplied by the rate of the price of land. 2. in the sum of all the moveable riches existing in a nation.

Real estates are equivalent to any capital equal to their annual revenue, multiplied by the current rate at which lands are sold. Thus if we add the revenue of all lands, viz. the clear revenue they render to the proprietor, and to all those that share in the property, as the lord that levies a rent, the curate that levies the tythe, the sovereign that levies the tax; if say I, we should add all these sums, and multiply them by the rate at which lands are sold, we would have the sum of all the wealth of a nation in real estates. To have the whole of a nation's wealth, the moveable riches ought to be joined, which consist in the sum of capitals converted into enterprises of culture, industry, and commerce, which is never lost; as all advances, in any kind of undertaking, must unceasingly return to the undertaker, to be unceasingly converted into enterprises, which without that could not be continued. It would be a gross mistake to confound the immense mass of moveable riches with the mass of money that exists in a state; the latter is a small object in comparison with the other. To convince one's self of this, we need only remember the immense quantity of beasts, utensils, and seed, which constitute the advances of agriculture; the materials, tools, moveables, and merchandises of every kind, that fill up the work-houses, shops, and warehouses of all manufacturers, of all merchants, and of all traders, and it will be plain, that in the totality of riches either real or moveable of a nation, the specie makes but an inconsiderable part: but all riches and money being continually exchangeable, they all represent money, and money represents them all.

92. The sum of lent capitals cannot be understood without a two-fold reckoning.

We must not include in the calculation of the riches of a nation the sum of lent capitals; for the capitals could only be lent either to proprietors of lands, or to undertakers to enhance their value in their enterprizes, since there are but these two kinds of people that can answer for a capital, and discharge the interest: a sum of money lent to people that have neither estate nor industry, would be a dead capital, and not an active one. If the owner of land of 400,000 livres borrows 100,000, his land is charged with a rent that diminishes his revenue by that sum. If he should sell it; out of the 400,000 livres he would receive, 100,000 are the property of the creditor. By these means the capital of the lender would always form, in the calculation of existing riches, a double estimate. The land is always worth 400,000 l. when the proprietor borrows 100,000 l. that does not make 500,000 l. it only follows, that in the 400,000 l. one hundred thousand belongs to the lender, and that there remains no more than 300,000 l. to the borrower.

The same double estimate would have place in the calculation, if we should comprehend in the total calculation of capitals, the money lent to an undertaker to be employed in advance for his undertaking; it only results, that that sum, and the part of the profits which represents the interest, belongs to the lender. Let a merchant employ 10,000 livres of his property in his trade, and engross the whole profit, or let him have those 10,000 livres borrowed of another, to whom he pays the interest, and is satisfied with the overplus of profit, and the salary of his industry, it still makes only 10,000 livres.

But if we cannot include, without making a double estimate in the calculation of national riches, the capital of the money lent on interest, we ought to call in the other kinds of moveables, which though originally forming an object of expence, and not carrying any profit, become, however, by their durability, a true capital, that constantly increases; and which, as it may occasionally be exchanged for money, is as if it was a stock in store, which may enter into commerce and make good, when necessary, the loss of other capitals. Such are the moveables of every kind; jewels, plates, paintings, statues, ready money shut up in chests by misers: all those matters have a value, and the sum of all those values may make a considerable object among wealthy nations. Yet be it considerable or not, it must always he added to the price of real estates, and to that of circulating advances in enterprises of every denomination, in order to form the total sum of the riches of a nation. As for the rest, it is superfluous to say, though it is easy to be defined, as we have just done, in what consists the totality of the riches of a nation; it is probably impossible to discover to how much they amount, unless some rule be found out to fix the proportion of the total commerce of a nation, with the revenue of its land: a feasible thing, but which has not been executed as yet in such a manner as to dispel all doubts.

93. In which of the three classes of society the lenders of money are to be ranked.

Let us see now, how what we have just discussed about the different ways of employing capitals, agrees with what we have before established about the division of all the members of society into three classes, the one the productive class of husbandmen, the industrious or trading class, and the disposing class, or the class of proprietors.

94. The lender of money belongs, as to his persons, to the disposing class.

We have seen that every rich man is necessarily possessor either of a capital in moveable riches, or funds equivalent to a capital. Any estate in land is of equal value with a capital; consequently every proprietor is a capitalist, but not every capitalist a proprietor of a real estate; and the possessor of a moveable capital may chuse to confer it on acquiring funds, or to improve it in enterprizes of the cultivating class, or of the industrious class. The capitalist, turned an undertaker in culture or industry, is no more of the disposing class, than the simple workmen in those two lines; they are both taken up in the continuation of their enterprises. The capitalist who keeps to the lending money, lends it either to a proprietor or to an undertaker. If he lends it to a proprietor, he seems to belong to the class of proprietors, and he becomes co-partitioner in the property; the income of the land is destined to the payment of the interest of his trust; the value of the funds is equal to the security of his capital.

If the money-lender has lent to an undertaker, it is certain that his person belongs to the disposing class; but his capital continues destined to the advances of the enterpriser, and cannot be withdrawn without hurting the enterprise, or without being replaced by a capital of equal value.

95. The use which the money-lender makes of his interest.

Indeed, the interest he draws from that capital seems to make him of the disposing class, since the undertaker and the enterprise may shift without it. It seems also we may form an inference, that in the profits of the two laborious classes, either in the culture of the earth or industry, there is a disposable portion, namely, that which answers to the interest of the advances, calculated on the current rate of interest of money lent; it appears also that this conclusion seems to agree with what we have said, that the mere class of proprietors had a revenue properly so called, a disposing revenue, and that all the members of the other classes had only salaries or profits. This merits some future inquiry. If we consider the thousand crowns that a man receives annually, who has lent 60,000 livres, to a merchant, in respect to the use he may make of it, there is no doubt of this being perfectly disposable, since the enterprize may subsist without it.

96. The interest of the money is not disposable in one sense, viz. so as the state may be authorized to appropriate, without any inconvenience, a part to supply its wants.

But it does not ensue that they are of the disposing class in such a sense, that the state can appropriate to itself with propriety a portion for the public wants. Those 1000 crowns are not a retribution, which culture or commerce bestows gratuitously on him that makes the advance; it is the price and the condition of this advance, independently of which the enterprize could not subsist. If this retribution is diminished, the capitalist will withdraw his money, and the undertaking will cease. This retribution ought then to be inviolable, and enjoy an entire immunity, because it is the price of an advance made for the enterprize, without which the enterprize could not exist. To encroach upon it, would cause an augmentation in the price of advances in all enterprizes, and consequently diminish the enterprizes themselves, that is to say, cultivation, industry, and commerce.

This answer should lead us to infer, that if we have said, that the capitalist who had lent money to a proprietor, seemed to belong to the class of proprietors, this appearance had somewhat equivocal in it which wanted to be elucidated. In fact, it is strictly true, that the interest of his money is not more disposable, that is, it is not more susceptible of retrenchment, than that of money lent to the undertakers in agriculture and commerce. But the interest is equally the price of the free agreement, and they cannot retrench any part of it without altering or changing the price of the loan.

For it imports little to whom the loan has been made: if the price decreases or augments for the proprietor of lands, it will also decrease and augment for the cultivator, the manufacturer, and the merchant. In a word, the proprietor who lends money ought to be considered, as a dealer in a commodity absolutely necessary for the production of riches, and which cannot be at too low a price. It is also as unreasonable to charge this commerce with duties as it would be to lay a duty on a dunghill which serves to manure the land. Let us conclude from hence, that the person who lends money belongs properly to the disposable class as to his person, because he has nothing to do; but not as to the nature of his property, whether the interest of his money is paid by the proprietor of land out of a portion of his income, or whether it is paid by an undertaker, out of a part of his profits designed to pay the interest of his advances.

97. Objection.

It may doubtless be objected, that the capitalist may indifferently either lend his money, or employ it in the purchase of land; that in either case he only receives an equivalent for his money, and whichever way he has employed it, he ought not the less to contribute to the public charges.

98. Answer to this objection.

I answer first, that in fact, when the capitalist has purchased an estate, the revenue will be equal as to him, to what he would have received for his money by lending it; but there is this essential difference with respect to the state, that the price which he gives for his land, does not contribute in any respect to the income it produces. It would not have produced a less income, if he had not purchased it. This income, as we have already explained, consists in what the land produces, beyond the salary of the cultivators, of their profits, and the interest of their advances. It is not the same with the interest of money; it is the express condition of the loan, the price of the advance, without which the revenue or profits, which serve to pay it, could never exist.

I answer in the second place, that if the lands were charged separately with the contribution to the public expences, as soon as that contribution shall be once regulated, the capitalist who shall purchase these lands will not reckon as interest for his money, that part of the revenue which is affected by this contribution. The same as a man who now buys an estate, does not buy the tythe which the curate or clergy receives, but the revenue which remains after that tythe is deducted.

99. There exists no revenue strictly disposable in a state, but the clear produce of lands.

It is manifest by what I have said, that the interest of money lent is taken on the revenue of lands, or on the profits of enterprizes of culture, industry, and commerce. But we have already shewn that these profits themselves were only a part of the production of lands; that the produce of land is divided in two portions; that the one was designed for the salary of the cultivator, for his profits, for the recovery and interest of his advances; and that the other was the part of the proprietor, or the revenue which the proprietor expended at his option, and from whence he contributes to the general expences of the state.

We have demonstrated, that what the other classes of society received, was merely the salaries and profits paid, either by the proprietor upon his revenue, or by the agents of the productive class, on the part destined to their wants, and which they are obliged to purchase of the industrious class. Whether these profits be now distributed in wages to the workmen, in profits to undertakers, or in interests of advances, they do not change the nature, or augment the sum of the revenue produced by the productive class over and above the price of their labour, in which the industrious class does not participate, but as far as the price of their labour extends.

Hence it follows, that there is no revenue but the clear produce of land, and that all other profit is paid, either by that revenue, or makes part of the expenditure that serves to produce the revenue.

100. the land has also furnished the total of moveable riches, or existing capitals, and which are formed only by a portion of its production reserved every year.

Not only there does not exist, nor can exist, any other revenue than the clear produce of land, but it is the earth also that has furnished all capitals, that form the mass of all the advances of culture and commerce. It has produced, without culture, the first gross and indispensible advances of the first labourers; all the rest are the accumulated fruits of the oeconomy of successive ages, since they have begun to cultivate the earth. This oeconomy has effect not only on the revenues of proprietors, but also on the profits of all the members of laborious classes. It is even generally true, that, though the proprietors have more overplus, they spare less; for, having more treasure, they have more desires, and more passions; they think themselves better ensured of their fortune; and are more desirous of enjoying it contentedly, than to augment it; luxury is their pursuit. The stipendiary class, and he chiefly the undertakers of the other classes, receiving profits proportionate to their advances, talents, and activity, have, though they are not possessed of a revenue properly so called, a superfluity beyond their subsistence; but, absorbed as they generally are, only in their enterprizes, and anxious to increase their fortune; restrained by their labour from amusements and expensive passions; they save their whole superfluity, to re-convert it in other enterprizes, and augment it. The greater part of the undertakers in agriculture borrow but little, and they almost all rest on the capital of their own funds. The undertakers of other businesses, who wish to render their fortune stable, strive likewise to attain to the same state. Those that make their enterprizes on borrowed funds, are greatly in danger of failing. However, although capitals are formed in part by the saving of profits in the laborious classes, yet, as those profits spring always from the earth, they are almost all repaid, either by the revenue, or in the expences that serve to produce the revenue; it is evident, that the capitals are derived from the earth as well as the revenue, or rather that they are but an accumulation of a part of the riches produced by the earth, which the proprietors of the revenue, or those that share it, are able to lay by every year in store, without consuming it on their wants.

101. Although money is the direct object in saving, and it is, if we may call it so, the first foundation of capitals, yet money and specie form but an insensible part is the total sum of capitals.

We have seen what an inconsiderable part money forms in the total sum of existing capitals, but it makes a very large one in the formation of them. In fact, almost all savings are only in money; it is in money that the revenue is paid to the proprietors, that the advances and profits are received by the undertakers of every kind; it is their money which they save, and the annual increase of capitals happens in money; but all the undertakers make no other use of it, than immediately to convert it into the different kinds of effects on which their enterprizes turn; thus, money returns into circulation, and the greater part of capitals exist only, as we have already explained it, in effects of different natures.

10: 10. John Millar, On the Origin of the Distinction Ranks (1771)

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John Millar of Glasgow, the son of a Scotch Presbyterian minister, was born in 1735. He grew up with his uncle on a small family estate near Glasgow after 1737. There, he studied with Adam Smith, among others, when Smith was teaching moral philosophy. Though intended for the ministry, he had doubts about the profession of faith and instead pursued the law. He served as tutor to the son of Lord Kames and came to know David Hume, whose metaphysical system he admired. He became an advocate in 1760 but abruptly changed course the next year by accepting for family reasons (he had just married) a less lucrative though more secure professorship of law at Glasgow, a post for which he was recommended by Smith and Kames. He soon had large followings of students in civil law and in jurisprudence. He also lectured on Scottish law, English law, and government. He and his wife, who had eleven children, also took in student boarders. He became a member of the Literary Society of Glasgow, where he defended Hume’s theories against those of his friend and faculty colleague Thomas Reid. He outspokenly defended Whiggish causes such as parliamentary reform, abolitionism, and American independence, and was a member of the Society of the Friends of the People. He was sympathetic to the French Revolution and opposed war against France. His main works, based on his lectures, were On the Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771), which was influenced by Montesquieu, Hume, and Smith, and was translated in his lifetime into French and German; and Historical View of the English Government (1787), a Whiggish history dedicated to Fox. He died in 1801. The present excerpts are taken from the third edition (1779) of On the Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (originally published in 1771 as Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society): (Chapter 1, section VI) “The effects of great opulence, and the culture of the elegant arts, upon the relative condition of the sexes,” (Chapter 2, section II) “The influence of the improvement of arts upon the jurisdiction of the father”. These excerpts were chosen because they apply a distinctively Scottish historical method to an understanding of the condition of women in commercial society.

John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks; or, An Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to Influence and Authority in the Different Members of Society, edited and with an Introduction by Aaron Garrett (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/287 on 2009-04-23

The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

INTRODUCTION

What is the nature of authority? How does it change and why? The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks is John Millar’s1 concise but trenchant answer to these questions via an empirical analysis of three so-called adventitious2 personal rights and one adventitious “governmental right” of natural law theory: the right of husband over wife, father over children, master over servants, and chief or sovereign over tribesmen or citizens. These rights are of obvious interest for a social philosopher since all have a degree of authority built into them—the right of the father over the child, for example, presumes the father’s authority to appropriately discharge his role and the duties incumbent to it. Yet, when these four rights are examined comparatively and historically, from Aragon to Zeeland, from ancient Rome to Georgian Glasgow, drastic differences appear in the authority appropriate to the exercise of the right. And this is not just a problem of comparing European and non-European societies. The Roman law, the backbone of much European legal and moral thinking, allowed the head of the household to treat wife, children, and servants as property and to expose infants.3 The authority appropriate for the exercise of the right by early Romans (and Greeks) is completely at odds with the authority proper to a progressive eighteenth-century society. Millar’s Ranks provides an empirical account of how rights arise and how they change, and a means to understand historical discrepancies in the scope of authority. It also attempts to draw some limited normative consequences and thus offer the elements of an empirical moral theory.

The Argument of the Ranks

It is not surprising that the Ranks turns on rights, considering that the three most important influences on Millar’s thinking all stressed that evolving systems of justice and rights were the backbone of morals and human nature. In Treatise III.2 David Hume argued that justice is an artificial human creation that guides and serves human utility. In his seminal essay, “The Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” Hume discussed the history of the authority of husband over wife—the subject of the first long section of the Ranks—as an index of the progress of manners in society.4 Adam Smith presented his historical theory of justice and rights in a series of lectures on moral philosophy that Millar attended in 1751. Student transcripts from Smith’s lectures from the 1760s include extensive treatment of the rights Millar later considered in the Ranks, rooted in a stadial division between the ages of “Hunters,” “Shepherds,” “Agriculture,” and “Commerce.”5 Lord Kames treated the historical evolution of different aspects of the law, including criminal law and property law, in his Historical Law-Tracts (1758), connecting legal obligation, moral duty, and social progress.6

Justice, law, and rights were also central to Millar’s pedagogy. When the first edition of the Ranks appeared in 1771—Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society—Millar had held the Regius Chair of Civil Law at the University of Glasgow for ten years. His primary teaching duty had been lecturing on Justinian’s Institutes and Digest with the aid of Heineccius’s commentaries.7 The combination of Smith’s jurisprudence and variations in rights within the Digest itself—for example, changes in the Roman peculium (Ranks, <132–33>)—must have set Millar thinking about the history of adventitious rights. Furthermore, in addition to his regular course Millar undertook a series of “private” “Lectures on Government.” These lectures, which he continued for the rest of his life, were the source of his two major works: the Ranks and the Historical View (see appendix 3). Given the connection between the government lectures and the course on Roman law, it is unsurprising that the Ranks—the first part of the “Government” course—is infused with justice and rights.

The Ranks’s treatment of rights and their order was likely derived from Smith; likewise the division of human history into the four “ages” distinguished by population, wealth, the needs these engendered, and the ways those needs were satisfied.8 Man’s earliest stages were characterized almost wholly by attempts to satisfy simple needs. As basic needs were satisfied more efficiently and population grew, wealth resulting from the satisfaction of needs allowed for leisure, the rise of human institutions, and more complex desires—the arts and sciences, taste, and love.

Romantic love provides a good illustration of how successive stages multiply needs. In the earliest stages of mankind commerce between the sexes was a ubiquitous function of animal need and so considered of little import in comparison with the acquisition of food (<28>). When men moved to the pastoral stage, food supplies became more regular and the labor in acquiring them less:

The leisure, tranquillity, and retirement of a pastoral life, seem calculated, in a peculiar manner, to favour the indulgence of those indolent gratifications … and mere animal pleasure is more frequently accompanied with a correspondence of inclination and sentiment. (<58>)

The transition to the pastoral stage also initiated the system of ranks,9 as families acquired surplus wealth and power. When families separated due to growing estates and retinues, the resultant rivalries between different families seeking prominence in the order of ranks led to the suppression of sexual desires and “animal” commerce between the sexes. At the same time, increased leisure allowed young men and women to fixate more on desires that had been considered unimportant in the previous stage of society. Consequently, “the inclinations of individuals … will break forth with greater vigor, and rise at length to a higher pitch, in proportion to the difficulties which they have surmounted” (<61>). With this structural explanation (and much comparative empirical evidence) Millar showed how romantic love arose as a passion and became an important motive for action. For example, interfamilial contests over women gave rise to chivalric combat mediated by elites dispensing justice and thus avoiding feuds through a courtly system of ranks. These changes resulted in human beings with more complex social codes and more varied emotional lives that they needed to satisfy.10

For Millar, different historical stages were not just distinct but progressive: “There is … in human society, a natural progress from ignorance to knowledge, and from rude to civilized manners, the several stages of which are usually accompanied with peculiar laws and customs” (<4>). Each succeeding stage satisfies needs in a prior stage while developing new needs and the means to satisfy and express them through science (“knowledge”) and art (“civilized manners”). Stages were also progressive in another sense: our present stage of commerce has far less brutality than the first stage and less romantic extravagance than the later stages and thus allows women to be “more universally regarded upon account of their useful or agreeable talents” (<89>). Millar clearly viewed the unbigoted meritocracy and personal liberty appropriate to the fourth stage of society as desirable, and slavery and domestic tyranny as inappropriate to a progressive society insofar as it thwarted liberty and merit. In other words, unlike Rousseau and like Smith and Hume, Millar considered liberty and equality to be social achievements:11

Whereever men of inferior condition are enabled to live in affluence by their own industry, and, in procuring their livelihood, have little occasion to court the favour of their superiors, there we may expect that ideas of liberty will be universally diffused. This happy arrangement of things is naturally produced by commerce and manufactures; but it would be as vain to look for it in the uncultivated parts of the world, as to look for the independent spirit of an English waggoner among persons of low rank in the highlands of Scotland. (<241–42>)

This stress on progress was not an unbridled advocacy of wealth. Much like Smith, Millar viewed stagnant luxury as a dangerous corruptor of morals that stopped “useful and agreeable” talents from being recognized.12 Wealth is desirable only insofar as it gives rise to liberty and historical progress.

The scientist of human nature arrives at regularities that differentiate these stages through cross-cultural and comparative historical study. Millar’s conclusions were tempered by the circumspect attitude toward evidence that he had learned from Hume.13 In the later chapters of Ranks on government he made much use of Montesquieu’s comparisons of legal codes and constitutions in The Spirit of the Laws. But Millar presumed, following Hume and contra Montesquieu, that mores or “moral causes,” as opposed to physical causes such as climate, are responsible for characteristic differences in human population. Customs and mores arise from the aggregate actions of individuals. But individuals differ widely in their behavior, and the comparison of a few human individuals is not sufficient to educe general rules of human nature. By comparing many individuals, or different societies composed of many individuals, one can find consistent patterns of behavior. And by comparing regularities across historical periods the human scientist can discern stadial differences determined by underlying causes in human nature.

The stadial analysis had a further important function. It presupposed no particular contingent historical narrative such as “the Goths invaded,” “Watt discovered the steam engine.” Consequently, the “Age of Hunters” was not a particular time or place but rather a social arrangement built around a mode of subsistence that had existed, and perhaps would exist, in many times and places. Thus the divide between “ancients and moderns” that fascinated thinkers like Hume in the first half of the eighteenth century and continued to interest many thinkers who promoted comparative stadial history—such as Kames, Monboddo, and Gilbert Stuart—was moot. Instead, history has a scientifically accessible structure with identifiable moral causes.

This does not mean that stages necessarily follow one another like clockwork. Rome declined because of excess luxury and the accidental cause of the barbarian invasions (<218–19>). Accidents enter into the forms of particular governments as well. For example, Solon’s and Lycurgus’s idiosyncrasies were partially responsible for the very different manners of Athens and Sparta. But for laws to have influence with the people whom they are to govern, they must harmonize with and speak to existing regularities. The scientist of human nature should discover these empirical regularities yet not dismiss the role of accident (<7>).14

So far this is of a piece with Hume and Smith. But Millar’s Ranks goes beyond them in providing a stadial genealogy of particular rights and showing that rights should be understood as evolving responses to human needs. By focusing on familial rights Millar brought the problem of natural rights into sharp focus. If the most basic social rights are mutable and artificial, and if man is social, what is one to make of natural rights at all? Hume had pointed the way in his analyses of property in the Treatise and of the history of love by implying that all rights are to some degree adventitious, and natural rights of the Lockean sort are highly questionable. Millar’s contribution was to push this analysis in a single-minded way within a well-worked-out historical theory.15

A comparison with Smith’s discussion of the rights of husband over wife shows Millar’s novelty. Smith taught jurisprudence through the framework of his predecessor and teacher Francis Hutcheson, building the discussion of the first of the rights “which belong to a man as a member of a family” around three aspects of marriage: “1st, the manner in which this union is entered into and the origin of it; 2dly, the obligation or rights that are thereby acquired and the injuries corresponding to these; and 3dly, the manner in which it is dissolved” (LJ (A), iii.2). Smith treated these rights historically, but the discussion was always structured by background issues in natural law: the standing of polygamy, the perpetuity of marriage, the reasons for dissolving a marriage. The primary purpose of Smith’s lectures was to elucidate marriage; the historical evolution of marital rights was auxiliary. Similarly, Smith’s very brief discussion of the right of father over children centered on the issue of greatest interest to natural lawyers: patria potestas.

Smith’s discussions of the rights of the master and, most notably, the rights of the community member or citizen involve much more extensive stadial comparison. He used comparisons between societal stages to make a normative claim, “that the state of slavery is a much more tolerable one in a poor and barbarous people than in a rich and polished one” (LJ (A), iii.105), and he developed a complex stadial history of governments as well (iii.105-v. 43), both of which influenced the Ranks. Unlike Smith, however, Millar treated each of the rights directly through the stadial theory and showed how changes in the scope of the right arose from changing needs. We have seen this with the right of husband over wife; Millar made parallel arguments for the other three rights under consideration. Furthermore, he attempted to draw normative consequences about authority itself. Slavery and brutality toward inferiors have no place in progressive societies because authority has legitimacy when it is used to efficiently satisfy needs. The authority appropriate to an adventitious right in a particular historical stage ought to be limited by the useful and agreeable ends that the rights allow human groups to fulfill. Once a right gets in the way of the satisfaction of these needs, for example, by stopping useful and agreeable talents of women from being recognized, it is no longer legitimate. With this insight Millar had created a fully empirical moral theory centered on adventitious rights and allowing for normative criticisms.

John Craig’s “Account of the Life and Writings of the Author”

Ranks is an important work of empirical moral philosophy, and the fourth, posthumous edition is further enhanced by John Craig’s “Account of the Life and Writings of the Author.”16 Craig’s fascinating portrait details the intellectual milieu of Glasgow, the teaching of law at the university, the great regard in which Millar was held, and his rare personal qualities. John Craig (1766–1840) was Millar’s nephew, and he studied under him at Glasgow in the late 1770s, acquiring a firsthand acquaintance with his uncle’s teaching methods. He was, along with Millar’s son-in-law James Mylne, the literary executor of Millar’s estate. The two also made a posthumous edition of the Historical View, which added two volumes of manuscripts (1803). Craig, a notable political theorist himself, wrote two works: Elements of Political Science (1814), in which he drew out further consequences of Smith’s and Millar’s political philosophy, and Remarks on Some Fundamental Doctrines in Political Economy (1821). Consequently, Craig was in a unique position to understand Millar’s life, his influences, and his doctrines and should be the first stopping point for Millar’s readers.17

Sources Used by Millar

Millar used a wide range of sources to make his stadial argument in the Ranks. I will briefly consider four of the types of sources on which he drew.

1. Because of the comparative historical nature of Millar’s project, travel narratives were important sources. He kept up with this expanding literature and added footnotes to the second and third editions as evidence became available from newly published reports. Many of the travel writers he drew on are now obscure, but by examining a few we can get a sense of the breadth of Millar’s reading.

Millar made extensive use of the Abbé Prevost’s enormous collection of travel reports, the Histoire Générale. Each volume of the Histoire Générale includes a number of different “books”; hence Millar’s citation procedure refers to the volume, the book within the volume, and normally a chapter within the book. He also made repeated use of another massive, popular work, the Modern Universal History, which collects ancient sources, histories, and travel narratives in its forty-plus volumes.

One of the best-known travel reports Millar drew on was William Dampier’s New Voyage (1697). Dampier is now primarily remembered for a 1703 expedition in which Alexander Selkirk found Dampier so unbearable as a captain that he asked to be marooned on Juan Fernández rather than stay onboard the ship. He lived on Juan Fernández until 1709 and became the model for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Another important seventeenth-century source was Jean Chardin’s Journal du voyage du Chevalier Chardin en Perse et aux Indes Orientales (1686), the most authoritative account of the Maghreb in the period and the basis for Gibbon’s discussions of North Africa.

Millar made numerous references to similarly credible eighteenth-century sources covering disparate parts of the world: Peter Kolb’s descriptions of southern Africa, the botanist Johann Georg Gmelin’s account of his scientific expedition to Siberia, and the widely read works of Charlevoix and Lafitau on America. Not all of Millar’s sources were so legitimate. Millar used the plagiarized edition of De Brosses’s Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes (1756) (consulted by Bougainville and Cook on their voyages to the South Seas) that was translated and published by John Callendar under his own name in Edinburgh (1766–68). Millar also accepted such unauthorized or slimly authorized sources as the journalist John Hawkesworth’s compendium from the journals of various expeditions, including Cook’s first voyage (1773).

2. Like Smith, Millar drew on ancient ethnographies—above all, Tacitus’s Germania and Caesar’s De Bello Gallico—and Roman legal works. In good eighteenth-century fashion he illustrated his arguments with passages from classical literature to strengthen his point and show off his erudition. Millar also used the Hebrew bible as an ethnographic source for the early history of nomadic and pastoral law in a strikingly detached and “scientific” manner. He cast the comparative net even wider with Ossian, James Macpherson’s series of poems putatively translated from early Gaelic sources (but in fact only inspired by them). Millar seemed much less skeptical than Hume about the authenticity of Ossian.18

3. Millar drew on natural lawyers and legal historians—Heineccius, de Noodt, Bynkershoek—but more for their interpretation of Roman law than for their own substantial doctrines. He did not cite the natural lawyers commonly discussed in jurisprudence or moral philosophy: Pufendorf, Barbeyrac, and so on.

4. Millar cited many French authors—Montaigne, Mably, Fontenelle, and Du Bos among them—but, with the exception of Montaigne, for their history, not their philosophy. Throughout the Ranks he also made erudite use of French histories of medieval chivalry. Like many Enlightenment thinkers, he was clearly as comfortable with French as with British sources.

In the first and second editions Millar cited his illustrious Scottish contemporaries—Hume, Robertson, and Smith—but it is notable that the reference to Robertson and those to Hume’s History were eliminated from the third edition. This suggests that Millar had become more confident in his own interpretation of historical sources through teaching the historical sections of his “Government” course. Millar may also have developed a sense of himself as (along with Smith) belonging to the next generation of more rigorous “Scientific Whig” students of man. In keeping with the more sober tone of the preface to the third edition, a reference to Montesquieu’s Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains was deleted.

One further striking change that concerns Hume lies behind the reference “See Dr. Wallace, on the numbers of mankind” (note, <267>). The note in the first and second editions read “See Essay on the populousness of ancient nations, by Mr. Hume.” Hume and Wallace were involved in an amicable controversy concerning whether the ancient world was more or less populous than the modern world. Millar seems to have changed sides on this point by the time the third edition was published. This does not diminish Millar’s lifelong admiration of Hume and advocacy of the “true old Humean philosophy”;19 in fact, it reflects a Humean belief in changing standards of empirical adequacy of research.

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

This edition reproduces the fourth edition of Millar’s Ranks. A discussion of changes in the various editions can be found in appendix 1. Although the fourth edition was posthumous, it is in fact identical to the third edition, the final lifetime edition, except for the addition of Craig’s Preface.

Millar documented his arguments in the Ranks and provided many footnotes, whose contents range from accurate titles and page numbers to far more elusive references. I have tried to fill in the references wherever possible and provide notes wherever necessary. I have for the most part erred on the side of parsimony, adding notes to Millar’s text only when required for the ease of the reader. My additions to Millar’s notes are enclosed in a double set of square brackets.

The text has been corrected only when there are clear typographical errors or spelling mistakes, and all such errors have been corrected without comment. Page breaks in the fourth edition are indicated here by the use of angle brackets. For example, page 112 begins after<112>. In addition, the errata from the third edition have been incorporated and flagged with footnotes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Knud Haakonssen for answering many questions and helping to solve many puzzles in the notes; Wolfgang Haase for help with Millar’s references to ancient texts; Charles Wolfe for a great deal of research assistance and French translation help; Steve Scully, Joel Berson, and Theo Korzukhin for assistance with Latin translations; Charles Griswold and the philosophy department at Boston University; the staff at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; and the staff at Liberty Fund.

THE ORIGIN OF THE DISTINCTION OF RANKS

TO JOHN YOUNG, ESQUIRE,1

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.

My Dear Sir,

In presenting you with a Memoir on the Life of our late excellent Friend, Mr. Millar, I submit it to the person who, from long and familiar intercourse with him, will most readily perceive any misconceptions of his real character, or inaccuracies in the representation of his opinions.

I am fully aware of the difficulty of delineating a character such as Mr. Millar’s, and I am not insensible of the danger of failing in a species of composition in which some late writings have accustomed the Public to the union, in an uncommon degree, of Philosophy and Taste; but I could<iv> not be deterred by any selfish regard to my own reputation, from making that attempt, for which, in the opinion of our mutual friends, my intimacy with Mr. Millar, begun by our near connection, and continued by his kind indulgence, had afforded me peculiar advantages.

I am, with the greatest regard,
My Dear Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,

JOHN CRAIG.

Glasgow, February, 1806.<v>

ACCOUNT of the LIFE AND WRITINGS of JOHN MILLAR, ESQ.

John Millar, late Professor of Law in the University of Glasgow, was born on the 22d June, 1735, in the parish of Shotts, twenty-four miles west from Edinbugh. His father, Mr. James Millar,3 a man much respected for his abilities, learning, and purity of manners, was then minister of that parish; but, two years afterwards, he was translated to Hamilton, where he spent the rest of his life. His mother4 was a daughter of Mr. Hamilton of Westburn, a gentleman of considerable estate in the county of Lanark.

When the family removed to Hamilton, Mr. Millar went to reside at Milheugh, in the parish of<ii> Blantyre, about eight miles from Glasgow, with his uncle Mr. John Millar, who had been educated in Edinburgh as a writer to the signet, but, from bad health, had given up that profession, and retired to a small estate which had been long in his family. Here Mr. Millar, being taught to read by his uncle, continued to reside, till he was of the proper age to go to the Latin school. In 1742 he was brought to Hamilton to learn Latin and Greek, under Mr. Pillans, who taught the Grammar School of that town with considerable reputation.

In 1746, he went to Glasgow College, where he distinguished himself as an attentive and intelligent student. During one or two winters, he boarded in the same house with Mr. Morehead, afterwards of Herbertshire, with whom he formed an early friendship, which their very different pursuits in after life never obliterated. When he was a few years older, he lived in College Chambers, and usually dined with the celebrated Dr. Cullen,5 then Lecturer in Chemistry, whose wife was cousin-german to his mother. Those who have been so happy as to be acquainted with Dr. and Mrs. Cullen will recollect, with delight, the elegance which distinguished their conversation, and will easily be able to appreciate the advantages of this connection, to a<iii> young man, in forming his manners, and improving his taste.

In the evenings, as a relaxation from study, Mr. Millar used frequently to pass an hour or two at the house of Mrs. Craig, whose eldest son possessed a taste for literary conversation and philosophical experiment, not at that time very common among merchants. Here he met with several young men, intended for different professions, but almost all fond of literary inquiries; in particular, it was here that he formed an acquaintance with Mr. Watt,6 now of Birmingham, whose discoveries have entitled him to the gratitude of his country, and the admiration of the world. At this time, Mr. Millar was remarkable among his companions for the vivacity of his conversation, as well as the extent of his knowledge, and his powers of argument. “In our meetings,” says Mr. Watt, (in a letter with which he honoured me relative to this memoir) “the conversation, besides the usual subjects with young men, turned principally on literature, religion, morality, history; and to these conversations my mind owed its first bias to such subjects. Mr. Millar was always looked up to as the oracle of the company; his attainments were greater than those of the others; he had more<iv> wit, and much greater argumentative powers.” He adds, with that modesty which ever accompanies real genius, “He was a man when I was a boy, though in years little my senior. The diversity of our pursuits made me know less of him afterwards than I should otherwise have done; but we always continued attached friends, and I consider myself as indebted to him for much useful knowledge.”

It was also during Mr. Millar’s studies at Glasgow, that he formed an acquaintance and friendship with Dr. Adam Smith. He had attended the Logic and Moral Philosophy Classes before Dr. Smith was appointed to these Chairs; but, having come to the University for instruction, not merely to go through a common routine, he eagerly seized the opportunity of hearing Lectures which excited, and fully gratified, the public expectation. His intelligence and ardour soon attracted Dr. Smith’s notice, and at this time was laid the foundation of that mutual esteem, which, during the few years they were afterwards Professors in the same University, produced lasting intimacy and friendship. It is probable that Mr. Millar’s attention was first directed to that particular line of research, in which he afterwards became so eminent, by Dr. Smith’s Lectures and conversa-<v>tion; and it was with much pleasure, that he afterwards seized every opportunity of acknowledging his obligations to the instructions he at this time enjoyed.* The very gratifying proof of Dr. Smith’s esteem, which he received long afterwards, in being intrusted by him with the education of his relation, Mr. Douglas, (at a time when he himself could ill spare the pleasure of his society) has been noticed by the elegant biographer of that celebrated philosopher.†

Mr. Millar’s friends intended him for the church, and it was with this view that he began his studies at Glasgow. In a young man ardent in inquiry, there must always, however, be some disinclination to fetter himself by established articles of belief; and the Church of Scotland holds out few inducements to the ambition of him who is conscious of superior talents: Mr. Millar, accordingly, soon betrayed a desire to adopt a different profession, and to this he was probably still farther induced, by his occasional residences, during the summer, at Milheugh. His uncle, though much retired from the world, and naturally diffident and reserved, was a man of excellent understanding and most amiable<vi> manners. He had read, with much attention, whatever related to the history of his own country, and had observed, with much acuteness, the various struggles of parties during his own times. An ardent friend of civil and religious liberty, zealously attached to the Revolution settlement, and to the party of the Whigs, his early instructions probably contributed to form, in his nephew’s mind, those sentiments of independence, which, through his whole life, he himself had steadily maintained. Next to history and politics, his favourite subject of reading and conversation was Scotch Law, for which he always retained a fondness, derived from his early education, and perhaps increased by the consequence it gave him as a Justice of Peace among his country neighbours. It was natural that Mr. Millar, in choosing a profession, should be influenced by the taste of his uncle, with whom he had passed the early period of his life, who had instructed him by his conversation, and whom he saw respected for his understanding and legal knowledge. Fortunately Mr. Millar’s father, though much attached to his own profession, and desirous that his son should succeed him in those duties, from the regular and able discharge of which he had derived much happiness and great respectabi-<vii>lity, was not inflexible in his determination; so that, with little opposition from his friends, Mr. Millar was allowed to turn his attention from the Pulpit to the Bar.

About the time that Mr. Millar had finished his studies at Glasgow, he received an invitation from Lord Kames to reside in his family, and superintend the education of his son. It would be superfluous to dwell on the advantages he must have derived from the society of a man, so remarkable for the variety of his knowledge, the ardour of his literary curiosity, and his talent in communicating information in its most pleasing form. Considering Mr. Millar as a young man of superior abilities and attainments, Lord Kames had much pleasure in solving any difficulties that occurred to him on subjects of law, and few days passed without some improving conversations on various topics of philosophical research.* In this society he spent about two years; during which time, that attachment to the study of the history of mankind and of political institutions, which Dr. Smith’s lectures had excited, could not fail to be strengthened by the<viii> communications of a philosopher engaged in nearly similar pursuits.

It was chiefly at this period, also, that Mr. Millar had an opportunity of cultivating an acquaintance with Mr. Hume. The urbanity of this illustrious author never failed to conciliate the friendship even of those who viewed his political opinions with dislike, and his metaphysical tenets with abhorrence. Mr. Millar had few prejudices of this kind to conquer. Though a steady and zealous Whig himself, he had no enmity to speculative Tories; and, convinced of the truth of Mr. Hume’s metaphysical opinions, he was not of a temper to abandon a system, which appeared to him to afford a satisfactory explanation of many of the phenomena of the human mind, because it had been attacked by ignorant and illiberal abuse. Mr. Hume’s visit to the Continent, which took place a few years after this, together with Mr. Millar’s change of residence and numerous avocations, prevented this acquaintance from being improved into that intimacy, which their mutual respect would, in other circumstances, have produced; but they never failed to seize such opportunities of enjoying each other’s society, as afterwards occurred. From Mr. Hume, Mr. Millar received the same flattering mark of confidence as<ix> from Dr. Smith, having been entrusted with the education of his nephew, the present very eminent Professor of Scotch Law in the University of Edinburgh.7

In 1760, Mr. Millar was called to the Bar; or, according to the Scotch technical phraseology, he passed advocate. He was fortunate enough, during the very short time he practised as a lawyer, to have some opportunities of appearing before the Inner House,* and, on these occasions, he received very flattering compliments from several of the Judges. He was indeed universally considered as a very rising young lawyer; and it was not without surprise that his friends learned his intention, on the death of Mr. Hercules Lindsay, of applying for the Law Professorship at Glasgow.8 It seemed to them an extraordinary want of ambition in a young man, whose talents entitled him to look forward to the highest honours of his profession, at once to abandon all these hopes, and sit down contented with the moderate revenue, and the less brilliant reputa-<x>tion, of a Teacher of Law. They knew that he could not be prompted to such a step by timidity, for his temper was uncommonly sanguine; nor by indolence, for never was a mind more active. He was induced, however, to take this resolution, by his having, about this time, married Miss Margaret Craig, a lady nearly of his own age, to whom, while visiting on a familiar footing at her mother’s, he had become strongly attached.

He saw that it was impossible for a young lawyer, whatever his abilities and diligence might be, to maintain a family, even with the most rigid oeconomy; and he was unwilling to risk the becoming a burden on his father and uncle. The emoluments of a Professor of Law were not, indeed, very great; but they were much superior to what, for many years, he could expect to reach at the bar; they were sufficient to enable him to maintain a family in a respectable manner; and, by his own exertions, he hoped to increase the number of students, on which, at Glasgow, the emolument of a Professor chiefly depends. The situation, too, if not brilliant, was highly respectable; and he was happy to think, that those speculations on law and government, which had always been his favourite studies, were now to become the business of his life, the<xi> source of his income, and the foundation of his future reputation.

With such views, he applied for the vacant Chair; and, through the interest of the guardians of the Duke of Hamilton, then a minor, and at the recommendation of Lord Kames and Dr. Smith, he was appointed Professor of Law in the University of Glasgow, in 1761, about sixteen months after he had been called to the bar.

From the absence of the higher Courts of Justice, Glasgow lies under many obvious disadvantages, as a school of law; and, accordingly, the students of Law in that University, previously to Mr. Millar’s appointment, seldom exceeded four or five, and sometimes fell short even of that number. From the first moment of his appointment, there was a very general expectation that Mr. Millar would greatly improve, in this branch of education, the character of the University,9 but I believe his most sanguine friends never entertained the idea, that he could possibly raise it to that degree of celebrity, which it soon attained. The improvement, in a few years, became rapid: he had, frequently, about forty students of Civil Law; while those who attended his Lectures on Government, often amounted to a much greater number. To establish and maintain the reputation<xii> of his classes, became with him the principal object of his life; and never, perhaps, was any object followed out with more ardour or perseverance. He was not merely desirous to convey to his students just views and accurate information; but he was anxious to convey them in the manner most likely to seize the attention, and to produce habits of original thought and philosophical investigation; thus rendering Lectures, formerly considered as useful only to lawyers, the most important schools of general education.

From the first establishment of the University, it had been the custom to employ the Latin language in all academical prelections; a custom originating in the exclusive admiration entertained of ancient literature, during the dark ages, and continued to later times, by the blind attachment of all public seminaries to old and antiquated forms. By degrees, it was discovered that every man will express his ideas with the greatest clearness and force in that language in which he is accustomed to think; and that an audience must lose much of the substance of a lecture, when part of the attention is necessarily occupied in estimating the exact import of the words. Such truths, obvious as they now appear, were but slowly received; but, at last, the practice of lecturing in English had been intro-<xiii>duced into the philosophical classes at Glasgow, and this alteration rendered it still more difficult for the students, now unaccustomed to follow the complicated arrangement of a Latin period, to comprehend, with facility and accuracy, the lectures on Roman Law, which still continued to be delivered in Latin. The old custom was however retained in those classes, after it had been laid aside in others, very possibly from some fancied propriety in lecturing on the Laws of Rome, in the language in which they had been promulgated and compiled; and so wedded were the older members of the profession to this practice, that, when Mr. Lindsay (Mr. Millar’s immediate predecessor) began to deliver lectures on the Institutes of Justinian, in English, the Faculty of Advocates made formal application to the University, requesting that the practice of teaching the Civil Law in Latin might be restored. Mr. Lindsay, with a steadiness which did him honour, refused to yield to this interference; and Mr. Millar, from the moment he was appointed to the Chair, adopted the English language in all the courses of lectures which he delivered. But, as Latin is still used in the customary trials, preparatory to a young man’s being called to the Bar, he thought it proper to employ it in the daily<xiv> examination of the Civil Law classes, that his students might not be under the disadvantage of being altogether unaccustomed to the language in which the Faculty of Advocates still conduct their examinations.

Perhaps it is in some measure to the adoption of the English language in his several classes, that Mr. Millar owed part of his success. Had the same improvement been introduced at Edinburgh, it may, I think, be doubted whether his talents and utmost exertions could have raised the Law Classes of Glasgow from the low state to which they had fallen, and in which, from the absence of the Courts, they seemed destined to remain. But the Law Professors of Edinburgh, for a long time, continued to read their lectures in Latin, and, before they thought proper to abandon this custom, Mr. Millar’s fame was too well established, and too widely diffused, to admit of any competition.

Mr. Millar never wrote his Lectures; but was accustomed to speak from notes, containing his arrangement, his chief topics, and some of his principal facts and illustrations. For the transitions from one part of his subject to another, the occasional allusions, the smaller embellishments, and the whole of the expression, he trusted to that extemporane-<xv>ous eloquence, which seldom fails a speaker deeply interested in his subject. In some branches of science, where the utmost precision of language is requisite to avoid obscurity or error, such a mode of lecturing may be attended with much difficulty, and several disadvantages: But in Morals, in Jurisprudence, in Law, and in Politics, if the Professor make himself completely master of the different topics he is to illustrate, if he possess ideas clear and defined, with tolerable facility in expressing them, the little inelegancies into which he may occasionally be betrayed, the slight hesitation which he may not always escape, will be much more than compensated by the fulness of his illustrations, the energy of his manner, and that interest which is excited, both in the hearer and speaker, by extemporaneous eloquence.

Lecturing is obviously more connected with public speaking than with writing. In a finished composition, we expect to find the author’s arrangement accurate, his language correct and elegant, his ideas clearly and concisely expressed. Prolixity we regard as a fault both disagreeable and inexcusable; because, having his book before us, we can easily refer to any passage which we have forgotten or imperfectly comprehended, and thus<xvi> supply the defects of our memory or attention. In lecturing, the same rules will by no means apply. An idea must be turned on every side, that all its various connections may be perceived; it must be presented in a variety of lights, and a variety of forms, that, in some of them, it may be so fully impressed on the mind, as readily to recur when afterwards alluded to. For these purposes, it must be repeatedly urged with that earnestness of manner, which can seldom be commanded, in reading over, year after year, what was written at a distant period, and, probably, in a very different frame of mind. Those who were so fortunate as to witness the animation with which Mr. Millar delivered his Lectures, the delicacy with which he seemed to perceive when his audience fully understood his doctrines, the interest which he gave to subjects sometimes in themselves not very inviting, the clear conceptions that he conveyed, and the ardour of inquiry which he excited, will never hesitate to pronounce, that written lectures could not possibly have been so fascinating, or so instructive.

It is also a most important advantage attending extemporary lectures, that the Professor can, with ease to himself, follow the general progress of science, or insert the occasional results of his own<xvii> private investigations. The trouble of making alterations on written lectures is apt, on the contrary, to deter from future inquiry, and even to prevent the correction of acknowledged error. He who has, with much labour, transcribed a system of lectures sufficient for his regular course, can neither omit nor insert a topic, without extending or condensing some other department of his subject; he can change none of his principles, without altering his inferences, and expunging many allusions that may occur in other parts of his course; he can neither adopt new opinions, nor admit new facts, without inserting new conclusions, and new modifications of his other doctrines. Such a revision of written opinions will usually be found too great a task for human exertion; and the lectures will continue to be delivered with all their original imperfections. In the mean time, some of the students, more industrious than the rest, will perceive that the professor seems ignorant of what has been published on the science which he pretends to teach; the secret will soon be whispered round the class; and all respect for his talents and information will be irrecoverably gone. But an extemporaneous lecturer can alter, modify, and improve his system, with little comparative trouble. The addition of a few lines,<xviii> the expunging of a few words, even a particular mark upon the margin of his note book, will enable him to correct any errors into which he may have fallen, and to add whatever important discoveries have been made by himself or others. Accordingly, in Mr. Millar’s notes, now before me, I find some pages effaced, many references, and many leaves inserted; and, from a distinct recollection of particular conversations, I can decidedly assert, that, although he delivered the same courses of Lectures for forty years, many improvements were made, many important disquisitions were introduced, within a very short period of his death.

Not satisfied with explaining his opinions in the most perspicuous manner in his Lecture, Mr. Millar encouraged such of the students as had not fully comprehended his doctrines, or conceived that there was some error in his reasonings, to state to him their difficulties and objections. With this view, at the conclusion of the Lecture, a little circle of his most attentive pupils was formed around him, when the doctrines which had been delivered were canvassed with the most perfect freedom. Before a professor can admit of such a practice, he must be completely master of his subject, and have acquired some confidence in his own quickness at refuting objections, and detecting sophistry. A few instan-<xix>ces of defeat might be injurious to his reputation, and to the discipline of the class. But, should he possess a clear comprehension of all the bearings of his system, joined to quickness of understanding and tolerable ease of expression, he will derive the most important advantages from the unrestrained communications of his pupils. He will learn where he has failed to convey his ideas with accuracy, where he has been too concise, or where imperfect analogies have led him into slight mistakes; and he will easily find a future opportunity to introduce new illustrations, to explain what has been misapprehended, or correct what was really an error. To the students, such a practice insures accurate knowledge; it teaches the important lesson of considering opinions before adopting them, and gives an additional incitement to strict and vigilant attention. Accordingly, to be able to state difficulties with propriety, was justly looked upon by the more ingenious and attentive students as no slight proof of proficiency; and to be an active and intelligent member of the fire-side committee, never failed to give a young man some consideration among his companions.

The proper business of the Professorship to which Mr. Millar was appointed, is to deliver Lectures on the Institutions and Pandects of Justinian.<xx> But the employment of a whole winter in tracing, with the utmost accuracy and tedious erudition, the exact line of Roman Law, seemed to him a mere waste of time and study. Whatever it was useful to know of the Institutes, he thought might be sufficiently taught in the half of the session, or term; and he wished to devote the rest of it to a course of Lectures on Jurisprudence. After, therefore, going over the Institutes, according to the arrangement of Heineccius,10 and explaining the nature and origin of each particular right as it occurred, he began a new course of Lectures, in which he treated of such general principles of Law as pervade the codes of all nations, and have their origin in those sentiments of justice which are imprinted on the human heart.

The multifarious doctrines to be explained in the Pandects prevented him from shortening the time allotted for that branch of legal study; but, aware that the ordinary arrangement is confused, and almost unintelligible, he soon published a new syllabus, following very nearly the order of the Institutes, according to which he discussed the various and sometimes discordant laws of Rome, and the still more discordant opinions of Roman lawyers. In these two courses, he gave every information that could be desired on Civil Law,<xxi> whether considered as merely an object of literary curiosity, or as the basis of modern Law, and consequently a most useful commentary on the municipal systems of the greater part of Europe.

These Lectures, which most men would have found sufficient to engross all their time, and occupy all their attention, still left Mr. Millar some leisure, which he thought he could not employ more usefully, than in giving a course of Lectures on Government.11 As this class occupied an hour only three times a week, he was afterwards induced to appropriate the same hour, on two other days, to the teaching of Scotch Law, a branch of study useful to every Scotchman, and particularly necessary to a number of young men, who had no other opportunity of becoming acquainted with the principles of that profession, which they were afterwards to exercise. The class of Scotch Law he thought it sufficient to teach every second year.

A few years before his death, Mr. Millar was led, by the attention he always paid to the advantage of his pupils, to prepare and deliver a course of Lectures on English Law. In this course it could not be expected that he should convey more information than is contained in the best authors; but he greatly simplified and improved the arrange-<xxii>ment, and accounted for the various rules and even fictions of English Law, in a manner more satisfactory, than by vague analogies, or that last resource of ignorance, an unmeaning reference to the pretended wisdom of our ancestors.

It would be uninteresting to many of my readers, were I to enter into details respecting the Lectures on Roman, Scotch, or English Law; but Jurisprudence and Politics are sciences so important to all, and so instructive in the views they exhibit of human nature, that a slight sketch of Mr. Millar’s manner of treating these subjects may not, perhaps, be unacceptable. Some view of these Lectures seems indeed the more requisite, as they were, in a great measure, the foundation of his high reputation; and, having never been committed to writing, they cannot now, in any perfect form, be submitted to the public. In attempting this sketch, I shall merely give an idea of the general principles and order, according to which he proceeded to investigate these most important sciences, passing slightly over the numerous and very ingenious disquisitions to which they naturally led, and omitting many important doctrines which he established on the firm basis of justice, and the public good. To enter fully into the subject, would not be so much to give an account of Mr. Millar’s<xxiii> life, as to write a number of treatises on what are at once the most abstruse, and most useful, branches of Law, Government, and Political economy.

The Ancients seem never to have thought of delineating a general system of laws founded on the principles of justice, independent of such modifications as have been produced, in each particular country, by circumstances not universally applicable to mankind. This important branch of science was reserved for the moderns, among whom Grotius is the first and most eminent author, who took a view of the subject so general and extended. He has been succeeded by a multitude of later writers, most of whom, however, may be considered rather as his commentators than as original authors. A science, promising such benefits to mankind, required only to be pointed out in order to excite the attention of the learned; it spread rapidly over the whole of Europe, and soon became an established branch of education in many Universities.

It was, indeed, a most important step in the advancement of legal study. By displaying to mankind an ideal perfection of Law, which, if attained, must have secured their prosperity and happi-<xxiv>ness, it furnished them with a standard by which the particular institutions of each country might be examined and corrected; and, by exhibiting the frequent deviations of municipal law from such a standard, it weakened that blind admiration of old and local usages, which is the great sanctifier of abuses, the most dangerous enemy of truth. The systems of Universal Law, however, which at different times have been given to the world, seem liable to several objections. They could be illustrated in no other way than by reference to particular laws, so intimately blended with other regulations, and with peculiar customs and manners, that the reasoning lost much of its universal character, and often assumed the appearance of dissertation on the institutions of an individual nation. For the most part, the writers on Jurisprudence followed too closely the system of Roman Law, even where that system is defective; but sometimes, also, in endeavouring to avoid this error, they entered so imperfectly into legal details, that their conclusions appeared vague and inaccurate.

It may farther be objected to almost all the writers on jurisprudence, that they have insisted too much on what a man, in a particular situation, ought to do, rather than on what he can justly be compelled to do; thus confounding the important distinction<xxv> between Ethics and Law, and forgetting that, though the one be a branch of the other, it is necessary to keep their respective limits strictly in view, if we would establish any system of rules for the conduct of individuals which society has a title to enforce. From the disregard of this distinction, systems of jurisprudence came to resemble systems of morals in almost every thing, except their being treated in a more formal, and far less interesting manner.

A new branch of study displayed itself to the capacious mind of Montesquieu. By considering the various and important deviations from the standards of jurisprudence observable in the laws of every state, he was led to compare together the different nations among whom similar deviations may be discerned; to contrast their situation with that of other countries where the laws have an opposite bias; and thus, from an extended view of human nature, to deduce the causes of those differences in laws, customs, and institutions, which, previously, had been remarked merely as isolated and uninstructive facts. In this inquiry he had been followed by many philosophers, in different parts of Europe, and by none more successfully than our countrymen, Lord Kames and Dr. Smith, the former in tracing the history of manners and<xxvi> of private law, the latter in delineating the progress of public institutions.

Mr. Millar, in his Lectures, conjoined those separate views of jurisprudence. He began by investigating the origin and foundation of each right in the natural principles of justice; and afterwards traced its progress through the different conditions of mankind; marking such deviations from the general rule as the known circumstances of particular nations might be expected to occasion, and accounting, in the most satisfactory manner, for those diversities in laws, which must otherwise have appeared irreconcilable with the idea that there is any thing stable or precise in the moral sentiments of mankind.

As a preparation for this course of inquiry, it was obviously necessary to investigate the principles of Moral Approbation. On this subject, Mr. Hume and Dr. Smith have written treatises, equally eloquent and ingenious; and, to Mr. Millar, little appeared to be wanting, but to combine their systems.

Both of these philosophers have shewn, by a very extensive induction, that whatever is considered as useful, to ourselves or others, gives us pleasure; whatever is thought detrimental, gives us pain. This is the case, whether the good or evil be produced<xxvii> by inanimate objects, or by sentient beings; but when by the latter, the pleasure, excited by the perception of increased happiness, is connected with a feeling of good-will towards the agent; and the pain, arising from the perception of hurt or injury, is attended with a sentiment of dislike. Whether the good or evil may affect ourselves or others, we never fail to experience such sentiments; where our own good is promoted, we feel direct pleasure and gratitude; where the good of others is increased, we experience a reflected or sympathetic pleasure and gratitude, exactly the same in their nature, though always weaker in degree.

The direct good, or evil, proceeding from an action, is often of less real importance to general happiness than such remote consequences as are neither intended by the agent, nor directly observable by the spectator. Every breach of duty, besides occasioning immediate evil, weakens the influence of those general rules, by which, while exposed to temptations, the virtuous regulate their conduct; and every crime that is unpunished tends to destroy the strongest barrier which human society can oppose to vice. But such remote and contingent results of actions, though they exert a powerful influence on our moral sentiments, do<xxviii> not affect us equally with their more direct and obvious effects. We enter more readily into what is immediately present to us, than into general and distant consequences, which it requires much experience and attention to discover, and some effort of imagination to delineate. Existing and present happiness makes a lively impression; future and contingent utility is more faintly and obscurely felt.

Although the system of utility thus accounts for much of our moral sentiments, Mr. Millar was convinced, that, by itself, it could afford no satisfactory solution of many difficulties suggested by the experience of mankind. The sentiment of approbation arising from utility seems cold and languid, when compared with the warm burst of applause sometimes excited by a virtuous action; an applause, too, which bears no proportion to that experience and knowledge, which might enable the spectator to grasp all the distant consequences of the action, but frequently is most enthusiastic in the young and ignorant. Nor does the degree, in which we approve of the different classes of virtues,12 correspond to the respective degrees of utility; Prudence is, in most situations, a more useful, though certainly a less admired quality, than Courage; and Justice, the most essential of all the vir-<xxix>tues to human welfare, meets with less rapturous applause than irregular, and perhaps thoughtless, Generosity.

What was thus defective in the theory of utility seemed to Mr. Millar, in a great measure, to be supplied, by the systems which found our approbation of virtue on the sentiment of Propriety. We approve of such actions as we are led to expect from the particular circumstances in which the agent is placed, of such as appear to us agreeable to the general standard of human nature; and, as any remarkable deviation from the ordinary figure of the human body is disgusting, so are we displeased with any remarkable deviation from the constitution of the human mind. These sentiments of approbation and dislike have, by some authors, been referred to the influence of Custom; but they seem too steady and regular in their operations, to be the offspring of what is so very capricious. It is true that custom may bestow a higher applause on particular classes of virtues than, in themselves, they deserve; that it may diminish the abhorrence of certain vices, by rendering them objects of more cursory observation; that it may even reconcile us to flagitious crimes, which, from particular circumstances, we have associated with some of the higher<xxx> virtues; but all such effects of custom are merely to modify, and that in a smaller degree than is usually apprehended, the other sentiments of moral approbation springing from more regular sources.

Dr. Smith has given a most ingenious and eloquent account of our sentiments of propriety, which he derives from the pleasure of Sympathy with the feelings of the agent.13 He has shewn, in the most satisfactory manner, that the perception of the coincidence of our own sentiments with those of others, is always attended with an exquisite enjoyment; and that the appearance of any repugnance between our feelings and those of our fellow-men is productive of disgust. Not only is this true with regard to moral sentiment, but in every taste, opinion, and emotion. Hence the charms of pure and disinterested friendship, and the difficulty of continuing an intimate intercourse with those who, on subjects of much interest and frequent occurrence, think very differently from ourselves. It is in judging of human conduct, however, that this principle acts its most important part. When our attention is called to the behaviour of another, we immediately conceive how we should have acted in similar circumstances; and, according as our sentiments do, or do not, correspond to those he<xxxi> has discovered, we feel pleasure and approbation, or pain and dislike. Nor are these moral feelings liable to any important irregularities. When removed from temptation, and free from the influence of passion, all men are brave, temperate, just, and generous; consequently, these virtues must always appear proper, and the opposite vices improper, to the unconcerned spectator.

Mr. Millar fully adopted this opinion of Dr. Smith; but still he thought the system would prove defective, unless more weight were given to an observation which had been stated, rather in a cursory manner, both by that author and Mr. Hume. The degree of applause excited by virtue is not dependent solely on the propriety and utility of the action, but also on the difficulty which we know the agent must have overcome, and the mental energy which he has displayed, in reducing his feelings to the level of those of the unconcerned spectator. The passions, in many cases, being slightly affected, a small exertion is sufficient; in other situations, the utmost effort of self-command is indispensible: The one we simply approve; the other we applaud and admire. In this view, our moral sentiments bear a striking analogy to the principles of taste; and, though Mr. Millar did not admit that intimate and necessary connection between them which has<xxxii> been asserted by an eminent author,* he traced, with much ingenuity, and much felicity of illustration, the likeness which exists, both between the sentiments themselves, and the means by which they are excited. That virtue which is new or extraordinary in its nature, which breaks forth when we expect and dread the opposite vice, which exhibits high powers of self-control, and produces some great and striking benefit to man, raises our admiration to sublimity and rapture; while a life spent in acts of beneficence and kindness, like a rich and beautiful landscape, excites the more gentle emotions of complacence and delight.

Such are the outlines of the analysis of our moral sentiments, according to which Mr. Millar accounted for the various rights acknowledged and protected by society. In doing this, he was careful to separate and distinguish Justice from the other virtues. The rules of Justice,14 he observed, are satisfied, when a man abstains from injuring others, although he should make no addition whatever to general or particular happiness. He who fails in prudence, in temperance, in courage, or beneficence, may become an object of dislike; he may destroy his own happiness, and disregard many<xxxiii> opportunities of promoting that of others; but, having done no direct injury, he can scarcely become the object of general indignation. The infringement of the rules of Justice, on the other hand, never fails to excite resentment in the breast of the person injured, and indignation in that of the spectators;—an indignation, sometimes satisfied with the redress of the wrong, sometimes demanding the infliction of farther pain or mortification on the delinquent. At the same time, he who has thus subjected himself to merited punishment, can never complain of a sentence, which his own conscience must approve, or pretend that he was not aware of the natural consequence of his crimes. The rules of conduct prescribed by Justice, unlike the dictates of the other virtues, are always clear and precise. Frequently it may be a matter of some difficulty to determine what measure, in the particular circumstances of the case, may be most prudent or most beneficent; but never can any person be at a loss to know, when he deliberately diminishes the comforts or enjoyments of others, or be unconscious, that by so doing, he renders himself the object of merited punishment. For these reasons, it is on the virtue of Justice, and on that virtue alone, that Laws, the object of which is to maintain<xxxiv> rights and repress injuries, must be altogether founded.

General systems of Law have rarely, if ever, been formed by the prospective wisdom of legislators, but have arisen gradually, and almost insensibly, from the slow progress of human experience. When a dispute has taken place between two individuals, the spectators will naturally assist him, with whose motives they sympathize; who seeks no undue advantage, but merely wishes to retain what, without loss to others, is already in his possession. They will disapprove of the conduct and motives of that person, who, disregarding the good of his fellow-men, seeks his own advantage by the direct injury of another, and they will perceive that, by preventing his intentions, they take nothing from those comforts, which, with innocence, he can command. Between two such competitors for the possession of any object, there being no room for hesitation, the spectators are led immediately to interfere, and prevent injustice. Being also sensible that they themselves are liable to similar wrongs, against which a general combination is the only effectual protection, they are farther prompted to such an interference, by a species of self-interest. Such simple and obvious considerations must occur to<xxxv> men even in the rudest state of society; and, in Mr. Millar’s opinion, they sufficiently account for that general resemblance, which may be discovered in the laws of all countries, however different in their circumstances, or remote in their situations. It was therefore to such simple ideas, not to great and extended views of policy, that he traced the origin of the different recognised rights of individuals, and on such universal feelings, that he established their justice.

But, when we examine more particularly the laws and customs of different countries, we are struck with a diversity, and even opposition, among their regulations, which might almost lead us to suspect, that different nations, had been influenced, by opposite, and inconsistent, principles of Morals.

A nearer inspection, however, will convince us, that these diversities, important as they certainly are, may frequently arise from diversities no less striking in the conditions of different nations. Some tribes, drawing a precarious subsistence from hunting and fishing, and improvident for futurity, seem scarcely raised above the rank of irrational beings: Others, having learned to domesticate particular animals, are exempted from the danger of immediate want, yet forced to wander from place to place, in search of the spontaneous productions<xxxvi> of the earth: Those who inhabit a country of greater fertility, or who have discovered the means of improving fertility by labour, relinquishing their wandering habits, trust for their subsistence to the more certain resources of agriculture: From particular situation, or gradual discovery, some nations are led to meliorate, by human art, the rude produce of the soil, or to exchange their superfluous commodities for other, and to them more desirable, means of enjoyment: Distinctions of professions, and of ranks, are introduced; new sources of gratification are discovered; new wants excite to new exertions; the human mind is cultivated and expanded; and man rises to the highest pitch of civilization and refinement.

It were surely unreasonable to expect that, during all these successive changes, the laws should remain the same. Rules are gradually multiplied, as inconveniencies are felt, as new modes of injustice are detected; and such rules, simple and inartificial at first, are gradually modified and rendered more complex, by the subterfuges and evasions of fraud, as well as by the more general views of utility suggested by extensive experience and improved habits of reasoning.

These observations, however, Mr. Millar considered as but one step in his proposed inquiry; for among<xxxvii> nations advanced very nearly to the same degree of civilization, very opposite laws often prevail. This may frequently be accounted for by accurate observation of the real line of progress, which these different nations have described. All have not passed through exactly the same stages of improvement; all have not advanced with equal rapidity; some have remained long stationary at an early period of their course; while others, hurrying on with rapid strides at first, have appeared to repose for a while at a more advanced station, from which they have again proceeded with increased celerity and vigour. From whatever circumstances of soil, climate, or situation, such differences may have arisen, they must be attended with corresponding differences in the rules of law. The powerful effect of custom is discernible in all the institutions of man. Those views to which he has long been habituated he does not easily relinquish; those laws from which he has long derived protection he does not easily perceive to be defective. The rude institutions of a nation, which has remained stationary at any particular stage of improvement, become so rooted in the habits of the people, and in the opinions even of legislators, that it is long before a change of circumstances can produce any correspondent<xxxviii> change upon the laws. It was thus that the Patria Potestas, originating in very rude ideas, maintained its ground even during the most civilized times of Rome:* and thus the Feudal law, adapted to a state of society which has long ceased to exist, still continues to regulate the landed property of Scotland.

But besides the direct tendency of the progress of civilization to alter and modify the Laws, it has an indirect influence, still more important. In another course of Lectures (which I shall soon have occasion to mention more particularly), Mr. Millar had traced the natural progress of Government, as arising from the most obvious views of utility, as improved and varied by the advancement of a community, from the state of a rude horde to that of a civilized nation, and as influenced by many circumstances both of general and of particular application. He had, at the same time, pointed out the various distributions of Property that took place; the various distinctions of Ranks; the innumerable diversities of Public Opinion, of Public Institutions, and of National Character. All these varieties, from whatever circumstances they proceed, cannot fail to oc-<xxxix>casion endless diversities in systems of Law. But, by an attentive inquirer the causes of such diversities may usually be discovered; and thus all anomalies of Law will be explained, and the uniformity of our moral principles established, by an examination of what, at first view, has the appearance of irreconcileable contradiction.

It was on these principles, that Mr. Millar proceeded in the investigation of the Origin and History of private Rights. He rejected, as fabulous, the great and sudden alterations said to have been introduced by particular legislators, or at least he reduced such interpositions to a mere modification of what must have been occasioned by the circumstances of the times; and he doubted, if he did not altogether discredit, those wonderful effects that have been ascribed to the direct operation of climate on the human mind. I shall only add to the reasons he himself has assigned for these opinions,* that, by accounting from moral causes for the varieties which occur between the codes of different nations, he rendered unnecessary and unphilosophical, all historical assertions resting on<xl> questionable authority, and all assumed physical affections of the human mind, from their own nature, incapable of proof; substituting for such gratuitous hypothesis, a simple and universal theory, founded on the acknowledged nature of man, and capable of receiving confirmation from the whole history of the human race.

A system of Jurisprudence, embracing so many and such important disquisitions, reducing such apparently discordant facts in human nature to a few simple principles, and exemplifying the operation of our moral sentiments in such a variety of situations and circumstances, is surely one of the noblest efforts of the mind of man: Nor can any branch of education be considered as more important. While, by the richness of its illustrations, the variety of its facts, and the unexpected simplicity of its results, it fixes the attention, and delights the imagination; it accustoms the student to an accuracy of discrimination, and a generalisation of ideas, which are the surest characteristics of a philosophic mind. But, unconfined in their operations to a few individuals, the effects of studies so conducted may often be extended to the welfare of nations. By proving that no institutions, however just in themselves, can be either expedient or permanent, if inconsistent with established ranks,<xli> manners, and opinions, a system of Jurisprudence checks inconsiderate innovation, and indiscriminate reform; while, on the other hand, it points out, to the enlightened Legislator, such parts of the municipal code, as, introduced during ruder times, have remained in force, long after the circumstances from which they arose have ceased to exist, and directs him in the noble, but arduous, attempt, to purify and improve the laws of his country.

The investigation of the Nature and History of the several rights, subsisting between Individuals, called Mr. Millar’s attention to another species of rights, those subsisting between different Orders, and Classes, of the community. The former are so remarkably modified by the latter, that, in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, he had very frequently found it necessary, to give some explanation of the principles, according to which, distinguished powers and privileges are committed to particular persons: but this he had always done in as concise a manner as was consistent with perspicuity. The origin and progress of authority seemed to demand a more detailed investigation, than could<xlii> be introduced into his other Lectures, and promised to open up both an amusing and very useful field of inquiry.

To many of his students, indeed, who, without any intention of becoming practical lawyers, had been sent to the University, as to a seminary of liberal education, a course of Lectures on Public Law seemed more important than on almost any other science. In a free country, every man may be said to be born a politician; and the higher classes of society, those who chiefly resort to Universities as general students, are frequently obliged, by their situation in life, to give opinions on various subjects of Government, which may have considerable influence on the welfare of their country. To them a knowledge of Public Law must be an object of the first importance, whether they look forward to the degree of estimation in which they would wish to be held in their respective counties, or listen to the voice of honourable ambition, which calls them to add lustre to their names, by defending the rights and augmenting the happiness of their fellow-men. With the view of being serviceable to this class of Students, and, at the same time, with the conviction that a knowledge of Public Law is essential to a just and liberal conception<xliii> of the rules of the Municipal Code, Mr. Millar paid very particular attention to the course of Lectures on Government; introducing whatever disquisitions, connected with his subject, he thought likely to awaken curiosity, or illustrate the general principles of his theory. Hence he indulged himself in many speculations on Manners, on National Character, Literature, and the Fine Arts, which, though arising naturally from his subject, and intimately related to it, both by their influence on the theory of Government, and their tendency to illustrate the general progress of improvement in man, might, in some points of view, be considered as digressions.

The order which Mr. Millar had followed in his Lectures on Jurisprudence was not, in its full extent, applicable to the subject of Government. In private rights, a very considerable uniformity may be traced in the regulations of all countries, arrived at the same stage of improvement. The same associations, and the same obvious views of utility, suggest to all very similar laws; and though, indeed, many diversities, and some contrarieties may be observed, yet the general rule is always apparent, and the exceptions may usually be traced, by a short investigation, to a few circumstances peculiar to those countries in which they have occurred.<xliv>

But, in looking to the governments that have existed in the world, little of a similar uniformity appears. So many circumstances, besides the gradual improvement of mankind, have influenced the distribution of political power, and these circumstances are so various in their nature, so complicated in their mutual relations, that, on a cursory view, every thing seems irregular and anomalous; and it is only by a careful survey of the history of each nation, that the causes of its particular institutions can be discovered.

In treating of Jurisprudence, the most convenient and most philosophical arrangement was, to state the origin and history of each several right, explaining, as they occurred, the most remarkable deviations from the general rules. But, had the same method been followed in the Lectures on Government, the digressions to the circumstances, and institutions, of particular nations, must have been so frequent, and so minute, that, all traces of uniform principle being lost, the course would have appeared a series of partial and unconnected disquisitions.

Influenced, as is probable, by such considerations, Mr. Millar divided the course of Lectures on Government into three parts.<xlv>

I. He began with what Mr. Stewart has called a theoretical or conjectural history of government,* tracing its natural progress, according to the gradual civilization of mankind. In this part of his course, he noticed the modifications arising from circumstances of extensive influence; from the fertility of the soil; the extent and population of the state; the condition of surrounding nations; the exposure to attack; the facility of making great or permanent conquests: But he treated the subject generally, without any farther reference to the history of particular nations than was necessary to explain and illustrate his system.

The different conditions in which mankind have been discovered, Mr. Millar, with other authors, divided into four; the state of Hunters and Fishers; the Pastoral state; the Agricultural; and the Commercial.15 He was far from meaning to assert, that every nation, which has arrived at a high state of improvement, must have passed, successively, through all these conditions. He knew well that narrowness of territory might prevent even an inconsiderable tribe from existing by hunting, and force them to have recourse to the rearing of cattle; that a mild and fertile region, by the abundance of<xlvi> its spontaneous productions, might induce a preference of grain and roots to animal food, which must be acquired by exertion, and preserved by care; that an ungrateful soil might very early turn the attention of a people inhabiting an island or bay to piracy or commerce; that, above all, great and extensive conquests sometimes made the most rapid change on the condition of the conquerors, and of the conquered. But he adopted the ordinary division as the most convenient for suggesting and introducing the various changes recorded on human institutions and manners; and, while the progress which it assumed had the advantage of leading from the simple to the more complex views of human society, he considered it, though not universal, as probably the most general course of improvement which could be traced in history.

In each of those stages of society, he examined the powers which were likely to be placed in the hands of the Sovereign, and in those of the Nobility; the privileges which might probably be asserted by the People; and the Judicial establishments naturally resulting from the distinction of ranks, and distribution of property and power. He was particularly careful to mark the variations which occurred, when a nation passed from one of those conditions to another; and he noticed the various modifica-<xlvii>tions arising from circumstances of such extensive operation, as to be reducible to general rules.

Mr. Millar was well aware that, in the early part of the progress of mankind, he could find few authentic materials for his theoretical history; but this defect was in some measure compensated, by the similarity of the public institutions of savage nations, in different parts of the world, and by the general agreement of travellers in describing the very few features which form their characters. As he proceeded, his authorities became more full, and more precise; while the discordances between the manners and institutions of different countries becoming also more important, made it necessary for him to enter more minutely into details, and to point out many distinctions, and many modifications of his general doctrines. In the commercial state, in particular, it was requisite to enumerate very fully the circumstances, which, on the one hand, exalted the power of the sovereign, and, on the other, raised up a spirit of independence among the people; as it depended altogether on the early prevalence of the one or the other, whether a despotical or free Government should be established or maintained.

Having followed the progress of civilization and government, till they reached the greatest perfec-<xlviii>tion of which we have experience, Mr. Millar examined, at some length, the question, whether this advancement can be continued without end, or whether, from the nature of human affairs, it be not subjected to certain limitations. Of those nations, which have sunk from riches and power to poverty and insignificance, the downfall has been occasioned, either by despotical government, a casual effect of opulence which may probably be corrected by the greater diffusion of knowledge, or by the inroads of barbarians now guarded against by the balance of power, and the improvements of modern tactics. Neither did Mr. Millar conceive that the high wages of labour, arising from the general diffusion of wealth, could so far counterbalance the advantages resulting from superior capital, from improved machinery, and from the division of labour, as to enable a poor nation to outstrip a richer, in the commercial competition. In none of those causes usually assigned for the decay of opulent states, did he see any reason for believing that there are fixed impassable limits to the improvement of man. But, in examining the changes produced by wealth on the national character, he was struck with that sordid love of gain, that exclusive attention to individual interests, which debase the character of man, and under-<xlix>mine the generous enthusiasm for the public welfare, on which alone Public Liberty can securely rest. Even without Patriotism, he did not deny that, by wise institutions, a semblance of Freedom might long be preserved; but this he considered as a mere phantom, always liable to disappear, through the arts of the court, or the blind fury of the populace. Nor did it escape his observation, that a very great diffusion of wealth has a tendency to impair those habits of active industry, on which the successful cultivation of the ordinary arts of life altogether depends. Should any such relaxation of industry take place, a relaxation which the influence of imitation and fashion may extend from the higher to the lower orders of society, it cannot fail very speedily to be followed by poverty and vice, with their usual concomitants, servility and oppression: neither can this deterioration be checked, while the profligate habits, occasioned by the former affluence of the country, continue to prevail.

This part of the course Mr. Millar concluded with a detailed examination of the principles which produce the idea of obligation in submitting to Government. He dismissed, as scarcely worthy of refutation, the doctrines of Divine Right; but he was at some pains to enforce Mr. Hume’s objections<l> to the fiction of an Original Compact, long the favourite opinion of English Whigs.* He referred the origin of the Rights of Government, partly to the natural deference for abilities, birth, and wealth, which he denominated the principle of authority; partly to obvious and powerful considerations of utility. His opinions on this subject are very distinctly stated in a posthumous publication, to which I shall refer the reader.†

II. This theoretical history of Mankind was followed by a survey of the particular forms of Government, established in the principal countries, of ancient and modern times; which, while it illustrated the principles that had been explained, pointed out many causes of deviation from the general system. Of the constitutional history of each of those nations, Mr. Millar gave a rapid sketch, in which, without omitting any thing material or fundamental, he passed slightly over the less important, or what may be considered as the technical, forms of their several Governments. His object was to delineate the successive changes that took place in each of these States; to shew how their Governments had arisen; what altera-<li>tions they had undergone during the progress of improvement; and in what manner these alterations had been produced by the peculiar circumstances in which they were respectively placed.

In this Review, the Athenian Government naturally attracted his attention, by its admirable effects in exalting the powers of Intellect, and in refining, to a degree hitherto unexampled, those of Taste. In another respect, also, it merited particular examination. From the barrenness of Attica, and the convenience of its harbours, the inhabitants, even before making any considerable advances in agriculture, had become first pirates, and afterwards merchants. A similar progress might probably have occurred in several other states of antiquity; but the memorials of such nations are few and mutilated, while the history of Athens has been transmitted to our times with uncommon accuracy and fulness. That country, therefore, he considered as one of the few instances in which the influence of early commerce on national character, and on the structure and genius of the government, may be duly appreciated.

In treating of Sparta, Mr. Millar examined, in detail, those regulations which are commonly ascribed to Lycurgus;16 proving them to have been such as would naturally prevail in a country which<lii> had long remained in a rude condition, and indeed very similar to customs and institutions which may be found in other parts of the world. He was ready to allow that Lycurgus might, in some respects, improve the Laws, and perhaps, by his personal influence, give superior stability to the Institutions of his country; but he ascribed their duration chiefly to particular circumstances, such as constant wars, and inattention to commerce, which, keeping Sparta poor and barbarous, confirmed her early customs, by the force of habit.

The Roman Government Mr. Millar considered at greater length, on account, both of the superior importance of that state, and of the more accurate information which has come down to us respecting its Laws and Institutions. That Government, too, seemed particularly deserving of attention, because the Roman Law has been the foundation of almost all the modern Codes, and is still appealed to, as decisive authority, in the silence of the municipal regulations of modern Europe.

To these Lectures may be applied Mr. Millar’s own remark, on what might have been expected from the Treatises Dr. Smith once proposed to write on the Greek and Roman Republics. “After all that has been published on that subject, his<liii> observations suggested many new and important views, concerning the internal and domestic circumstances of those nations, which displayed their several systems of policy, in a light much less artificial, than that in which they have hitherto appeared.”*

In the institutions of Modern Europe, a much greater similarity may be traced, than in the Governments of ancient states. All the kingdoms of the south of Europe, were founded by rude shepherds, overrunning extensive tracts of cultivated country, and incorporating with the civilized inhabitants of the Roman Provinces. All those barbarians, bringing with them similar institutions, and making similar conquests, established political systems, in their principal features, very nearly alike. Previously, therefore, to delineating any of the Governments of modern Europe, Mr. Millar thought it useful, to give a general picture of the whole; and, in doing so, he found it convenient to separate the Civil from the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction; a distinction unnecessary in treating of the ancient Governments, but important respecting those of modern times.

It would carry me too far, were I to attempt to<liv> give any account of Mr. Millar’s original and ingenious speculations, respecting the Feudal system: I shall merely remark, that he steered a middle course between the older Antiquarians, who conceived that the system of Tenures was completed soon after the settlement of the barbarians, and the partizans of the more modern opinion, that the whole lands were originally held allodially, and that Fiefs were introduced entirely by subsequent resignations.† Nor shall I attempt to follow him in his very masterly sketch of the rise, elevation, and decline, of Ecclesiastical Power.

Having taken a general survey of the constitutional history of Modern Europe, both in Church and State, Mr. Millar entered upon a particular examination of the Governments of France, Germany, and England; concluding this part of his course with a rapid view of the Histories of Scotland, and of Ireland. Here, it is unnecessary for me to attempt to follow him; as he has laid before the public the historical view of the English Government, which will sufficiently evince the saga-<lv>city of research, and the comprehensiveness of view, which so eminently characterised these Disquisitions.

III. The History of the British Government led, by a very natural transition, to an account of the Constitution, as settled at the Revolution in 1688, which formed the third branch of these Lectures. To this, indeed, the other parts of the course might be considered as in some degree subordinate. However curious and instructive speculations on the progress of Government may be, their chief use is to suggest different views, and various comparisons, by which we may estimate the advantages of our present institutions, and thence be led to venerate and support what is excellent, to correct and improve whatever may be defective.

In this important part of the Lectures, Mr. Millar entered with a minuteness, which renders it impossible for me, in this short essay, to give even an outline of his opinions, into the consideration of all the parts of the British Government; occasionally relieving the dryness of detail, by remarks, and even discussions, on the advantages of the present system; on the dangers to which it is exposed; and on such means of improvement as are consistent with the present state of manners and opinions, and with those established distinc-<lvi>tions of Rank which it is often unjust, and always hazardous, to abolish. Animated by the love of his country, he delivered his opinions openly and explicitly; opinions equally removed, on the one hand, from courtly servility, and on the other, from unbending republicanism. After discussing the constitution and rights of Parliament, the privileges of the several branches of the legislature, and the ministerial or executive powers of the Crown, he entered, at considerable length, into the detail of the Judicial establishments in England and in Scotland; concluding with a short comparison between them, in which, with what by many will be thought a Scottish prejudice, he, upon the whole, seemed to give the preference to those of his own country.

From the very slight sketch which I have now given of these Lectures, their high importance will be sufficiently apparent. Though nothing uninteresting was introduced, they comprehended a greater variety of topics than almost any other subject could have afforded; and gave occasion to very numerous disquisitions, having an immediate reference to the public welfare. The general student was delighted with the acuteness of the observations, the sagacity of the antiquarian researches; the number and elegance of the analo-<lvii>gies, the comprehensiveness and consistency of the doctrines: The young Lawyer, by tracing the progress and views of the Government, was instructed in the spirit and real intention of the Laws: But, to the future statesman, were opened up views of human society, of the nature and ends of Government, and of the influence of Public Institutions on the prosperity, morals, and happiness of states; views which could hardly fail to impress a veneration for liberty on his heart, and which, through his exertions, might essentially promote the welfare of his country.

When Mr. Millar was appointed Professor of Law, the University of Glasgow enjoyed that very high reputation for philosophical inquiry, which, by the continued exertions of its professors, it still maintains. Dr. Hutchison laid the foundation of this fame, by his very amiable and ingenious system of Morals, and, under his successors, Dr. Smith and Dr. Reid, the character which the Moral Philosophy Class then acquired has been both established and extended. The originality of the speculations of these Philosophers has given a de-<lviii>cided bias, at Glasgow, to moral and metaphysical research; a bias in some degree unfavourable to the study of the ancient languages, and even to the important sciences of Physics and Mathematics. Yet, in these departments, also, the University can boast of professors of no common reputation. Dr. Moor and Mr. Muirhead, joined to an intimate acquaintance with the stores of ancient literature, much critical knowledge and acuteness: Dr. Wilson distinguished himself by several astronomical discoveries of considerable moment: The writings of Dr. Simson are known and admired by every mathematician in Europe; and Dr. Cullen and Dr. Black, did more than perhaps any other English philosophers, in extending and improving the sciences of medicine and chemistry.*

In a university, where so many learned men had excited a general spirit of inquiry, and where so many original investigations were going forward, it was a natural wish, that there should be some established mode of mutual communication by which new ideas might be elicited, and error, ever prone<lix> to insinuate itself among new discoveries, might speedily be detected. Such were the views with which The Literary Society, consisting chiefly of Professors, together with some Clergymen of the city and neighbourhood, had been instituted in 1752.17

On Mr. Millar’s coming to Glasgow, he found this society in a very flourishing state, and, from a conviction of the advantages attending such an institution, both to its particular members, and to the general interests of science, he immediately became a very active and zealous promoter of its views. Till his death, he continued to attend the meetings with a punctuality of which I believe there are few examples. So far as I can learn, he never once failed, in the course of forty years, to read a discourse in his turn; and it was very seldom indeed that he allowed any other engagement to interfere with his attendance. The society became a kind of weekly habit to him; and he seemed to feel considerable disappointment and uneasiness, when any circumstance prevented its regular meeting.

The members of the Literary Society are accustomed to read papers on those subjects of science or taste, with which they are most conversant; each professor usually making choice of some to-<lx>pic connected with the particular business of his class, or taking the opinion of his colleagues on such speculations as he may be preparing for the press. The reading of the essay is followed by a conversation, sometimes by a debate, on the opinions that have been maintained; strictures are made on the arrangement, illustrations, or language; new ideas are occasionally started by the speakers; various improvements are suggested; and not unfrequently the whole foundations of the system are unreservedly attacked. The author is thus made sensible of any obscurity that may have pervaded his statements, or of any sophistry that may have insinuated itself into his arguments; he is led to revise his positions, to re-examine his authorities, and sometimes to perceive new views and new combinations, productive of the most important discoveries. To the other members, much useful knowledge is conveyed, on subjects often remote from their ordinary studies; and, by the diffusion of a general curiosity respecting all branches of science, that narrow exclusive attention to one particular study, which is so apt to proceed from the division of intellectual labour, is, in some measure, corrected.

Mr. Millar usually took a leading part in these discussions. Few subjects could be proposed on<lxi> which he had not, in some degree, reflected; and, though occasionally the essays entered so minutely into abstract science, that a person possessed only of general knowledge could not deliver a profound opinion; yet, even in such cases, his natural acuteness, and scientific habits, frequently enabled him to detect any inaccuracy in the arrangement, or inconsistent opinions in different parts of the discourse. His favourite subjects, however, those which he always canvassed with new interest and delight, were the sciences connected with the study of the human mind. A zealous admirer of Mr. Hume’s philosophical opinions, which he had early adopted, and of the truth of which, after inquiries increased his conviction,* he was necessarily engaged in frequent debate with Dr. Reid. Each, firmly persuaded that he maintained the cause of truth, used every exertion to support his own opinions and overthrow those of his opponent. No<lxii> weapon was rejected. To the utmost subtility of argument, to the most acute detection of sophistry, were sometimes joined the powers of ridicule; and occasionally, when arguments, conceived to be refuted in former debates, were again, on either side, introduced, some impatience might appear, some expressions might be used which seemed to convey the idea of contempt. But such feelings never, for a moment, survived the debate; and it is honourable to both, that frequent, and even acrimonious disputation never weakened their sentiments of friendship, nor impaired that mutual esteem which their worth, their talents, and their unwearied ardour in the investigation of truth, were calculated to inspire.

On several evenings, each winter, in place of a regular essay being read, a member of the society is appointed to open a debate on a given subject; and, on such evenings, the speeches assume more of the character of public harangues. Mr. Millar’s elocution when he became a member of the Literary Society, has been described to me as, in some degree, embarrassed, cold, and constrained. To him, who was resolved to deliver extemporary Lectures, nothing could be more important than to conquer such defects; nor could there be any more certain means of accomplishing this object,<lxiii> than were furnished by the meetings of the society. A flow of ideas and expression, can be acquired only by practice, and by that self-possession and confidence which spring from repeated attempts, and repeated success. In the Society, too, Mr. Millar had frequent opportunities of comparing very different styles of oratory, and, in particular, of listening to the elegant and pleasing eloquence of his friend Dr. Wight, who, by the liveliness of his manner, and brilliancy of his imagination, often foiled the superior information and strength of argument by which he was assailed.* By seizing every opportunity of improvement, Mr. Millar soon overcame any disadvantages under which he at first might labour, and placed himself, as a speaker, decidedly at the head of the Society. Feeling a lively interest in most of the questions proposed, he never failed to communicate something of this interest to his hearers; following the most natural order of ideas, he took a firm and steady hold of his subject; possessed of extensive knowledge, and a very lively imagination, he drew illustrations from a vast variety of topics; fond of wit, and not averse to ridicule, he enlivened the discussion with<lxiv> fanciful allusions, with delicate irony, and pointed satire; and, sometimes, rising with his subject, his eye on fire, his action strong and energetic, his tones impressive, his language bold and figurative, he astonished by the force of his declamation, and reached the highest pitch of impassioned eloquence.

After the business of the society was concluded, such of the members, as happened to have no other engagements, frequently adjourned, for a few hours, to a tavern in the neighbourhood. Here the discussion was sometimes continued, but with more sudden transitions, greater play of imagination, and all those sallies and deviations which are the charm of unrestrained conversation. In this part of the evening’s amusement, Mr. Millar was as conspicuous, as in the previous discussions. His convivial talents, his unfailing vivacity and good humour, called out the powers of many, who would otherwise have remained silent and reserved; the liveliness of his fancy suggested infinite topics of conversation or of mirth; and his rich stores of information enabled him to supply endless sources of knowledge and amusement.

In most men, distinguished powers of conversation are merely an agreeable talent, the source of pleasure to their friends, and of affection to-<lxv>wards themselves; but, in Mr. Millar’s particular situation, they were of higher importance; enabling him, with the most distinguished success, to discharge the duties of an instructor of youth. It has long been the custom at Glasgow, for several of the professors to admit into their houses young gentlemen, of whose education they take a general superintendence. While, by this means, they derive a considerable addition to their moderate incomes, they hold out a new inducement to men of fortune to send their sons to a University, where their conduct and manners, as well as their studies, will be under the watchful eye of a man of established reputation. For some years, Mr. Millar’s time was too much occupied, in collecting materials for his Lectures, to allow him to receive domestic pupils; but, when this part of his labour was nearly completed, he found that, notwithstanding his public duties as a professor, it was in his power to do full justice to such young men as, with the views above alluded to, might be entrusted to his care. To their instruction he devoted a very considerable part of his time; he had much delight in conversing with them on their several studies, in leading them to inquire and to reflect, and, particularly, in encouraging such talents as promised future discoveries in science, or future eminence in the state.<lxvi>

Perhaps nothing contributed so much to the improvement of his pupils, as the art with which he contrived to make them lay aside all timidity in his presence, and speak their sentiments without constraint. While he was thus enabled to judge of their abilities and attainments, he acquired, in addition to the respect due to his talents, that confidence and friendship which ensure the attention of young men, and render the office of a teacher not undelightful. This easy and liberal communication of sentiments extended equally to every subject; to the doctrines taught in his own classes; to criticism; to contested points of History; and to the political struggles of the day. Whatever Mr. Millar’s own opinions were on these subjects, he never wished to impose them on his pupils. In those discussions, which his conversation often introduced, and which, as a most useful exercise to their minds, he was always ready to encourage, he was pleased with ingenious argument, even when he did not adopt the conclusion; and he exposed sophistry, even when exerted in defence of his favourite opinions. In consequence of his own command of temper, he could at once repress any improper warmth that might appear; and, when the debate seemed to lead to unpleasing wrangling, he was always ready, with some whim-<lxvii>sical allusion, to restore good humour, or, by the introduction of some collateral topic, to change the subject of discourse. Wherever he discovered uncommon literary talents, his conversation called them into exertion, his warm applause produced that degree of self-confidence which is almost necessary to excellence, and his good humoured raillery, or serious remonstrances, reclaimed from indolence and deterred from dissipation.

In his domestic intercourse, he encouraged, at times, the detail of the juvenile pursuits and amusements of the young men, both from indulgence to their inclinations, and from a desire of tracing, in such unreserved communications, the temper and dispositions of his pupils; but he instantly repressed all trivial details, and all insignificant or gossiping anecdotes of individuals. Even in doing so, he avoided, as much as possible, every appearance of restraint or severity; and the ease and affability of his manners contributed more, perhaps, than even his talents, to produce that affectionate attachment, with which almost all his pupils were inspired. This attachment he had great pleasure in cultivating, as the most gratifying reward for his labours, and the most effectual control on young men, more apt to be influenced in their behaviour by their affections, than by stern,<lxviii> and what often appears to them, capricious, authority. While under Mr. Millar’s care, all his pupils were treated alike; or rather the differences which might be remarked in his attentions, were the consequence of superior talents or application, never of superior rank. When they left his house, his connection with most of them necessarily ceased. He was always delighted, indeed, to hear of their success or eminence; but his regular occupations rendered it impossible for him to continue an epistolary correspondence; and his proud independence of mind made him rather decline, than cultivate, the friendship of those who succeeded to honours, or rose to power.

Such were his regular and stated occupations, during the winter. For some years after he was settled in Glasgow, he was in the habit of spending great part of the summer with his father at Hamilton; but, as his family increased, this became more inconvenient; and his uncle, ever attentive to his comfort, gave him a small farm near the village of Kilbride, about seven miles from Glasgow.

The farm of Whitemoss consisted of about thirty acres of very indifferent land, lying in a climate no way genial. Such circumstances, however, did not prevent him from feeling all the ardour of an improver. Many a scheme did he devise for rais-<lxix>ing crops, and clothing his fields with verdure; and, though these schemes were never very successful, they were carried on at little expence, served to amuse his leisure, and, to a certain degree, diminished the natural bleakness immediately round his house.

His life at Whitemoss was very uniform; but, occupied with the cultivation of his little farm, interested in his studies, and surrounded by his family, he felt no languor, and desired no variety. He had few neighbours, and visited them very seldom. With Sir William Maxwell of Calderwood,18 to whose lady Mrs. Millar was distantly related, he always lived on terms of friendship; and with Dr. and Mrs. Baillie, on a footing of intimacy. Dr. Baillie,19 after being elected Professor of Divinity, resided, during the summer, at Long Calderwood, about a mile from Whitemoss; and, after his death, his widow and daughters made it their abode for several years. Their society added much to Mr. Millar’s enjoyments and to those of his family; the young people were together almost every day; their time of life and amusements were the same; and the celebrity which Dr. Baillie of London afterwards acquired in his profession, the universal admiration which his sister has secured by her<lxx> Dramatic Compositions, have been sources of the purest pleasure to their early friends.20

In the year 1784, Mr. Millar’s uncle, who had ever been most kind and attentive to him, from unwillingness to prevent improvements of which Milheugh was very capable, but which he was much too old either to direct or even altogether to approve, went to reside with his brother at Hamilton; where he remained till his death, which happened in the following year. The two old men had, during the whole of their lives, been very strongly attached to each other, and had often been heard to wish that the fate of two brothers who had died in Hamilton, within a few days of each other, might also be theirs. In this wish they were not disappointed. The old clergyman, after his brother’s death, became uneasy and restless, but could not be prevented from attending the funeral. Being so near Milheugh, he took a last view of the scenes of his infancy, and, with singular liberality of mind, gave his approbation to alterations which had swept away many objects of his early partiality. The agitation of his mind, the want of sleep, and the heat of the weather overpowered him. By the time he returned to Hamilton, symptoms of an inflammatory fever had appear-<lxxi>ed, and, in a few days, he followed his beloved brother to the grave.

Milheugh possesses many natural beauties. It consists of several small meadows, separated from each other by the Calder, a little stream which winds among them, sometimes skirting, at other times intersecting, the valley. The bushes which fringe the edges of the rivulet, and a number of large trees standing near the house, and shading several of the principal walks, give great richness to the scene, while the steep banks, which rise from each side of the valley, suggest ideas of retirement and seclusion. But, when Mr. Millar came to Milheugh, there was much to alter and improve. He removed many formal hedges, which subdivided the little meadows, or, by stiff unbending lines, marked too distinctly the course of the rivulet. He formed the old orchard into pleasing group of trees around the house; left bushes irregularly scattered on the banks of the stream; and carried plantations along the top of the banks. Every thing throve in this sheltered situation, and Milheugh is now one of the sweetest little retirements that could be desired. Its beauties are elegant and simple, and perhaps it would be difficult to point out any farther embellishments that would accord with the character of the place.<lxxii>

For some time, Mr. Millar’s summers were altogether devoted to his improvements. Every tree that was planted, still more every bush that was cut down, was the subject of many consultations with his family: The direction of a path, the opening up of a new view, or the discovery of a new object in one of his prospects, engrossed the whole of his mind: and, when he could not enjoy these higher pleasures, he watched, with delight, the progress of his young plantations, and enjoyed, by anticipation, the future beauties of his plans. By degrees, as his improvements were completed, Milheugh occupied less of his attention; but it never ceased to interest and delight him. It was endeared to him by no common ties; it had been the scene of his early years, and was now embellished by his mature taste: in one view, it was associated with his most pleasing recollections; in another, it might almost be considered as the production of his own mind.

Mr. Millar’s intercourse with his neighbours was scarcely more frequent at Milheugh, than it had been at Whitemoss. He was, indeed, no way dependent on society; but he was fond of the occasional visits of his acquaintances, and of the variety arising from the addition of a few strangers to the family circle. He was therefore much gratified,<lxxiii> soon after he went to Milheugh, by the establishment, in his near neighbourhood, of Mr. Jardine,* one of his most respected friends, who, induced chiefly by the desire of enjoying his society during the summer, purchased a small estate, not above two miles distant. Their frequent intercourse was to both a source of much enjoyment.

When in the country, Mr. Millar employed a great part of his leisure in perusing such books as his other avocations in winter had prevented him from reading, and in preparing his own works for the press. The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, was written chiefly at Hamilton, and Glasgow; The Historical View of the English Government, altogether at Whitemoss and Milheugh. While carrying on this last work, it very frequently became the subject of conversation in the family, and all the opinions and speculations it contains were freely canvassed. He had long been in the habit of consulting Mrs. Millar with regard to his literary works, and some of his children being, by this time, competent judges of composition, he oc-<lxxiv>casionally read over to his family the most amusing or interesting passages, and listened with much attention to their various criticisms. By this means, besides increasing that mutual confidence which ever subsisted between him and his family, he had the means of detecting any little errors which had escaped his own observation, and he formed the taste, while he improved the judgment of his children.

Of the subjects which Mr. Millar had occasion to discuss in his Lectures on Jurisprudence and Government, none seemed more interesting in themselves, or so capable of being detached from his other disquisitions, as that of the various Ranks which are established in society, the various degrees of authority and power which are distributed among the several members of a community. In so far as such differences of rank and power are founded on fixed and universal relations, they may be traced to four distinct sources. The difference of sex has, in every country, occasioned remarkable differences between the habits, occupations, acquirements, and authority of men and women: The helplessness of infancy, and the habits at that time contracted, have produced a dependence, more or less complete, of children on their parents: Various circumstances have subjected some men to<lxxv> others as servants or slaves: And the wants of society, the necessity of a warlike leader for each tribe, the natural authority of strength, courage, wisdom, and riches, have raised particular members of the community to political power. The three first of these sources of the distinction of Ranks are the foundation of what, in the Civil Law, are called the Rights of Persons, the last is the basis of the rights of Government; consequently they had all been the subjects of inquiry, in the several courses of Lectures delivered by Mr. Millar in the University.

Believing that some account of the origin and progress of those distinctions of Ranks might be generally interesting, Mr. Millar was induced, in 1771, to publish a short treatise on this subject, which was very favourably received. Even to cursory readers, it was calculated to afford amusement, by the various views of human nature which it exhibited, and by the singularity of many of the traits of manners, as well as of national characters and institutions, which it traced to their sources. To the philosopher, it delineated a general but instructive view of the changes consequent on the progress of improvement; accounting, in a satisfactory manner, for the introduction of many of the most singular institutions described in history; and, by the explanation it afforded of the causes of<lxxvi> what has existed, directing his speculations, and giving a reasonable degree of certainty to his conclusions respecting the future destinies of mankind. From its first publication, this work attracted considerable attention, and several successive editions have been called for by the public. It also became known and esteemed on the Continent, through a translation, executed, I believe, by Garat, who afterwards, at a most eventful period of the French Revolution,* was, little to his own honour or the public advantage, appointed Minister of Justice.

The subjects of this publication were part of those which had been treated of in the Lectures on Jurisprudence and Government; but the point of view in which they were considered was, in some respects, different. Mr. Millar, in this treatise, proposed to confine himself altogether to the changes produced on the several relations of society, by the gradual progress of civilization and improvement. He neither intended to give any account of the laws and institutions springing from these relations, except when necessary for illustration, nor to investigate, in a detailed manner, the effects produced upon them by particular systems of Government<lxxvii> or Religion. Thus, in tracing the condition of the female sex, he abstained from a detailed inquiry into the subjects of Marriage and Divorce, and took only a very cursory view of the effects of particular systems of Government or Religion on the condition of women, or of the comparative advantages attending the different degrees of consideration, which, at different periods, they have acquired. All these subjects, he had treated very fully in his Lectures on Jurisprudence; but, in this publication, his object was simply to exhibit a theoretical history of the condition of women, as affected by the gradual progress of refinement, and by that progress alone.

In those chapters which trace the progress of political power, Mr. Millar has bestowed much attention on the Feudal Governments of modern Europe. He has shewn how such institutions naturally arose from the condition of the German tribes, the extent of their conquests, and the reciprocal influence on each other of the manners of the old and new inhabitants; and he has detected many traces of similar institutions in the laws of other countries. This was indeed a very favourite subject with him, and his speculations respecting it were considerably different from those of other writers. They are marked by that simplicity and clearness of view<lxxviii> which characterise all his disquisitions, and they produce that conviction which never fails to attend a system, simple in its construction, consistent in itself, and satisfactory in accounting for a multitude of facts.

Of his opinions respecting the Feudal System, the changes on the state of servants in modern Europe, and the origin of that spirit of chivalry which has still left remarkable traces in modern manners, (subjects which are sketched in a very spirited manner in The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks) Mr. Millar had afterwards occasion to publish many additional illustrations, in his principal work, the Historical View of the English Government.

It has already been mentioned that, in his Lectures on Government, he paid particular attention to the constitution of his own country; tracing it through all its successive changes, and accounting for its several modifications, from the known state of manners, opinions, and property. On this subject, many rash and erroneous speculations have, at different times, been given to the world. Some authors have fondly traced the institutions of Britain to the woods of Germany, flattering the national vanity with the idea that our rude forefathers possessed juster views of Government, more liberal sen-<lxxix>timents, and better digested laws, than can be found among other barbarians.21 The majority of writers, less prone to investigation, have satisfied themselves with ascribing whatever is remarkable in the constitution, to the general wisdom of our ancestors; meaning, if indeed they have had any accurate meaning, that it arose from such views of remote utility, as may be sufficiently obvious to us, but never have had any very perceptible influence on the public measures of an early age. Several authors, among whom is Mr. Hume, have conceived that, at the Norman Conquest, all traces of former liberty were abolished, and an absolute government established, on which various encroachments have successively been made, when the weakness of the monarch, or the embarrassment of public affairs, afforded a favourable opportunity, to the turbulence of the Barons, or seditions of the people. Such being the favourite creed of the Tories, it was encountered with more ardour than acuteness by the Whigs, who pretended that, at a time when vassals held their lands chiefly during the pleasure of their superiors, and the inhabitants of towns were universally slaves, the present fabric of our constitution was completed, and a fair representation of the Commons in Parliament fully established.<lxxx>

Mr. Millar saw that a connected view of the changes which have taken place in the English Government would completely overthrow such opinions, from which many dangerous inferences have often been drawn: and, besides being in this view highly important, he conceived that a detail of the various steps by which a constitution, uniting the advantages of monarchy to those of popular government, has gradually been brought to its present form, (steps, in many instances, productive of consequences very different from the considerations of temporary convenience in which they originated) could not fail to afford a most interesting and improving object of research. Animated by such expectations, he devoted the leisure of his summers to the arranging and extending of this branch of his Lectures, and, in 1787, he gave to the world The Historical View of the English Government, from the settlement of the Saxons in Britain, to the accession of the house of Stewart. This work, containing much inquiry into the remote periods of our Government, and many disquisitions which it demands some effort of attention fully to understand, could not be of a very popular nature: but it has been justly appreciated by those who were fitted, by their habits and previous studies, to take an interest in such researches, and, consider-<lxxxi>ing the nature of the subjects of which it treats, its having already reached a third edition is no slight proof of public approbation.

It is by no means my intention to attempt any analysis of the Historical View; nor, indeed, is it possible, by an analysis, to do justice to a work in which every opinion is already stated with all the conciseness consistent with perspicuity. To detach any one speculation from the rest, to sketch the progress of the kingly power, of the privileges of parliament, of the judicial establishments, or of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, separately from each other, would be to deprive the whole of that evidence, (perhaps the most convincing to a philosopher), which results from the congruity of all its parts, from the connection of the several institutions with each other, and the dependence of the whole on the real and ascertained improvement in the condition of the people.

Indeed Mr. Millar is frequently obliged to rest the truth of his opinions on this internal proof. Ascending to a period of which the records are scanty, and disfigured with fable, he often, without reference to such uncertain authority, produces a conviction, stronger perhaps than can ever be derived from the testimony of an individual, always liable to be deceived. His argument, founded on<lxxxii> unconnected circumstances all tending to one effect; his successive positions, derived from the acknowledged condition of the several ranks of inhabitants, flowing naturally from the state of manners and property, and leading, by easy transition, to what we know was afterwards established; his frequent illustrations, by reference to similar institutions existing in other countries, and by a distinct enumeration of circumstances in some nations leading to opposite results: His disquisitions, so conducted, produce a confidence in his conclusions, to which the authority of rude and careless annalists can have no pretension.

Institutions familiar to early historians seldom appear to them objects of curiosity or research. Occupied in giving a bare narration of events, which have passed in their own times, or have been handed down by tradition, they may occasionally notice some existing institutions; but, with regard to their origin, the time of their introduction, or the successive steps which led to their improvement, they are usually extremely ignorant. Such objects of inquiry seem to them of no importance; what is familiar excites no curiosity; what has existed during the whole life of the author may have existed for ever. Long before the importance of any particular change in the manners, state of property,<lxxxiii> or government becomes apparent, the circumstances from which it arose are usually effaced; the want of information is supplied by the invention of some puerile story; or the fame of a particular prince, or the wisdom of our ancestors, are referred to as a satisfactory solution of all difficulties and doubts. Such vague accounts of the origin and progress of the most important Institutions, at first brought forward without authority, are afterwards repeated without examination, and are too frequently considered as the well authenticated facts of history.

From such authorities, Mr. Millar could derive little assistance. There was seldom any controversy respecting the existence of particular institutions, and it was in vain to seek, from such writers, any accurate information of their nature, or of the gradual and unobserved steps which led to their establishment. Nothing, indeed, could have been easier, than to have crowded his margin with references; but this show of erudition must have been altogether illusive, and such affectation he regarded with contempt. Where his opinion could derive real support from a reference, or quotation, he did not disregard it: where it could not, he never presumed on the ignorance or carelessness of his reader, but rested his doctrine, openly and fairly, on its intrinsic evidence. Yet, so much are we now accustomed to the cita-<lxxxiv>tion of numerous authorities even for what no man ever doubted, that, very possibly, Mr. Millar paid too little regard to the prevailing taste of antiquarians, and deprived his work too much of that kind of support, on which they are accustomed, almost exclusively, to depend.

It has been often remarked that the style of Mr. Millar’s writings is very different from what the vivacity of his conversation, and the copious diction of his extemporary eloquence, gave reason to expect. When he sat down to compose, he seems to have discarded every idea not strictly connected with the subject of his inquiry, and to have guarded, with a vigilance very unfavourable to the lighter graces of composition, against all equivocal expressions, or fanciful allusions. His language, as has been well observed by one of his friends,* is the expression rather than the ornament of his thoughts. Clear, accurate, precise, it never fails to convey his ideas with a distinctness which precludes all misapprehension; but frequently it conveys them in a manner, neither the most striking, nor the most alluring, to the reader. The structure of his sentences is always extremely simple. Following the most obvious arrangement, and avoiding all such inversions, as, though delighting the ear, might occasion<lxxxv> some risk of mistake in the sense, he produces a degree of monotony in his pauses, and gives a severity, sometimes repulsive, to his writings. These were circumstances which Mr. Millar was accustomed to disregard. His object was to convey clear and accurate ideas; and that object he so fully accomplished, that perhaps it would be impossible to find a sentence in his book, which can require a second perusal to be distinctly understood.

Similar views seem to have restrained him from employing those figurative expressions and fanciful allusions, which an imagination such as his could not fail to suggest. Simple correctness and accuracy are so much the characteristics of his style, that, even when he rises from plain narration to warmth and energy, (and there are many such passages in his writings), the force is always in the principal idea, seldom in the accessories. Not unfrequently, we meet with a strong conception distinctly expressed, and affecting the reader by its native energy; seldom with a collection of associated ideas and sentiments hurrying on the mind by their accumulated force.

It can scarcely be doubted that this steady rejection of metaphor and allusion, as well as the particular construction of his period, was adopted, after due consideration, as the style best suited to a<lxxxvi> didactic subject. No man had more command of his ideas; none could combine them more readily, where his purpose was to address the imagination: But, in establishing a great and comprehensive system, he was anxious that the mind should not be diverted from the full consideration of all its parts, and of their several relations and dependencies. Perhaps he did not sufficiently consider, that many readers can be engaged in such disquisitions, only by the charms of style, and that, to those unaccustomed to severe investigation, some relief is necessary from continued exertion; some relaxation is required, that they may afterwards proceed with renovated ardour. By a person already interested in such inquiries, Mr. Millar’s style may probably be preferred to one of greater variety and embellishment; but it may be doubted how far it is calculated to excite such interest, where it does not previously exist.

The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, and the Historical View of the English Government, are the only works to which Mr. Millar prefixed his name. Nor do I find that he published any other Tracts, except one or two anonymous pamphlets, on such political questions as he thought important to the public welfare, and a few articles in the Analytical Review. These Tracts I shall not par-<lxxxvii>ticularize, because what he never acknowledged, even to his acquaintances, I do not feel myself at liberty to divulge. The plan adopted in the Analytical Review, at its first establishment, was to give such an abstract of the different publications as might enable its readers to judge of their matter, and to insert such extracts as might give some idea of their style.22 Mr. Millar, in the articles which he wrote, adhered very rigidly to this plan, stating, as shortly as possible, any observations that seemed necessary on the merits of the publications, and introducing very sparingly his own particular opinions. To review in this manner obviously requires a very accurate study of the several books; more study than is always convenient for Reviewers; and therefore it was gradually laid aside for that careless and rash Criticism, which are so conspicuous in most other publications of the same nature. No sooner did this change of system appear, than Mr. Millar thought it advisable to withdraw his assistance.

Mr. Millar, notwithstanding all these occupations, still found time for limited practice as a lawyer, a profession which he had not altogether abandoned, in undertaking the duties of a Public Teacher. He was very frequently consulted, as Counsel, previously to the commencement of a law suit, or<lxxxviii> when any difficulty occurred in conveyancing; and the time he could spare from his other employments was occupied in determining causes referred to his arbitration. The delay and expence of law-suits, partly unavoidable in a commercial country, but partly also owing to the constitution of the Court of Session, has rendered it extremely common for parties, when both are convinced of the justice of their claims, to refer their disputes to private arbitration. For the office of Arbiter, Mr. Millar was singularly qualified. While, from his residence in a mercantile town, he could easily be informed of the usages of merchants, he was led, by his professional habits, to pay that attention to strict law, which is requisite to substantial justice, in a country where all agreements are entered into with the knowledge that they may become the subject of legal interpretation. His natural acuteness, too, led him to seize very readily the important circumstances of a case, and to detach them from such collateral topics, as might have bewildered the judgment, and certainly must have protracted the investigation. His decisions were consequently prompt, but they never were inconsiderate. As the surest guard against error, he was in the habit, before pronouncing his awards, of submitting his opinion, with a short statement of<lxxxix> the principles on which it rested, to the parties; and, not unfrequently, these statements were drawn up in a manner so clear and satisfactory, as to convince even the party against whose claims he intended to decide.

At the circuits, Mr. Millar was in the habit, for many years, of appearing as counsel for those unfortunate men who are brought to the bar to answer for their crimes. Thinking, with other philosophers, that the criminal laws of this country are, in many instances, unnecessarily and unjustly severe, he entered with warmth into the defence of those who, however profligate in their morals, were in danger of being subjected to punishments more than adequate to their offences. In the examination of witnesses, he showed uncommon skill and penetration; and his addresses to the Juries,* besides containing a most acute and severe examination of such part of the evidence as seemed unfavourable to the prisoner, exhibited a clear view of whatever tended to establish his innocence, and, not unfrequently, were terminated by a most powerful appeal to the feelings of his audience. Before I was old enough to attend to criminal<xc> trials, Mr. Millar had declined appearing at the Circuits, that he might not deprive younger lawyers of an opportunity of displaying their talents; but I have been assured by many gentlemen, on whose opinions I can rely, that his addresses to the Jury were very brilliant and successful exertions of forensic eloquence.

Fully occupied, in the winter, with the duties of his office, and engaged, during the summer, in improving his Lectures, or preparing his works for the press, Mr. Millar went seldom from home: sometimes, however, he made a short excursion to different parts of Scotland, or the north of England, occasionally he passed a few days with his friends in Edinburgh, and, for several summers, he paid an annual visit to his favourite pupil, Lord Maitland, now the Earl of Lauderdale. With none of his pupils did Mr. Millar continue on a footing of so much intimacy and friendship as with Lord Lauderdale; and it is to their frequent and unreserved communication of sentiment, that a similarity, observable between their opinions of the nature of the profit of stock, may be ascribed.* Which of them first suggested this ingenious idea, it would probably have been difficult, even for<xci> themselves, to determine: it is likely to have occurred in some of their conversations on political oeconomy, and, having been afterwards developed and improved by both, it naturally conducted them to similar results.

Mr. Millar paid two visits to London; the first was in 1774. Having remained in the capital about two months, and having seen the principal objects of curiosity, he made a short excursion to Cambridge, and stopped for three weeks at Oxford, on his return; partly with the view of making himself acquainted with the present state of these celebrated Universities, and partly for the purpose of consulting several authors on the early history of Modern Europe, whose works he had not an opportunity of perusing at home.

His second visit to London he made in 1792, accompanied by Mrs. Millar and his eldest daughter. Having set off in the beginning of May, immediately after the conclusion of his Lectures, he arrived in London in sufficient time to be present at several very important debates, in both houses of Parliament, and he enjoyed the satisfaction of becoming acquainted with Mr. Fox and the other leaders of opposition, whose talents he admired, whose steady patriotism, unshaken by obloquy, and superior to popular cen-<xcii>sure or applause, was the object of his highest veneration. The chief part of his time, however, that from which he probably derived the greatest enjoyment, was passed in the society of his former pupils, Lord Lauderdale, and Mr. Adam, now one of the King’s Counsel, and Attorney General to the Prince of Wales, and in the family of his old friend, Dr. Moore, the celebrated author of Zeluco and Edward.23

The greatest intimacy had subsisted between Dr. Moore and Mr. Millar, from the time they were young men; an intimacy which had been farther promoted by their marrying ladies who were companions and friends. While Dr. Moore was on the continent, with the Duke of Hamilton, engaged in those travels, with an account of which he afterwards delighted the world, Mrs. Moore was a frequent visiter at the college, and Mr. Millar took a general superintendence of the education of her sons. During the short stay the Doctor made in Glasgow, after his return, he spent a great deal of his time with Mr. Millar, and, on his going to reside in London, they began a correspondence, some part of which might not have been uninteresting to the public, had they thought it proper to preserve letters written merely for each other’s<xciii> perusal.* Their talents were calculated to produce mutual esteem, and their powers of conversation to contribute very highly to each other’s amusement.

Mr. Millar had the art, in a most uncommon degree, of adapting his conversation to those around him. Even to children, he could make himself a most amusing companion; and no young person ever left his company without being charmed with his vivacity. His countenance was uncommonly animated and expressive; his stature about the middle size; his person strong, active, and athletic, rather than elegant. When he first entered a room, his manner was not altogether free from formality and constraint; but this continued only for a moment. The first subject that was started kindled animation in his eye, and seemed entirely to engross his mind. Never did he show the slightest absence, nor allow any carelessness, or contemptuous indif-<xciv>ference, to escape him. Never, indeed, did he feel that languor from which they most commonly proceed. However trifling the subject might be, he was always lively and animated; his constant flow of spirits enabled him to extract some amusement from every topic, and every character; and his repartees, though not rising to that high species of wit, which can delight on repetition, flowed so naturally from the conversation, and were accompanied with so much gaiety, playfulness, and good humour, that, perhaps, no company ever was dull or languid in his presence.

His conversation was equally agreeable to those who preferred subjects of a graver or more improving kind. His information reached to almost every subject which was likely to occur in conversation. He was completely master of whatever had been written on the sciences connected with the study of mind, and had added many new opinions and combinations to the discoveries of others. The whole range of history was familiar to him, and there was little in the manners or customs of any nation, which he could not state with accuracy, and account for with surprising quickness and ingenuity. Nor was he ignorant of the physical sciences, although his knowledge of them rather embraced the different theories by which the facts are<xcv> explained, than showed any very intimate acquaintance with the facts themselves. To the task of minute observation, or the drudgery of accurate experiment, he could not submit: but, wherever there was an appearance of system, his attention was roused so fully, that, for a time, it almost engrossed his mind. It was thus, that, after Lavoisier24 published his astonishing experiments, and no less astonishing system built on these experiments, Mr. Millar, for a whole winter, thought of nothing but chemistry; and so great was his veneration for that philosopher, that no circumstance in the French Revolution struck him with so much horror, as the murder of the man whom he considered as the brightest ornament of the age.

In Literature and Belles Lettres, perhaps the most delightful of all subjects for conversation, Mr. Millar was completely conversant. In his youth, he had read all the classics with such pleasure and discrimination, that, although his line of study was afterwards extremely different, he could always refer to the most impressive passages, and discuss, with much intelligence, their relative beauties and defects. His acquaintance with English Poetry was also very general, though his taste might be considered as somewhat fastidious. Mediocrity, in every thing, but particularly in verse, he was<xcvi> accustomed to treat with marked contempt; and the frequent recurrence of such expressions in his conversation, joined to the ridicule with which, in a sportive humour, he sometimes treated even compositions of considerable merit, gave those not intimately acquainted with him, an idea that he had little relish for poetry. Perhaps the severity in which he indulged rather arose from a taste too delicate and refined. Seldom have I known any person more alive to the higher kinds of poetry; to those striking and sublime allusions, that rich and varied imagery, that loftiness of thought, and dignity of expression, which delight the imagination and elevate the mind. Nor did he confine his admiration to poets of the highest order; to Milton, Akenside, and Gray: He was highly delighted with the fancy, the elegance, and varied talents of Pope, the natural and impressive descriptions of Thomson, and that charming blending of melancholy with ideas of pleasure, which a great critic has failed to discover, in the little poems of Prior.* He was also well acquainted with the best French<xcvii> and Italian Poets; but, while he was obliged to admit the more refined eloquence, and superior conduct of the French Drama, he always contended for the superiority of the English, in delineating the simple and genuine feelings of the human heart, and in using a measure of versification which is at once capable of approaching the looseness and facility of prose, and of being adapted to the expression of exalted and heroic sentiment.

Nor was Mr. Millar averse to argument; or to the display of his ingenuity in supporting paradoxes, often the children of the moment. He was indeed so complete a master of debate, that it was unsafe to attack him, even when he occupied most disadvantageous ground. Ever acute and collected, he was apt, by slight sarcasms, to put his antagonist off his guard, and to surprise him by unexpected inferences from whatever was unadvisedly admitted. He overpowered his opponent by innumerable analogies, drawn from the most remote quarters, and presented in the most forcible points of view. He covered, with infinite art, the weaker parts of his own argument, and exposed, with much ingenuity, any mistakes or fallacies by which he was assailed. When fairly driven from all his positions, he often became most formidable: seiz-<xcviii>ing some unguarded expression, or some unfortunate illustration, he held it up to ridicule, with a degree of vivacity and humour, which carried off the attention from the previous subject of debate, and secured him the honours of a triumph, when he had really suffered a defeat. On the subject of Politics he argued always with zeal; and, towards the end of his life, with a considerable degree of keenness. He, who had refused the offer of a lucrative place, which might have introduced him to higher honours, because he feared that his acceptance might be construed into an engagement to support an administration whose measures he condemned,* had little allowance to make for those who sacrificed their principles to their interest. Ever steady and consistent himself, he was apt to suspect the purity of the motives from which all violent or sudden changes in political opinion arose; without perhaps making a due degree of allowance for that alarm, which, however hurtful in its consequences, was the natural result of the blind fanaticism of several popular societies. On a subject, too, which he had studied with the utmost care, he naturally, might be rather impatient<xcix> of ignorant and presumptuous contradiction; nor could his mind brook the imputations, which, at a season of political intolerance, were so liberally passed on all the opposers of Ministerial power. Arguing, frequently, under considerable irritation of mind, perhaps unavoidable in his particular circumstances, it is not impossible that expressions may have escaped him which might afford room for mistake, or misrepresentation; and, on this account, it is but justice to his memory, to give an impartial detail of his real opinions and political conduct.

Occupied in the examination of different systems of Government, and in tracing their several effects on the morals, prosperity, and happiness of nations, it was scarcely possible that Mr. Millar should not take a lively interest in the political transactions of his own country, and of his own times. Even a general view of history is sufficient to prove the intimate connection between liberty and the improvement of man. Wherever the laws are dictated by the will of a few, wherever they can be altered or modified according to the caprice or<c> convenience of the rulers; there we shall find them ill digested and worse administered; there we shall find the people borne down by insolence, dispirited by oppression, indolent, ignorant, and profligate. On the other hand, the never failing results of free government are that justice in the laws, that fairness in their execution, which, by giving every man a certainty of enjoying the full produce of his labour, incite to industry and exertion, the only secure foundations of general prosperity and happiness. It is thus, that the particular distribution of Political Privileges exerts its powerful influence on the civil rights enjoyed by the inhabitants, on their morals, and their general welfare.

Political power, indeed, ought not to be distributed, in the same manner in all nations. Where the people are extremely ignorant and debased, from whatever circumstances this may have proceeded, it is obviously for their own advantage, that they should be excluded from all share in the government, and directed, even at the risk of being occasionally oppressed, by those of higher rank and more liberal education. But, as a nation improves in knowledge, as the manners become more civilized, as industry produces a more obvious interest in the peace and good order of the state,<ci> there comes to be not only less inconvenience, but the most important public advantage, in a more wide diffusion of political power.

Unhappily, the history of mankind very seldom displays this gradual and beneficial progress towards liberty. There seems a constant and incorrigible tendency in governors of all descriptions to extend their own powers, and abridge those of the people. This desire, which usually springs from the most despicable personal motives, may sometimes arise even from virtuous feelings, from an honest conviction of the beneficial tendency of many measures liable to be thwarted by public ignorance or private interests.* To whichever source we may be disposed to ascribe the spirit of encroachment, the whole history of mankind will prove that it never for an instant is asleep; that even when veiled under apparent moderation, it watches the most favourable opportunity; and that its prevalence is, either immediately or more remotely, destructive of patriotism, and of the prosperity of the state. A strong view of this almost universal tendency of<cii> government, and of the calamities inseparable from the loss of freedom, rendered Mr. Millar a strenuous opposer of the power of the Crown, whether in the undisguised shape of prerogative, or the more insidious, and perhaps more dangerous, form of secret influence.

He, accordingly, attached himself zealously to the party of the Whigs; and, in particular, to that branch of the Whigs, who acknowledged the Marquis of Rockingham, and afterwards Mr. Fox, as their leaders.25 From the opinions of these illustrious statesmen, he seldom had occasion to dissent; and, even when he could not altogether approve of their measures, he was led to acquiesce in their decisions, by his great deference for their authority, his full confidence in their uprightness, and, above all, his steady conviction, that no effectual barrier could be raised against the increasing influence of the Crown, without a regular and vigorous co-operation of all who agreed in the general principles of their political conduct. The necessity of a union of talents and rank, to limit the growing influence of the Court, might be considered as the leading article of Mr. Millar’s political creed; and it was only when he found this combination entirely broken by recent events, that he became fully convinced of the necessity of henceforward founding<ciii> National Liberty on a much more general diffusion of political power.

He has himself stated the grounds of his conviction, “That the power of the Crown has, since the Revolution, made the most rapid and alarming advances.” He has, distinctly and fairly, enumerated the various sources of a most extensive influence; and he has justly remarked, that such an influence “is apt to be the greater, as it operates upon the manners and habits of a mercantile people: a people engrossed by lucrative trades and professions, whose great object is gain, and whose ruling principle is avarice.”* Even to such elevated rank as might be thought most likely to exclude the operation of this mercantile spirit, the national character must always, in some measure, extend; and it is too obvious to be denied, that the general luxury of the times has introduced such a degree of extravagance, that the expences, even of the most opulent families, are apt to exceed their incomes, and to render ministerial dependence their only resource against what to them is really indigence. In such circumstances, he almost despaired of again witnessing so great a co-operation of leading families, of patriotism, and<civ> of talents, as might effectually check that increasing influence which seemed firmly erected on the immense patronage of the Minister, and the present manners and character of the nation. A change of circumstances implied a change in the mode of resisting the progress of power; and, no longer expecting to find this important object accomplished by the great families of England, Mr. Millar was led to consider more attentively the condition of the people.

Here he found some grounds for reasonable hope. The diffusion of riches has produced a general spirit of independence, and a very wide diffusion of knowledge. The simpler principles of politics, and even of political economy, are more universally studied, more frequently the ordinary topics of conversation, than at any former period; and it may safely be asserted, that the great majority of the middling ranks have now much more information, on such subjects, than was enjoyed by the highest orders of the community, before the Revolution. The great body of the nation, those who may justly be styled the People, attentive to the conduct of public men, and capable of estimating public measures, might now be entrusted with the power of choosing Representatives, without much risk of their choice being very inconsiderate,<cv> and without much disadvantage resulting from occasional errors or delusions affecting the public opinion. But, whenever such an extension of the elective suffrage has become safe, it must, of necessity, be highly beneficial. It prevents the enactment of laws favourable to private views or private interests; it gives the people a new motive of attachment to their country, a new incitement to virtuous and patriotic exertion; and, if any barrier can be effectual against the tide of corruption, it must be found in a body so large as to be independent of Court favour, and in some degree exempt from secret intrigue. At all times had Mr. Millar viewed the inequality of Representation as a defect in the Government; but, while there was a powerful union of great families to repress encroachment, he had considered it rather as a blemish, than a very important practical evil. Now, when all appearance of effective control has vanished before the luxury of the age, and the immense revenue and patronage of the Crown, he thought it essential to the existence of freedom that such a reform should take place, as might interest the great body of the people in public measures, and enable them, in a constitutional manner, to withstand the encroachment of the Executive Power.<cvi>

But, while he became more and more favourable to a wider extension of the elective franchise, Mr. Millar was ever decidedly hostile to the system of universal suffrage, conceiving it altogether impossible that the lowest of the people can ever be independent in their circumstances, or so enlightened as to prefer the public good to their immediate pecuniary interest. Universal suffrage, far from raising an effectual barrier against the influence of the Crown, could only, he thought, spread wider the evils of corruption, and more completely annihilate the control of the wiser part of the nation. It would, in ordinary cases, confirm the dominion of the Minister, whose means of corruption are almost inexhaustible; sometimes it might occasion disorderly tumult, or enable the poor to dictate laws equally unjust and destructive; never, in his opinion, could it tend to just equality of rights, or vindicate the cause of rational liberty.

Even a just and prudent reform of Parliament seemed to Mr. Millar no adequate defence, in itself, against an influence founded on so immense a revenue as that of Britain: But he trusted in the intelligence and virtue of a House of Commons, freely chosen by the people, for the adoption of other measures, imperiously demanded by every consideration of policy and justice. Of this nature he<cvii> deemed the abolition of all sinecure places, the diminution of the national expenditure, and the strict appropriation of the revenue to the several heads of the public service. He also considered it as most important, that the appointment to all offices, wherever such a regulation was consistent with the nature of the duty, should be vested in the freeholders of the several counties, or in some description of persons altogether unconnected with Administration. By such changes he hoped that the influence of the Crown might be checked, and the approach of what Mr. Hume has denominated the true Euthanasia of the British Constitution at least retarded.*

Mr. Millar’s opinions and conduct, respecting the principal events of the present reign, were in strict conformity to these principles. He openly disapproved of the attempt to tax America, as equally unjust and impolitic; and, when that country, by a series of ill digested measures was driven to the declaration of Independence, he explicitly avowed his wishes for a total separation, rather than a conquest. In the one, there was undoubtedly a humiliation of Great Britain, and some diminution of her power; though, as he suspected, and as the<cviii> event has shewn, none of her commerce: But the subjugation of America would have been the triumph of injustice, and was likely, by increasing the ministerial influence, and putting under the command of the crown a large army accustomed to act against the people, to be as fatal to the liberties of the conquerors, as to those of the conquered. In a town, such as Glasgow, depending wholly, at that time, on the American trade, it will easily be believed that those opinions were extremely unpopular, though now their truth is very generally admitted.

The much lamented death of the Marquis of Rockingham blasted the hopes raised by the dissolution of Lord North’s administration, and the triumph of the Coalition over a party, composed of the friends of Prerogative joined to some of those who had formerly supported the rights of the People, was incomplete and transient. Of the Coalition between Lord North and Mr. Fox, many defences have been made, not only as natural, when the grounds of their former differences no longer existed, but also as necessary, on the part of the Whigs, to prevent that uncontrollable influence which must have arisen from a coalition between Lord North and Lord Shelburne.26 Mr. Millar entered warmly into all these views, but the event<cix> has shown, that the nation considered it as a measure, by which principle was sacrificed to the love of power; and, however erroneous this opinion may be, its consequences have been very fatal to the cause of Liberty.

Soon after this occurred the important struggle between the Crown and the House of Commons, in 1784, which, terminating in the triumph of the former, gave, in Mr. Millar’s opinion, a fatal blow to the British Constitution. The right of the king to avail himself of his negative against any bill, which has passed through both Houses of Parliament, cannot be contested, though that negative seems nearly to have fallen into disuse; but in this case, it was almost admitted that an indirect interposition took place at a more early stage of Mr. Fox’s India Bill, and such an interposition has always been considered as highly illegal. Soon, however, a still more important question occurred. The House of Commons petitioned for the removal of Ministers; and his majesty was advised not only to refuse their desire, but to dissolve Parliament, for the avowed purpose of acquiring a majority in a new House of Commons. Mr. Millar did not deny that, according to the letter of the Constitution, such prerogatives are vested in the crown; but he contended for its being essential to all idea<cx> of free Government, that the Representatives of the people should have an effective control over the appointment of Ministers; and he maintained that the circumstances of England and of Europe, have rendered the old constitutional checks, by the withholding of the supplies, or the reduction of the army, altogether inapplicable. He held it to be the duty of the king to exercise all his prerogatives for the good of his people, and according to the advice of his Parliament: He, in an especial manner, considered it as important that he should act by such advice, in dismissing Ministers who had rendered themselves obnoxious or suspected, and he viewed a dissolution on account of a petition for the removal of Ministers, as an attempt not only to evade all practicable control, but to influence and overawe future Parliaments. He observed, that, if all the Prerogatives of the Crown are to be exercised in their full extent, after so great an influence, quite unknown at the Revolution, has been created, then has the Government of this country undergone a most material alteration; and he considered a threat of Dissolution as likely, in future, to establish a most pernicious influence over the members of the House of Commons, whose returns have usually been procured with much trouble and at great expence.<cxi>

But however highly Mr. Millar valued Civil Liberty, he considered Personal Freedom as infinitely more important; and had Mr. Pitt vigorously prosecuted the abolition of the Slave Trade, he might have been brought to overlook the mode in which his power was acquired, in consideration of its beneficial exertion. Domestic slavery he viewed as equally unjust and impolitic; as ruinous to the morals both of the masters and of the slaves; and as detrimental even to that industry, and that accumulation of riches, for which alone it is avowedly continued. Without pretending that West India planters are more cruel than others would be in their situation, he contended that absolute power is ever liable to abuse; that the habitual indulgence of every passion must engender cruelty; and that, where there is no restraint, there must frequently be vexatious caprice. The nominal interference of laws executed by the masters, in the very few cases capable of proof, must of necessity, be but a small and rare palliation of the evil.* But the abolition of the Slave Trade would have recommended humanity by the powerful motive of interest; and such are the laws of the Universe, that to assert the impossibility of keeping up the stock of slaves<cxii> without importation, is fully to acknowledge the misery of their condition, and to establish, in a manner more convincing than a thousand facts, the cruelty and oppression of their Masters. Mr. Millar accordingly took a most active part in favour of the abolition of the Slave Trade, by attending all the meetings held at Glasgow for that purpose, by drawing up the Petition to the House of Commons, and using every exertion to interest his Towns-men in the cause of humanity and justice.

The French Revolution, from its first appearance, rivetted Mr. Millar’s attention, and, in its early progress excited his fondest hopes. Doubtful, at first, of France being in a condition effectually to oppose the will of the king, and the joint power of the nobility and the church, he feared that the splendid attempt might end in the ruin of the friends of liberty, and the aggravation of the public wrongs. But Mr. Millar was not of a temper to despond after the will of the nation was distinctly pronounced; and, though he lamented, and sometimes ridiculed the precipitation with which the Constituent Assembly swept away all former institutions, he admitted that this, in some instances, might be unavoidable from the inveteracy of abuses, or useful in supporting the enthusiasm of the peo-<cxiii>ple. The confiscation of Church property, without an equivalent provision for the present incumbents, he never failed to reprobate, as an act of flagrant injustice; nor could he be brought to excuse the Assembly for rashly and presumptuously abolishing all those distinctions of ranks to which the people had been habituated, and by the influence of which they might have been restrained from many excesses. It was only in smaller deviations from rectitude, and in less hazardous experiments, that he thought allowance should be made for the inexperience of unpractised legislators, and the impatience of a nation new to liberty.

Similar considerations diminished his apprehensions from the few, and not very sanguinary, tumults, which occurred in the more early stages of the Revolution. No man could deplore such excesses more than Mr. Millar; none could be more convinced of their tendency to excite terror, and diffuse general misery; none could be more fully aware of the odium they must bring on the cause of freedom over the whole of Europe, and of their powerful influence in supporting ancient abuses: But, while he abhorred all instances of popular rage or revenge, he knew that, in so unexampled a change from slavery to freedom, some excesses<cxiv> were unavoidable; and in the temporary commotions which took place, he was more frequently struck with the generous patriotism of the people, than surprised at the occasional acts of cruelty, into which they were betrayed. When a nation, depraved by previous servitude, rises to assert privileges long trodden under foot, it were vain to expect regularity of proceedings, or even constant justice of intention: Yet for a considerable time, the conduct of the Assembly and that of the nation, with occasional exceptions, was firm, resolute, and temperate.

The spirit of freedom seemed to be aroused in this country, by the force of example, and, as might be expected, it was, by some, carried to the most extravagant lengths. Mr. Millar, who had always considered government as instituted for the good of the people, and who had been accustomed to examine all political institutions by this criterion alone, treated with the utmost contempt all assertion of metaphysical Rights, inconsistent with practical utility: But, while he ridiculed the idea of imprescriptible, indefeasible, right in the people, to conduct the affairs of Government, he was aware that the doctrines then afloat were of a popular nature, and he thought the best and only solid refutation of them, was such a reform of par-<cxv>liament, as, in itself highly desirable, had now become almost necessary, to rally the great body of the nation around the constitution. Actuated by such motives, he became a zealous member of the society of the Friends of the People, and, with those great characters whom he venerated, willingly exposed himself to obloquy in performing what he considered as an important duty to his country.

The inconsiderate violence of the Republicans of France, on the one hand, and the obvious determination of the Court, on the other, to obey the forms and evade the spirit of the new constitution, soon hurled the benevolent, but misguided, Monarch from his throne, and exposed the country to the most imminent danger of subjugation by a foreign power. Feeling every respect for the motives and characters of the Brissotine party, Mr. Millar regretted deeply that want of energy, of combination, and of resource, which unfitted them to contend either with their foreign or domestic foes. He was no way surprised to see the people, jealous after having been repeatedly betrayed, when struggling for the existence of their country, at last throw themselves into the arms of a faction, odious from its ferocity, but, able, prompt, and energetic. No person could lament more sincerely the disgusting and atrocious scenes which marked<cxvi> the administration of Robespierre in characters of blood; but his horror for such atrocities was always accompanied with the most lively indignation at that combination of the Princes of Europe, to which alone he ascribed the continental war, the destruction of the Brissotines, and the acquiescence of the nation in a system, which, however horrible in itself, was represented as the only means of opposing the dismemberment, or total conquest, of the state.

The imbecility and rapacity of the Directory excited the most sovereign contempt;27 and Mr. Millar, though he was far from approving of the means by which Buonaparte rose to supreme power, and still farther from approving of the constitution he established, acknowledged that this new revolution had been rendered almost unavoidable by previous misconduct, and trusted to the melioration of the Government, at the period of a general peace.

Before this event took place, Mr. Millar was no more. Had he lived to witness the servility of France, under the present system, he would have been grieved by so melancholy an illustration of his own remark. “Even in countries,” says he, “where the people have made vigorous efforts to meliorate their government, how often has the collision of parties, the opposite attractions of public and private interest, the fermentation of numberless discordant ele-<cxvii>ments, produced nothing at last, but a residue of despotism.”* But Mr. Millar’s sanguine disposition, even under all these disappointments, would have found reason still to hope for a final result less fatal to the future destinies of man. He would have remembered that England, after a noble and successful struggle against regal tyranny, sunk for a time under the arts of a hypocrite, the corruption of a profligate, and the sanguinary violence of a bigot: but that she roused herself at last, shook off her fetters, and established a constitution which has been the admiration of the world. So would he have expected France to rise from her depression, when the minds of men, no longer appalled by recent horrors, should return to reason, and again feel the salutary influences of patriotism and hope.

It must be sufficiently obvious that, to a man of Mr. Millar’s way of thinking, the whole conduct of the British Ministry towards France must have appeared highly reprehensible. Having seen them remain quiet spectators, and even refuse their mediation, when that country was threatened with subjugation, he could not easily credit that solicitude which they afterwards expressed for the ba-<cxviii>lance of power: Finding that Holland made no requisition for our protection, and recollecting that the same Ministers had taken no steps whatever, when the Emperor, some years before, had threatened to open the Scheldt by force, he could scarcely ascribe their interference at this juncture to a pure love of justice, or a scrupulous adherence to treaties: Being well convinced that their real intention was to force a Monarchical Government on France, he paid little regard to the abhorrence they expressed at that decree of the Convention, which, until explained, and restricted, threatened the most unjustifiable interference in the internal policy of independent states. Looking on all these as mere pretences, he was well convinced that the war originated in a determination to prevent the reforms meditated at home, to re-establish the ancient despotism in France, and to rivet the fetters of the rest of Europe. He rejoiced that the defeat of a combination, formed on such principles, though for the present unfavourable to the balance of power, rendered abortive the project of shackling, by open force, the spirit of Freedom, and cramping for ever the improvement of man: and he deeply lamented that the atrocities of the French insured complete success to one of the objects of the war,<cxix> by checking the progress of reform in Britain, and injuring the cause of liberty over the world.

So soon after the awful events to which we have been witnesses, it would be presumptuous to say that Mr. Millar’s views on this subject were always wise; that he never was deceived by his own passions, nor hurried away by those of others. In considering a situation of affairs, so new, so interesting, and so complicated, he might, occasionally, be misled by hasty or partial views, his hopes might be excited by his wishes, and his expectations might often be disappointed by the event. In the heat of debate, too, he might sometimes be hurried into assertions or illustrations, which his cooler judgment would have disowned; and, at a time when political rancour rose to an unexampled height, it is no way surprising, that the open and manly avowal of his sentiments should have exposed him to much calumny and misrepresentation. But those who knew his worth always did justice to the purity of his motives: and it is with much pleasure I quote the testimony of one of his Friends, who entertained opinions of the French Revolution and the late war, directly opposite to his. “However much,” says Mr. Jardine, “we may have differed from him on these subjects, respecting his zeal and good intentions, there can be, as I con-<cxx>ceive, but one opinion. No little ideas of private interest, no narrow views of advantage or emolument, sunk him to the level of party politicians; but firm, resolute, and decided, he was, from first to last, the enlightened and manly defender of what he conceived to be, The Rights and Liberties of Mankind.”

Mr. Millar’s virtues were the spontaneous growth of an understanding strong, enlightened, and capacious; of a heart overflowing with benevolence and sensibility. Of these, his uncommon candour in judging of his own claims, and those of others, was one of the most conspicuous. Never was his opinion warped by his private interest, never did he palliate or excuse that in himself, which he would have blamed in his friend. His conduct was uniformly guided by the most delicate attention to the rights, claims, and expectations of others, by the strictest sense of honour. Always aware of the tendency of a man’s interest, and desires, to pervert his judgment, against such partiality and self-deception, he guarded with the most vigilant care; anxious not only to abstain from all injustice, but to avoid every suspicion, in his own mind, of his<cxxi> having done what any person informed of the circumstances, could possibly disapprove.

This delicate purity of conduct is the more remarkable, as Mr. Millar’s temper was uncommonly sanguine. What he wished he always convinced himself was probable; what he dreaded he seldom allowed himself to think could take place. His ingenuity in deceiving himself was sometimes most surprising. The slightest favourable circumstances were so combined as to seem a solid foundation for confidence; the smallest doubt of the truth of unwelcome intelligence was strengthened and corroborated, till it lulled, if it could not entirely overcome, apprehension. Even when there was an end of hope and of fear; when a disagreeable or distressing event had actually occurred, he could turn his mind, with surprising facility, to new views, and new circumstances, from which he still expected favourable results. Such a temper, to a man engaged in active life, must be the source of many precipitate measures, of much disappointment and distress; not unfrequently of absolute ruin. But to him, who was rather a spectator than an actor in the scene, it could occasion no very serious calamity, and was often the cause of real happiness.<cxxii>

That sensibility, which was in some measure the source of this sanguineness of temper, made Mr. Millar enter, with the greatest warmth, into the feelings of every person around him. It was this sensibility, this delicacy of attention to the habits, wishes, and feelings of others, which rendered his conversation so generally agreeable, and gained him the affections of those friends to whom he was ever warmly and steadily attached. To all of them, when an opportunity offered, he was always ready to do every act of kindness, and to do it in that delicate manner which produces a more lasting gratitude than any favour; and from all of them, he experienced the most cordial affection and respect.

He was, indeed, always disposed to do good, whether to a friend or to a stranger. So far was he from being actuated by selfish considerations, that his generosity sometimes exceeded what his limited fortune might altogether warrant. Nothing was so despicable in his mind, as any sordid attention to money; and, while he knew that he could place his family in independent circumstances, he was less anxious about farther accumulation. The liberality of his disposition made him equally ready to contribute to every useful institution, and to relieve private distress; and in his charities, in his good offices, he was always attentive to save the feelings<cxxiii> of the person whom he relieved, from that sense of degradation which, to many, is more intolerable than want.

The same warmth of feeling which displayed itself in Mr. Millar’s services to strangers, and still more amiably in the kindness with which he treated every member of his family, and every person whom he called his friend, made him feel with the greatest poignancy, those more intimate distresses, from which no man can be exempt. Afraid, however, of intruding his grief on others less nearly interested, or less violently affected, he was at the utmost pains to repress every exterior mark of affliction, every thing which might appear a demand on the sympathy of his friends. So far did he carry this command over his own mind, that a stranger might have mistaken his character, and supposed him perfectly tranquil, at the very time when he was in the deepest affliction. No man could more completely bring his behaviour to a tone in unison with the feelings of those around him: But in his anxiety to accomplish this, and his unwillingness to be any restraint on society, he sometimes perhaps went beyond the exact line of propriety, and gave an impression of severity and unconcern, which were far from belonging to his character. In the astonishing exertions of self-<cxxiv>command he often displayed, it was scarcely possible that he should not occasionally be carried too far by the violence of the effort over his own feelings, and the want of confidence in his own strength of mind. Those who enjoyed his friendship were never deceived by such appearances of tranquillity. They saw them not as proofs of real ease, far less as proofs of indifference; but as the most unequivocal indications of an habitual attention to the feelings of others struggling against poignant distress.

For a long time, Mr. Millar, though exposed to many smaller misfortunes, was almost exempt from family affliction. He lost, indeed, two infants; but all his other children grew up around him, and repaid his cares by the most lively affection. It was not till 1791 that he had occasion to support their mother, under what might almost be considered as the first breach in the family. During that summer, their second daughter died of consumption. Mrs. Millar’s health, not long after, began to decline; and, in summer 1795, a long and painful illness, which she bore with admirable constancy and even cheerfulness, was terminated by her death. The first burst of Mr. Millar’s grief was such as might be expected in a man of the deepest sensibility, deprived of the companion of his life, the<cxxv> woman who, for 34 years, had enjoyed his fullest confidence, and possessed his fondest affections. On visiting him, the day after this melancholy event, I found that he had resumed his accustomed control over his own mind. He spoke to me of his loss with feeling, but without weakness; like a man deprived of much happiness, but not abandoning himself to affliction; neither priding himself in stoical indifference, nor undervaluing the comforts he still enjoyed in the affections of his family and of his friends.

It was not long till he was again called upon for a new exertion of his self-command. His eldest son, on whose education he had bestowed uncommon attention, who was respected for his literary talents, and endeared to all his friends by the singular excellence and amiableness of his dispositions, met, for some time, with a success at the Bar equal to his most sanguine hopes. With very flattering prospects of rising in his profession, he married the youngest daughter of Dr. Cullen, a lady of most fascinating manners and uncommon talents and acquirements. He was, however, soon after seized with an indisposition, which lasted for a considerable time; and, though he recovered from it in a great degree, yet his professional labours continued to be too severe, and indeed very hurtful to his health.<cxxvi> At this period, the violence of political parties rose to an extreme height in Scotland, and it was impossible for the son of Mr. Millar, carrying his conviction of the necessity of reform in some degree farther than his father, and equally open and steady in maintaining his opinions, to escape that obloquy with which the violent and interested in political parties always attempt to overwhelm their opponents. Averse to contention, hopeless of a pacific change in the political institutions of his country, and finding himself in a state of health which rendered laborious application improper, he resolved, in spring 1795, to emigrate to America. Soon after his arrival there, he was offered an advantageous purchase of lands, and the management of an extensive settlement in the back country of Pennsylvania. This, as he was particularly fond of agricultural pursuits, he immediately accepted. On arriving at the settlement, he began to plan and execute improvements, with all the ardour natural to his temper; but having incautiously exposed himself, in a very hot day of summer, he was struck with a coup de soleil, of which he almost instantly expired.

I saw Mr. Millar a few hours after he had received intelligence of his death; and, though still there were faint hopes that the accounts might be untrue, seldom have I witnessed more deep distress. He<cxxvii> had opposed his son’s quitting his profession and his country, in the full confidence that the political animosities could not be of long duration; already symptoms of the decline of party rancour were beginning to appear: and, perhaps, he had never relinquished the secret hope of again seeing him in the midst of those valued friends from whom he had parted with deep regret. The final disappointment of all these hopes Mr. Millar felt most acutely; but, after the first shock, he resumed his self-possession; and, even at the very time that he was most strongly agitated, I am convinced that the presence of a stranger would have recalled him to himself, and that he would have conversed with firmness and apparent ease.*

Mr. Millar’s athletic form, his agility, surprising in a man of his years, his temperance of every<cxxviii> kind, and his regular habits of exercise, gave his friends reason to expect that he would have enjoyed long life and continued health. He never was subject to those little temporary complaints, which spring from a weak constitution or indolent habits, and which, while they diminish the enjoyment of life, gradually bring on old age. Always vigorous and alert, his mind was free from languor, his appearance youthful, and his strength unimpaired. But, in the end of 1799, he was seized with a very dangerous inflammatory complaint, from which, after a few weeks of severe illness, he seemed perfectly recovered; and, although those who paid anxious attention to his appearance saw that he had lost something of the youthful spring of his step, and was less able to endure any violent exertion, to others he seemed as healthful and vigorous as ever.

In May 1801, when he was in perfect health he incautiously exposed himself to a hot sun for several hours, fearing no bad effect from changes of weather to which he had always accustomed himself. That very night he was taken ill; and his complaint soon put on the appearance of the most dangerous pleurisy. I happened to be at a distance from Glasgow, when I should have wished most to be near him. The instant I heard of his danger,<cxxix> I hurried to Milheugh; but, on the 30th of May, the day before my arrival, I had lost that Friend, whose continued kindness will always live in my remembrance. Of Mr. Millar’s behaviour during his last illness, his son-in-law, Mr. Mylne, who was present during the distressing scene, has given the following short, but interesting account:

“In the midst of his family, he encountered the severe trial presented by the sufferings and prospects of a death-bed. That trial he nobly sustained. His last scene was altogether worthy of the part he had uniformly maintained on the stage of life. Soon after the very unexpected attack of the disease which brought him to the grave, he foresaw the issue, and awaited it with the most perfect composure. No symptom of impatience or of alarm ever escaped him: and no thought gave him pain but the thought of being separated from his family, with whom he had long enjoyed the purest happiness, and to whose happiness his life was so important.”

On his death-bed, Mr. Millar committed the care of his manuscripts to his son the Professor of Mathematics, his son-in-law Mr. Mylne, and myself. As he had at one time given orders to destroy his whole manuscripts, a resolution from which he was<cxxx> with difficulty diverted, we considered ourselves as particularly called upon, in executing the trust reposed in us, to publish only what seemed to have been carefully revised, and written out for the press. The Historical View of the English Government, we found in a state less complete than we had expected. For several years, the public attention had been so fully engrossed by the important events passing on the theatre of Europe, that there remained little curiosity respecting those steps by which the British Constitution had reached its present state. The minds of men were more intent on discovering what is best, than what has actually taken place; and perhaps even the author was, for some time, less interested in his usual speculations, while every appearance indicated that a new era had commenced, and that the future Governments of Europe were likely to have little dependence on former institutions. But, though these considerations might, for a time, diminish Mr. Millar’s ardour in this particular study, he never for a moment abandoned his intention of completing the Historical View of the English Government, and of presenting to the Public a detailed account of the various branches of the British Constitution.

In pursuance of this intention, he had completed<cxxxi> his account of the period from the accession of the House of Stewart, to the Revolution, in a manner which cannot fail to add to his reputation. Here he appears more openly in opposition to Mr. Hume, than in the earlier part of the History; pointing out, with clearness and precision, the sources of that very eminent author’s misapprehensions. Without directly misrepresenting, or even suppressing, any important fact, Mr. Hume has passed slightly over the ambitious designs, and profligate insincerity of Charles the First, dwelling frequently and fully on such irregularities as were probably unavoidable in the measures of the Commons, and on what, in a more enlightened age, appears the revolting bigotry of the times. What had occasionally been done, when obviously useful and necessary, without exciting the attention of a rude and simple age, even exercises of power which had been declared illegal by statute, he represents as the ordinary rule of the Constitution: what had become requisite to guard public liberty against the future attempts of a king who, never yielding without mental reservations, had stretched his prerogative far beyond its just bounds, and, aided by the clergy, had well nigh put an end to all the liberties and privileges of the Nation, he has ventured to re-<cxxxii>prehend as unwarrantable encroachments. In opposition to such representations, Mr. Millar, without a particular examination of every measure of the Crown or Parliament, has given a very masterly sketch of the transactions of that important period, characterising, in a just and striking manner, the views and motives of the several parties, whose struggles and collisions prepared the Revolution settlement, by which the prerogatives of the Crown were defined, and the Rights of the People finally ascertained.

Of the period since the Revolution, we found several chapters; but in a state so incomplete, that we did not think it proper to give them to the public. There were, however, several Dissertations, written with the intention of forming part of the History, or perhaps with the view of having the substance of their speculations interwoven with it; and these treatises contained such ingenious disquisitions on the rise of the influence of the Crown, and on the effects of extended commerce in giving birth to a spirit of independence in the people; they exhibited so animated a sketch of the changes produced by refinement on national character, and of the natural progress of poetical composition; that we thought, we should be doing injustice to the me-<cxxxiii>mory of our Friend, by withholding them from the world.*

Among Mr. Millar’s manuscripts, we found no others, which, consistently with the rule we had laid down for ourselves, we thought proper for publication. There were indeed many valuable chapters of The Account of the Present State of the British Government, and several ingenious treatises on various subjects, composed for the Literary Society; but some of them were imperfect, and none were written with that care which, without many alterations and corrections, would have justified us in sending them to the press. From what Mr. Millar had written of the delineation of the British<cxxxiv> Government, and from the very excellent Lectures he used to deliver on that subject, it is particularly to be regretted that he did not live to finish a work which must have added greatly to his reputation, and which might have been of the most important advantage to his country.

After all that has been published on the British Constitution, a work which should exhibit, not a fanciful theory, but the real practice of the Government, is still wanting;28 and such a work, if executed with judgment and impartiality, would resolve the important questions, how far, in the course of the last century, the various branches of the Legislature have actually, though silently, encroached on the powers of each other, and what changes in the forms of Government have consequently become necessary, to restore it, in principles and spirit, to the Revolution settlement in 1688.

That what is well may keep
Its goodness permanent, and what requires
Our healing hand, with mild severity
May be corrected.29
Potter’s Aeschylus.

THE ORIGIN OF THE DISTINCTION OF RANKS.

Introduction

Those who have examined the manners and customs of nations have had chiefly two objects in view. By observing the systems of law established in different parts of the world, and by remarking the consequences with which they are attended, men have endeavoured to reap advantage from the experience of others, and to make a selection of such institutions and modes of government as appear most worthy of being adopted.

To investigate the causes of different usages has been likewise esteemed an useful as well as an entertaining speculation. When we contemplate the amazing diversity to be found in the laws of different countries, and even of the same country at different periods, our curiosity is naturally excited to enquire in what manner mankind have been led to embrace such different rules of conduct; and at the same it is evident, that, unless we are ac-<2>quainted with the circumstances which have recommended any set of regulations, we cannot form a just notion of their utility, or even determine, in any case, how far they are practicable.

In searching for the causes of those peculiar systems of law and government which have appeared in the world, we must undoubtedly resort, first of all, to the differences of situation, which have suggested different views and motives of action to the inhabitants of particular countries. Of this kind, are the fertility or barrenness of the soil, the nature of its productions, the species of labour requisite for procuring subsistence, the number of individuals collected together in one community, their proficiency in arts, the advantages which they enjoy for entering into mutual transactions, and for maintaining an intimate correspondence. The variety that frequently occurs in these, and such other particulars, must have a prodigious influence upon the great body of a people; as, by giving a peculiar direction to their inclinations and pursuits, it must be productive of correspondent habits, dispositions, and ways of thinking.

When we survey the present state of the globe, we find that, in many parts of it, the inhabitants are so destitute of culture, as to appear little above the condition of brute animals; and even when we peruse the remote history of polished nations, we have seldom any difficulty in tracing them to a state of the same rudeness and barbarism. There<3> is, however, in man a disposition and capacity for improving his condition, by the exertion of which, he is carried on from one degree of advancement to another; and the similarity of his wants, as well as of the faculties by which those wants are supplied, has every where produced a remarkable uniformity in the several steps of his progression. A nation of savages, who feel the want of almost every thing requisite for the support of life, must have their attention directed to a small number of objects, to the acquisition of food and clothing, or the procuring shelter from the inclemencies of the weather; and their ideas and feelings, in conformity to their situation, must, of course, be narrow and contracted. Their first efforts are naturally calculated to increase the means of subsistence, by catching or ensnaring wild animals, or by gathering the spontaneous fruits of the earth; and the experience, acquired in the exercise of these employments, is apt, successively, to point out the methods of taming and rearing cattle, and of cultivating the ground. According as men have been successful in these great improvements, and find less difficulty in the attainment of bare necessaries, their prospects are gradually enlarged, their appetites and desires are more and more awakened and called forth in pursuit of the several conveniencies of life; and the various branches of manufacture, together with commerce, its inseparable attendant, and with science and literature, the natural off-<4>spring of ease and affluence, are introduced, and brought to maturity. By such gradual advances in rendering their situation more comfortable, the most important alterations are produced in the state and condition of a people: their numbers are increased; the connections of society are extended; and men, being less oppressed with their own wants, are more at liberty to cultivate the feelings of humanity: property, the great source of distinction among individuals, is established; and the various rights of mankind, arising from their multiplied connections, are recognised and protected: the laws of a country are thereby rendered numerous; and a more complex form of government becomes necessary, for distributing justice, and for preventing the disorders which proceed from the jarring interests and passions of a large and opulent community. It is evident, at the same time, that these, and such other effects of improvement, which have so great a tendency to vary the state of mankind, and their manner of life, will be productive of suitable variations in their taste and sentiments, and in their general system of behaviour.

There is thus, in human society, a natural progress from ignorance to knowledge, and from rude to civilized manners, the several stages of which are usually accompanied with peculiar laws and customs. Various accidental causes, indeed, have contributed to accelerate, or to retard this advance-<5>ment in different countries. It has even happened that nations, being placed in such unfavourable circumstances as to render them long stationary at a particular period, have been so habituated to the peculiar manners of that age, as to retain a strong tincture of those peculiarities, through every subsequent revolution.1 This appears to have occasioned some of the chief varieties which take place in the maxims and customs of nations equally civilized.

The character and genius of a nation may, perhaps, be considered as nearly the same with that of every other in similar circumstances; but the case is very different with respect to individuals, among whom there is often a great diversity, proceeding from no fixed causes that are capable of being ascertained. Thus, in a multitude of dice thrown together at random, the result, at different times, will be nearly equal; but in one or two throws of a single die,2 very different numbers may often be produced. It is to be expected, therefore, that, though the greater part of the political system of any country be derived from the combined influence of the whole people, a variety of peculiar institutions will sometimes take their origin from the casual interposition of particular persons, who happen to be placed at the head of a community, and to be possessed of singular abilities, and views of policy. This has been regarded, by many writers, as the great source of those differences<6> which are to be found in the laws, and government of different nations. It is thus that Brama is supposed to have introduced the peculiar customs of Indostan; that Lycurgus is believed to have formed the singular character of the Lacedemonians; and that Solon is looked upon as the author of that very different style of manners which prevailed at Athens. It is thus, also, that the English constitution is understood to have arisen from the uncommon genius, and patriotic spirit, of King Alfred. In short, there is scarcely any people, ancient or modern, who do not boast of some early monarch, or statesman, to whom it is pretended they owe whatever is remarkable in their form of government.

But, notwithstanding the concurring testimony of historians, concerning the great political changes introduced by the lawgivers of a remote age, there may be reason to doubt, whether the effect of their interpositions has ever been so extensive as is generally supposed. Before an individual can be invested with so much authority, and possessed of such reflection and foresight as would induce him to act in the capacity of a legislator, he must, probably, have been educated and brought up in the knowledge of those natural manners and customs, which, for ages perhaps, have prevailed among his countrymen. Under the influence of all the prejudices derived from ancient usuage, he will commonly be disposed to prefer the system already estab-<7>lished to any other, of which the effects have not been ascertained by experience; or if in any case he should venture to entertain a different opinion, he must be sensible that, from the general prepossession in favour of the ancient establishment, an attempt to overturn it, or to vary it in any considerable degree, would be a dangerous measure, extremely unpopular in itself, and likely to be attended with troublesome consequences.

As the greater part of those heroes and sages that are reputed to have been the founders and modellers of states, are only recorded by uncertain tradition, or by fabulous history, we may be allowed to suspect that, from the obscurity in which they are placed, or from the admiration of distant posterity, their labours have been exaggerated, and misrepresented. It is even extremely probable, that those patriotic statesmen, whose existence is well ascertained, and whose laws have been justly celebrated, were at great pains to accommodate their regulations to the situation of the people for whom they were intended; and that, instead of being actuated by a projecting spirit, or attempting, from visionary speculations of remote utility, to produce any violent reformation, they confined themselves to such moderate improvements as, by deviating little from the former usage, were in some measure supported by experience, and coincided with the prevailing opinions of the country. All the ancient systems of legislation that have<8> been handed down to us with any degree of authenticity, show evident marks of their having been framed with such reasonable views; and in none of them is this more remarkable than in the regulations of the Spartan Lawgiver, which appear, in every respect, agreeable to the primitive manners of that simple and barbarous people, for whose benefit they were promulgated.

Among the several circumstances which may affect the gradual improvements of society, the difference of climate is one of the most remarkable. In warm countries, the earth is often extremely fertile, and with little culture is capable of producing whatever is necessary for subsistence. To labour under the extreme heat of the sun is, at the same time, exceedingly troublesome and oppressive. The inhabitants, therefore, of such countries, while they enjoy a degree of affluence, and, while by the mildness of the climate they are exempted from many inconveniencies and wants, are seldom disposed to any laborious exertion, and thus, acquiring habits of indolence, become addicted to sensual pleasure, and liable to all those infirmities which are nourished by idleness and sloth. The people who live in a cold country find, on the contrary, that little or nothing is to be obtained without labour; and being subjected to numberless hardships, while they are forced to contend with the ruggedness of the soil, and the severity of the seasons, in earning their scanty provision, they become<9> active and industrious, and acquire those dispositions and talents which proceed from the constant and vigorous exercise both of the mind and body.

Some philosophers are of opinion, that the difference of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness, or other qualities of the climate, have a more immediate influence upon the character and conduct of nations, by operating insensibly upon the human body, and by effecting correspondent alterations in the temper. It is pretended that great heat, by relaxing the fibres, and by extending the surface of the skin, where the action of the nerves is chiefly performed, occasions great sensibility to all external impressions; which is accompanied with proportionable vivacity of ideas and feelings.3 The inhabitants of a hot country are, upon this account, supposed to be naturally deficient in courage, and in that steadiness of attention which is necessary for the higher exertions of judgment; while they are no less distinguished by their extreme delicacy of taste, and liveliness of imagination. The weakness, too, of their bodily organs prevents them from consuming a great quantity of food, though their excessive perspiration, the effect of the climate, requires continual supplies of such thin liquors as are proper to repair the waste of their fluids. In this situation, therefore, temperance in eating and drinking becomes a constitutional virtue.

The inhabitants of a cold region, are said, on the other hand, to acquire an opposite complexion.<10> As cold tends to brace the fibres, and to contract the operation of the nerves, it is held to produce a vigorous constitution of body, with little sensibility or vivacity; from which we may expect activity, courage, and resolution, together with such calm and steady views of objects, as are usually connected with a clear understanding. The vigorous constitutions of men, in a cold climate, are also supposed to demand great supplies of strong food, and to create a particular inclination for intoxicating liquors.

In some such manner as this, it is imagined that the character of different nations arises, in a great measure, from the air which they breathe, and from the soil upon which they are maintained. How far these conjectures have any real foundation, it seems difficult to determine. We are too little acquainted with the structure of the human body, to discover how it is affected by such physical circumstances, or to discern the alterations in the state of the mind, which may possibly proceed from a different conformation of bodily organs; and in the history of the world, we see no regular marks of that secret influence which has been ascribed to the air and climate, but, on the contrary, may commonly explain the great differences in the manners and customs of mankind from other causes, the existence of which is capable of being more clearly ascertained.<11>

How many nations are to be found, whose situation in point of climate is apparently similar, and, yet, whose character and political institutions are entirely opposite? Compare, in this respect, the mildness and moderation of the Chinese, with the rough manners and intolerant principles of their neighbours in Japan. What a contrast is exhibited by people at no greater distance than were the ancient Athenians and Lacedemonians? Can it be conceived that the difference between the climate of France and that of Spain, or between that of Greece and of the neighbouring provinces of the Turkish empire, will account for the different usages and manners of the present inhabitants? How is it possible to explain those national peculiarities that have been remarked in the English, the Irish, and the Scotch, from the different temperature of the weather under which they have lived?

The different manners of people in the same country, at different periods, are no less remarkable, and afford evidence yet more satisfactory, that national character depends very little upon the immediate operation of climate. The inhabitants of Sparta are, at present, under the influence of the same physical circumstances as in the days of Leonidas. The modern Italians live in the country of the ancient Romans.

The following Inquiry is intended to illustrate the natural history of mankind in several import-<12>ant articles. This is attempted, by pointing out the more obvious and common improvements which gradually arise in the state of society, and by showing the influence of these upon the manners, the laws, and the government of a people.

With regard to the facts made use of in the following discourse, the reader, who is conversant in history, will readily perceive the difficulty of obtaining proper materials for speculations of this nature. Historians of reputation have commonly overlooked the transactions of early ages, as not deserving to be remembered; and even in the history of later and more cultivated periods, they have been more solicitous to give an exact account of battles, and public negociations, than of the interior police and government of a country. Our information, therefore, with regard to the state of mankind in the rude parts of the world, is chiefly derived from the relations of travellers, whose character and situation in life, neither set them above the suspicion of being easily deceived, nor of endeavouring to misrepresent the facts which they have related. From the number, however, and the variety of those relations, they acquire, in many cases, a degree of authority, upon which we may depend with security, and to which the narration of any single person, how respectable soever, can have no pretension. When illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each other, and who, unless upon religious subjects, had no speculative<13> systems to warp their opinions, have, in distant ages and countries, described the manners of people in similar circumstances, the reader has an opportunity of comparing their several descriptions, and from their agreement or disagreement is enabled to ascertain the credit that is due to them. According to this method of judging, which throws the veracity of the relater very much out of the question, we may be convinced of the truth of extraordinary facts, as well as of those that are more agreeable to our own experience. It may even be remarked, that in proportion to the singularity of any event, it is the more improbable that different persons, who design to impose upon the world, but who have no concert with each other, should agree in relating it. When to all this, we are able to add the reasons of those particular customs which have been uniformly reported, the evidence becomes as complete as the nature of the thing will admit. We cannot refuse our assent to such evidence, without falling into a degree of scepticism by which the credibility of all historical testimony would be in a great measure destroyed. This observation, it is hoped, will serve as an apology for the multiplicity of facts that are sometimes stated in confirmation of the following remarks. At the same time, from an apprehension of being tedious, the author has on other occasions, selected only a few, from a greater number to the same purpose, that might easily have been procured.<14>

CHAPTER I

Of the Rank and Condition of Women in Different Ages

SECTION I

The effects of poverty and barbarism, with respect to the condition of women.

Of all our passions, it should seem that those which unite the sexes are most easily affected by the peculiar circumstances in which we are placed, and most liable to be influenced by the power of habit and education. Upon this account they exhibit the most wonderful variety of appearances, and, in different ages and countries, have produced the greatest diversity of manners and customs.

The state of mankind in the rudest period of society, is extremely unfavourable to the improvement of these passions. A savage who earns his food by hunting and fishing, or by gathering the spontaneous fruits of the earth, is incapable of attaining any considerable refinement in his pleasures. He finds so much difficulty, and is exposed to so many hardships in procuring mere necessaries, that he has no leisure or encouragement to aim at the luxuries and conveniencies of life. His wants are few, in proportion to the narrowness of his<15> circumstances. With him, the great object is to be able to satisfy his hunger, and, after the utmost exertions of labour and activity, to enjoy the relief of idleness and repose. He has no time for cultivating a correspondence with the other sex, nor for attending to those enjoyments which result from it; and his desires being neither cherished by affluence, nor inflamed by indulgence, are allowed to remain in that moderate state which renders them barely sufficient for the continuation of the species.

The facility with which he may commonly gratify these appetites, is another circumstance by which his situation is peculiarly distinguished. In the most rude and barbarous ages, little or no property can be acquired by particular persons; and, consequently, there are no differences of rank to interrupt the free intercourse of the sexes. The pride of family, as well as the insolence of wealth, is unknown; and there are no distinctions among individuals, but those which arise from their age and experience, from their strength, courage, and other personal qualities. The members of different families, being all nearly upon a level, maintain the most familiar intercourse with one another, and, when impelled by natural instinct, give way to their mutual desires without hesitation or reluctance. They are unacquainted with those refinements which create a strong preference of particular objects, and with those artificial rules of decency and<16> decorum which might lay a restraint upon their conduct.

It cannot be supposed, therefore, that the passions of sex will rise to any considerable height in the breast of a savage. He must have little regard for pleasures which he can purchase at so easy a rate. He meets with no difficulties nor disappointments to enhance the value of his enjoyment, or to rouse and animate him in the pursuit of it. He arrives at the end of his wishes, before they have sufficiently occupied his thoughts, or engaged him in those delightful anticipations of happiness which the imagination is apt to display in the most flattering colours. He is a stranger to that long continued solicitude, those alternate hopes and fears, which agitate and torment the lover, and which, by awakening the sensibility, while they relax the vigour of his mind, render his prevailing inclinations more irresistible.

The phlegmatic disposition of savages, in this particular, has accordingly been often remarked as a distinguishing part of their character. There is good reason to believe that, in the state of simplicity which precedes all cultivation and improvement, the intercourse of the sexes is chiefly regulated by the primary intention of nature; that it is of consequence totally interrupted by the periods of pregnancy; and that the same laws, with respect to the difference of seasons, which govern<17> the constitution of inferior animals, have also an influence upon the desires of the human species.*

It is true, that, even in early ages, some sort of marriage, or permanent union between persons of different sexes, has been almost universally established. But when we examine the nature of this<18> primitive alliance, it appears to have been derived from motives very little connected with those passions which we are at present considering. When a child has been produced by the accidental correspondence of his parents, it is to be expected that, from the influence of natural affection, they will be excited to assist one another in making some provision for his maintenance. For this purpose, they are led to take up their residence together, that they may act in concert with each other, and unite their efforts in the preservation and care of their offspring.

Among inferior animals, we may discern the influence of the same principle in forming an association between individuals of different sexes. The connection indeed, in this case, is commonly of short duration; because the young animal is soon in a condition to provide for its own subsistence. In some of the species of birds, however, the young which are hatched at one time, are frequently incapable of procuring their own food before the mother begins to lay eggs a-new; and the male and female are, therefore, apt to contract a more permanent attachment. To this circumstance we may ascribe the imagined fidelity of the turtle, as well as the poetical honours that have been paid to the gentleness of the dove; an animal which, notwithstanding the character it has so universally acquired, appears remarkable for its peevish and quarrelsome temper. Among common poultry,<19> on the contrary, whose offspring is reared without much assistance even from the dam, the disposition to unite in pairs is scarcely observable.

But the long culture which is necessary in rearing the human species, will generally afford to the parents a second pledge of their commerce, before their assistance can be withdrawn from the former. Their attention, therefore, is extended from one object to another, as long as the mother is capable of child-bearing; and their union is thus continued by the same causes which first gave rise to it. Even after this period, they will naturally be disposed to remain in a society to which they have been so long accustomed: more especially, as by living at the head of a numerous family, they enjoy a degree of ease, respect, and security, of which they would otherwise be deprived, and have reason, in their old age, to expect the assistance and protection of their posterity, under all those diseases and infirmities by which they are rendered incapable of providing for themselves.*

These were in all probability the first inducements to marriage among the rude and barbarous<20> inhabitants of the earth. As it appears to have taken its origin from the accidental and unforeseen exertions of parental affection, we may suppose that it would be commenced without any previous contract between the parties, concerning the terms or duration of their correspondence. Thus, among the Romans, it should seem that the most ancient marriage was formed merely by use; that is, by the parties living constantly together for the space of a year; a period which, in the ordinary course of things, was sufficient to involve them in the care of a family.* It is believed that the early Greeks were accustomed to marry in the same simple manner.† The Kalmuck Tartars have, at present, a similar practice. Among them, it is usual for a young pair to retire, and live together as man and wife for one year; and if, during this time, the woman has produced a child, their marriage is understood to be completed; but if not, they either separate at pleasure, or agree to make another year’s trial.‡ Traces of this primitive custom may still be discovered in the law of Scotland; according to which, a marriage dissolved within a year and day, and without a child, has no legal consequences, but restores the property of either party to the same situation as if no such alliance had ever existed.<21>

Time and experience gradually improved this connection, and discovered the many advantages of which it is productive. The consideration of those advantages, together with the influence of fashion and example, contributed to promote its universal establishment. The anxiety of parties, or of their relations, to avoid those disputes and inconveniencies with which it was frequently attended, made them endeavour, by an express stipulation, to settle the conditions of their union, and produced a solemn and formal celebration of marriage. The utility of this contract, as it makes a regular provision for multiplying the inhabitants of a country, gave rise to a variety of public regulations for promoting the institution in general, for directing its particular forms, and for discouraging the vague and irregular commerce of the sexes.

The marriages, however, of rude people, according to all accounts, are usually contracted without any previous attachment between the parties, and with little regard to the gratification of their mutual passions. A savage is seldom or never determined to marry from the particular inclinations of sex, but commonly enters into that connexion when he arrives at an age, and finds himself in circumstances, which render the acquisition of a family expedient or necessary to his comfortable subsistence. He discovers no preference of any particular woman, but leaves it to his parents, or other relations, to make choice of a person whom<22> it is thought proper that he should marry: He is not even at the trouble of paying her a visit, but allows them to begin and finish the bargain, without concerning himself at all in the matter: If his proposals are rejected, he hears it without the least disturbance; or if he meets with a favourable reception, he is equally unmoved; and the marriage is completed, on both sides, with the most perfect indifference.* <23>

From the extreme insensibility, observable in the character of all savage nations, it is no wonder they should entertain very gross ideas concerning those female virtues which, in a polished nation, are supposed to constitute the honour and dignity of the sex.

The Indians of America think it no stain upon a woman’s character, that she has violated the laws of chastity before marriage; nay, if we can give credit to travellers who have visited that country, a trespass of this kind is a circumstance by which a woman is recommended to a husband; who is apt to value her the more, from the consideration that she has been valued by others, and, on the other hand, thinks that he has sufficient ground for putting her away, when he has reason to suspect that she has been overlooked.*

Young women, among the Lydians, were not accustomed to marry, until they had earned their doweries by prostitution.†

The Babylonians had a public regulation, founded upon their religion, and probably handed down from very remote antiquity, that every woman, of whatever rank, should, once in her life, submit to a public prostitution in the temple of Venus.‡ A<24> religious ceremony of a like nature is said to have been observed in some parts of the Island of Cyprus.*

The infidelity of a married woman is naturally viewed in a different light, and, upon account of the inconveniencies with which it is attended, is often regarded as an offence that deserves to be severely punished. To introduce a spurious offspring into the family; to form a connexion with a stranger, by which the wife is diverted from her proper employments and duties, and by which she may be influenced to embezzle the goods committed to her charge; these are circumstances, that, even in a rude period, are apt to awaken the jealousy of the husband, and to excite his indignation and resentment. There are nations, however, who have disregarded even these considerations, and who have looked upon the strict preservation of conjugal fidelity as a matter of no consequence.

Among the ancient Massagetae, it was usual for persons who resided in the same part of the country to possess their wives in common.† The same custom is said, by Diodorus Siculus, to have taken place among the ancient Troglodites, and the Icthyophagi, inhabiting the coast of the Red Sea.‡

Caesar observes that, in Britain, ten or a dozen persons, chiefly near relations, were accustomed to maintain a community of wives; but that the off-<25>spring of such promiscuous intercourse was reputed to belong to that man who had been first connected with the mother.

Some authors, from a laudable desire of vindicating our forefathers, have called this fact in question, and have been willing to believe, that, in this particular, Caesar was imposed upon by the simple accommodation of those persons who lodged in the same cottage. But it is difficult to conceive that the judicious and well informed conqueror of Gaul, who had been long acquainted with the manners of rude people, and was of a disposition to look upon this as a matter of curiosity, would have made so slight an inquiry, or satisfied himself with so superficial an examination, as might expose him to such a gross deception.*

The custom of lending a wife to a friend, that he might have children by her, appears to have been universal among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and even when these nations had become wealthy and civilized, was openly countenanced by persons of the highest rank and character. It is said to have been recommended, in a particular manner, to the Spartans, by the celebrated institutions of Lycurgus.† <26>

In the country of Kamtschatka, there are several tribes of savages, who esteem it an ordinary mark of politeness, when they entertain a friend, to offer him the enjoyment of their wife or their daughter; and whosoever refuses a civility of this kind, to his guest, is supposed to have intended an affront; and his behaviour is resented accordingly. In Louisiana, upon the coast of Guinea, in several parts of the East Indies, in Pegu, Siam, Cochinchina, and Cambodia, the inhabitants are, in like manner, accustomed, for a small present, to make an offer of their women to all strangers who have occasion to visit the country.* <27>

Among all men who have made any considerable advances towards refinement, sentiments of modesty are connected with the intercourse of the sexes. These sentiments are derived from the very different manner in which individuals are affected, when under the immediate influence of desire, and upon other occasions. After the violence of passion has subsided, and when the mind returns to its usual state of tranquillity, its former emotions appear, in some measure, extravagant, and disproportioned to the object which excited them. But if, with all our partiality, the recollection of our own appetites, in the case here alluded to, be seldom agreeable even to ourselves, we have good reason to conclude that an open display of them will be extremely offensive to others. Those who are not actuated by the same desires must behold our enjoyment with disgust: those who are, must look upon it with jealousy and rivalship. It is to be expected, therefore, that, according as men become sensible of this, they will endeavour to remove such disagreeable appearances. They will be disposed to throw a veil over those pleasures, and to cover from the public eye those thoughts and inclinations, which, they know by experience, would expose them to contempt and aversion. The dictates of nature, in this respect, are inculcated by the force of education; our own feelings are continually gathering strength by a comparison with those of the people around us; and we blush at every deviation from that conceal-<28>ment and reserve which we have been taught to maintain, and which long practice has rendered habitual. Certain rules of decency and decorum with relation to dress, the modes of expression, and general deportment, are thus introduced; and as these contribute, in a high degree, to improve and embellish the commerce of society, they are regarded as peculiarly indispensible to that sex, in which, for obvious reasons, the greatest delicacy and propriety is required.

But mere savages are little acquainted with such refinements. Their situation and manner of life prevent them, either from considering the intercourse of the sexes as an object of importance, or from attending to those circumstances which might suggest the propriety of concealing it. Conscious of nothing blameable in that instinct which nature has bestowed upon them, they are not ashamed of its ordinary gratifications; and they effect no disguise, as to this particular, either in their words or in their actions.

From the account given by Herodotus of the Massagetae, it appears that those barbarians were strangers to reserve or modesty in the commerce of the sexes.* The same circumstance is mentioned by Caesar, in describing the ancient Germans; a people who had made some improvements<29> in their manner of life.* The form of courtship among the Hottentots, by which the lover is permitted to overcome the reluctance of his mistress, may be considered as a plain indication of similar manners, and exhibits a striking picture of primitive rudeness and simplicity.†

When Mr. Banks was in the island of Otaheite, in 1769, he received a visit from some ladies, who made him a present of cloth, attended with very uncommon ceremonies, of which the following account is published by Dr. Hawkesworth. “There were nine pieces; and having laid three pieces one upon another, the foremost of the women, who seemed to be the principal, and who was called Oorattooa, stepped upon them, and taking up her garments all round her to the waist, turned about, and with great composure and deliberation, and with an air of perfect innocence and simplicity, three times: when this was done, she dropped the veil, and stepping off the cloth, three more pieces were laid on, and she repeated the ceremony: then stepping off as before, the last three were laid on, and the ceremony was repeated in the same manner the third time.”‡ <30>

Though the inhabitants of that country are, almost without labour, supplied with great plenty of food, and may therefore be supposed more addicted to pleasure than is usual among savages in a colder climate, yet they appear to have no such differences of wealth as might restrain the free indulgence of their appetites, and by that means produce a degree of refinement in their passions.

Upon the discovery of the new world by Columbus, the natives appeared to have no idea of clothing as a matter of decency; for, though the men made use of a garment, the women, it is said had not the least covering.* The nakedness, however, of these Indians, when authorised by custom, had probably no more tendency to promote debauchery than similar circumstances can be supposed to have upon inferior animals. Rude nations are usually<31> distinguished by greater freedom and plainness of behaviour, according as they are farther removed from luxury and intemperance.

In the Odyssey, when Telemachus arrives at Pylos, he is stripped naked, bathed, and annointed by the king’s daughter.

While these officious tend the rites divine,
The last fair branch of the Nestorian line,
Sweet Polycaste, took the pleasing toil
To bathe the prince, and pour the fragrant oil.
O’er his fair limbs a flowery vest he threw,
And issued, like a god, to mortal view.†

A remarkable instance of this plainness and simplicity occurs in the behaviour of Ruth to Boaz her kinsman.

“And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came softly, and uncovered his feet and laid her down.

“And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and behold a woman lay at his feet.

“And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth, thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid, for thou art a near kinsman.”‡ <32>

The influence of such manners must be extremely unfavourable to the rank and dignity of the women; who are deprived of that consideration and respect which, in a polished nation, they are accustomed to derive from the passion between the sexes. It is, at the same time, impossible, in a rude age, that they should procure esteem by such talents as they are capable of acquiring, or by their usefulness in such employments as they have any occasion to exercise.

Among those who are almost continually employed in war, or in hunting, and who, by their manner of life, are exposed to numberless hardships and dangers, activity, strength, courage, and military skill, are the chief accomplishments that are held in high estimation. These accomplishments, which in all ages excite a degree of admiration, are, in a barbarous country, the principal sources of rank and dignity; as they are most immediately useful to the people in procuring food, and in providing for their personal safety, the two great objects which they have constantly in view.1 When the members of a rude tribe return from an expedition, every man is respected in proportion to the actions which he has performed; and that person is distinguished at the feast who has been so fortunate as to signalize himself in the field. The various incidents of the battle, or of the chase, occupy their thoughts, and become an interesting subject of conversation. Those who are old take<33> pleasure in relating the deeds of former times, by which their own reputation has been established, and in communicating to the young those observations which they have treasured up, or those rules of conduct which appear most worthy of attention. The son, when he goes out to battle, is armed with the sword of his fathers, and, when he calls to mind the renown which they have acquired, is excited to a noble emulation of their achievements.

The inferiority of the women, in this respect, may be easily imagined. From their situation, indeed, they naturally acquire a degree of firmness and intrepidity which appears surprising to persons only acquainted with the manners of polished nations. It is usual for them to accompany the men in their expeditions either for hunting or for war; and it sometimes happens that individuals are excited, by the general spirit of the times, to engage in battle, so as even to gain a reputation by their exploits. But whatever may have happened in some extraordinary cases, we may venture to conclude, that the female character is by no means suited to martial employments; and that, in barbarous, as well as in refined periods, the women are, for the most part, incapable of rivaling the other sex in point of strength and courage. Their attention, therefore, is generally limited to an humbler province. It falls upon them to manage all the inferior concerns of the household, and to perform such domestic offices as the particular circumstances of the people<34> have introduced: offices which, however useful, yet requiring little dexterity or skill, and being attended with no exertion of splendid talents, are naturally regarded as mean and servile, and unworthy to engage the attention of persons who command respect by their military accomplishments.

From these observations we may form an idea of the state and condition of the women in the ages most remote from improvement. Having little attention paid them, either upon account of those pleasures to which they are subservient, or of those occupations which they are qualified to exercise, they are degraded below the other sex, and reduced under that authority which the strong acquire over the weak: an authority, which, in early periods, is subject to no limitation from the government, and is therefore exerted with a degree of harshness and severity suited to the dispositions of the people.

We accordingly find that, in those periods, the women of a family are usually treated as the servants or slaves of the men.* Nothing can exceed the dependence and subjection in which they are kept, or the toil and drudgery which they are obliged to undergo. They are forced to labour without intermission in digging roots, in drawing water, in carrying wood, in milking the cattle, in dressing the victuals, in rearing the children, and<35> in those other kinds of work which their situation has taught them to perform. The husband, when he is not engaged in some warlike exercise, indulges himself in idleness, and devolves upon his wife the whole burden of his domestic affairs. He disdains to assist her in these employments: she sleeps in a different bed, and is seldom permitted to have any conversation or correspondence with him.*

Among the negroes upon the slave-coast, the wife is never allowed to appear before the husband, or to receive any thing from his hands, without putting herself into a kneeling posture.†

In the empire of Congo, and in the greater part of those nations which inhabit the southern coast of Africa, the women of a family are seldom allowed to eat with the men. The husband sits alone at table, and the wife commonly stands at his back, to guard him from the flies, to serve him with his victuals, or to furnish him with his pipe and his tobacco. After he has finished his meal, she is allowed to eat what remains; but without sitting down, which it seems would be inconsistent with the inferiority and submission that is thought suitable to her sex.‡ <36> When a Hottentot and his wife have come into the service of a European, and are entertained in the same house, the master is under the necessity of allotting to each of them a distinct portion of victuals; which, out of regard to the general usage of their country, they always devour at a distance from one another.§

In the account lately given by Commodore Byron of the Indians of South America, we are told, that “the men exercise a most despotic authority over their wives, whom they consider in the same view they do any other part of their property; and dispose of them accordingly: even their common treatment of them is cruel; for though the toil and hazard of procuring food lies entirely upon the women, yet they are not suffered to touch any part of it till the husband is satisfied; and then he assigns them their portion, which is generally very scanty, and such as he has not a stomach for himself.” The same author informs us, that he observed a like arbitrary behaviour in many other nations of savages with whom he has since become acquainted.*

From the servile condition of the women in barbarous countries, they are rendered in a great measure incapable of property, and are supposed<37> to have no share in the estate of that particular family to which they belong. Whatever has been acquired by their labour is under the sole administration and disposal of those male relations and friends, by whom they are protected, and from whom they receive a precarious subsistence. Upon the death of a proprietor, his estate is continued in the possession of his sons, or transmitted to his other male relations; and his daughters are so far from being entitled to a share of the succession, that they are even considered as a part of the inheritance, which the heir has the power of managing at pleasure.

At the Cape of Good Hope, in the kingdom of Benin, and in general upon the whole southern and western coast of Africa, no female is ever admitted to the succession of any estate, either real or personal.†

The same custom is said to be observed among the Tartars; and there is some reason to believe that it has been anciently established among all the inhabitants of Chaldea and Arabia.‡

From the famous decision of this point related by Moses, it appears that, in his time, the succession of females had been without a precedent; and,<38> by his appointment, they were only permitted to inherit upon a failure of males of the same degree.

“Then came the daughters of Zelophehad—and they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes, and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying,

“ ‘Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons.

“ ‘Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father.’

“And Moses brought their cause before the Lord.

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

“ ‘The daughters of Zelophehad speak right; thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren, and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.

“ ‘And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.’ ”* <39>

In all those German nations which over-ran and subdued the different provinces of the Roman empire, the same notions were entertained concerning the inferiority of the woman; and the same rules of succession were naturally introduced. It is probable that, according to the original customs which prevailed in all these nations, daughters, and all other female relations, were entirely excluded from the right of inheritance; but that afterwards, when the increase of opulence and luxury had raised them to higher consideration, they were admitted to succeed after the males of the same degree.†

In a country where the women are universally regarded as the slaves of the other sex, it is natural to expect that they should be bought and sold, like any other species of property. To marry a wife must there be the same thing as to purchase a female servant, who is to be intrusted, under the husband’s direction, with a great part of the domestic economy.

Thus, in all savage nations, whether in Asia, Africa, or America, the wife is commonly bought by the husband from the father, or those other relations who have an authority over her; and the conclusion of a bargain of this nature, together with the payment of the price, has therefore become the most usual form or solemnity in the celebration of their marriages.* <40>

This appears to be the real foundation of what is related by historians; that in some parts of the world it is usual for the husband to give a dowery to the wife or her relations, instead of the wife bringing along with her a dowery to the husband.

“Dotem non uxor marito, sed uxori maritus offert,” is the expression used by Tacitus in speaking of this practice among the ancient German nations.†

When Shechem wanted to marry the daughter of Jacob—“He said unto her father, and unto her brethren, Let me find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give.

“Ask me never so much dowery and gift, And I will give according as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel to wife.”‡

When David married the daughter of king<41> Saul, he was obliged to pay a dowery of a very singular nature.§

This ancient custom, that the husband should buy his wife from her relations, remains at present among the Chinese; who, notwithstanding their opulence, and their improvement in arts, are still so wonderfully tenacious of the usages introduced in a barbarous period.‖

Sir Thomas Smith takes notice, that, according to the old law of England, “the woman, at the church-door, was given of her father, or some other man of the next of her kin, into the hands of the husband; and he= laid down gold and silver for her upon the book, as though he did buy her.”* In the early history of France we meet with a similar practice; of which there are traces remaining in the present marriage ceremony of that country.†

Upon the same principle, the husband is generally understood to have the power of selling his wife, or of putting her away at pleasure.‡ <42>

It may however be remarked, that this is a privilege, which, from the manners of a rude people, he seldom has reason to exercise. The wife, who is the mother of his children, is generally the most proper person to be employed in the office of rearing and maintaining them. As she advances in years, she is likely to advance in prudence and discretion; a circumstance of too much importance to be counterbalanced by any considerations relating to the appetite between the sexes. Nothing but some extraordinary crime that she has committed, will move the husband to put away so useful a servant, with whom he has long been acquainted, and whose labour, attention, and fidelity, are commonly of more value than all the money she will bring in a market. Divorces are therefore rarely to be met with in the history of early nations.

But though the wife is not apt to incur the settled displeasure of her husband, which might lead him to banish her from the family, she may often experience the sudden and fatal effects of his anger and resentment. When unlimited power is committed to the hands of a savage, it cannot fail, upon many occasions, to be grossly abused. He looks upon her in the same light with his other<43> domestic servants, and expects from her the same implicit obedience to his will. The least opposition kindles his resentment; and, from the natural ferocity of his temper, he is frequently excited to behave with a degree of brutality which, in some cases, may prove the unhappy occasion of her death.

Among the ancient inhabitants of Gaul, the husband exercised the power of life and death over his wives, and treated them with all the severity of an absolute and tyrannical master. In that country, whenever a person of distinction was thought to have died a violent death, his wives lay under the same suspicion of guilt with his other domestic servants; and in order to discover who had committed the crime, they were all subjected to the torture.*

But of all the different branches of power with which in a rude age the husband is usually invested, we meet with the fullest and most complete illustration in the ancient law of the Romans. By that law, a wife was originally considered as, in every respect, the slave of her husband.† She<44> might be sold by him, or she might be put to death by an arbitrary exertion of his authority. From the ceremonies which were used in the more solemn and regular celebration of marriage, it seems probable that, in early times, the wife was purchased with a real price from her relations.‡ She was held incapable of having any estate of her own, and whatever she possessed at the time of her marriage, became the absolute property of her husband.*

It will be thought, perhaps, a mortifying picture that is here presented to us, when we contemplate the barbarous treatment of the female sex in early times, and the rude state of those passions which may be considered as the origin of society. But this rudeness and barbarism, so universally discovered in the early inhabitants of the world, is not unsuitable to the mean condition in which they are placed, and to the numberless hardships and difficulties which they are obliged to encounter. When men are in danger of perishing for hunger; when they are exerting their utmost efforts to procure the bare necessaries of life; when they are unable to shelter themselves from beasts of prey, or from enemies of their own kind, no less ferocious; their constitution would surely be ill adapt-<45>ed to their circumstances, were they endowed with a refined taste of pleasure, and capable of feeling the delicate distresses and enjoyments of love, accompanied with all those elegant sentiments, which, in a civilized and enlightened age, are naturally derived from that passion. Dispositions of this nature would be altogether misplaced in the breast of a savage: They would even be exceedingly hurtful, by turning his attention from real wants, to the pursuit of imaginary, and what, in his situation, must be accounted fantastical gratifications. Neither will it escape observation, that this refinement would be totally inconsistent with the other parts of his character. Nations who have so little regard to property as to live in the continual exercise of theft and rapine; who are so destitute of humanity, as, in cold blood, to put their captives to death with the most excruciating tortures; who have the shocking barbarity to feed upon their fellow-creatures, a practice rarely to be found among the fiercest and most rapacious of the brute animals; such nations, it is evident, would entirely depart from their ordinary habits and principles of action, were they to display much tenderness or benevolence, in consequence of that blind appetite which unites the sexes. It ought, at the same time to be remembered, that, how poor and wretched soever the aspect of human nature in this early state, it contains the seeds of improvement,<46> which, by long care and culture, are capable of being brought to maturity; so that the lower its primitive condition, it requires the greater exertions of labour and activity, and calls for a more extensive operation of those wonderful powers and faculties, which, in a gradual progression from such rude beginnings, have led to the noblest discoveries in art or science, and to the most exalted refinement of taste and manners.<47>

SECTION II

The influence acquired by the mother of a family, before marriage is completely established.

Such are the natural effects of poverty and barbarism, with respect to the passions of sex, and with respect to the rank in society which the women are permitted to enjoy. There is one circumstance, however, in the manners of a rude age, that merits particular attention; as it appears, in some countries, to have produced a remarkable exception to the foregoing observations.

Although marriage, for the reasons formerly mentioned, is undoubtedly a very early institution, yet some little time and experience are necessary before it can be fully established in a barbarous community; and we read of several nations, among whom it is either unknown, or takes place in a very imperfect and limited manner.

To a people who are little acquainted with that institution it will appear, that children have much more connexion with their mother than with their father. If a woman has no notion of attachment or fidelity to any particular person, if notwithstanding her occasional intercourse with different individuals she continues to live by herself, or with her own relations, the child which she has borne, and<48> which she maintains under her own inspection, must be regarded as a member of her own family; and the father, who lives at a distance, can have no opportunity of establishing an authority over it. We may in general conclude, that the same ideas which obtain in a polished nation, with regard to bastards, will, in those primitive times, be extended to all, or the greater part of the children produced in the country.

Thus, among the Lycians, children were accustomed to take their names from their mother, and not from their father; so that if any person was desired to give an account of the family to which he belonged, he was naturally led to recount his maternal genealogy in the female line. The same custom took place among the ancient inhabitants of Attica; as it does at present among several tribes of the natives of North America, and of the Indians upon the coast of Malabar.* <49>

In this situation, the mother of a numerous family, who lives at a distance from her other relations, will often be raised to a degree of rank and dignity to which, from her sex, she would not otherwise be entitled. Her children being, in their early years, maintained and protected by her care and tenderness, and having been accustomed to submit to her authority, will be apt, even after they are grown up, and have arrived at their full strength and vigour, to behave to her with some degree of reverence and filial affection. Although they have no admiration of her military talents, they may respect her upon account of her experience and wisdom; and although they should not themselves be always very scrupulous in paying her an implicit obedience, they will probably be disposed to espouse her quarrel, or to support her interest against every other person.

We are informed, indeed, that when a young Hottentot is of age to be received into the society of men, it is usual for him to beat and abuse his<50> mother, by way of triumph at being freed from her tuition. Such behaviour may happen in a rude country, where, after marriage is established, the superior strength of the husband has raised him to the head of his family, and where his authority has of course annihilated that of the wife, or at least greatly reduced her consideration and importance. But in a country where children have no acquaintance with their father, and are not indebted to him for subsistence and protection, they can hardly fail, during a considerable part of their life, to regard their mother as the principal person in the family.

This is in all probability the source of that influence which appears to have been possessed by the women in several rude and barbarous parts of the world.

In the island of Formosa, it is said, that in forming that slight and transient union between the sexes, to which our travellers, in conformity to the customs of Europe, have given the name of marriage, the husband quits his own family, and passes into that of his wife, where he continues to reside as long as his connection with her remains.* The same custom is said to be established among the people called Moxos, in Peru.† <51>

In the Ladrone islands the wife is absolute mistress of the house, and the husband is not at liberty to dispose of any thing without her permission. She chastises him, or puts him away, at pleasure; and whenever a separation happens, she not only retains all her moveables, but also her children, who consider the next husband she takes as their father.‡

The North American tribes are accustomed to admit their women into their public councils, and even to allow them the privilege of being first called to give their opinion upon every subject of deliberation. Females, indeed, are held incapable of enjoying the office of chief, but through them the succession to that dignity is continued; and therefore, upon the death of a chief, he is succeeded, not by his own son, but by that of his sister; and in default of the sister’s son, by his nearest relation in the female line. When his whole family happens to be extinct, the right of naming a successor is claimed by the noblest matron of the village.

It is observed, however, by an author, who has given us the fullest account of all these particulars, that the women of North America do not arrive at this influence and dignity till after a certain age, and after their children are in a condition to procure<52> them respect; that before this period they are commonly treated as the slaves of the men; and that there is no country in the world where the female sex is in general more neglected and despised.*

Among the ancient inhabitants of Attica, the women had, in like manner, a share in public deliberations. This custom continued till the reign of Cecrops, when a revolution was produced, of which the following fabulous relation has been given by historians. It is said that, after the building of Athens, Minerva and Neptune became competitors for the honour of giving a name to the city, and that Cecrops called a public assembly of the men and women in order to determine the difference. The women were interested upon the part of Minerva; the men upon that of Neptune; and the former carried the point by the majority of one vote. Soon after, there happened an inundation of the sea, which occasioned much damage, and greatly terrified the inhabitants, who believed that this calamity proceeded from the vengeance of Neptune for the affront he had suffered. To appease him, they resolved to punish the female sex, by whom the offence was committed, and determined that no woman should for the future be admitted into the public assemblies, nor any child be allowed to bear the name of its mother.† <53>

It may explain this piece of ancient mythology to observe, that in the reign of Cecrops marriage was first established among the Athenians. In consequence of this establishment the children were no longer accustomed to bear the name of their mother, but that of their father, who, from his superior strength and military talents, became the head and governor of the family; and as the influence of the women was thereby greatly diminished, it was to be expected that they should, in a little time, be entirely excluded from those great assemblies which deliberated upon public affairs.

Among the ancient Britons we find, in like manner, that the women were accustomed to vote in the public assemblies. The rude and imperfect institution of marriage, and the community of wives, that anciently took place in Britain, must have prevented the children from acquiring any considerable connexion with their father, and have disposed them to follow the condition of their mother, as well as to support her interest and dignity.

When a woman, by being at the head of a large family, is thus advanced to influence and authority, and becomes a sort of female chief, she naturally maintains a number of servants, and endeavours to live with suitable splendour and magnificence. In proportion to her affluence, she has the greater temptation to indulge her sensual appetites; and, in a period when the sexes are but little accustomed to controul or disguise their inclinations, she<54> may, in some cases, be led into a correspondence with different male retainers, who happen to reside in her family, and over whom she exercises an authority resembling that of a master.

The above remark may account for what is related by historians; that, in some provinces of the ancient Median empire, it was customary for women to entertain a number of husbands, as in others, it was usual for men to entertain a number of wives or concubines.* The dominion of the ancient Medes comprehended many extensive territories; in some of which, the inhabitants were extremely barbarous; in others, no less opulent and luxurious.

This unusual kind of polygamy, if I may be allowed to use that expression, is established at present upon the coast of Malabar,* as well as in some cantons of the Iroquois in North America;† and though there is no practice more inconsistent with the views and manners of a civilized nation, it has in all probability been adopted by many individuals, in every country where the inhabitants were unacquainted with the regular institution of marriage.‡ <55>

It is highly probable, that the celebrated traditions of the Amazons, inhabiting the most barbarous regions of Scythia, and the relations of a similar people in some parts of America, have arisen from the state of manners now under consideration. Though these accounts are evidently mixed with fable, and appear to contain much exaggeration, we can hardly suppose that they would have been propagated by so many authors, and have created such universal attention, had they been entirely destitute of real foundation.§ In a country where marriage is unknown, females are commonly exalted to be the heads of families, or chiefs, and thus acquire an authority, which, notwithstanding their inferiority in strength, may extend to the direction of war, as well as of other transactions. So extraordinary a spectacle as that of a military<56> enterprise conducted by women, and where the men acted in a subordinate capacity, must have filled the enemy with wonder and astonishment, and might easily give rise to those fictions of a femalerepublic, and of other circumstances equally marvellous, which we meet with in ancient writers.

Ducit Amazonidum lunatis agmina peltis
Penthesilea furens, mediisque in millibus ardet,
Aurea subnectens exsertae cingula mammae,
Bellatrix, audetque viris concurrere virgo.2 <57>

SECTION III

The refinement of the passions of Sex, in the Pastoral Ages.

When we examine the circumstances which occasion the depression of the women, and the low estimation in which they are held, in a simple and barbarous age, we may easily imagine in what manner their condition is varied and improved in the subsequent periods of society. Their condition is naturally improved by every circumstance which tends to create more attention to the pleasures of sex, and to increase the value of those occupations that are suited to the female character; by the cultivation of the arts of life; by the advancement of opulence; and by the gradual refinement of taste and manners. From a view of the progress of society, in these respects, we may, in a great measure, account for the diversity that occurs among different nations, in relation to the rank of the sexes, their dispositions and sentiments towards each other, and the regulations which they have established in the several branches of their domestic economy.

The invention of taming and pasturing cattle, which may be regarded as the first remarkable improvement in the savage life, is productive of<58> very important alterations in the state and manners of a people.

A shepherd is more regularly supplied with food, and is commonly subjected to fewer hardships and calamities than those who live by hunting and fishing. In proportion to the size of his family, the number of his flocks may in some measure be increased; while the labour which is requisite for their management can never be very oppressive. Being thus provided with necessaries, he is led to the pursuit of those objects which may render his situation more easy and comfortable; and among these the enjoyments derived from the intercourse of the sexes claim a principal share, and become an object of attention.

The leisure, tranquillity, and retirement of a pastoral life, seem calculated, in a peculiar manner, to favour the indulgence of those indolent gratifications. From higher notions of refinement a nicer distinction is made with regard to the objects of desire; and the mere animal pleasure is more frequently accompanied with a correspondence of inclination and sentiment. As this must occasion a great diversity in the taste of individuals, it proves, on many occasions, an obstruction to their happiness, and prevents the lover from meeting with a proper return to his passion. But the delays and the uneasiness to which he is thereby subjected, far from repressing the ardour of his wishes, serve only to increase it; and, amid the idleness and<59> freedom from other cares which his situation affords, he is often wholly occupied by the same tender ideas, which are apt to inflame his imagination, and to become the principal subject of such artless expressive songs as he is capable of composing for his ordinary pastime and amusement.

In consequence of these improvements the virtue of chastity begins to be recognized; for when love becomes a passion, instead of being a mere sensual appetite, it is natural to think that those affections which are not dissipated by variety of enjoyment, will be the purest and the strongest.

The acquisition of property among shepherds has also a considerable effect upon the commerce of the sexes.

Those who have no other fund for their subsistence but the natural fruits of the earth, or the game which the country affords, are acquainted with no other distinctions in the rank of individuals, but such as arise from their personal accomplishments; distinctions which are never continued for any length of time in the same family, and which therefore can never be productive of any lasting influence and authority. But the invention of taming and pasturing cattle gives rise to a more remarkable and permanent distinction of ranks. Some persons, by being more industrious or more fortunate than others, are led in a short time to acquire more numerous herds and flocks, and are thereby enabled to live in greater affluence, to maintain a<60> number of servants and retainers, and to increase, in proportion, their power and dignity. As the superior fortune which is thus acquired by a single person is apt to remain with his posterity, it creates a train of dependance in those who have been connected with the possessor; and the influence which it occasions is gradually augmented, and transmitted from one generation to another.

The degree of wealth acquired by single families of shepherds is greater than may at first be imagined. In the eastern parts of Tartary, where the inhabitants are chiefly maintained upon the flesh of rein-deer, many of the rich possess ten or twenty thousand of those animals; and one of the chiefs of that country, according to an account lately published, was proprietor of no less than an hundred thousand.

The introduction of wealth, and the distinction of ranks with which it is attended, must interrupt the communication of the sexes, and, in many cases, render it difficult for them to gratify their wishes. As particular persons become opulent, they are led to entertain suitable notions of their own dignity; and, while they aim at superior elegance and refinement in their pleasures, they disdain to contract an alliance with their own dependents, or with people of inferior condition. If great families, upon an equal footing, happen to reside in the same neighbourhood, they are frequently engaged in mutual depredations, and are<61> obliged to have a watchful eye upon the conduct of each other, in order to defend their persons and their property. The animosities and quarrels which arise from their ambition or desire of plunder, and which are fomented by reciprocal injuries, dispose them, in all cases, to behave to one another with distance and reserve, and sometimes prove an insuperable bar to their correspondence.

Among persons living upon such terms, the passions of sex cannot be gratified with the same facility as among hunters and fishers. The forms of behaviour, naturally introduced among individuals jealous of each other, have a tendency to check all familiarity between them, and to render their approaches towards an intimacy proportionably slow and gradual. The rivalship subsisting between different families, and the mutual prejudices which they have long indulged, must often induce them to oppose the union of their respective relations: And thus the inclinations of individuals having in vain been smothered by opposition, will break forth with greater vigour, and rise at length to a higher pitch, in proportion to the difficulties which they have surmounted.

Upon the eastern coast of Tartary, it is said that such tribes as are accustomed to the pasturing of cattle discover some sort of jealousy with regard to the chastity of their women; a circumstance regarded as of no importance by those inhabitants of<62> the same country who procure their subsistence merely by fishing.*

From what is related of the patriarch Jacob, it would seem that those families or tribes of shepherds which were anciently scattered over the country of Arabia, had attained some degree of improvement in their manners.

“And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.

“And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee than that I should give her to another man: abide with me.

“And Jacob served seven years for Rachel: and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.”†

In the compositions of Ossian, which describe the manners of a people acquainted with pasturage, there is often a degree of tenderness and delicacy of sentiment which can hardly be equalled in the most refined productions of a civilized age. Some allowance no doubt must be made for the heightening of a poet possessed of uncommon genius and sensibility; but, at the same time, it is probable, that the real history of his countrymen was the groundwork of those events which he has related,<63> and of those tragical effects which he frequently ascribes to the passion between the sexes.‡

“Lorma sat in Aldo’s hall, at the light of a flaming oak: the night came, but he did not return, and the soul of Lorma is sad.—What detains thee, Hunter of Cona? for thou didst promise to return.—Has the deer been distant far, and do the dark winds sigh round thee on the<64> heath? I am in the land of strangers, where is my friend, but Aldo? Come from thy echoing hills, O my best beloved!

“Her eyes are turned towards the gate, and she listens to the rustling blast. She thinks it is Aldo’s tread, and joy rises in her face:—but sorrow returns again, like a thin cloud on the moon.—And thou wilt not return, my love? Let me behold the face of the hill. The moon is in the east. Calm and bright is the breast of the lake! When shall I behold his dogs returning from the chace? When shall I hear his voice loud and distant on the wind? Come from thy echoing hills, Hunter of Woody Cona!

“His thin ghost appeared on a rock, like the watery beam of the moon, when it rushes from between two clouds, and the midnight shower is on the field.—She followed the empty form over the heath, for she knew that her hero fell.—I heard her approaching cries on the wind, like the mournful voice of the breeze, when it sighs on the grass of the cave.

“She came, she found her hero: her voice was heard no more: silent she rolled her sad eyes; she was pale as a watery cloud, that rises from the lake to the beam of the moon.

“Few were her days on Cona: she sunk into the tomb: Fingal commanded his bards, and they sung over the death of Lorma. The daughters <65>of Morven mourned her for one day in the year, when the dark winds of autumn returned.”*

In the agreeable pictures of the golden age, handed down from remote antiquity, we may discover the opinion that was generally entertained of the situation and manners of shepherds. Hence that particular species of poetry, which is now appropriated by fashion, to describe the pleasures of rural retirement, accompanied with innocence and simplicity, and with the indulgence of all the tender passions. There is good reason to believe, that these representations of the pastoral life were not inconsistent with the real condition of shepherds, and that the poets, who were the first historians, have only embellished the traditions of early times. In Arcadia, in Sicily, and in some parts of Italy, where the climate was favourable to the rearing of cattle, or where the inhabitants were but little exposed to the depredations of their neighbours, it is probable that the refinement natural to the pastoral state was carried to a great height. This refinement was the more likely to become the subject of exaggeration and poetical embellishment; as, from a view of the progressive improvements in society, it was contrasted, on the one hand, with the barbarous manners of mere savages; and, on the other, with the opposite style of behaviour in polished nations, who, being con-<66>stantly engaged in the pursuit of gain, and immersed in the cares of business, have contracted habits of industry, avarice, and selfishness.

Nondum caesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem,
Montibus, in liquidas pinus descenderat undas:
Nullaque mortales, praeter sua littora norant.
Nondum praecipites cingebant oppida fossae:
Non tuba directi, non aeris cornua flexi,
Non galeae, non ensis erant. Sine militis usu
Mollia securae peragebant otia gentes:
Ipsa quoque immunis, rastroque intacta, nec ullis
Saucia vomeribus, per se dabat omnia tellus;
Contentique cibis, nullo cogente, creatis,
Arbuteos foetus, montanaque fraga legebant;
Cornaque, et in duris haerentia mora rubetis;
Et quae deciderant patula Jovis arbore glandes;
Ver erat eternum, placidique tepentibus auris
Mulcebant Zephyri, natos sine semine flores.3 <67>

SECTION IV

The consequences of the introduction of Agriculture, with respect to the intercourse of the Sexes.

The passions which relate to the commerce of the sexes may be still raised to a greater height, when men are acquainted with the cultivation of the ground, and have made some progress in the different branches of husbandry.

The improvement of agriculture, which in most parts of the world has been posterior to the art of taming and rearing cattle, is productive of very important alterations in the state of society; more especially with respect to the subject of our present inquiry. Although this employment requires greater industry and labour than is necessary among men who have only the care of herds and flocks; yet, by producing plenty of vegetable as well as of animal food, it multiplies the comforts and conveniencies of life, and therefore excites in mankind a stronger desire of obtaining those pleasures to which they are prompted by their natural appetites. It also obliges men to fix their residence in the neighbourhood of that spot where their labour is chiefly to be employed, and thereby gives rise to property in land, the most valuable and permanent species of wealth; by the unequal distribution of<68> which a greater disproportion is made in the fortune and rank of individuals, and the causes of their dissension and jealousy are, of course, extended.

In the heroic times of Greece, we may, in some measure, discern the effect of these circumstances upon the character and manners of the people.

The inhabitants of that country were then divided into clans or tribes, who, having for the most part begun the practice of agriculture, had quitted the wandering life of shepherds, and established a number of separate independent villages. As those little societies maintained a constant rivalship with each other, and were frequently engaged in actual hostilities, they were far from being in circumstances to encourage a familiar correspondence; and when in particular cases a formal visit had produced an interview between them, it was often attended with such consequences as might be expected from the restraints to which they were usually subjected. A man of wealth and distinction, having conceived a violent passion for the wife or the daughter of a neighbouring prince, was disposed to encounter every danger in order to gratify his desires; and, after seducing the lady, or carrying her away by force, he was generally involved in a war with her relations, and with such as chose to assist them in vindicating the honour of their family. Disorders of this kind were for a considerable time the source of the chief animosities among the different states of Greece, as well as between them and<69> the inhabitants of Asia Minor; and the rape of Io, of Europa, of Medea, and of Helen, are mentioned as the ground of successive quarrels, which in the end were productive of the most distinguished military enterprise that is recorded in the history of those periods.

But notwithstanding these events, from which it appears that the passions of sex had often a considerable influence upon the conduct of the people, there is no reason to imagine that the Greeks, in those times, had entirely shaken off their ancient barbarous manners, or in their ideas with respect to the women, had attained any high degree of delicacy.

In the Iliad, the wife of Menelaus is considered as of little more value than the treasure which had been stolen along with her. The restitution of the lady and of that treasure is always mentioned in the same breath, and seems to be regarded as a full reparation of the injury which Menelaus had sustained: and though it was known that Helen had made a vol-untary elopement with Paris, yet her husband neither discovers any resentment upon that account, nor seems unwilling to receive her again into favour.*

Even the wife of Ulysses, whose virtue in refusing the suitors is highly celebrated in the Odyssey, is supposed to derive her principal merit from<70> preserving to her husband’s family the dowery which she had brought along with her, and which, it seems, upon her second marriage, must have been restored to her father Icarius.*

And though Telemachus is always represented as a pious and dutiful son, we find him reproving his mother in a manner which shews he had no very high notion of her dignity, or of the respect which belonged to her sex.

Your widowed hours, apart, with female toil,
And various labours of the loom, beguile;
There rule, from palace cares remote and free;
That care to man belongs, and most to me.†

Penelope, so far from being offended at this language, appears to consider it as a mark of uncommon prudence and judgment in so young a person.

Mature beyond his years, the queen admires
His sage reply, and with her train retires.

In all parts of the world, where the advancement of agriculture has introduced the appropriation of landed estates, it will be found that the manners of the inhabitants are such, as indicate considerable improvements in the commerce of the sexes.<71>

But the acquisition of property in land, the jealousy arising from the distinction of ranks, and the animosities which are apt to be produced by the neighbourhood of great independent families, appear to have been attended with the most remarkable consequences in those barbarous nations, who, about the fifth century, invaded the Roman empire, and afterwards settled in the different provinces which they had conquered.

As those nations were small, and as they acquired an extensive territory, the different tribes or families of which they were composed spread themselves over the country, and were permitted to occupy very large estates. Particular chieftains or heads of families became great and powerful in proportion to their wealth, which enabled them to support a numerous train of retainers and followers. A great number of these were united under a sovereign; for the different parts of a Roman province, having a dependence upon one another, fell naturally into the hands of the same military leader, and were erected into one kingdom. But, in a rude age, unaccustomed to subordination, the monarch could have little authority over such wide dominions. The opulent proprietors of land, disdaining submission to regular government, lived in the constant exercise of predatory incursions upon their neighbours; and every separate family, being in a great measure left without protection from the public, was under the necessity of provid-<72>ing for its own defence. The disorders arising from private wars between different families of the same kingdom, were not effectually repressed for many centuries; during which time the same causes continued to operate in forming the character and manners of the people, and gave rise to a set of customs and institutions of which we have no example in any other age or country.

The high notions of military honour, and the romantic love and gallantry, by which the modern nations of Europe have been so much distinguished, were equally derived from those particular circumstances.

As war was the principal employment of those nations, so it was carried on in a manner somewhat peculiar to themselves. Their military enterprises were less frequently undertaken against a foreign enemy than against the inhabitants of a neighbouring district; and on these latter occasions, the chief warriors of either party, were, from the smallness of their numbers, known to each other, and distinguished by the respective degrees of strength or valour which they possessed. The members of different families, who had long been at variance, were therefore animated with a strong personal animosity; and as, in the time of an engagement, they were disposed to single out one another, a battle was frequently nothing more than a number of separate duels between combatants inspired with mutual jealousy, and contending for<73> superiority in military prowess. As the individuals of different parties were inflamed by opposition, those of the same party, conscious of acting under the particular observation of all their companions, were excited to vie with each other in the performance of such exploits as might procure admiration and applause. In this situation they not only contracted habits which rendered them cool and intrepid in danger, but at the same time acquired a remarkable generosity of sentiment in the exercise of their mutual hostilities. Persons, who aspired to superior rank and influence, fought merely to obtain a reputation in arms, and affected to look upon every other consideration as mean and ignoble. Having this object in view, they thought it disgraceful to assault an enemy when unprepared for his defence, or without putting him upon his guard by a previous challenge; and they disdained to practise unfair means in order to gain a victory, or to use it with insolence and barbarity. These notions of honour were productive of certain rules and maxims, by which the gentry were directed in their whole manner of fighting, and from which they never deviated without bringing an indelible stain upon their character.

The ideas of personal dignity, which were thus raised to so high a pitch among neighbouring families, were incompatible with any regular distribution of justice. Men of wealth and distinction were unwilling to apply to a magistrate in order<74> to procure redress for the injuries or affronts which they sustained; because this would have amounted to a confession that they were unable to assert their character and rank, by taking vengeance upon the offender. If a law-suit had arisen in matters of property, it commonly happened in the progress of the dispute, that one of the parties gave such offence to the other, as occasioned their deciding the difference by the sword. The judge, who found himself incapable of preventing this determination, endeavoured to render it less hurtful to society, by discouraging the friends of either party from interfering in the quarrel. With this view, he assumed the privilege of regulating the forms, and even became a spectator of the combat; which in that age, no less prone to superstition than intoxicated with the love of military glory, was considered as an immediate appeal to the judgment of heaven. These judicial combats, though they did not introduce the custom of duelling, had certainly a tendency to render it more universal, and to settle a variety of observances with which it came to be attended.

The diversions of a people have always a relation to their general character and manners. It was therefore to be expected that such warlike nations would be extremely addicted to martial exercises, and that the members of different tribes or families, when not engaged in actual hostilities, would be accustomed to challenge one another to<75> a trial of their strength, activity, or military skill. Hence the origin of jousts and tournaments; those images of war, which were frequently exhibited by men of rank, and which tended still farther to improve those nice punctilios of behaviour that were commonly practised by the military people in every serious contest.

From this prevailing spirit of the times, the art of war became the study of every one who was desirous of maintaining the character of a gentleman. The youth were early initiated in the profession of arms, and served a sort of apprenticeship under persons of distinguished eminence. The young squire became in reality the servant of that leader to whom he had attached himself, and whose virtues were set before him as a model for imitation. He was taught to perform with ease and dexterity those exercises which were either ornamental or useful; and, at the same time, he endeavoured to acquire those talents and accomplishments which were thought suitable to his profession. He was taught to look upon it as his duty to check the insolent, to restrain the oppressor, to protect the weak and defenceless; to behave with frankness and humanity even to an enemy, with modesty and politeness to all. According to the proficiency which he had made, he was honoured with new titles and marks of distinction, till at length he arrived at the dignity of knighthood; a dignity which even the greatest<76> potentates were ambitious of acquiring, as it was supposed to ascertain the most complete military education, and the attainment of such qualifications as were then universally admired and respected.

The same ambition, in persons of an exalted military rank, which gave rise to the institution of chivalry, was afterwards productive of the different orders of knighthood, by which, from a variety of similar establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, a subdivision was made in the degrees of honour conferred upon individuals.

The situation of mankind in those periods had also a manifest tendency to heighten and improve the passion between the sexes. It was not to be expected that those opulent chiefs, who maintained a constant opposition to each other, would allow any sort of familiarity to take place between the members of their respective families. Retired in their own castles, and surrounded with their numerous vassals, they looked upon their neighbours either as inferior to them in rank, or as enemies. They behaved to each other with that ceremonious civility which the laws of chivalry required; but, at the same time, with that reserve and caution which a regard to their own safety made it necessary for them to observe. The young knight, as he marched to the tournament, saw at a distance the daughter of the chieftain by whom the show was exhibited; and it was even with difficulty that<77> he could obtain access to her, in order to declare the sentiments with which she had inspired him. He was entertained by her relations with that cold respect which demonstrated that their dignity was alarmed by his aspiring to contract an alliance with them. The lady herself was taught to assume the pride of her family, and to think that no person was worthy of her affection who did not possess an exalted rank and character. To have given way to a sudden inclination would have disgraced her for ever in the opinion of all her kindred; and it was only by a long course of attention, and of the most respectful service, that the lover could hope for any favour from his mistress.*

The barbarous state of the country at that time, and the injuries to which the inhabitants, especially those of the weaker sex, were frequently exposed, gave ample scope for the display of military talents; and the knight, who had nothing to do at home, was encouraged to wander from place to place, and from one court to another, in quest of adventures; in which he endeavoured to ad-<78>vance his reputation in arms, and to recommend himself to the fair of whom he was enamoured, by fighting with every person who was so inconsiderate as to dispute her unrivalled beauty, virtue, or personal accomplishments. Thus, while his thoughts were constantly fixed upon the same object, and while his imagination, inflamed by absence and repeated disappointments, was employed in heightening all those charms by which his desires were continually excited, his passion was at length wrought up to the highest pitch, and uniting with the love of fame, became the ruling principle, which gave a particular turn and direction to all his sentiments and opinions.

As there were many persons in the same situation, they were naturally inspired with similar sentiments. Rivals to one another in military glory, they were often competitors, as it is expressed by Milton, “to win her grace whom all commend”;4 and the same emulation which disposed them to aim at pre-eminence in the one respect, excited them with no less eagerness to dispute the preference in the other. Their dispositions and manner of thinking became fashionable, and were gradually diffused by the force of education and example. To be in love was looked upon as one of the necessary qualifications of a knight; and he was no less ambitious of showing his constancy and fidelity to his mistress, than of displaying his military virtues. He assumed the title of her slave, or servant. By<79> this he distinguished himself in every combat; and his success was supposed to redound to her honour, no less than to his own. If she had bestowed upon him a present to be worn in the field of battle in token of her regard, it was considered as a pledge of victory, and as laying upon him the strongest obligation to render himself worthy of the favour.

The sincere and faithful passion, which commonly occupied the heart of every warrior, and which he professed upon all occasions, was naturally productive of the utmost purity of manners, and of great respect and veneration for the female sex. The delicacy of sentiment which prevailed, had a tendency to divert the attention from sensual pleasure, and created a general abhorrence of debauchery. Persons who felt a strong propensity to magnify and exalt the object of their own wishes, were easily led to make allowance for the same disposition in their neighbours; and such individuals as made a point of defending the reputation and dignity of that particular lady to whom they were devoted, became extremely cautious, lest by any insinuation or impropriety of behaviour, they should hurt the character of another, and be exposed to the just resentment of those by whom she was protected. A woman who deviated so far from the established maxims of the age as to violate the laws of chastity, was indeed deserted by every body, and<80> was universally contemned and insulted.* But those who adhered to the strict rules of virtue, and maintained an unblemished reputation, were treated like beings of a superior order. The love of God and of the ladies was one of the first lessons inculcated upon every young person who was initiated into the military profession. He was instructed with care in all those forms of behaviour which, according to the received notions of gallantry and politeness, were settled with the most frivolous exactness. He was frequently put under the tuition of some matron of rank and distinction, who in this particular directed his education, and to whom he was under a necessity of revealing all his sentiments, thoughts, and actions. An oath was imposed upon him, by which he became bound to vindicate the honour of the ladies, as well as to de-<81>fend them from every species of injustice; and the uncourteous knight who behaved to them with rudeness, or who ventured to injure and insult them, became the object of general indignation and vengeance, and was treated as the common enemy of all those who were actuated by the true and genuine principles of chivalry.†

The sentiments of military honour, and the love and gallantry so universally diffused among those nations, which were displayed in all the amusements and diversions of the people, had necessarily a remarkable influence upon the genius and taste of their literary compositions. Men were pleased with a recital of what they admired in real life; and the first poetical historians endeavoured to embellish those events which had struck their imagination, and appeared the most worthy of being preserved.

Such was the employment of the bards,* who about the eleventh century are said, along with their minstrels,† to have attended the festivals and entertainments of princes, and to have sung, with the accompaniment of musical instruments, a variety of small poetical pieces of their own composition, describing the heroic sentiments, as well as the love and gallantry of the times.‡ <82>

They were succeeded by the writers of romance, who related a longer and more connected series of adventures, in which were exhibited the most extravagant instances of valour and generosity, of patience and fortitude, of respect to the ladies, of disinterested love, and inviolable fidelity; subjects the most capable of warming the imagination, and of producing the most sublime and refined descriptions; but which were often disgraced by the unskilfulness of the author, and by that excessive propensity to exaggeration, and turn for the marvellous, which prevailed in those ages of darkness and superstition. These performances, however, with all their faults, may be regarded as striking monuments of the Gothic taste and genius, to which there is nothing similar in the writings of antiquity, and at the same time as useful records, that contain some of the outlines of the history, together with a faithful picture of the manners and customs of those remarkable periods.

This observation is in some measure applicable to the Epic poetry which followed, and which, with little more correctness, but with the graces of versification, described the same heroic and tender sentiments, though tinctured by the peculiar genius and character of different writers.

The romance of Charlemain and his twelve peers, ascribed to archbishop Turpin, a cotemporary of that monarch, but which is supposed to be a work of the eleventh century,5 furnished mate-<83>rials for the Morgante, the Orlando Innamorato, and the Orlando Furioso.6 The last of these poems, which entirely eclipsed the reputation of the two former, whatever may be its merit to an Italian, in easiness and harmony of expression, is a bundle of incoherent adventures, discovering neither unity of design, nor any selection of such objects as are fitted to excite admiration. The Gierusalemme Liberata, to the system of enchantment, and the romantic exploits which modern times had introduced, has united the regularity of the ancient Greek and Roman poets; and though the author’s talents for the pathetic seem inferior to his powers of description, the whole structure of his admirable poem is sufficient to show the advantages, in point of sublimity, derived from the manners and institutions of chivalry.7 The fabulous legends of Prince Arthur, and his knights of the round table, suggested the ground-work of Spenser’s Fairy Queen;8 but the writer, instead of improving upon the Gothic model, has thought proper to cover it with a veil of allegory; which is too dark to have much beauty of its own; and which, notwithstanding the strength of imagery frequently displayed, destroys the appearance of reality, necessary, in works of imagination, to interest the affections.

When the improvement of public shows had given rise to dramatic performances, the same sort of manners was adopted in those entertainments;<84> and the first tragedies, unless when founded upon religious subjects, represented love as the grand spring and mover of every action, the source of all those hopes and fears with which the principal persons were successively agitated, and of that distress and misery in which they were finally involved. This is the more remarkable, because, from the rigid morals of that age, women were not permitted to act in those representations; and therefore the parts allotted to them, which were performed by men, were usually so conducted by the poet as to bear a very small proportion to the rest of the piece.

The first deviation from this general taste of composition in works of entertainment may be discovered in Italy, where the revival of letters was early attended with some relaxation of the Gothic institutions and manners.

The advancement of the Italian states in commerce and manufactures so early as the thirteenth century, had produced a degree of opulence and luxury, and was followed, soon after, by the cultivation of the fine arts, and the improvement of taste and science. The principal towns of Italy came thus to be filled with tradesmen and merchants, whose unwarlike dispositions, conformable to their manner of life, were readily communicated to those who had intercourse with them. To this we may add the influence of the clergy, who resorted in great numbers to Rome, as the fountain of ecclesiastical pre-<85>ferment, and who, embracing different views and principles from those of the military profession, were enabled to propagate their opinions and sentiments among the greater part of the inhabitants.

The decay of the military spirit among the Italians was manifest from their disuse of duelling, the most refined method of executing private revenge, and from their substituting, in place of it, the more artful but cowardly practice of poisoning. Their taste of writing was in like manner varied according to this alteration of their circumstances; and people began to relish those ludicrous descripions of low life and of licentious manners which we meet with in the tales of Boccace, and many other writers, entirely repugnant to the gravity and decorum of former times, and which appear to have taken their origin from the monks, in consequence of such dispositions and habits as their constrained and unnatural situation had a tendency to produce. This kind of composition, however, appears to have been the peculiar growth of Italy; and those authors who attempted to introduce it into other countries, as was done by Chaucer in England, are only servile imitators, or rather mere translators of the Italians.

In the other countries of Europe, the manners introduced by chivalry were more firmly rooted, and acquiring stability from custom, may still be observed to have a good deal of influence upon the taste and sentiments even of the present age.<86> When a change of circumstances, more than the inimitable ridicule of Cervantes, had contributed to explode the ancient romances, they were succeeded by those serious novels which, in France and England, are still the favourite entertainment, and which represent, in a more moderate degree, the sentiments of military honour, as well as the love and gallantry which prevailed in the writings of a former period. The fashion of those times has also remained with us in our theatrical compositions; and scarce any author, till very lately, seems to have thought that a tragedy without a love-plot could be attended with success.

The great respect and veneration for the ladies, which prevailed in a former period, has still a considerable influence upon our behaviour towards them, and has occasioned their being treated with a degree of politeness, delicacy, and attention, that was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and perhaps to all the nations of antiquity. This has given an air of refinement to the intercourse of the sexes, which contributes to heighten the elegant pleasures of society, and may therefore be considered as a valuable improvement, arising from the extravagance of Gothic institutions and manners.<87>

SECTION V

Changes in the condition of women, arising from the improvement of useful Arts and Manufactures.

One of the most remarkable differences between man and other animals consists in that wonderful capacity for the improvement of his faculties with which he is endowed. Never satisfied with any particular attainment, he is continually impelled by his desires from the pursuit of one object to that of another; and his activity is called forth in the prosecution of the several arts which render his situation more easy and agreeable. This progress however is slow and gradual; at the same time that, from the uniformity of the human constitution, it is accompanied with similar appearances in different parts of the world. When agriculture has created abundance of provisions, people extend their views to other circumstances of smaller importance. They endeavour to be clothed and lodged, as well as maintained, in a more comfortable manner; and they engage in such occupations as are calculated for these useful purposes. By the application of their labour to a variety of objects, commodities of different kinds are produced. These are exchanged for one another, according to the demand of different individuals; and thus<88> manufactures, together with commerce, are at length introduced into a country.

These improvements are the source of very important changes in the state of society, and particularly in relation to the women. The advancement of a people in manufactures and commerce has a natural tendency to remove those circumstances which prevented the free intercourse of the sexes, and contributed to heighten and inflame their passions. From the cultivation of the arts of peace, the different members of society are more and more united, and have occasion to enter into a greater variety of transactions for their mutual benefit. As they become more civilized, they perceive the advantages of establishing a regular government; and different tribes who lived in a state of independence, are restrained from injuring one another, and reduced under subjection to the laws. Their former animosities, the cause of so much disturbance, are no longer cherished by fresh provocation, and at length are buried in oblivion. Being no longer withheld by mutual fear and jealousy, they are led by degrees to contract an acquaintance, and to carry on a more intimate correspondence. The men and women of different families are permitted to converse with more ease and freedom, and meet with less opposition to the indulgence of their inclinations.

But while the fair sex become less frequently the objects of those romantic and extravagant pas-<89>sions, which in some measure arise from the disorders of society, they are more universally regarded upon account of their useful or agreeable talents.

When men begin to disuse their ancient barbarous practices, when their attention is not wholly engrossed by the pursuit of military reputation, when they have made some progress in arts, and have attained to a proportional degree of refinement, they are necessarily led to set a value upon those female accomplishments and virtues which have so much influence upon every species of improvement, and which contribute in so many different ways to multiply the comforts of life. In this situation, the women become, neither the slaves, nor the idols of the other sex, but the friends and companions. The wife obtains that rank and station which appears most agreeable to reason, being suited to her character and talents. Loaded by nature with the first and most immediate concern in rearing and maintaining the children, she is endowed with such dispositions as fit her for the discharge of this important duty, and is at the same time particularly qualified for all such employments as require skill and dexterity more than strength, which are so necessary in the interior management of the family. Possessed of peculiar delicacy, and sensibility, whether derived from original constitution, or from her way of life, she is capable of securing the esteem and<90> affection of her husband, by dividing his cares, by sharing his joys, and by soothing his misfortunes.

The regard, which is thus shown to the useful talents and accomplishments of the women, cannot fail to operate in directing their education, and in forming their manners. They learn to suit their behaviour to the circumstances in which they are placed, and to that particular standard of propriety and excellence which is set before them. Being respected upon account of their diligence and proficiency in the various branches of domestic economy, they naturally endeavour to improve and extend those valuable qualifications. They are taught to apply with assiduity to those occupations which fall under their province, and to look upon idleness as the greatest blemish in the female character. They are instructed betimes in whatever will qualify them for the duties of their station, and is thought conducive to the ornament of private life. Engaged in these solid pursuits, they are less apt to be distinguished by such brilliant accomplishments as make a figure in the circle of gaiety and amusement. Accustomed to live in retirement, and to keep company with their nearest relations and friends, they are inspired with all that modesty and diffidence which is natural to persons unacquainted with promiscuous conversation; and their affections are neither dissipated by pleasure, nor corrupted by the vicious customs of the world. As their attention is principally bestowed upon the<91> members of their own family, they are led, in a particular manner, to improve those feelings of the heart which are excited by these tender connections, and they are trained up in the practice of all the domestic virtues.

The celebrated character, drawn by Solomon, of the virtuous woman, is highly expressive of those ideas and sentiments, which are commonly entertained by a people advancing in commerce and in the arts of life.

“She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.

“She is like the merchant ships, she bringeth her food from afar.

“She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.

“She considereth a field and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.

“She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.

“She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.

“She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.

“She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.

“She maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple.<92>

“Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.

“She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.

“Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.

“She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

“She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.”*

In many of the Greek states, during their most flourishing periods, it appears that the women were viewed nearly in the same light, and that their education was chiefly calculated to improve their industry and talents, so as to render them useful members of society. Their attention seems to have been engrossed by the care of their own families, and by those smaller branches of manufacture which they were qualified to exercise. They were usually lodged in a remote apartment of the house, and were seldom visited by any person except their near relations. Their modesty and reserve, and their notions of a behaviour suited to the female character, were such as might be expected from their retired manner of life. They never appeared abroad without being covered with a veil, and were not allowed to be present at any public entertainment.† “As for you, women,”<93> says Pericles, in one of the orations in Thucydides, “it ought to be the constant aim of your sex to avoid being talked of by the public; and it is your highest commendation that you should never be the objects either of applause or censure.”‡

Lysias, in one of his orations, has introduced a widow, the mother of several children, who considers her appearing in public as one of the most desperate measures to which she could be driven by her misfortunes. She prays and entreats her son-in-law to call together her relations and friends, that she might inform them of her situation. “I have,” says she, “never before been accustomed to speak in the presence of men; but I am compelled by my sufferings to complain of the injuries I have met with.”*

In another oration, composed by the same author, a citizen, accused of murdering his wife’s gallant, gives the following simple narrative of his domestic economy.

“When I first entered into the married state, Athenians! I endeavoured to observe a medium between the harsh severity of some husbands, and the easy fondness of others. My wife, though treated with kindness, was watched with attention. As a husband, I rendered her situation agreeable; but as a woman, she was left<94> neither the entire mistress of my fortune, nor of her own actions. When she became a mother, this new endearment softened and overcame the prudent caution of my former conduct, and engaged me to repose in her an unlimited confidence. During a short time, Athenians! I had no occasion to repent of this alteration: she proved a most excellent wife; and, highly circumspect in her private behaviour, she managed my affairs with the utmost diligence and frugality. But since the death of my mother, she has been the cause of all my calamities. Then she first got abroad to attend the funeral, and being observed by Eratosthenes, was soon after seduced by him. This he effected by means of our female slave, whom he watched going to market, and whom, by fair promises and flattery, he drew over to his designs.

“It is necessary you should be informed, Athenians! that my house consists of two floors; the floor above is laid out in a similar manner to that below; this lodges the men, that above is destined for the women. Upon the birth of our son, my wife suckled him herself; and to relieve her from the fatigue of going below stairs as often as it was necessary to bathe him, I yielded up the ground floor to the women, and kept above stairs myself. She still continued, however, to sleep with me during the night; and when the child was peevish, and fell a-cry-<95>ing, she frequently went below stairs, and offered it the breast. This practice was long continued without any suspicion on my part, who, simple man that I was! regarded my spouse as a prodigy of virtue.”*

Solon is said to have made regulations for preventing the women from violating those decorums which were esteemed essential to their character. He appointed that no matron should go from home with more than three garments, nor a larger quantity of provisions than could be purchased for an obolus. He also provided, that when any matron went abroad, she should always have an attendant, and a lighted torch carried before her.†

At Athens, a man was not permitted to approach the apartment of his step-mother, or her children, though living in the same house; which is given, by Mr. Hume, as the reason why, by the Athenian laws, one might marry his half-sister by the father; for as these relations had no more intercourse than the men and women of different families, there was no greater danger of any criminal correspondence between them.9

It is probable, that the recluse situation of the Grecian women, which was adapted to the circumstances of the people upon their first advancement in arts, was afterwards maintained from an inviol-<96>able respect to their ancient institutions. The democratical form of government, which came to be established in most parts of Greece, had, at the same time, a tendency to occupy the people in the management of public affairs, and to engage them in those pursuits of ambition, from which the women were naturally excluded. It must however be admitted that, while such a state of manners might be conducive to the more solid enjoyments of life, it undoubtedly prevented the two sexes from improving the arts of conversation, and from giving a polish to the expression of their thoughts and sentiments. Hence it is, that the Greeks, notwithstanding their learning and good sense, were remarkably deficient in delicacy and politeness, and were so little judges of propriety in wit and humour, as to relish the low ribaldry of an Aristophanes, at a period when they were entertained with the sublime eloquence of a Demosthenes, and with the pathetic compositions of a Euripides and a Sophocles.

The military character in ancient Greece, considered with respect to politeness, and compared with the same character in modern times, seems to afford a good illustration of what has been observed. Soldiers, as they are men of the world, have usually such manners as are formed by company and conversation. But in ancient Greece they were no less remarkable for rusticity and ill-manners, than in the modern nations of Europe they<97> are distinguished by politeness and good-breeding; for Menander, the comic poet, says, that he can hardly conceive such a character as that of a polite soldier to be formed even by the power of the Deity.*

When the Romans, towards the middle of the Commonwealth, had become in some degree civilized, it is probable that the condition of their women was nearly the same with that of the Greeks in the period above mentioned. But it appears that, at Rome, the circumstances of the people underwent very rapid changes in this particular. By the conquest of many opulent nations, great wealth was suddenly imported into the capital of the empire; which corrupted the ancient manners of the inhabitants, and produced a great revolution in their taste and sentiments.

In the modern nations of Europe, we may also observe, that the introduction of arts, and of regular government, had an immediate influence upon the relative condition and behaviour of the sexes. When the disorders incident to the Gothic system had subsided, the women began to be valued upon account of their useful talents and accomplishments; and their consideration and rank, making allowance for some remains of that romantic spirit which had prevailed in a former period, came to be chiefly determined by the importance of those departments<98> which they occupied, in carrying on the business and maintaining the intercourse of society. The manners introduced by such views of the female character are still in some measure preserved, in those European countries which have been least affected by the late rapid advances of luxury and refinement.<99>

SECTION VI

The effects of great opulence, and the culture of the elegant arts, upon the relative condition of the sexes.

The progressive improvements of a country are still attended with farther variations in the sentiments and manners of the inhabitants.

The first attention of a people is directed to the acquisition of the mere necessaries of life, and to the exercise of those occupations which are most immediately requisite for subsistence. According as they are successful in these pursuits, they feel a gradual increase of their wants, and are excited with fresh vigour and activity to search for the means of supplying them. The advancement of the more useful arts is followed by the cultivation of those which are subservient to pleasure and entertainment. Mankind, in proportion to the progress they have made in multiplying the conveniencies of their situation, become more refined in their taste, and luxurious in their manner of living. Exempted from labour, and placed in great affluence, they endeavour to improve their enjoyments, and become addicted to all those amusements and diversions which give an exercise to their minds, and relieve them from languor and weariness, the<100> effects of idleness and dissipation. In such a state, the pleasures which nature has grafted upon the love between the sexes, become the source of an elegant correspondence, and are likely to have a general influence upon the commerce of society. Women of condition come to be more universally admired and courted upon account of the agreeable qualities which they possess, and upon account of the amusement which their conversation affords. They are encouraged to quit that retirement which was formerly esteemed so suitable to their character, to enlarge the sphere of their acquaintance, and to appear in mixed company, and in public meetings of pleasure. They lay aside the spindle and the distaff, and engage in other employments more agreeable to the fashion. As they are introduced more into public life, they are led to cultivate those talents which are adapted to the intercourse of the world, and to distinguish themselves by polite accomplishments that tend to heighten their personal attractions, and to excite those peculiar sentiments and passions of which they are the natural objects.

These improvements, in the state and accomplishments of the women, might be illustrated from a view of the manners in the different nations of Europe. They have been carried to the greatest height in France, and in some parts of Italy, where the fine arts have received the highest cultivation, and where a taste for refined and elegant amusement has been generally diffused. The same im-<101>provements have made their way into England and Germany; though the attention of the people to the more necessary and useful arts, and their slow advancement in those which are subservient to entertainment, has, in these countries, prevented the intercourse of the sexes from being equally extended. Even in Spain, where, from the defects of administration, or from whatever causes, the arts have for a long time been almost entirely neglected, the same effects of refinement are at length beginning to appear, by the admission of the women to that freedom which they have in the other countries of Europe.

Thus we may observe, that in refined and polished nations there is the same free communication between the sexes as in the ages of rudeness and barbarism. In the latter, women enjoy the most unbounded liberty, because it is thought of no consequence what use they shall make of it. In the former, they are entitled to the same freedom, upon account of those agreeable qualities which they possess, and the rank and dignity which they hold as members of society.

It should seem, however, that there are certain limits beyond which it is impossible to push the real improvements arising from wealth and opulence. In a simple age, the free intercourse of the sexes is attended with no bad consequences; but in opulent and luxurious nations, it gives rise to licentious and dissolute manners, inconsistent<102> with good order, and with the general interest of society. The love of pleasure, when carried to excess, is apt to weaken and destroy those passions which it endeavours to gratify, and to pervert those appetites which nature has bestowed upon mankind for the most beneficial purposes. The natural tendency, therefore, of great luxury and dissipation is to diminish the rank and dignity of the women, by preventing all refinement in their connection with the other sex, and rendering them only subservient to the purposes of animal enjoyment.

Prima peregrinos obscena pecunia mores
Intulit; et turpi fregerunt secula luxû
Divitiae molles. Quid enim Venus ebria curat?10

The voluptuousness of the Eastern nations, arising from a degree of advancement in the arts, joined, perhaps, to the effect of their climate, and the facility with which they are able to procure subsistence, has introduced the practice of polygamy; by which the women are reduced into a state of slavery and confinement, and a great proportion of the inhabitants are employed in such offices as render them incapable of contributing, either to the population, or to the useful improvements of the country.* <103>

The excessive opulence of Rome, about the end of the Commonwealth, and after the establishment of the despotism, gave rise to a degree of debauchery of which we have no example in any other European nation. This did not introduce polygamy, which was repugnant to the regular and well-established police of a former period; though Julius Caesar is said to have prepared a law by which the emperour should be allowed to have as many wives as he thought fit.† But the luxury of the people, being restrained in this way, came to be the more indulged in every other; and the common prostitution of the women was carried to a height that must have been extremely unfavourable to the multiplication of the species; while the liberty of divorce was so much extended and abused, that, among persons of condition, marriage became a very slight and transient connection.* <104>

The frequency of divorce, among the Romans, was attended with bad consequences, which were felt in every part of their domestic economy. As the husband and wife had a separation constantly in view, they could repose little confidence in each other, but were continually occupied by separate considerations of interest. In such a situation, they were not likely to form a strong attachment, or to bestow much attention to the joint concerns of their family. So far otherwise, the practice of<105> stealing from each other, in expectation of a divorce, became so general that it was not branded with the name of theft, but, like other fashionable vices, received a softening appellation.†

The bad agreement between married persons, together with the common infidelity of the wife, had a natural tendency to alienate the affections of a father from his children, and led him, in many cases, not only to neglect their education, but even to deprive them of their paternal inheritance. This appears to have been one great cause of that propensity, discovered by the people, to convey their estates by will; which, from the many statutes that were made, and the equitable decisions of judges that were given, in order to rectify the abuse, has rendered that branch of the Roman law, relating to testaments, more extensive and complicated than any other. The frequency of such deeds, to the prejudice of the heirs at law, created swarms of those legacy-hunters,* whose trade, as we learn from Horace, afforded the most infallible means of growing rich; and the same circumstance gave also great encouragement to the forgery or falsification of wills, a species of fraud which is much taken notice of by the writers of those times,<106> and which has been improperly regarded as one of the general effects of opulence and luxury.†

In those voluptuous ages of Rome, it should seem that the inhabitants were too much dissipated by pleasure to feel any violent passion for an individual, and the correspondence of the sexes was too undistinguishing to be attended with much delicacy of sentiment. It may accordingly be remarked, that the writers of the Augustan age, who have afforded so many models of composition in other branches, have left no work of imagination, describing the manners of their own countrymen, in which love is supposed to be productive of any tragical, or very serious effects. Neither that part of the Eneid which relates to the death of Dido, nor the love-epistles of Ovid, both of which are founded upon events in a remote age, and in distant countries, can properly be considered as exceptions to what is here alleged. It also merits<107> attention, that when the Roman poets have occasion to represent their own sentiments in this particular, the subject of their description, not to mention more irregular appetites, is either the love of a concubine, or an intrigue with a married woman. This is not less apparent from the grave and tender Elegies of Tibullus and Propertius, than from the gay and more licentious writings of Horace, of Ovid, and of Catullus. The style of those compositions, and the manners from which it was derived, while they degraded the women of virtue, contributed, no doubt, to exalt the character of a kept-mistress. The different situation of modern nations, in this respect, is perhaps the reason why they have no term corresponding to that of amica in Latin.

The acquisition of great wealth, and the improvement of the elegant arts, together with the free intercourse of the sexes, have, in some of the modern European nations, had similar consequences to what they produced in ancient Rome, by introducing a strong disposition to pleasure. This is most especially remarkable in France and Italy, the countries in which opulence was first acquired, and in which the improvements of society are supposed to have made the greatest advances. But in these countries, the authority obtained by the clergy after the establishment of the Christian religion, and the notions which they endeavoured to inculcate with regard to abstinence from every sensual gratification, have concurred with the influ-<108>ence of the former usage and laws, not only to exclude polygamy, but in a great measure to prevent the dissolution of marriage by voluntary divorce. Many disorders, therefore, which were felt in the luxurious ages of Rome, have thus been avoided; and in modern Europe, the chief effect of debauchery, beside the encouragement given to common prostitution, has been to turn the attention, from the pursuits of business or ambition, to the amusements of gallantry; or rather to convert these last into a serious occupation.

It is not intended, however, in this discourse, to consider those variations, in the state of women, which arise from the civil or religious government of a people, or from such other causes as are peculiar to the inhabitants of different countries. The revolutions that I have mentioned, in the condition and manners of the sexes, are chiefly derived from the progress of mankind in the common arts of life, and therefore make a part in the general history of society.<109>

CHAPTER II

Of the Jurisdiction and Authority of a Father over His Children

SECTION I

The power of a father in early ages.

The jurisdiction and authority which, in early times, a father exercised over his children, was of the same nature with that of a husband over his wife. Before the institution of regular government, the strong are permitted to oppress the weak; and in a rude nation, every one is apt to abuse that power which he happens to possess.

After marriage is completely established in a community, the husband, as has been formerly observed, becomes the head of his family, and assumes the direction and government of all its members. It is to be expected, indeed, that in the exercise of this authority, he should have an inclination to promote the welfare and prosperity of his children. The helpless and miserable state in which they are produced, can hardly fail to excite his pity, and to solicit, in a peculiar manner, the protection of that person from whom they have derived their existence. Being thereby induced to undertake the burden of rearing and maintain-<110>ing them, he is more warmly engaged in their behalf in proportion to the efforts which he has made for their benefit, and his affection for them is increased by every new mark of his kindness. While they grow up under his culture and tuition, and begin to lisp the endearing names of a parent, he has the satisfaction of observing their progress towards maturity, and of discovering the seeds of those dispositions and talents, from the future display of which he draws the most flattering expectations. By retaining them afterwards in his family, which is the foundation of a constant intercourse, by procuring their assistance in the labour to which he is subjected, by connecting them with all his plans and views of interest, his attachment is usually continued and strengthened from the same habits and principles which, in other cases, give rise to friendship or acquaintance. As these sentiments are felt in common by the father and mother, it is natural to suppose that their affection for each other will be, in some measure, reflected upon their offspring, and will become an additional motive of attention to the objects of their united care and tenderness.

Such is, probably, the origin of that parental fondness, which has been found so extensive and universal that it is commonly regarded as the effect of an immediate propensity. But how strongly soever a father may be disposed to promote the happiness of his children, this disposition, in the breast<111> of a savage, is often counteracted by a regard to his own preservation, and smothered by the misery with which he is loaded. In many cases he is forced to abandon them entirely, and suffer them to perish by hunger, or be devoured by wild beasts. From his necessitous circumstances, he is sometimes laid under the temptation of selling his children for slaves. Even those whom the father finds it not convenient to support, are subjected to a variety of hardships from the natural ferocity of his temper; and if on some occasions they are treated with the utmost indulgence, they are, on others, no less exposed to the sudden and dreadful effects of his anger. As the resentment of a savage is easily kindled, and raised to an excessive pitch; as he behaves like a sovereign in his own family, where he has never been accustomed to bear opposition or controul, we need not wonder that, when provoked by unusual disrespect or contradiction, he should be roused and hurried on to commit the most barbarous of all actions, the murder of his own child.

The children in their early years, are under the necessity of submitting to the severe and arbitrary will of their father. From their inferiority in strength, they are in no condition to dispute his commands; and being incapable of maintaining themselves, they depend entirely upon him for subsistence. To him they must apply for assistance, whenever they are exposed to danger, or<112> threatened with injustice; and looking upon him as the source of all their enjoyments, they have every motive to court his favour and to avoid his displeasure.

The respect and reverence which is paid to the father, upon account of his wisdom and experience, is another circumstance that contributes to support his power and authority.

Among savages, who are strangers to the art of writing, and who have scarcely any method of recording facts, the experience and observation of each individual are almost the only means of procuring knowledge; and the only persons who can attain a superior degree of wisdom and sagacity are those who have lived to a considerable age.

It also merits attention that, in rude and ignorant nations, the least superiority in knowledge and wisdom is the source of great honour and distinction. The man who understands any operation of nature, unknown to the vulgar, is beheld with superstitious awe and veneration. As they cannot penetrate into the ways by which he has procured his information, they are disposed to magnify his extraordinary endowments; and they feel an unbounded admiration of that skill and learning which they are unable to comprehend. They suppose that nothing is beyond the compass of his abilities, and apply to him for counsel and direction in every new and difficult emergency. They are apt to imagine that he holds commerce<113> with invisible beings, and to believe that he is capable of seeing into futurity, as well as of altering the course of human events by the wonderful power of his art. Thus, in the dark ages, a slight acquaintance with the heavenly bodies gave rise to the absurd pretensions of judicial astrology; and a little knowledge of chemistry, or medicine, was supposed to reveal the invaluable secret of rendering ourselves immortal.

As in all barbarous countries old men are distinguished by their great experience and wisdom, they are upon this account universally respected, and commonly attain superior influence and authority.

Among the Greeks, at the siege of Troy, the man who had lived three ages was treated with uncommon deference, and was their principal adviser and director in all important deliberations.

“Dost thou not see, O Gaul,” says Morni, in one of the poems of Ossian, “how the steps of my age are honoured? Morni moves forth, and the young meet him with reverence, and turn their eyes, with silent joy, on his course.”*

The Jewish lawgiver, whose system of laws was in many respects accommodated to the circumstances of an early people, has thought proper to enforce the respect due to old age, by making it the subject of a particular precept. “See that<114> thou rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man.”†

“I am young,” says the son of Barachel, “and ye are very old, wherefore I was afraid, and durst not show you mine opinion. I said days should speak, and multitude of years teach wisdom.”‡

When any of the Tartar nations have occasion to elect a khan or leader, they regard experience and wisdom more than any other circumstance; and for that reason they commonly prefer the oldest person of the royal family.§ It is the same circumstance that, in the infancy of government, has given rise to a senate or council of the elders, which is commonly invested with the chief direction and management of all public affairs.‖

So inseparably connected are age and authority in early periods, that in the language of rude nations the same word which signifies an old man is generally employed to denote a ruler or magistrate.¶

Among the Chinese, who, from their little intercourse with strangers, are remarkably attached to their ancient usages, the art of writing, notwith-<115>standing their improvement in manufactures, is still beyond the reach of the vulgar. This people have accordingly preserved that high admiration of the advantages arising from long experience and observation, which we commonly met with in times of ignorance and simplicity. Among them, neither birth, nor riches, nor honours, nor dignities, can make a man forget that reverence which is due to grey hairs; and the sovereign himself never fails to respect old age, even in persons of the lowest condition.

The difference in this particular, between the manners of a rude and polished nation may be illustrated from the following anecdote concerning two Grecian states, which, in point of what is commonly called refinement, were remarkably distinguished from each other.

“It happened, at Athens, during a public representation of some play, exhibited in honour of the commonwealth, that an old gentleman came too late for a place suitable to his age and quality. Many of the young gentlemen, who observed the difficulty and confusion he was in, made signs to him that they would accommodate him, if he came where they sat. The good man bustled through the crowd accordingly; but when he came to the seats to which he was invited, the jest was to sit close, and, as he stood out of countenance, expose him to the whole audience. The frolic went round all the<116> Athenian benches. But on those occasions there were also particular places assigned for foreigners: when the good man skulked towards the boxes appointed for the Lacedemonians, that honest people, more virtuous than polite, rose up all to a man, and with the greatest respect received him among them. The Athenians, being suddenly touched with a sense of the Spartan virtue and their own degeneracy, gave a thunder of applause; and the old man cried out, The Athenians understand what is good, but the Lacedemonians practise it.”*

We may easily imagine that this admiration and reverence, which is excited by wisdom and knowledge, must in a particular manner affect the conduct of children with respect to their father. The experience of the father must always appear greatly superior to that of his children, and becomes the more remarkable, according as he advances in years, and decays in bodily strength. He is placed in a situation where that experience is constantly displayed to them, and where, being exerted for their preservation and welfare, it is regarded in the most<117> favourable light. From him they learn those contrivances which they make use of in procuring their food, and the various stratagems which they put in practice against their enemies. By him they are instructed in the different branches of their domestic economy, and are directed what measures to pursue in all those difficulties and distresses in which they may be involved. They hear with wonder the exploits he has performed, the precautions he has taken to avoid the evils with which he was surrounded, or the address and dexterity he has employed to extricate himself from those misfortunes which had befallen him; and, from his observation of the past, they treasure up lessons of prudence, by which they may regulate their future behaviour. If ever they depart from his counsel, and follow their own headstrong inclination, they are commonly taught by the event to repent of their folly and rashness, and are struck with new admiration of his uncommon penetration and foresight. They regard him in the light of a superior being, and imagine that the gifts of fortune are at his disposal. They dread his curse, as the cause of every misfortune; and they esteem his blessing of more value than the richest inheritance.

When Phenix, in the Iliad, bewails his misfortune in having no children, he imputes it to the curse of his father, which he had incurred in his youth.<118>

My sire with curses loads my hated head,
And cries, ye furies! barren be his bed!
Infernal Jove, the vengeful Fiends below,
And ruthless Proserpine confirmed his vow.*

“And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my Father! And Esau lift up his voice and wept.”†

To these observations it may be added, that the authority of the father is confirmed and rendered more universal, by the force and influence of custom.

We naturally retain, after we are old, those habits of respect and submission which we received in our youth; and we find it difficult to put ourselves upon a level with those persons whom we have long regarded as greatly our superiors. The slave, who has been bred up in a low situation, does not immediately, upon obtaining his freedom, lay aside those sentiments which he has been accustomed to feel. He retains for some time the idea of his former dependence, and, notwithstanding the change of his circumstances, is disposed to continue that respect and reverence which he owed to his master. We find that the legislature, in some countries, has even regarded and enforced these natural sentiments. By the Roman law a freed man was, through the whole<119> of his life, obliged to pay to his patron certain attendance on public occasions, and to show him particular marks of honour and distinction.* If ever he failed in the observance of these duties, he was thought unworthy of his liberty, and was again reduced to be the slave of that person to whom he had behaved in so unbecoming a manner.†

A son who, in a barbarous age, has been accustomed from his infancy to serve and to obey his father, is in the same manner disposed for the future to continue that service and obedience. Even after he is grown up, and has arrived at his full strength of body, and maturity of judgment, he retains the early impressions of his youth, and remains in a great measure under the yoke of that authority to which he has hitherto submitted. He shrinks at the angry countenance of his father, and trembles at the power of that arm whose severe discipline he has so often experienced, and of whose valour and dexterity he has so often been a witness. He thinks it the highest presumption to dispute the wisdom and propriety of those commands to which he has always listened, as to an oracle, and which he has been taught to regard as the infallible rule of his conduct. He is<120> naturally led to acquiesce in that jurisdiction which he has seen exerted on so many different occasions, and which he finds to be uniformly acknowledged by all the members of the family. In proportion to the rigour with which he is treated, his temper will be more thoroughly subdued, and his habits of implicit submission and obedience will be the stronger. He looks upon his father as invested by Heaven with an unlimited power and authority over all his children, and imagines that, whatever hardships they may suffer, their rebellion against him, or resistance to his will, would be the same species of impiety, as to call in question the authority of the Deity, and arraign the severe dispensations with which, in the government of the world, he is sometimes pleased to visit his creatures.

From these dispositions, which commonly prevail among the members of his family, the father can have no difficulty to enforce his orders, whereever compulsion may be necessary. In order to correct the depravity, or to conquer the rebellious disposition of any single child, he can make use of that influence which he possesses over the rest, who will regard the disobedience of their brother with horror and detestation, and be ready to contribute their assistance in punishing his transgression.

In the history of early nations, we meet with a great variety of facts, to illustrate the nature and<121> extent of that jurisdiction and authority which originally belonged to the father, as the head and governor of his family.

We are informed by Caesar, that among the Gauls the father had the power of life and death over his children;* and there is reason to believe, that, in the ancient German nations, his jurisdiction was no less extensive.†

By the early laws and customs of Arabia, every head of a family seems, in like manner, to have enjoyed an absolute power over his descendants. When the sons of Jacob proposed to carry their brother Benjamin along with them into Egypt, and their father discovered an unwillingness to part with him, “Reuben spake unto his father, saying, Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee: deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again.”‡ Moses appears to have intended that the father should not, in ordinary cases, be at liberty to take away the life of his children in private; as may be concluded from this particular institution, that a stubborn and rebellious son should be stoned to death before the elders of the city.* It was further enacted by this legislator, that a man might sell his daughter for a slave or concubine to those of his own nation, though he was not permitted to dispose of her to a stranger.<122>

“If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do.

“If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her to a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.”†

In the empire of Russia, the paternal jurisdiction was formerly understood to be altogether supreme and unlimited.‡ Peter the Great appears to have been so little aware that the customs of his own country might differ from those of other nations, that in his public declaration to his clergy, and to the states civil and military, relative to the trial of his son, he appeals to all the world, and affirms, that, according to all laws human and divine, and, above all, according to those of Russia, a father, even among private persons, has a full and absolute right to judge his children, without appeal, and without taking the advice of any person.§

Among the Tartars, nothing can exceed the respect and reverence which the children usually pay to their father. They look upon him as the sovereign lord and master of his family, and consider it as their duty to serve him upon all occasions. In those parts of Tartary which have any inter-<123>course with the great nations of Asia, it is also common for the father to sell his children of both sexes; and from thence the women and eunuchs, in the harams and seraglios, belonging to men of wealth and distinction in those countries, are said to be frequently procured.‖

Upon the coast of Africa, the power of the father is carried to the most excessive pitch, and exercised with the utmost severity. It is too well known to be denied, that, in order to supply the European market, he often disposes of his own children for slaves; and that the chief part of a man’s wealth is supposed to consist in the number of his descendants. Upon the slave-coast, the children are accustomed to throw themselves upon their knees, as often as they come into the presence of their father.*

The following account, given by Commodore Byron, may serve, in some measure, to show the spirit with which the savages of South America are apt to govern the members of their family.

“Here,” says he, “I must relate a little anecdote of our Christian Cacique. He and his wife had gone off, at some distance from the shore, in their canoe, when she dived for sea-eggs; but not meeting with great success, they returned a good deal out of humour. A little boy of theirs,<124> about three years old, whom they appeared to be doatingly fond of, watching for his father and mother’s return, ran into the surf to meet them: the father handed a basket of sea-eggs to the child, which being too heavy for him to carry, he let it fall; upon which the father jumped out of the canoe, and catching the boy up in his arms, dashed him with the utmost violence against the stones. The poor little creature lay motionless and bleeding, and in that condition was taken up by the mother, but died soon after. She appeared inconsolable for some time; but the brute his father shewed little concern about it.”†

The exposition of infants, so common in a great part of the nations of antiquity, is a proof that the different heads of families were under no restraint or controul in the management of their domestic concerns. This barbarous practice was probably introduced in those rude ages when the father was often incapable of maintaining his children, and from the influence of old usage, was permitted to remain in later times, when the plea of necessity could no longer be urged in its vindication. How shocking soever it may appear to us, the custom of exposing infant-children was universal among the ancient inhabitants of Greece, and was never abolished even by such of the Greek states as were<125> most distinguished for their learning and politeness.*

According to the laws and customs of the Romans, the father had anciently an unlimited power of putting his children to death, and of selling them for slaves. While they remained in his family, they were incapable of having any estate of their own, and whatever they acquired, either by their own industry, or by the donations of others, became immediately the property of their father. Though with respect to every other person they were regarded as free, yet with respect to their father they were considered as in a state of absolute slavery and subjection; and they could neither marry, nor enter into any other contract, without his approbation and consent.†

In one respect, the power of a father over his sons appears, in ancient Rome, to have extended even farther than that of a master over his slaves.<126> If upon any occasion a son had been sold by his father, and had afterwards obtained his freedom from the purchaser, he did not thereby become independent, but was again reduced under the paternal dominion. The same consequence followed, if he had been sold and manumitted a second time; and it was only after a third purchase, that the power of his father was altogether dissolved, and that he was permitted to enjoy any real and permanent advantage from the bounty of his master.

This peculiarity is said to have been derived from a statute of Romulus, adopted into the laws of the twelve tables, and affords a sufficient proof that the Romans had anciently no idea of a child living in the family, without being considered as the slave of his father.*

In those early ages, when this practice was first introduced, the Roman state was composed of a few clans, or families of barbarians, the members of which had usually a strong attachment to one another, and were at variance with most of their<127> neighbours. When a son therefore had been banished from his family by the avarice of his father, we may suppose that, as soon as he was at liberty, he would not think of remaining in a foreign tribe, or of submitting to the hardships of procuring his food in a state of solitude, but that he would rather choose to return to his own kindred, and again submit to that jurisdiction, which was more useful from the protection it afforded, than painful from the service and obedience which it required.

It is probable, however, that if in this manner a child had been frequently separated from the company of his relations, he would at length grow weary of returning to a society in which he was the object of so little affection, and in which he was treated with so much contempt. How long he would be disposed to maintain his former connexions, and how often he would be willing to restore that property which his father had abandoned, seems, from the nature of the thing, impossible to ascertain. But whatever might be the conduct of the son, it seems to have been intended by the statute of Romulus, that, after a third sale, the property of the father should be finally extinguished, and that he should never afterwards recover a power which he had exercised with such immoderate severity.<128>

SECTION II

The influence of the improvement of arts upon the jurisdiction of the father.

Such was the power, in early times, possessed by the head of a family. But the gradual advancement of a people in civilized manners, and their subjection to regular government, have a natural tendency to limit and restrain this primitive jurisdiction. When different families are united in a larger society, the several members of which have an intimate correspondence with each other, it may be expected that the exercise of domestic authority will begin to excite the attention of the public. The near relations of a family, who have a concern for the welfare of the children, and who have an opportunity of observing the manner in which they are treated, will naturally interpose by their good offices, and endeavour to screen them from injustice and oppression. The abuses which, on some occasions, are known and represented with all their aggravating circumstances, will excite indignation and resentment, and will at length give rise to such regulations as are necessary for preventing the like disorders for the future.

Those improvements in the state of society, which are the common effects of opulence and refinement,<129> will at the same time dispose the father to use his power with greater moderation. By living in affluence and security, he is more at leisure to exert the social affections, and to cultivate those arts which tend to soften and humanize the temper. Being often engaged in the business and conversation of the world, and finding, in many cases, the necessity of conforming to the humours of those with whom he converses, he becomes less impatient of contradiction, and less apt to give way to the irregular sallies of passion. His parental affection, though not perhaps more violent, becomes at least more steady and uniform; and while it prompts him to undergo the labour that may be requisite in providing for his family, it is not incompatible with that discretion which leads him to bear with the frowardness, the folly, and imprudence of his children, and in his behaviour towards them, to avoid equally the excess of severity and of indulgence.

On the other hand, the progress of arts and manufactures will contribute to undermine and weaken his power, and even to raise the members of his family to a state of freedom and independence.

In those rude and simple periods when men are chiefly employed in hunting and fishing, in pasturing cattle, or in cultivating the ground, the children are commonly brought up in the house of their father; and continuing in his family as long as he<130> lives, they have no occasion to acquire any separate property, but depend entirely for subsistence upon that hereditary estate, of which he is the sole disposer and manager. Their situation, however, in this, as well as in many other respects, is greatly altered by the introduction of commerce and manufactures. In a commercial country, a great part of the inhabitants are employed in such a manner as tends to disperse the members of a family, and often requires that they should live at a distance from one another.

The children, at an early period of life, are obliged to leave their home, in order to be instructed in those trades and professions by which it is proposed they should earn a livelihood, and afterwards to settle in those parts of the country which they find convenient for prosecuting their several employments. By this alteration of circumstances, they are emancipated from their father’s authority. They are put in a condition to procure a maintainance without having recourse to his bounty, and by their own labour and industry are frequently possessed of opulent fortunes. As they live in separate families of their own, of which they have the entire direction, and are placed at such a distance from their father, that he has no longer an opportunity of observing and controuling their behaviour, it is natural to suppose that their former habits will be gradually laid aside and forgotten.<131>

When we examine the laws and customs of polished nations, they appear to coincide with the foregoing remarks, and leave no room to doubt that, in most countries, the paternal jurisdiction has been reduced within narrower bounds, in proportion to the ordinary improvements of society.

The Romans, who for several centuries were constantly employed in war, and for that reason gave little attention to the arts of peace, discovered more attachment to their barbarous usages than perhaps any other nation that arose to wealth and splendour; and their ancient practice, with respect to the power of the father, was therefore permitted to remain in the most flourishing periods of their government. The alterations in this particular, which were at length found expedient, having, for the most part, occurred in times of light and knowledge, are recorded with some degree of accuracy, and, as they mark the progress of a great people in an important branch of policy, may deserve to be particularly considered.

We know nothing with certainty concerning the attempts which, in a very remote period, are supposed to have been made for restraining the exposition of infants. By a law of Romulus, parents are said to have been obliged to maintain their male children, and the eldest female, unless where a child was, by two of the neighbours called for the purpose, declared to be a monster. A regulation of the same nature is mentioned among the laws of<132> the twelve tables; but there is ground to believe that little regard was paid to it; and even under the emperors, the exposing of new-born children, of either sex, appears to have been exceedingly common.*

The first effectual regulations in favour of children were those which bestowed upon them a privilege of acquiring property independent of their father. During the free government of Rome, as war was the chief employment in which a Roman citizen thought proper to engage, and by which he had any opportunity of gaining a fortune, it appeared highly reasonable, that when he hazarded his person in the service of his country, he should be allowed to reap the fruit of his labour, and be entitled to the full enjoyment of whatever he had acquired. With this view, it was enacted by Julius and by Augustus Caesar, that whatever was gained by a son, in the military profession, should be considered as his own estate, and that he should be at liberty to dispose of it at pleasure.*

Some time after, when the practice of the law had also become a lucrative profession, it was further established, that whatever a son acquired in the exercise of this employment, should in like manner become his own property, and should in no respect belong to the father.† <133>

In a later age, when no employment was considered as too mean for the subjects of the Roman empire, the son became proprietor of what he could procure by the practice of the mechanical arts, and of whatever he obtained by donations, or by succession to his mother or maternal relations; though the usufruct1 of those acquisitions was, in ordinary cases, bestowed upon the father.‡

It is uncertain at what time the Romans first began to limit the father in the power of selling his children for slaves. It appears, that before the reign of the emperor Dioclesian this privilege was entirely abolished, except in a singular case, in which it remained to the latest periods of the empire. To remove the temptation of abandoning new-born children, a permission was given to sell them, but with provision that they might, at any time after, be redeemed from the purchaser, by restoring the price which he had paid.§

Exclusive of infants, the power over the life of children was first subjected to any limitation in the reign of Trajan, and of Hadrian his successor, who interposed, in some particular cases, to punish the wanton exercise of paternal authority. In the<134> time of the emperor Severus, the father was not allowed to put his children to death in private, but when they committed a crime of an atrocious nature, was directed to accuse them before a magistrate, to whom he was empowered, in that case, to prescribe the particular punishment which he chose to have inflicted. At length this part of his jurisdiction was finally abolished by the emperor Constantine, who ordained, that if a father took away the life of his child, he should be deemed guilty of parricide.*

These were the principal steps by which the Romans endeavoured to correct this remarkable part of their ancient law. It was natural to begin with the reformation of those particulars in which the greatest abuses were committed, and thence to proceed to others, which, however absurd in appearance, were less severely felt, and less productive of disorder and oppression. It seldom happened that a father, though permitted by law, was so hardened to the feelings of humanity and natural affection, as to be capable of embruing his hands in the blood of a child whom he had brought up in his family; and accordingly no more than three or four instances of that nature are mentioned in the whole Roman history.2 He might oftener be tempted to neglect his children immediately after their birth, or be reconciled to the measure of reaping a certain<135> profit at the expence of their freedom. But the part of his prerogative which he would probably exert in the most arbitrary manner, was that which related to the maintenance of his family, and the management of that property which had been procured by their industry and labour. Thus we find that, beside the early and ineffectual attempts to prevent the neglect of infants, the interpositions of the Roman legislature were directed first to secure the property, afterwards the liberty, and last of all the life and personal safety of the children.*

Upon comparing the manners of different countries, with regard to the subject of our present inquiry, it will be found that wherever polygamy is established, the authority enjoyed by the head of every family is usually carried to a greater height, and is more apt to remain in its full force, notwithstanding the improvements which, in other respects, the people may have attained. By the institution of polygamy, the children belonging to a person of opulent fortune, are commonly rendered so numerous as greatly to diminish the influence of paternal affection: not to mention that the confinement of his wives, and the jealousy, hatred, and dissension, which prevail among them, are productive of such intrigues to supplant or destroy one another, and to promote the interest of their respective children, that the husband, in order to repress these dis-<136>orders, finds it necessary to preserve a strict discipline in his family, and to hold all its members in extreme subjection. This will suggest a reason for what is observed by Aristotle, that among the Persians, in his time, the power of a father over his children was no less absolute as that of a master over his slaves.†

In the empire of China, the same circumstance, together with that aversion which the people discover to every sort of innovation, has also enabled the father to maintain a great part of his original jurisdiction.‡ The father is said to have there the privilege of selling his children whenever he thinks proper; but if he intends to put them to death, it is necessary that he should bring them before a magistrate, and publicly accuse them. At the same time, whatever be the crime of which they are accused, they are held to be guilty, without any other proof but the bare assertion of the father.§

The custom of exposing infants was not restrained in China till very lately. Father Noel, in a relation presented to the general of the Jesuits, in 1703, takes notice, that at Pekin a number of children were usually dropt or exposed every morning<137> in the streets. “As Pekin is excessively populous,” continues that pious and Catholic father, “and those who have more children than they can maintain do not scruple to drop them in places of public resort, where they either die miserably, or are devoured by beasts; one of our first cares is to send, every morning, catechists into the different parts of that great city, in order to baptize such of those children as are not dead. About twenty or thirty thousand children are exposed yearly, and of these our catechists baptize about three thousand; and had we twenty or thirty catechists, few of the children in question would die unbaptized.”*

In those European nations which have made the greatest improvements in commerce and manufactures, great liberty is usually enjoyed by the members of every family; and the children are no farther subjected to the father than seems necessary for their own advantage. When they come to be of age, they have the full enjoyment and disposal of any separate property which they happen to acquire; and even during their father’s life, they are in some cases entitled to a fixed provision out of the family estate.

It can hardly be doubted that these regulations,<138> which tend to moderate the excessive and arbitrary power assumed by the head of a family, are supported by every consideration of justice and utility. The opinion of Sir Robert Filmer, who founds the doctrine of passive obedience to a monarch, upon the unlimited submission which children owe to their father, seems, at this day, unworthy of the serious refutation which it has met with, and could only have gained reputation when men were just beginning to reflect upon the first principles of government.3 To say that a king ought to enjoy absolute power because a father has enjoyed it, is to defend one system of oppression by the example of another.

The interest of those who are governed is the chief circumstance which ought to regulate the powers committed to a father, as well as those committed to a civil magistrate; and whenever the prerogative of either is further extended than is requisite for this great end, it immediately degenerates into usurpation, and is to be regarded as a violation of the natural rights of mankind.

The tendency, however, of a commercial age is rather towards the opposite extreme, and may occasion some apprehension that the members of a family will be raised to greater independence than is consistent with good order, and with a proper domestic subordination. As, in every country, the laws enforced by the magistrate are in a great<139> measure confined to the rules of justice, it is evident that further precautions are necessary to guard the morals of the inhabitants, and that, for this purpose, the authority of parents ought to be such as may enable them to direct the education of their children, to restrain the irregularities of youth, and to instil those principles which will render them useful members of society.<140>

CHAPTER III

The Authority of a Chief over the Members of a Tribe or Village

SECTION I

The origin of a Chief, and the degrees of influence which he is enabled to acquire.

Having considered the primitive state of a family during the life of the father, we may now examine the changes which happen in their situation, upon the death of this original governor, and the different species of authority to which they are then commonly subjected.

When the members of a family become too numerous to be all maintained and lodged in the same house, some of them are under the necessity of leaving it, and providing themselves with a new habitation. The sons, having arrived at the age of manhood, and being disposed to marry, are led by degrees to have a separate residence, where they may live in a more comfortable manner. They build their huts very near one to another, and each of them forms a distinct family; of which he assumes the direction, and which he endeavours to supply with the means of subsistence. Thus the original society is gradually enlarged into a village<141> or tribe; and according as it is placed in circumstances which favour population, and render its condition prosperous and flourishing, it becomes proportionably extensive, and is subdivided into a greater multiplicity of branches.

From the situation of this early community, it is natural to suppose that an uncommon degree of attachment will subsist between all the different persons of which it is composed. As the ordinary life of a savage renders him hardy and robust, so he is a stranger to all those considerations of utility, by which, in a polished nation, men are commonly induced to restrain their appetites, and to abstain from violating the possessions of each other. Different clans or tribes of barbarians are therefore disposed to rob and plunder one another, as often as they have an opportunity of doing it with success; and the reciprocal inroads and hostilities in which they are engaged become the source of continual animosities and quarrels, which are prosecuted with a degree of fury and rancour suited to the temper and disposition of the people. Thus the members of every single clan are frequently at variance with all their neighbours around them. This makes it necessary that they should be constantly upon their guard, in order to repel the numerous attacks to which they are exposed, and to avoid that barbarous treatment, which they have reason to expect, were they ever to fall under the power of their enemies. As they are divided from<142> the rest of the world, so they are linked together by a sense of their common danger, and by a regard to their common interest. They are united in all their pastimes and amusements, as well as in their serious occupations; and when they go out upon a military enterprise, they are no less prompted to show their friendship for one another, than to gratify their common passions of enmity and resentment. As they have been brought up together from their infancy, and have little intercourse with those of a different community, their affections are raised to a greater height, in proportion to the narrowness of that circle to which they are confined. As the uniformity of their life supplies them with few occurrences, and as they have no opportunity of acquiring any great variety of knowledge, their thoughts are the more fixed upon those particular objects which have once excited their attention; they retain more steadily whatever impressions they have received, and become the more devoted to those entertainments and practices with which they have been acquainted.

Hence it is, that a savage is never without difficulty prevailed upon to abandon his family and friends, and to relinquish the sight of those objects to which he has been long familiar. To be banished from them is accounted the greatest of all misfortunes. His cottage, his fields, the faces and conversation of his kindred and companions, recur incessantly to his memory, and prevent him from<143> relishing any situation where these are wanting. He clings to those well-known objects, and dwells upon all those favourite enjoyments which he has lost. The poorer the country in which he has lived, the more wretched the manner of life to which he has been accustomed, the loss of it appears to him the more insupportable. That very poverty and wretchedness, which contracted the sphere of his amusements, is the chief circumstance that confirms his attachment to those few gratifications which it afforded, and renders him the more a slave to those particular habits which he has acquired. Not all the allurements of European luxury could bribe a Hottentot to resign that coarse manner of life which was become habitual to him; and we may remark, that the “maladie du pays,” which has been supposed peculiar to the inhabitants of Switzerland, is more or less felt by the inhabitants of all countries, according as they approach nearer to the ages of rudeness and simplicity.* <144>

Those tribes that inhabit the more uncultivated parts of the earth being almost continually at war with their neighbours, and finding it necessary to be always in a posture of defence, have constant occasion for a leader to conduct them in their various military enterprises.

Wherever a number of people meet together in order to execute any measures of common concern, it is convenient that some person should be appointed to direct their proceedings, and prevent them from running into confusion. It accordingly appears to be a regulation, uniformly adopted in all countries, that every public assembly should have a president, invested with a degree of authority suitable to the nature of the business committed to their care. But in no case is a regulation of this kind so necessary as in the conduct of a military<145> expedition. There is no situation in which a body of men are so apt to run into disorder, as in war; where it is impossible that they should co-operate, and preserve the least regularity, unless they are united under a single person, empowered to direct their movements, and to superintend and controul their several operations.

The members of a family having been usually conducted by the father in all their excursions of moment, are naturally disposed, even when their society becomes larger, to continue in that course of action to which they have been accustomed; and after they are deprived of this common parent, to fall under the guidance of some other person, who appears next to him in rank, and has obtained the second place in their esteem and confidence.

Superiority in strength, courage, and other personal accomplishments, is the first circumstance by which any single person is raised to be the leader of a tribe, and by which he is enabled to maintain his authority.

In that rude period, when men live by hunting and fishing, they have no opportunity of acquiring any considerable property; and there are no distinctions in the rank of individuals, but those which arise from their personal qualities, either of mind or body.

The strongest man in a village, the man who excels in running, in wrestling, or in handling those weapons which are made use of in war, is, in every<146> contest, possessed of an evident advantage which cannot fail to render him conspicuous, and to command respect and deference. In their games and exercises, being generally victorious, he gains an ascendency over his companions, which disposes them to yield him pre-eminence, and to rest fully satisfied of his superior abilities. When they go out to battle, he is placed at their head, and permitted to occupy that station where his behaviour is most likely to be distinguished and applauded. His exploits and feats of activity are regarded by his followers with pleasure and admiration; and he becomes their boast and champion in every strife or competition with their neighbours. The more they have been accustomed to follow his banner, they contract a stronger attachment to his person, are more afraid of incurring his displeasure, and discover more readiness to execute those measures which he thinks proper to suggest. Instead of being mortified by his greatness, they imagine that it reflects honour upon the society to which he belongs, and are even disposed to magnify his prowess with that fond partiality which they entertain in favour of themselves.

In many savage tribes, the captain of an expedition is commonly chosen from the number of wounds he has received in battle. The Indians of Chili are said, in the choice of a leader, to regard only his superior strength, and to determine<147> this point according to the burden which he is able to carry.*

Montaigne gives an account of three West Indian savages, who came to Rouen when Charles IX. was there. “The king,” says he, “discoursed a long time with them. They were shown our manner of living, our pomp, and the several beauties of that great city. Some time after, a gentleman asked what it was that struck them most among the various objects they had seen. They answered, three things. First, They thought it very strange that so many tall men, wearing beards, and standing round the king (these in all probability were his Swiss guards) should submit voluntarily to a child; and that they did not rather choose to be governed by one of themselves.”† <148>

But when a people have begun to make improvements in their manner of fighting, they are soon led to introduce a variety of stratagems, in order to deceive their enemy, and are often no less indebted to the art and address which they employ, than to the strength or courage which they have occasion to exert. Thus, military skill and conduct are raised to higher degrees of estimation; and the experience of a Nestor, or the cunning of a Ulysses, being found more useful than the brutal force of an Ajax, is frequently the source of greater influence and authority.

This, as has been formerly observed, is the foundation of that respect and reverence which<149> among early nations is commonly paid to old men. From this cause also it happens, that the leader of a barbarous tribe, is often a person somewhat advanced in years, who, retaining still his bodily strength, has had time to acquire experience in the art of war, and to obtain a distinguished reputation by his atchievements.

The effect of these circumstances, to raise and support the authority of a leader or chief, is sufficiently obvious, and is fully illustrated, not only from the uniform history of mankind in a barbarous state, but also from a variety of particulars which may be observed in the intercourse of polished society.

“And the people and princes of Gilead said one to another, What man is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

“Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot, and Gilead begat Jephthah.

“And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou art the son of a strange woman.

“Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob; and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him.<150>

“And it came to pass, in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel.

“And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob.

“And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon.

“And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did ye not hate me, and expel me out of my father’s house? and why are ye come unto me now, when ye are in distress?

“And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

“And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the Lord deliver them before me, shall I be your head?

“And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The Lord be witness between us, if we do not so, according to thy words.

“Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead; and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the Lord in Mizpeh.”* <151>

When Saul was afterwards appointed king over the Jewish nation, we find that the prophet Samuel recommends him to the people, merely upon account of his superior stature, and the advantages of his person.

“And when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upward.

“And Samuel said to all the people, See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people? And all the people shouted, and said, God save the king.”*

In like manner, when the family of this prince was deprived of the crown, the minds of the people were prepared for that revolution by the opinion which they entertained of the superior valour and military accomplishments of his successor.

“And it came to pass, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music.

“And the women answered one another as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.”†

After mankind have fallen upon the expedient of taming and pasturing cattle, in order to render<152> their situation more comfortable, there arises another source of influence and authority which was formerly unknown to them. In their herds and flocks they frequently enjoy considerable wealth, which is distributed in various proportions, according to the industry or good fortune of different individuals; and those who are poor become dependent upon the rich, who are capable of relieving their necessities, and affording them subsistence. As the pre- eminence and superior abilities of the chief are naturally exerted in the acquisition of that wealth which is then introduced, he becomes of course the richest man in the society; and his influence is rendered proportionably more extensive. According to the estate which he has accumulated, he is exalted to a higher rank, lives in greater magnificence, and keeps a more numerous train of servants and retainers, who, in return for that maintenance and protection which they receive from him, are accustomed in all cases to support his power and dignity.‡

The authority derived from wealth, is not only greater than that which arises from mere personal accomplishments, but also more stable and permanent. Extraordinary endowments, either of mind or body, can operate only during the life of the<153> possessor, and are seldom continued for any length of time in the same family. But a man usually transmits his fortune to his posterity, and along with it all the means of creating dependence which he enjoyed. Thus the son, who inherits the estate of his father, is enabled to maintain an equal rank, at the same time that he preserves all the influence acquired by the former proprietor, which is daily augmented by the power of habit, and becomes more considerable as it passes from one generation to another.

Hence that regard to genealogy and descent which we often meet with among those who have remained long in a pastoral state. From the simplicity of their manners, they are not apt to squander or alienate their possessions; and the representative of an ancient family is naturally disposed to be ostentatious of a circumstance which contributes so much to increase his power and authority. All the Tartars, of whatever country or religion, have an exact knowledge of the tribe from which they are descended, and are at great pains to ascertain the several branches into which it is divided.”*

For the same reason the dignity of the chief, which in a former period was frequently elective, is, among shepherds, more commonly transmitted<154> from father to son by hereditary succession. As the chief possesses the largest estate, so he represents the most powerful family in the tribe; a family from which all the rest are vain of being descended, and the superiority of which they have been uniformly accustomed to acknowledge. He enjoys not only that rank and consequence which is derived from his own opulence, but seems entitled to the continuance of that respect and submission which has been paid to his ancestors; and it rarely happens that any other person, though of superior abilities, is capable of supplanting him, or of diverting the course of that influence which has flowed so long in the same channel.

The acquisition of wealth in herds and flocks, does not immediately give rise to the idea of property in land. The different families of a tribe are accustomed to feed their cattle promiscuously, and have no separate possession or enjoyment of the ground employed for that purpose. Having exhausted one field of pasture, they proceed to another; and when at length they find it convenient to move their tents, and change the place of their residence, it is of no consequence who shall succeed them, and occupy the spot which they have relinquished.

“Is not the whole land before thee?” says Abraham to Lot his kinsman; “Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou de-<155>part to the right hand, then I will go to the left.”*

The wild Arabs, who inhabit a barren country, are accustomed to change their residence every fortnight, or at least every month.† The same wandering life is led by the Tartars; though, from the greater fertility of their soil, their migrations are perhaps less frequent.‡

If people in this situation, during their temporary abode in any one part of a country, should cultivate a piece of ground, this also, like that which is employed in pasture, will naturally be possessed in common. The management of it is regarded as an extraordinary and difficult work, in which it is necessary that they should unite and assist one another; and therefore, as each individual is entitled to the fruit of his own labour, the crop, which has been raised by the joint labour of all, is deemed the property of the whole society.§ <156>

Thus among the natives of the island of Borneo, it is customary, in time of harvest, that every family of a tribe should reap so much grain as is sufficient for their maintenance; and the remainder is laid up by the public, as a provision for any future demand.‖ Similar practices have probably taken place in most countries, when the inhabitants first applied themselves to the cultivation of the earth. “The Suevi,” according to Caesar, “are by far the greatest and most warlike of the German tribes. They are said to possess an hundred villages; from each of which a thousand armed men are annually led forth to war. The rest of the people remain at home; and cultivate the ground for both. These the following year take arms, and the former, in their turn, remain at home. Thus neither agriculture, nor the knowledge and practice of the military art is neglected. But they have no separate landed possessions belonging to individuals, and are not allowed to reside longer than a year in one place. They make little use of grain; but live chiefly upon milk and the flesh of their cattle, and are much addicted to hunting.”* <157>

But the settlement of a village in some particular place, with a view to the further improvement of agriculture, has a tendency to abolish this ancient community of goods, and to produce a separate appropriation of landed estates. When mankind have made some proficiency in the various branches of husbandry, they have no longer occasion to exercise them by the united deliberation and counsel of a whole society. They grow weary of those joint measures, by which they are subjected to continual disputes concerning the distribution and management of their common property, while every one is desirous of employing his labour for his own advantage, and of having a separate possession, which he may enjoy according to his own inclination. Thus, by a sort of tacit agreement, the different families of a village are led to cultivate different portions of land apart from one another, and thereby acquire a right to the respective produce arising from the labour that each of them has bestowed. In order to reap what they have sown, it is necessary that they should have the management of the subject upon which<158> it is produced; so that from having a right to the crop, they appear of course entitled to the exclusive possession of the ground itself. This possession, however, from the imperfect state of early cultivation, is at first continued only from the seed-time to the harvest; and during the rest of the year, the lands of a whole village are used in common for pasturing their cattle. Traces of this ancient community of pasture grounds, during the winter season, may still be discovered in several parts of Scotland. But after a person has long cultivated the same field, his possession becomes gradually more and more complete; it is continued during the whole year without interruption; and when by his industry and labour he has increased the value of the subject, he seems justly entitled, not only to the immediate crop that is raised, but to all the future advantages arising from the melioration of the soil.

The additional influence which the captain of a tribe or village is enabled to derive from this alteration of circumstances, may be easily imagined. As the land employed in tillage is at first possessed in common, the different branches of husbandry are at first carried on, and even the distribution of the produce is made, under the inspection of their leader, who claims the superintendence of all their public concerns.

Among the negroes upon the banks of the river Gambia, the seed-time is a period of much festivity. Those who belong to the same village unite in cul-<159>tivating the ground, and the chief appears at their head, armed as if he were going out to battle, and surrounded by a band of musicians, resembling the bards of the Celtic nations, who, by singing and playing upon musical instruments, endeavour to encourage the labourers. The chief frequently joins in the music; and the workmen accompany their labour with a variety of ridiculous gestures and grimace, according to the different tunes with which they are entertained.*

Upon the Gold Coast each individual must obtain the consent of the chief before he has liberty to cultivate so much ground as is necessary for his subsistence. At the same time when a person has been allowed to cultivate a particular spot, it should seem that he has the exclusive privilege of reaping the crop.* This may be considered as one step towards the appropriation of land.

When men are disposed to separate and divide their landed possessions, every family, according as it is numerous and powerful, will be in a condition to occupy and appropriate a suitable extent of territory. For this reason the chief, from his superior wealth in cattle, and the number of his domestics, as well as from his dignity and personal abilities, can hardly fail to acquire a much larger estate, than any other member of the community. His retainers must of consequence be increased in<160> proportion to the enlargement of his domain, and as these are either maintained in his family, or live upon his ground in the situation of tenants at will, they depend entirely upon him for subsistence. They become, therefore, necessarily subservient to his interest, and may at pleasure be obliged either to labour or to fight upon his account. The number of dependents whom he is thus capable of maintaining will be so much the greater, as, from the simplicity of his manners, he has no occasion to purchase many articles of luxury, and almost his whole fortune is consumed in supplying the bare necessaries of life.

The estate which is acquired by a chief, after the appropriation of land, is not only more extensive than what he formerly possessed in herds and flocks, but at the same time is less liable to be destroyed or impaired by accidents; so that the authority which is founded upon it becomes more permanent, and is apt to receive a continued accumulation of strength by remaining for ages in the same family.<161>

SECTION II

The powers with which the chief of a rude tribe is commonly invested.

The powers which belong to this early magistrate, who is thus exalted to the head of a rude society, are such as might be expected from the nature of his office, and from the circumstances of the people over whom he is placed.

He is at first the commander of their forces, and has merely the direction of their measures during the time of an engagement. But having acted for some time in this capacity, he finds encouragement to exert his authority on other occasions, and is entrusted with various branches of public administration.

From his peculiar situation, he is more immediately led to attend to the defence of the society, to suggest such precautions as may be necessary for that purpose, and to point out those enterprises which he thinks it would be expedient for them to undertake. By degrees they are accustomed to follow his opinion, in planning as well as in conducting their several expeditions. Warmly attached to his person, and zealous to promote his interest, they are disposed to accompany him for his own sake, and to espouse his quarrel upon every<162> occasion. “The Germans,” says Tacitus, “esteem it an inviolable duty to defend their chief, to maintain his dignity, and to yield him the glory of all their exploits. The chiefs fight for victory: the attendants only for the chief.”* As the leader of a tribe affords protection and security to all its members, so he expects that they should make a proper return for these good offices by serving him in war. To refuse this service would not only expose them to his resentment, but be regarded as a mark of infidelity or cowardice that would disgrace them for ever in the opinion of all their kindred. When, on the other hand, they are willing to fulfil their duty, by appearing in the field as often as they are summoned, and by discharging with honour the trust that is reposed in them, they are admitted to be the friends and companions of the chief; they are entertained at his table, and partake in all his amusements; and after the improvement of agriculture has given rise to the appropriation of land, they obtain the possession of landed estates, proportioned to their merit, and suited to their rank and circumstances.

As the chief is, by his office, engaged in protecting and securing the members of his tribe from the hostile attacks of their neighbours, so he endea-<163>vours to prevent those disorders and quarrels which may sometimes arise among themselves, and which tend to weaken and disturb the society. When a dispute or controversy happens among those who belong to different families, he readily interposes by his good offices, in order to bring about a reconciliation between the parties; who at the same time, if they choose to avoid an open rupture, may probably be willing to terminate their difference by referring it to his judgment. To render his decisions effectual, he is, at first, under the necessity of employing persuasion and entreaty, and of calling to his assistance the several heads of families in the tribe. When his authority is better established, he ventures to execute his sentences by force; in which, from considerations of expediency, he is naturally supported by every impartial and unprejudiced member of the society. Having been accustomed to determine causes in consequence of a reference, and finding that persons, accused of injustice, are frequently averse to such determination, he is at length induced, when complaints are made, to summon parties before him, and to judge of their differences independent of their consent. Thus he acquires a regular jurisdiction both in civil and criminal cases; in the exercise of which particular officers of court are gradually set apart to enforce his commands: and when law-suits become numerous, a deputy-judge is appointed, from whom the people may expect more attention to<164> the dispatch of business than the chief is usually inclined to bestow.

Of this gradual progress in the judicial power of a magistrate, from the period when he is merely an arbiter, to that when he is enabled to execute his decrees, and to call parties before him, several vestiges are still to be found even in the laws of polished nations. Among the Romans, the civil judge had no power to determine a law suit, unless the parties had previously referred the cause to his decision, by a contract which was called litis contestatio.1 In England, at this day, no criminal trial can proceed, until the culprit, by his pleading, has acknowledged the authority of the court. But while these practices were retained, from a superstitious regard to ancient usage, a ridiculous circuit was made, to avoid the inconveniencies of which they were manifestly productive. At Rome, the plaintiff, after having desired the defendant to come voluntarily into court, was, upon his refusal, permitted to drag him by the throat;* and by the English law, the defendant, who stands mute, is subjected to the peine fort et dure,2 a species of torture intended to overcome the obstinacy of such as are accused of atrocious crimes.

According to the systems of religion which have prevailed in the unenlightened parts of the world, mankind have imagined that the Supreme Being is endowed with passions and sentiments resem-<165>bling their own, and that he views the extraordinary talents and abilities of their leader with such approbation and esteem as these qualities never fail to excite in themselves. The same person whom they look upon as the first of mortals, is naturally believed to be the peculiar favourite of Heaven, and is therefore regarded as the most capable to intercede in their behalf, to explain the will of the Deity, and to point out the most effectual means to avert his anger, or to procure his favour.

The admiration of a military leader in rude countries, has frequently proceeded so far as to produce a belief of his being sprung from a heavenly original, and to render him the object of that adoration which is due to the Supreme Being.

In some of the American tribes, the chiefs carry the name of the sun, from whom they are supposed to be descended, and whom they are understood to represent upon earth.* The Yncas of Peru derived themselves, in like manner, from the sun. In the kingdom of Loango, the prince is worshipped as a god by his subjects. They give him the name or title usually bestowed upon the Deity; and they address him with the utmost solemnity for rain or fruitful seasons.† <166>

The superstition of the early Greeks, in this particular, is well known; which was carried to such a height, as enabled almost every family of distinction to count kindred with some one or other of the celestial deities. It is in conformity to this ancient mythology that Racine has put the following beautiful address into the mouth of Phedra.

Noble et brillant auteur d’une triste famille,
Toi, dont ma mére osoit se vanter d’être fille,
Qui peut-être rougis du trouble où tu me vois,
Soleil, je te viens voir pour la dernière fois!3

The same principle has disposed men to deify those heroes who have rendered themselves illustrious by their public spirit, and their eminent abilities; to imagine that in another state of existence they retain their former patriotic sentiments, and being possessed of superior power, continue, with unremitting vigilance, to ward off the misfortunes, and to promote the happiness of their people.

When such are the prevailing dispositions of a people, the chief of a barbarous tribe is naturally raised to be their high priest; or if he does not himself exercise that office, he obtains at least the direction and superintendence of their religious concerns. For some time after the building of Rome, the leader of each curia, or tribe, is said to have been their chief ecclesiastical officer. A similar police in this respect appears to have been<167> originally established in the cities of Greece, and has probably taken place among the primitive inhabitants of most countries. It may easily be conceived, that in ignorant nations, guided by omens and dreams, and subject to all the terrors of gross superstition, this branch of power, when added to the conduct of war, and the distribution of justice, will be an engine of great consequence to the magistrate, for carrying through his measures, and for extending his authority.

As, in conducting the affairs of a community, in the management of what relates to peace or war, and in the administration of justice, various abuses are apt to be committed, and many more may still be apprehended, the people are gradually led, by experience and observation, to introduce particular statutes or laws, in order to correct or ascertain their practice for the future. Even this legislative power, by which all the other branches of government are controuled and directed, is naturally assumed by the chief, after he has acquired considerable influence and authority. When the members of his tribe have become in a great measure dependent upon him with regard to their property, they are in no condition to dispute his commands, or to refuse obedience to those ordinances which he issues at pleasure, in order to model or establish the constitution of the society.

From these observations, we may form an idea of that constitution of government which is natu-<168>rally introduced among the members of a rude tribe or village. Each of the different families of which it is composed is under the jurisdiction of the father, and the whole community is subjected to a chief or leader, who enjoys a degree of influence and authority according to the superior abilities with which he is endowed, or the wealth which he has been enabled to acquire.

The rudest form of this government may be discovered among the Indians of America. As these people subsist, for the most part, by hunting or fishing, they have no means of obtaining so much wealth as will raise any one person greatly above his companions. They are divided into small independent villages, in each of which there is a chief, who is their principal leader in war. He bears the name of that particular tribe over which he presides; and in their public meetings he is known by no other. His authority, though greater in some villages than in others, does not appear in any of them to be very considerable. If he is never disobeyed, it is because he knows how to set bounds to his commands. Every family has a right to name an assistant to the chief; and the several heads of families compose an assembly, or “council of the elders,” which is accustomed to deliberate upon all matters of public importance.* <169>

Each individual is allowed, in ordinary cases, to “take up the hatchet,” as it is called, or make war upon those who have offended him. Enterprises of moment, however, are seldom undertaken without the concurrence of the assembly. Each family has a jurisdiction over its own members.<170> But the members of different families are at liberty to settle their differences in what manner they please; and the chief, or council, interfere only as mediators, or as arbiters; unless upon the commission of those enormous and extraordinary crimes which excite the general indignation, and which, from a sudden impulse of resentment, are instantly punished with severity.* <171>

From the accounts which have been given of the wandering tribes of shepherds in different parts of the world, it would seem that their government is of the same nature, though the power of their leader is further advanced, according to the degrees of wealth which they enjoy. In proportion to the extent of his herds and flocks, the chief is exalted above all the other members of the tribe, and has more influence in directing their military operations, in establishing their forms of judicial procedure, and in regulating the several branches of their public administration. Thus the captain or leader of a tribe among the Hottentots, who have made but small progress in the pastoral life, and among the wild Arabs, who have seldom acquired considerable property, appears to have little more authority than among the savages of America.* The great riches, on the other hand, which<172> are frequently acquired by those numerous bands of shepherds inhabiting the vast country of Tartary, have rendered the influence of the chief proportionably extensive, and have bestowed upon him an almost unlimited power, which commonly remains in the same family, and is transmitted from father to son like a private inheritance.†

The ancient German nations, described by Caesar and Tacitus, may be ranked in a middle situation between these extremes; having probably had more wealth than the Hottentots, or most of the wild Arabs, and less than the greater part of the Tartars. While they remained in their own country, they were not altogether strangers to the cultivation of the ground; but they all led a wandering life, and seem to have had no idea of property in land; a sufficient proof that they drew their subsistence chiefly from their cattle, and regarded agriculture as only a secondary employment. Their<173> chiefs appear to have been either hereditary, or elected from those families who had been longest in the possession of opulent fortunes; but their military expeditions were frequently conducted by such inferior leaders, as happened to offer their service, and could persuade their companions to follow them. In time of peace, justice was administered by the respective chiefs, or leading men, of the different villages.* <174>

But when those barbarians had sallied forth from their native forests, and invaded the provinces of the Roman empire, they were soon led to a great improvement in their circumstances. The countries which they conquered had been cultivated and civilized under the Roman dominion; and the inhabitants, though generally in a declining state, were still acquainted with husbandry and a variety of arts. It was to be expected, therefore, that, while the Gothic invaders, during a long course of bloody wars, defaced the monuments of ancient literature, and wherever they came planted their own barbarous customs, they should, on the other hand, suddenly catch a degree of knowledge from the conquered people; and make a quicker progress in agriculture, and some of the coarser handicrafts connected with it, than they could have done in the natural course of things, had they been left to their own experience and observation. By their repeated victories, different heads of families, or barons, were enabled to seize great landed estates. They also acquired many captives in war, whom they reduced into servitude, and by whom they were put into a condition for managing their extensive possessions.<175>

After the settlement of those nations was completed, the members of every large family came to be composed of two sorts of people; the slaves, acquired for the most part by conquest; and the free men, descended from a common ancestor, and maintained out of his estate. The former were employed chiefly in cultivating their masters grounds: the latter supported the interest and dignity of their leader, and in their turn were protected by him.

The authority of the baron was extremely absolute over all the members of his family; because they entirely depended upon him for subsistence. He obliged his slaves to labour at pleasure, and allowed them such recompence only as he thought proper. His kindred were under the necessity of following his banner in all his military expeditions. He exercised over both a supreme jurisdiction, in punishing their offences, as well as in deciding their differences; and he subjected them to such regulations as he judged convenient, for removing disorders, or preventing future disputes.

These barons, though in a great measure independent, were early united in a larger society, under circumstances which gave rise to a very peculiar set of institutions. The effect of that union, whence proceeded the system of feudal government in Europe, will fall to be considered in a subsequent part of this discourse.<176>

CHAPTER IV

The Authority of a Sovereign, and of Subordinate Officers, over a Society Composed of Different Tribes or Villages

SECTION I

The constitution of government arising from the union of different tribes or villages.

The improvement of agriculture, as it increases the quantity of provisions, and renders particular tribes more numerous and flourishing, so it obliges them at length to send out colonies to a distance, who occupy new seats wherever they can find a convenient situation, and are formed into separate villages, after the model of those with which they are acquainted. Thus, in proportion as a country is better cultivated, it comes to be inhabited by a greater number of distinct societies, whether derived from the same or from a different original, agreeing in their manners, and resembling each other in their institutions and customs.

These different communities being frequently at war, and being exposed to continual invasions from their neighbours, are in many cases determined, by the consideration of their mutual interest, to unite against their common enemies, and to form a va-<177>riety of combinations, which, from the influence of particular circumstances, are more or less permanent. Having found the advantage of joining their forces in one expedition, they are naturally disposed to continue the like association in another, and by degrees are encouraged to enter into a general alliance. The intercourse which people, in such a situation, have maintained in war will not be entirely dissolved even in time of peace; and though the different villages should be originally strangers to each other, yet, having many opportunities of assembling in their military enterprises, they cannot fail to contract an acquaintance, which will become an inducement to their future correspondence. They have frequent opportunities of meeting in their common sports and diversions: the leading men entertain one another with rustic hospitality and magnificence: intermarriages begin to take place between their respective families; and the various connexions of society are gradually multiplied and extended.

An alliance for mutual defence and security is a measure suggested by such obvious views of expediency, that it must frequently take place, not only among tribes of husbandmen, but also among those of shepherds, and even of mere savages. Many instances of it are, accordingly, to be found in Tartary, upon the coast of Guinea, in the history of the ancient Germans, and among the Indians of America. But such alliances are not<178> likely to produce a permanent union, until the populousness of a country has been increased by agriculture, and the inhabitants, in consequence of that employment, have taken up a fixed residence in the same neighbourhood.

From a confederacy of this kind, a very simple form of government is commonly established. As every village, or separate community, is subjected to its own leader, their joint measures fall naturally under the direction of all those distinguished personages; whose frequent meeting and deliberation gives rise, in a short time, to a regular council, or senate, invested with a degree of power and authority corresponding to what each of its members has acquired over his own particular domestics and retainers.

The same considerations, however, which determine the individuals of a single tribe to be guided by a particular person in their smaller expeditions, must recommend a similar expedient in conducting a numerous army, composed of different clans, often disagreeing in their views, and little connected with each other. While every chief has the conduct of his own dependents, it is found convenient that some one leader should be intrusted with the supreme command of their united forces; and as that dignity is commonly bestowed upon the person who, by his opulence, is most capable of supporting it, he is frequently enabled to maintain it during life, and even in many cases to render it<179> hereditary. In this manner a great chief, or king, is placed at the head of a nation, and is permitted to assume the inspection and superintendence of what relates to its defence and security.

But, notwithstanding the rank and pre-eminence enjoyed by this primitive sovereign, it may easily be conceived that his authority will not be very considerable. His advancement can hardly fail to excite the jealousy of chiefs unaccustomed to subordination, who will be disposed to take every opportunity of curbing his pretensions, and to allow him no higher prerogatives than are sufficient to answer the purposes for which he was created. His interpositions, in matters of public concern, will depend very much upon times and circumstances, and being directed by no previous rules, will be frequently made in an irregular and desultory manner. In a day of battle, when placed at the head of his army, he may venture, perhaps, to rule with a high hand, and it may be dangerous for any of his followers to disobey his orders; but upon other occasions his power is usually confined within a narrower compass, and frequently extends no further than to the members of his own clan. After the conclusion of a military enterprise, when the other tribes have retired to their separate places of abode, they are in a great measure withdrawn from his influence, and are placed under the immediate jurisdiction and authority of the respective chiefs by whom they are protected. As it is neces-<180>sary that these leading men should give their consent to every public measure of importance, they are usually convened for that purpose by the king; who at the same time is accustomed to preside in all their deliberations.

Such, as far as can be collected from the scattered hints delivered by travellers, is the state of government in many rude kingdoms, both upon the coast of Africa, or in those parts of Asia, where a number of distinct tribes or villages have been recently and imperfectly united.*

In the Odyssey, Alcinous, king of the Pheacians, says expressly, “There are twelve chiefs who share dominion in the kingdom, and I am the thir-teenth.”* He is accordingly obliged to call a council of his nobles, before he can venture to furnish Ulysses with a single ship, in order to transport him to his native country.

In the island of Ithaca, the power of the chiefs, who usually deliberated in council upon the affairs of the nation, is equally conspicuous.<181>

’Twas silence all, at last Aegyptius spoke;
Aegyptius, by his age and sorrows broke:—
Since great Ulysses sought the Phrygian plains,
Within these walls inglorious silence reigns.
Say then, ye Peers! by whose commands we meet?
Why here once more in solemn council sit?
Ye young, ye old, the weighty cause disclose:
Arrives some message of invading foes?
Or say, does high necessity of state
Inspire some patriot, and demand debate?
The present Synod speaks its author wise;
Assist him, Jove! thou regent of the skies!†

From the early history of all the Greek states, we have reason to believe that their government was of a similar nature. The country of Attica, in particular, is said to have been peopled by colonies which were brought, under different leaders, from Egypt and some of the neighbouring countries, and which formed a number of distinct tribes or villages, independent of one another.‡ The first association among these little societies happened in the time of Cecrops,1 the founder of Athens, who became their general, and who made a considerable reformation in their police and manners. They were afterwards more intimately united in the reign of Theseus, when the nobility, or principal inhabitants of the several towns or villages,<182> were persuaded to settle at Athens, and composed a senate, or national council, which exercised an authority over the whole country, and obtained the chief direction of religious matters, together with the privilege of electing magistrates, and of teaching and dispensing the laws.*

The resemblance between this and the ancient Roman constitution is sufficiently obvious. The foundation of that mighty empire was laid by a few tribes of barbarians, originally distinct from one another, who at first inhabited different quarters of the city, and who appear to have lived under the jurisdiction of their respective chiefs.† This was, in all probability, the origin of that connexion between the poor and the rich, which remained in after ages, and which has been commonly ascribed to the policy of Romulus. People of the lower class at Rome were all attached to some particular patron of rank and distinction; and every patrician had a number of clients, who, besides owing him respect and submission, were bound to portion his daughters, to pay his debts, and to ransom his per-<183>son from captivity; as, on the other hand, they were entitled to his advice and protection.‡ Of these leading men, who had an extensive influence over the populace, was formed the primitive senate, or council of the sovereign; which appears to have had the absolute determination of peace and war; and which, in the first instance, had not only the privilege of deliberating upon all public regulations, but also, upon the death of a king, that of naming a successor to the royal dignity.§

It must not be overlooked, however, that in the Roman, as well as in many of the Greek governments, there was originally a considerable mixture of democracy, arising from the peculiar circumstances of the people. The different tribes, or families, united in the formation of Rome, or of the independent cities which arose in Peloponnesus and some of the neighbouring countries, had very little property, either in moveables or in land; and their poverty must have prevented the growth of authority in their respective leaders. The influence of a chief, in each of those petty states, depended, in all probability, upon the personal attachment of his followers, and their admiration of his abilities, more than upon his superiority in wealth; and the power which that influence enabled him to assume<184> was, therefore, far, from being absolute. For this reason, under the kingly government of Rome, the authority of the senate, composed of all the chiefs, was not alone sufficient for making general laws, or transacting business where dissension might be apprehended, but its decrees, in such cases, were usually confirmed by an assembly consisting of the whole people. The same practice obtained in Athens and Sparta, and probably in most of the other states of Greece.

The particulars related by Caesar concerning the inhabitants of ancient Gaul may be considered as affording the most authentic evidence of the state of government in any rude country. We learn from this author that the whole of that country was divided into a number of separate states, independent of each other, and differing considerably in the degrees of their power, as well as in the extent of their territories. In the several towns, villages, or families, belonging to each nation, there were certain leading persons, possessed of great influence and authority, by whom their respective followers were governed and protected. The affairs of a whole nation were conducted by a king, or chief magistrate, assisted by a national council; and when different nations were engaged in a common enterprise, they made choice of a general to command their united forces.* <185>

The German nations who, about the fifth century, over-ran and subdued the provinces of the Western empire, were in a different situation from any other people with whose history we are acquainted. While they remained in their own country, those nations had made considerable advances in the pastoral state, and had thereby acquired a good deal of wealth in herds and flocks. By their settlement in the Roman provinces, they had an opportunity, as has been already observed, of acquiring large estates in land, which tended to augment the authority of different leaders in proportion to their riches.

The inhabitants of a large tract of country were, at the same time, associated for their mutual defence, and in their common expeditions, were conducted by a great chief, or king, whose rank and dignity, like that of every subordinate leader, was supported by his own private estate. There were two circumstances which rendered the associations<186> made upon this occasion much more extensive than they commonly are among nations equally barbarous.

As each of the nations who settled in the Western empire, though seldom large, was, by the rapid progress of its arms, and by a sudden improvement in agriculture, enabled to occupy a prodigious quantity of land, the different proprietors, among whom that land was divided, were placed at a great distance from one another, and spread over a wide country. But many of these proprietors consisting of kindred or acquaintance, and all of them having been accustomed to act under one commander, they were still inclined, how remote soever their situation, to maintain a correspondence, and to unite in their military enterprises.

The state of the Roman provinces was another circumstance which promoted an extensive association among the conquerors. Each province of the Roman empire constituted, in some measure, a separate government, the several parts of which had all a dependence upon one another. The inhabitants, not to mention their ancient national attachment, had usually a set of laws and customs peculiar to themselves, and were governed by the same officers civil and military. They were accustomed on public occasions to act in concert, and to consider themselves as having a common interest. The capital, which was the seat of the governor, became the centre of government, to which<187> the gentry of the province resorted in expectation of preferment, or with a view of sharing in the pleasures of a court; and from thence, to the most distant parts of the country, innumerable channels of communication were opened, through the principal towns, where trade was carried on, where taxes were levied, or where justice was administered.

The connexions, which had thus subsisted for ages between the several districts of large territory, were not entirely destroyed when it came under the dominion of the barbarians. As the ancient inhabitants were no where extirpated, but either by submitting to servitude, or by entering into various treaties of alliance, were incorporated and blended with the conquerors, the habits of intercourse, and the system of political union which remained with the former, was, in some degree, communicated to the latter. When different tribes, therefore, though strangers to each other, had settled in the same province, they were easily reduced under one sovereign; and the boundaries of a modern kingdom, came frequently, in the western part of Europe, to be nearly of the same extent with the dominions which had been formerly subject to a Roman governor.

In proportion to the number of tribes, or separate families, united in one kingdom, and to the wideness of the country over which they were scattered, the union between them was loose and feeble.<188> Every proprietor of land maintained a sort of independence, and notwithstanding the confederacy of which he was a member, assumed the privilege of engaging in private wars at pleasure. From the violent disposition to theft and rapine which prevailed in that age, neighbouring proprietors, when not occupied in a joint expedition, were tempted to commit depredations upon each other; and mutual injuries between the same individuals being often repeated, became the source of family quarrels, which were prosecuted with implacable animosity and rancour. There was no sufficient authority in the public for repressing these disorders. If, upon great provocation, the king had been excited to humble and punish an opulent baron, he found in many cases that the whole force of the crown was requisite for that purpose, and by the hazard and difficulty of the attempt, was commonly taught to be cautious, for the future, of involving himself in such disputes.

As individuals, therefore, in those times of violence and confusion, were continually exposed to injustice and oppression, and received little or no protection from government, they found it necessary to be constantly attentive to their own safety. It behoved every baron, not only to support his own personal dignity, and to maintain his own rights against the attacks of all his neighbours, but also to protect his retainers and dependents; and he was<189> led, upon that account, to regulate the state of his barony in such a manner, as to preserve the union of all its members, to secure their fidelity and service, and to keep them always in a posture of defence. With this view, when his relations, who had hitherto lived about his house, were gradually permitted to have families of their own, he did not bestow upon them separate estates, which would have rendered them independent; but he assigned them such portions of land as were thought sufficient for their maintenance, to be held upon condition, that whenever they were called upon, they should be ready to serve him in war, and that, in all their controversies, they should submit to his jurisdiction. These grants were made for no limited time, but might be resumed at pleasure; so that, though the master was not likely, without some extraordinary offence, to deprive his kinsmen of their possessions, yet his power in this respect being indisputable, it could hardly fail to keep them in awe, and to produce an implicit obedience to his commands.

The military tenants, supported in this manner, were denominated vassals; and the land held by any person upon such terms has been called a fief; though many writers, in order to distinguish it from what afterwards went under the same name, have termed it a benefice.

When the estate of a baron became extensive,<190> the slaves, by whom it was cultivated, were likewise sent to a distance from the house of their master, and were placed in separate families, each of which obtained the management of a particular farm; but that they might, in those disorderly times, be more easily protected by the owner, and might be in a condition to defend and assist one another, a number of them were usually collected together, and composed a little village. Hence they received the appellation of villani, or villains.

The whole of a kingdom was thus divided into a number of baronies, of greater or smaller extent, and regulated nearly in the same manner. The king was at the head of a barony similar in every respect to those of his subjects, though commonly larger, and therefore capable of maintaining a greater number of vassals and dependents. But the land which belonged to the barons, was held in the same independent manner with that which belonged to the king. As each of those warlike chiefs had purchased his demesnes by his own activity and valour, he claimed the absolute enjoyment and disposal of them, together with the privilege of transmitting them to his posterity; and as he had not been indebted to the crown for his original possession, neither was he obliged to secure the continuance of it, by serving the king in war, or by submitting to his jurisdiction. Their property, therefore, was such as has been called allodial, in contradistinc-<191>tion to that feudal tenure enjoyed by their respective military tenants.* <192>

These peculiarities, in the state of the kingdoms which were formed upon the ruins of the Roman empire, had a visible effect upon their constitution of government. According to the authority possessed by the barons, each over his own barony, and their independence with respect to each other, and with respect to the king, was their joint power<193> and influence over that great community of which they were members. The supreme powers of government in every kingdom were, therefore, exercised by an assembly composed of all those proprietors, and commonly summoned by the king on every great emergency.

Two meetings of this great council appear to have been regularly held in a year, for the ordinary dispatch of business; the first, after the seed-time, to determine their military operations during the summer; the second, before the harvest, in order to divide the booty. In those meetings it was customary also to rectify abuses by introducing new regulations, and to decide those law-suits which had arisen between independent proprietors of land. Such was the business of the early parliaments in France, of the Cortes in Spain, of the Wittenagemote in England; and in each of the feudal kingdoms, we discover evident marks of a national council, constituted in the same manner, and invested with similar priveleges.* <194>

These observations may serve to show the general aspect and complexion of that political constitution which results from the first union of rude tribes, or small independent societies. The government resulting from that union is apt to be of a mixed nature, in which there is a nobility distinguished from the people, and a king exalted above the nobles. But though, according to that system, the peculiar situation of different nations may have produced some variety in the powers belonging to these different orders, yet, unless in very poor states, the influence acquired by the nobles has commonly been such as to occasion a remarkable prevalence of aristocracy.<195>

SECTION II

The natural progress of government in a rude kingdom.

The continued union of rude tribes, or small societies, has a tendency to produce a great alteration in the political system of a people. The same circumstances, by which, in a single tribe, a chief is gradually advanced over the different heads of families, contribute, in a kingdom, to exalt the sovereign above the chiefs, and to extend his authority throughout the whole of his dominions.

As the king is placed at the head of the nation, and acts the most conspicuous part in all their public measures, his high rank and station reflect upon him a degree of splendour, which is apt to obscure the lustre of every inferior chief; and the longer he has remained in a situation where he excites the admiration and respect of the people, it is to be supposed that their habits of submission to him will be the more confirmed.

From the opulence, too, of the sovereign, which is generally much greater than that of any other member of the community, as well as from the nature of his office, he has more power to reward and protect his friends, and to punish or depress those who have become the objects of his resent-<196>ment or displeasure. The consideration of this must operate powerfully upon individuals, as a motive to court his favour, and, of consequence, to support his interest. It is therefore to be concluded that, from the natural course of things, the immediate followers and dependents of the king will be constantly increasing, and those of every inferior leader will be diminishing in the same proportion.

In a government so constituted as to introduce a continual jealousy between the crown and the nobles, it must frequently happen that the latter, instead of prosecuting a uniform plan for aggrandizing their own order, should be occupied with private quarrels and dissensions among them-selves; so that the king, who is ready to improve every conjuncture for extending his power, may often employ and assist the great lords in destroying each other, or take advantage of those occasions when they have been weakened by their continued struggles, and are in no condition to oppose his demands.

According as the real influence and authority of the crown are extended, its prerogatives are gradually augmented. When the king finds that the original chiefs have become in a great measure dependent upon him, he is not solicitous about consulting them in the management of public affairs; and the meetings of the national council, being seldom called, or being attended only by such<197> members as are entirely devoted to the crown, dwindle away from time to time, and are at last laid aside altogether. The judicial power of the heads of different tribes is gradually subjected to similar encroachments; and that jurisdiction, which they at first held in virtue of their own authority, is rendered subordinate to the tribunal of the monarch, who, after having established the right of appeal from their courts to his own court, is led to appoint the judges in each particular district. The power of making laws, as well as that of determining peace and war, and of summoning all his subjects to the field, may come in like manner to be exercised at the discretion of the prince.

This progress of government, towards monarchy, though it seems to hold universally, is likely to be accompanied with some diversity of appearances in different countries; and, in particular, is commonly more rapid in a small state than in a large one; in which point of view the ancient Greeks and Romans are most remarkably distinguished from the greater part of the feudal kingdoms in Europe.

The Roman and Greek states were originally of small extent, and the people belonging to each of them being, for the most part, collected in one city, were led in a short time to cultivate an acquaintance. The police, which was easily established in such a limited territory, put a stop to the divisions so prevalent among neighbouring tribes of barbarians. Those who belonged to different<198> families were soon restrained from injuring one another, and lived in security under the protection of the government. By conversing together almost every day, their ancient prejudices were eradicated; and their animosities, being no longer cherished by reciprocal acts of hostility, were allowed to subside, and left no traces behind. The whole people, being early engaged in violent struggles with the petty states around them, were obliged to hold an intimate correspondence, and acquired an high sense of public interest. In proportion as they were thus incorporated in a larger community, they lost all inferior distinctions. The members of each particular tribe had no reason to maintain their peculiar connexions, or to preserve their primitive attachment to their respective chiefs. The power of the nobility, therefore, which depended upon those circumstances, was quickly destroyed; and the monarch, who remained at the head of the nation without a rival to counterbalance his influence, had no difficulty in extending his influence over the whole of his dominions.

For this reason, the ancient jurisdiction and authority of the chiefs is not very distinctly marked in the early history of those nations, among whom it was in a great measure destroyed before they were possessed of historical records. At Rome, so early as the reign of Servius Tullius, the practice of convening the people according to their tribes, or curiae, was almost entirely laid aside;<199> and the public assemblies were held in such a manner, that every individual was classed according to his wealth.2

The great extent, on the other hand, of those modern kingdoms which, upon the downfall of the Roman empire, were erected in the western part of Europe, was formerly mentioned; and the political consequences, which appear to have been immediately derived from that circumstance, were likewise taken notice of. The numerous tribes, or separate families, that were associated under a sovereign, far from being collected in a single town, were spread over a large territory, and living at a distance from each other, were for a long time prevented from having much intercourse, or from acquiring the habits of polished society. Strangers to regular government, and little restrained by the authority of the public magistrate, they were devoted to their several chiefs, by whom they were encouraged to rob and plunder their neighbours, and protected from the punishment due to their offences. Mutual depredations became the source of perpetual animosity and discord among neighbouring barons, who, from jealousy, from an interference of interest, or from resentment of injuries, were, for the most part, either engaged in actual hostilities, or lying in wait for a favourable opportunity to oppress and destroy one another. Thus every kingdom was composed of a great variety of parts, loosely combined together, and for several centuries may be regarded as a collection of small in-<200>dependent societies, rather than as one great political community. The slow advances which were afterwards made by the people towards a more complete union, appear to have been productive of that feudal subordination which has been the subject of so much investigation and controversy.

In those times of license and disorder, the proprietors of small estates were necessarily exposed to many hardships and calamities. Surrounded by wealthier and more powerful neighbours, by whom they were invaded from every quarter, and held in constant terror, they could seldom indulge the hope of maintaining their possessions, or of transmitting them to their posterity. Conscious, therefore, of their weakness, they endeavoured to provide for their future safety, by soliciting the aid of some opulent chief, who appeared most capable of defending them; and, in order to obtain that protection which he afforded to his ancient retainers or vassals, they were obliged to render themselves equally subservient to his interest; to relinquish their pretensions to independence, to acknowledge him as their leader, and to yield him that homage and fealty which belonged to a feudal superior.

The nature of these important transactions, the solemnities with which they were accompanied, and the views and motives from which they were usually concluded, are sufficiently explained from the copies or forms of those deeds which have been collected and handed down to us. The vas-<201>sal promised, in a solemn manner, to submit to the jurisdiction of the superior, to reside within his domain, and to serve him in war, whether he should be engaged in prosecuting his own quarrels, or in the common cause of the nation. The superior, on the other hand, engaged to exert all his power and influence, in protecting the vassal, in defending his possessions, or in avenging his death, in case he should be assassinated. In consequence of these mutual engagements, the vassal, by certain symbols expressive of the agreement, resigned his property, of which he again received the investiture from the hands of the superior.*

It is probable, however, that the extension of particular baronies, by the voluntary submission of allodial proprietors, contributed to ascertain the right of the vassal, and to limit that property with which the superior was originally invested. The ancient<202> military tenants, who were the kindred and relations of the superior, and who had received their lands as a pure gratuity, never thought of demanding to be secured in the future possession; and while they continued to support the interest of the family, which they looked upon as inseparable from their own interest, they had no apprehension that they should ever be deprived of their estates. Thus, according to the more accurate ideas of later times, they were merely tenants at will; though from the affection of their master, and from their inviolable fidelity to him, they were commonly permitted to enjoy their lands during life; and in ordinary cases the same indulgence was even shown to their posterity.

But it was not to be expected that those who submitted to a foreign superior, and who gave up their allodial property as an equivalent for the protection which was promised them, would repose so much confidence in a person with whom they had no natural connexion, or be willing to hold their lands by the same precarious tenure. They endeavoured, by express stipulations, to prevent the arbitrary conduct of the master; and, according as they found themselves in a condition to insist for more favourable terms, they obtained a grant of their estates, for a certain limited time, for life, or to their heirs. By these grants the right of property, instead of being totally vested in the superior, came to be, in some measure, divided between him and his vassals.<203>

When a superior had entered into such transactions with his new retainers, he could not well refuse a similar security to such of his ancient vassals as, from any casual suspicion, thought proper to demand it; so that from the influence of example, joined to uninterrupted possession in a series of heirs, the same privileges were, either by an express bargain, or by a sort of tacit agreement, communicated, at length, to all his military tenants.

This alteration gave rise to what were called the incidents of the feudal tenures. The ancient military tenants, who were the kindred of the superior, might be removed by him at pleasure, or subjected to what burdens he thought proper to impose upon them; and there was no occasion to specify the services that might be required of them, or the grounds upon which they might forfeit their possessions. But when the vassal had obtained a permanent right to his estate, it became necessary to ascertain the extent of the obligations which he came under, and the penalty to which he was subjected upon his neglecting to fulfil them; so that, from the nature of the feudal connexion, he in some cases incurred a forfeiture, or total loss of the fief, and in others was liable for the payment of certain duties, which produced an occasional profit to the superior.

1. Thus when the vassal died without heirs; when he violated his duty by the commission of a crime, or by neglecting to perform the usual ser-<204>vice; in either of these cases his lands returned to the superior. The emolument arising from this forfeiture, or termination of the fief, was called an escheat.

2. When a person was admitted to hold a fief, he engaged by an oath to fulfil the duties of homage and fealty to the superior. Even after fiefs became hereditary, this ceremony was repeated upon every transmission of the feudal right by succession; so that while the heir of a vassal neglected to renew the engagement, he was not entitled to obtain possession, and the superior, in the mean time, drew the rent of the lands. Hence the incident of non-entry.

3. Though the heir of a vassal might claim a renewal of the feudal investiture, this was understood to be granted in consideration of his performing military service. When by his nonage, therefore, the heir was incapable of fulfilling that condition, the superior himself retained the possession of the lands; at the same time that he was accustomed, in that case, to protect and maintain his future vassal. This produced the incident of wardship.

4. Upon the death of a vassal, it was usual for the representative of his family to make a present to the superior, in order to obtain a ready admittance into the possession of the lands. When fiefs became hereditary, it was still found expedient to procure by means of a bribe, what could<205> not easily be extorted by force; and the original arbitrary payment was converted into a regular duty, under the name of relief.

5. From the original nature of the feudal grants, the vassal could have no title to sell, or give away to any other person, the lands which he held merely as a tenant, in consideration of the service which he was bound to perform. But when fiefs had been granted to heirs, and when of consequence the right of the vassal approached somewhat nearer to that of property, it became customary to compound with the superior for the privilege of alienating the estate, upon payment of a sum of money. This gave rise to a perquisite, called the fine of alienation.

6. From the disorders which prevailed in the feudal times, when different families were so frequently at war, it was of great consequence that the vassals should not contract an alliance with the enemy of their Liege Lord; which might have a tendency to corrupt their fidelity. When fiefs therefore came to be granted for life, or to heirs, it was still held a sufficient ground of forfeiture that the vassal married without the superior’s consent. This forfeiture was afterwards converted into a pecuniary penalty, called the incident of marriage.

7. According to the usual policy of the feudal nations, the superior levied no taxes from his retainers, but was maintained from the rent of his<206> own estate. In particular cases, however, when his ordinary revenue was insufficient, his vassals were accustomed to supply him by a voluntary contribution. When fiefs were precarious, what was given on those occasions depended upon the will of the superior, who might even seize upon the whole estate of his tenants. But when the vassal had obtained a more permanent right, it became necessary to settle the cases when those contributions were to be made, as well as the quantity that might be demanded; and in this manner, aid or benevolence came to be enumerated among the duties payable to a superior.

The conversion of allodial into feudal property, by a voluntary resignation, as it proceeded from the general manners and situation of the people, continued to be a frequent practice, while those manners and that situation remained. The smaller barons were thus, at different times, subjected to their opulent neighbours; the number of independent proprietors was gradually diminished; their estates were united and blended together in one barony; and large districts were brought under the dominion of a few great lords, who daily extended their influence and authority, by increasing the number of their vassals.

These changes, by exalting a small part of the nobility over the great body of the people, had, for some time, a tendency to abridge, instead of enlarging the power of the crown, and to render<207> the government more aristocratical. Whenever an independent proprietor had resigned his allodial property, and agreed to hold his land by a feudal tenure, he was no longer entitled to a voice in the national assembly, but was bound to follow the direction of the person to whom he had become liable in homage and fealty. This appears to be the reason of what is observed in France, that the national assembly was originally much more numerous than it came to be afterwards, when its constituent members were all persons of high rank and great opulence.* It would seem also that in England, under the later princes of the Saxon line, the great affairs of the nation were transacted in a meeting composed of a few great barons; and we discover no marks of those numerous assemblies which are taken notice of in a former period.†

But the same circumstances, by which the estates of different small proprietors were united in one barony, contributed afterwards to incorporate these larger districts, and to unite all the inhabitants of a kingdom in the same feudal dependency. As the<208> barons were diminished in number, and increased in power and opulence, they became more immediate rivals to each other. In their different quarrels, which were prosecuted with various success, the weaker party was often obliged to have recourse to the king, who alone was able to screen him from the fury of his enemy; and, in order to procure that succour and protection which his situation required, he became willing to surrender his property, and to hold his estate upon condition of his yielding that obedience, and performing that service, which a superior was accustomed to demand from his vassals. From the various disputes which arose, and the accidental combinations that were formed among the great families, the nobles were all, in their turns, reduced to difficulties from which they were forced to extricate themselves by the like compliances; and the sovereign, who laid hold of every opportunity to extend his influence, established his superiority over the barons by the same means which they themselves had formerly employed for subjecting the proprietors of smaller estates.

Thus, by degrees, the feudal system was completed in most of the countries of Europe. The whole of a kingdom came to be united in one great fief, of which the king was the superior, or lord paramount, having in some measure the property of all the land within his dominions. The great barons became his immediate vassals, and, accord-<209>ing to the tenure by which they held their estates, were subject to his jurisdiction, and liable to him in services of the same nature with those which they exacted from their own retainers or inferior military tenants.

The precise period when this revolution was finally accomplished, as in most other gradual changes which happen in a country, is involved in doubt and uncertainty. From a comparison of the opinions of different authors who have written upon this subject, and of the facts which they bring in support of their several conjectures, it appears most reasonable to conclude, that in France the great barons continued their allodial possessions during the kings of the first and second race, and about the beginning of the Capetian line were, for the most part, reduced into a state of feudal subjection to the monarch.* <210>

In England it would seem that, in like manner, the nobles maintained their independence during the time of the Saxon princes, and were reduced to be the vassals of the crown in the reign of William the Conqueror.* <211>

This opinion is confirmed by observing the changes which, from those two periods, began to take place in the government of these kingdoms. From the reign of Hugh Capet, the dominions of France appear more firmly united; they were no longer split upon the death of the sovereign, and shared among his children; the monarch was from this period capable of acting with more vigour, and continued to extend his prerogative till the<212> reign of Lewis XI. who exercised the power of imposing taxes, as well as of making laws independent of the convention of estates.* The same progress, though with some accidental interruptions, may be traced in England, from the Norman conquest to the accession of the Tudor family, under which the powers and prerogatives of the crown were exalted to a height that seemed equally incompatible with the rights of the nobility and the freedom of the people.

The authors, who have written upon the feudal law, seem to have generally considered that system as peculiar to the modern nations of Europe; and from what has been observed above, it appears evident that the circumstances of the Gothic nations, who settled in the western provinces of Rome, rendered such a set of regulations more especially useful for the defence and security of the people. It is highly probable that, from those<213> parts of Europe where the feudal law was first established, it was in some degree communicated, by the intercourse of the inhabitants and the force of example, to some of the neighbouring countries. But it merits particular attention that the same sort of policy, though not brought to the same perfection as in Europe, is to be found in many distant parts of the world, where it never could be derived from imitation; and perhaps there is reason to think that similar institutions, by which small bodies of men are incorporated in larger societies under a single leader, and afterwards linked together in one great community, have been suggested in every extensive kingdom, founded upon the original association of many rude tribes or families.

The kingdom of Congo, upon the southern coast of Africa, is divided into many large districts or provinces, the inhabitants of which appear to have made some progress in agriculture. Each of these districts comprehends a multitude of small lordships, which are said to have been formerly independent, but which are now united together, and reduced under a single chief or governor, who exercises absolute authority over them. The great lords, or governors of provinces, are in like manner dependent upon the king, and owe him the payment of certain annual duties. This monarch is understood to have an unlimited power over the goods of all his subjects; he is the proprietor of all the lands in the kingdom, which return to<214> the crown upon the death of the possessors; and, according to the arbitrary will of the prince, are either continued in the same, or bestowed upon a different family. All the inhabitants are bound to appear in the field whenever they are required by the sovereign, who is able in a short time to raise a prodigious army upon any sudden emergency. Every governor has a judicial power in his own district, and from his sentences there lies an appeal to the king, who is the supreme judge of the nation. Similar accounts are given of the constitution in the neighbouring kingdoms of Angola, Loango, and Benin.*

The same form of government may be discovered in several part of the East Indies, where many great lords, who have acquired extensive dominions, are often reduced into a sort of feudal dependence upon a single person.

Among the natives of Indostan, there are a great number of families who have been immemorially trained up to arms, and who enjoy a superior rank to most of the other inhabitants. They form a militia capable of enduring much hardship, and wanting nothing to make good soldiers but order and discipline. These hereditary warriors are subject to the authority of chiefs, or Rajahs, from whom they receive lands, upon condition of their per-<215>forming military service. It would seem that those different families were originally independent of each other. By degrees, however, many of the poorer sort have become subordinate to their opulent neighbours, and are obliged to serve them in war in order to obtain a livelihood. In like manner, the leaders of more wealthy families have been gradually subdued by a certain Rajah, who mounted the throne, and whose influence became more and more extensive. This, in all probability, gave rise to the political constitution at present established in that country. The Rajahs, or nobility, are now for the most part retained by the Great Mogul in a situation resembling that of the crown vassals in Europe. At the same time there are some of those chiefs who still maintain an independency even in the heart of the empire. In the reign of Aureng-zebe, there were about an hundred, dispersed over the whole country, several of whom were capable of bringing into the field 25,000 horse, better troops than those of the monarch.*

In the kingdom of Pegu, which was formerly an independent monarchy, the king is said to have been the sole heir of all the landed estates of his subjects. The nobility, or chiefs, had lands and towns assigned them, which they held of the crown, upon condition of their maintaining a cer-<216>tain number of troops in time of peace, and bringing them into the field in case of a war. Besides these military services, they were also bound to the performance of several kinds of work, which the sovereign rigorously exacted from them, in token of their subjection. This country is now annexed to the kingdom of Ava, in which, as well as in that of Laos and of Siam, the same regulations appear to be established.†

“Travellers who make observations on the Malays,” says the judicious M. Le Poivre, “are astonished to find, in the centre of Asia, under the scorching climate of the line, the laws, the manners, the customs, and the prejudices of the ancient inhabitants of the north of Europe. The Malays are governed by feudal laws, that capricious system, conceived for the defence of the liberty of a few against the tyranny of one, while the multitude is subjected to slavery and oppression.

“A chief, who has the title of king, or sultan, issues his commands to his great vassals, who obey when they think proper. These have inferior vassals, who often act in the same manner with regard to them. A small part of the nation live independent, under the title of Oramcay, or noble, and sell their services to those who pay<217> them best; while the body of the nation is composed of slaves, and lives in perpetual servitude.

“With these laws, the Malays are restless, fond of navigation, war, plunder, emigrations, colonies, desperate enterprises, adventures, and gallantry. They talk incessantly of their honour, and their bravery, while they are universally regarded, by those with whom they have intercourse, as the most treacherous, ferocious people on the face of the globe; and yet, what appeared to me extremely singular, they speak the softest language of Asia. What the Count de Forbin has said, in his Memoirs, is exactly true, and is the reigning characteristic of all the Malay nations. More attached to the absurd laws of their pretended honour, than to those of justice or humanity, you always observe, that among them, the strong oppress the weak: their treaties of peace and friendship never subsisting beyond that self-interest by which they were induced to make them. They are almost always armed, and either at war among themselves, or employed in pillaging their neighbours.”*

The remains of this feudal policy are also to be found in Turkey. The Zaims and Timariots, in the Turkish Empire, are a species of vassals, who possess landed estates upon condition of their upholding a certain number of soldiers for the service<218> of the grand seignior. The Zaims have lands of greater value than the Timariots, and are obliged to maintain a greater number of soldiers. The estates of both, are, in some cases, held during pleasure, and in others hereditary. It was computed, in the last century, that the whole militia maintained in this manner, throughout the Turkish empire, amounted to an hundred thousand men.†

In the history of the ancient Persians, during the wars which they carried on with the Roman emperors, we may also discover some traces of a similar constitution of government; for it is observed that this nation had no mercenary troops, but that the whole people might be called out to war by the king, and upon the conclusion of every expedition, were accustomed to return, with their booty, to their several places of residence.‡

When a great and polished nation begins to relapse into its primitive rudeness and barbarism, the dominions which belonged to it are in danger of falling asunder; and the same institutions may become necessary for preventing the different parts of the kingdom from being separated, which had been formerly employed in order to unite the several members of an extensive society. This was the case among the Romans in the later periods of the empire. When the provinces became in a great measure independent, and the government was no<219> longer able to protect them from the repeated invasions of the barbarians, the inhabitants were obliged to shelter themselves under the dominion of particular great men in their neighbourhood, whom the emperor put in possession of large estates, upon condition of their maintaining a proper armed force to defend the country. Thus, in different provinces, there arose a number of chiefs, or leaders, who enjoyed estates in land, as a consideration for the military service which they performed to the sovereign. The Abbé Du Bos has thence been led to imagine that the feudal policy of the German nations was copied from those regulations already established in the countries which they subdued.* But it ought to be considered, that the growth and decay of society have, in some respects, a resemblance to each other; which, independent of imitation, is naturally productive of similar manners and customs.<220>

CHAPTER V

The Changes Produced in the Government of a People, by Their Progress in Arts, and in Polished Manners

SECTION I

Circumstances, in a polished nation, which tend to increase the power of the Sovereign.

The advancement of a people in the arts of life, is attended with various alterations in the state of individuals, and in the whole constitution of their government.

Mankind, in a rude age, are commonly in readiness to go out to war, as often as their circumstances require it. From their extreme idleness, a military expedition is seldom inconvenient for them; while the prospect of enriching themselves with plunder, and of procuring distinction by their valour, renders it always agreeable. The members of every clan are no less eager to follow their chief, and to revenge his quarrel, than he is desirous of their assistance.They look upon it as a privilege, rather than a burden, to attend upon him, and to share in the danger, as well as in the glory and profit of all his undertakings. By the numberless acts of hostility in which they are engaged, they<221> are trained to the use of arms, and acquire experience in the military art, so far as it is then understood. Thus, without any trouble or expence, a powerful militia is constantly maintained, which, upon the slightest notice, can always be brought into the field, and employed in the defence of the country.

When Caesar made war upon the Helvetii they were able to muster against him no less than ninety-two thousand fighting men, amounting to a fourth part of all the inhabitants.*

Hence those prodigious swarms which issued, at different times, from the ill cultivated regions of the north, and over-ran the several provinces of the Roman empire. Hence too, the poor, but superstitious princes of Europe, were enabled to muster such numerous forces under the banner of the cross, in order to attack the opulent nations of the east, and to deliver the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.

The same observation will, in some measure, account for those immense armies which we read of in the early periods of history; or at least may incline us to consider the exaggerated relations of ancient authors, upon that subject, as not entirely destitute of real foundation.

These dispositions, arising from the frequent disorders incident to a rude society, are of course<222> laid aside when good order and tranquillity begin to be established. When the government acquires so much authority as to protect individuals from oppression, and to put an end to the private wars which subsisted between different families, the people, who have no other military enterprises but those which are carried on in the public cause of the nation, become gradually less accustomed to fighting, and their martial ardour is proportionably abated.

The improvement of arts and manufactures, by introducing luxury, contributes yet more to enervate the minds of men, who, according as they enjoy more ease and pleasure at home, feel greater aversion to the hardships and dangers of a military life, and put a lower value upon that sort of reputation which it affords. The increase of industry, at the same time, creates a number of lucrative employments which require a constant attention, and gives rise to a variety of tradesmen and artificers, who cannot afford to leave their business for the transient and uncertain advantages to be derived from the pillage of their enemies.

In these circumstances, the bulk of a people become at length unable or unwilling to serve in war, and when summoned to appear in the field, according to the ancient usage, are induced to offer a sum of money instead of their personal attendance. A composition of this kind is readily accepted by the sovereign or chief magistrate, as it<223> enables him to hire soldiers among those who have no better employment, or who have contracted a liking to that particular occupation. The forces which he has raised in this manner, receiving constant pay, and having no other means of procuring a livelihood, are entirely under the direction of their leader, and are willing to remain in his service as long as he chooses to retain them. From this alteration of circumstances, he has an opportunity of establishing a proper subordination in the army, and according as it becomes fitter for action, and, in all its motions capable of being guided and regulated with greater facility, he is encouraged to enter upon more difficult enterprises, as well as to meditate more distant schemes of ambition. His wars, which were formerly concluded in a few weeks, are now gradually protracted to a greater length of time, and occasioning a greater variety of operations, are productive of suitable improvements in the military art.

After a numerous body of troops have been levied at considerable expence, and have been prepared for war by a long course of discipline and experience, it appears highly expedient to the sovereign that, even in time of peace, some part of them, at least, should be kept in pay, to be in readiness whenever their service is required. Thus, the introduction of mercenary forces is soon followed by that of a regular standing army. The business of a soldier becomes a distinct profession,<224> which is appropriated to a separate order of men; while the rest of the inhabitants, being devoted to their several employments, become wholly unaccustomed to arms; and the preservation of their lives and fortunes is totally devolved upon those whom they are at the charge of maintaining for that purpose.

This important revolution, with respect to the means of national defence, appears to have taken place in all the civilized and opulent nations of antiquity. In all the Greek states, even in that of Sparta, we find that the military service of the free citizens came, from a change of manners, to be regarded as burdensome, and the practice of employing mercenary troops was introduced. The Romans too, before the end of the republic, had found it necessary to maintain a regular standing army in each of their distant provinces.

In the modern nations of Europe, the disuse of the feudal militia was an immediate consequence of the progress of the people in arts and manufactures; after which the different sovereigns were forced to hire soldiers upon particular occasions, and at last to maintain a regular body of troops for the defence of their dominions. In France, during the reign of Lewis XIII. and in Germany, about the same period, the military system began to be established upon that footing, which it has since acquired in all the countries of Europe.

The tendency of a standing mercenary army to<225> increase the power and prerogative of the crown, which has been the subject of much declamation, is sufficiently obvious. As the army is immediately under the conduct of the monarch; as the individuals of which it is composed depend entirely upon him for preferment; as, by forming a separate order of men, they are apt to become indifferent about the rights of their fellow-citizens; it may be expected that, in most cases, they will be disposed to pay an implicit obedience to his commands, and that the same force which is maintained to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions, may often be employed to subvert and destroy the liberties of the people.

The same improvements in society, which give rise to the maintenance of standing forces, are usually attended with similar changes in the manner of distributing justice. It has been already observed that, in a large community, which has made but little progress in the arts, every chief or baron is the judge over his own tribe, and the king, with the assistance of his great council, exercises a jurisdiction over the members of different tribes or baronies. From the small number of law-suits which occur in the ages of poverty and rudeness, and from the rapidity, with which they are usually determined among a warlike and ignorant people, the office of a judge demands little attention, and occasions no great interruption to those pursuits in which a man of rank and distinction is common-<226>ly engaged. The sovereign and the nobility, therefore, in such a situation, may continue to hold this office, though, in their several courts, they should appoint a deputy-judge to assist them in discharging the duties of it. But when the increase of opulence has given encouragement to a variety of tedious litigation, they become unwilling to bestow the necessary time in hearing causes, and are therefore induced to devolve the whole business upon inferior judges, who acquire by degrees the several branches of the judicial power, and are obliged to hold regular courts for the benefit of the inhabitants. Thus the exercise of jurisdiction becomes a separate employment, and is committed to an order of men, who require a particular education to qualify them for the duties of their office, and who, in return for their service, must therefore be enabled to earn a livelihood by their profession.

A provision for the maintenance of judges is apt, from the natural course of things, to grow out of their employment; as, in order to procure an indemnification for their attendance, they have an opportunity of exacting fees from the parties who come before them. This is analogous to what happens with respect to every sort of manufacture, in which an artificer is commonly paid by those who employ him. We find, accordingly, that this was the early practice in all the feudal courts of Europe, and that perquisites drawn by the judges, in different tribunals, yielded a considerable revenue both<227> to the king and the nobles. It is likely that similar customs, in this respect, have been adopted in most parts of the world, by nations in the same period of their advancement. The impropriety, however, of giving a permission to these exactions, which tend to influence the decisions of a judge, to render him active in stirring up law-suits, and in multiplying the forms of his procedure, in order to increase his perquisites; these pernicious consequences with which it is inseparably connected, could not fail to attract the notice of a polished people, and at length produced the more perfect plan of providing for the maintenance of judges by the appointment of a fixed salary in place of their former precarious emoluments.

It cannot be doubted that these establishments, of such mighty importance, and of so extensive a nature, must be the source of great expence to the public. In those early periods, when the inhabitants of a country are in a condition to defend themselves, and when their internal disputes are decided by judges who claim no reward for their interpositions, or at least no reward from government, few regulations are necessary with respect to the public revenue. The king is enabled to maintain his family, and to support his dignity, by the rents of his own estate; and, in ordinary cases, he has no farther demand. But when the disuse of the ancient militia has been succeeded by the practice of hiring troops, these original funds are no longer<228> sufficient; and other resources must be provided in order to supply the deficiency. By the happy disposition of human events, the very circumstance that occasions this difficulty appears also to suggest the means of removing it. When the bulk of a people become unwilling to serve in war, they are naturally disposed to offer a composition in order to be excused from that ancient personal service which, from long custom, it is thought they are bound to perform. Compositions of this nature are levied at first, in consequence of an agreement with each individual: to avoid the trouble arising from a multiplicity of separate transactions, they are afterwards paid in common by the inhabitants of particular districts, and at length give rise to a general assessment, the first considerable taxation that is commonly introduced into a country.

If this tax could always be laid upon the people in proportion to their circumstances, it might easily be augmented in such a manner as to defray all the expences of government. But the difficulty of ascertaining the wealth of individuals makes it impossible to push the assessment to a great height, without being guilty of oppression, and renders it proper that other methods of raising money should be employed to answer the increasing demands of the society. In return for the protection which is given to merchants in carrying their goods from one country to another, it is apprehended that some recompence is due to the government, and that certain duties<229> may be levied upon the exportation and importation of commodities. The security enjoyed by tradesmen and manufacturers, from the care and vigilance of the magistrate, is held also to lay a foundation for similar exactions upon the retail of goods, and upon the inland trade of a nation. Thus the payment of customs, and of what, in a large sense, may be called excise, is introduced and gradually extended.

It is not proposed to enter into a comparison of these different taxes, or to consider the several advantages and disadvantages of each. Their general effects in altering the political constitution of a state are more immediately the object of the present enquiry. With respect to this point, it merits attention that, as the sovereign claims a principal share at least, in the nomination of public officers, as he commonly obtains the chief direction in collecting and disposing of the revenue which is raised upon their account, he is enabled thereby to give subsistence to a great number of persons, who, in times of faction and disorder, will naturally adhere to his party, and whose interest, in ordinary cases, will be employed to support and to extend his authority. These circumstances contribute to strengthen the hands of the monarch, to undermine and destroy every opposite power, and to increase the general bias towards the absolute dominion of a single person.<230>

SECTION II

Other circumstances, which contribute to advance the privileges of the people.

After viewing those effects of opulence and the progress of arts which favour the interest of the crown, let us turn our attention to other circumstances, proceeding from the same source, that have an opposite tendency, and are manifestly conducive to a popular form of government.

In that early period of agriculture when manufactures are unknown, persons who have no landed estate are usually incapable of procuring subsistence otherwise than by serving some opulent neighbour, by whom they are employed, according to their qualifications, either in military service, or in the several branches of husbandry. Men of great fortune find that the entertaining a multitude of servants, for either of these purposes, is highly conducive both to their dignity and their personal security; and in a rude age, when people are strangers to luxury, and are maintained from the simple productions of the earth, the number of retainers who may be supported upon any particular estate is proportionably great.

In this situation, persons of low rank, have no opportunity of acquiring an affluent fortune, or of<231> raising themselves to superior stations; and remaining for ages in a state of dependence, they naturally contract such dispositions and habits as are suited to their circumstances. They acquire a sacred veneration for the person of their master, and are taught to pay an unbounded submission to his authority. They are proud of that servile obedience by which they seem to exalt his dignity, and consider it as their duty to sacrifice their lives and their possessions in order to promote his interest, or even to gratify his capricious humour.

But when the arts begin to be cultivated in a country, the labouring part of the inhabitants are enabled to procure subsistence in a different manner. They are led to make proficiency in particular trades and professions; and, instead of becoming servants to any body, they often find it more profitable to work at their own charges, and to vend the product of their labour. As in this situation their gain depends upon a variety of customers, they have little to fear from the displeasure of any single person; and, according to the good quality and cheapness of the commodity which they have to dispose of, they may commonly be assured of success in their business.

The farther a nation advances in opulence and refinement, it has occasion to employ a greater number of merchants, of tradesmen and artificers; and as the lower people, in general, become thereby more independent in their circumstances, they be-<232>gin to exert those sentiments of liberty which are natural to the mind of man, and which necessity alone is able to subdue. In proportion as they have less need of the favour and patronage of the great, they are at less pains to procure it; and their application is more uniformly directed to acquire those talents which are useful in the exercise of their employments. The impressions which they received in their former state of servitude are therefore gradually obliterated, and give place to habits of a different nature. The long attention and perseverance, by which they become expert and skilful in their business, render them ignorant of those decorums and of that politeness which arises from the intercourse of society; and that vanity which was formerly discovered in magnifying the power of a chief, is now equally displayed in sullen indifference, or in contemptuous and insolent behaviour to persons of superior rank and station.

While, from these causes, people of low rank are gradually advancing towards a state of independence, the influence derived from wealth is diminished in the same proportion. From the improvement of arts and manufactures, the ancient simplicity of manners is in a great measure destroyed; and the proprietor of a landed estate, instead of consuming its produce in hiring retainers, is obliged to employ a great part of it in purchasing those comforts and conveniencies which have become objects of attention, and which are thought suitable to his<233> condition. Thus while fewer persons are under the necessity of depending upon him, he is daily rendered less capable of maintaining dependents; till at last his domestics and servants are reduced to such as are merely subservient to luxury and pageantry, but are of no use in supporting his authority.

From the usual effects of luxury and refinement, it may at the same time be expected that old families will often be reduced to poverty and beggary. In a refined and luxurious nation those who are born to great affluence, and who have been bred to no business, are excited, with mutual emulation, to surpass one another in the elegance and refinement of their living. According as they have the means of indulging themselves in pleasure, they become more addicted to the pursuit of it, and are sunk in a degree of indolence and dissipation which renders them incapable of any active employment. Thus the expence of the landed gentleman is apt to be continually increasing, without any proportional addition to his income. His estate, therefore, being more and more incumbered with debts, is at length alienated, and brought into the possession of the frugal and industrious merchant, who, by success in trade, has been enabled to buy it, and who is desirous of obtaining that rank and consequence which landed property is capable of bestowing. The posterity, however, of this new proprietor, having adopted<234> the manners of the landed gentry, are again led, in a few generations, to squander their estate, with a heedless extravagance equal to the parsimony and activity by which it was acquired.

This fluctuation of property, so observable in all commercial countries, and which no prohibitions are capable of preventing, must necessarily weaken the authority of those who are placed in the higher ranks of life. Persons who have lately attained to riches, have no opportunity of establishing that train of dependence which is maintained by those who have remained for ages at the head of a great estate. The hereditary influence of family is thus, in a great measure, destroyed; and the consideration derived from wealth is often limited to what the possessor can acquire during his own life. Even this too, for the reasons formerly mentioned, is greatly diminished. A man of great fortune having dismissed his retainers, and spending a great part of his income in the purchase of commodities produced by tradesmen and manufacturers, has no ground to expect that many persons will be willing either to fight for him, or to run any great hazard for promoting his interest. Whatever profit he means to obtain from the labour and assistance of others, he must give a full equivalent for it. He must buy those personal services which are no longer to be performed either from attachment or from peculiar connexions. Money, therefore, becomes more and more the only means of procuring<235> honours and dignities; and the sordid pursuits of avarice are made subservient to the nobler purposes of ambition.

It cannot be doubted that these circumstances have a tendency to introduce a democratical government. As persons of inferior rank are placed in a situation which, in point of subsistence, renders them little dependent upon their superiors; as no one order of men continues in the exclusive possession of opulence; and as every man who is industrious may entertain the hope of gaining a fortune; it is to be expected that the prerogatives of the monarch and of the ancient nobility will be gradually undermined, that the privileges of the people will be extended in the same proportion, and that power, the usual attendant of wealth, will be in some measure diffused over all the members of the community.1 <236>

SECTION III

Result of the opposition between these different principles.

So widely different are the effects of opulence and refinement, which, at the same time that they furnish the king with a standing army, the great engine of tyranny and oppression, have also a tendency to inspire the people with notions of liberty and independence. It may thence be expected that a conflict will arise between these two opposite parties, in which a variety of accidents may contribute to cast the balance upon either side.

With respect to the issue of such a contest, it may be remarked that, in a small state, the people have been commonly successful in their efforts to establish a free constitution. When a state consists only of a small territory, and the bulk of the inhabitants live in one city, they have frequently occasion to converse together, and to communicate their sentiments upon every subject of importance. Their attention therefore is roused by every instance of oppression in the government; and as they easily take the alarm, so they are capable of quickly uniting their forces in order to demand redress of their grievances. By repeated experiments they become sensible of their strength, and<237> are enabled by degrees to enlarge their privileges, and to assume a greater share of the public administration.

In large and extensive nations, the struggles between the sovereign and his people are, on the contrary, more likely to terminate in favour of despotism. In a wide country, the encroachments of the government are frequently overlooked; and, even when the indignation of the people has been roused by flagrant injustice, they find it difficult to combine in uniform and vigorous measures for the defence of their rights. It is also difficult, in a great nation, to bring out the militia with that quickness which is requisite in case of a sudden invasion; and it becomes necessary, even before the country has been much civilized, to maintain such a body of mercenaries as is capable of supporting the regal authority.

It is farther to be considered that the revenue of the monarch is commonly a more powerful engine of authority in a great nation than in a small one. The influence of a sovereign seems to depend, not so much upon his absolute wealth, as upon the proportion which it bears to that of the other members of the community. So far as the estate of the king does not exceed that of the richest of his subjects, it is no more than sufficient to supply the ordinary expence of living, in a manner suitable to the splendour and dignity of the crown; and it is only the surplus of that estate which can be di-<238>rectly applied to the purposes of creating dependence. In this view the public revenue of the king will be productive of greater influence according to the extent and populousness of the country in which it is raised. Suppose in a country, like that of ancient Attica, containing about twenty thousand inhabitants, the people were, by assessment or otherwise, to pay at the rate of twenty shillings each person, this would produce only twenty thousand pounds; a revenue that would probably not exalt the chief magistrate above many private citizens. But in a kingdom, containing ten millions of people, the taxes, being paid in the same proportion, would in all probability render the estate of the monarch superior to the united wealth of many hundreds of the most opulent individuals. In these two cases, therefore, the disproportion of the armies maintained in each kingdom should be greater than that of their respective revenues; and if in the one, the king was enabled to maintain two hundred and fifty thousand men, he would, in the other, be incapable of supporting the expence of five hundred. It is obvious, however, that even five hundred regular and well disciplined troops will not strike the same terror into twenty thousand people, that will be created, by an army of two hundred and fifty thousand, over a nation composed of ten millions.

Most of the ancient republics, with which we are acquainted, appeared to have owed their liberty<239> to the narrowness of their territories. From the small number of people, and from the close intercourse among all the individuals in the same community, they imbibed a spirit of freedom even before they had made considerable progress in arts; and they found means to repress or abolish the power of their petty princes, before their effeminacy or industry had introduced the practice of maintaining mercenary troops.

The same observation is applicable to the modern states of Italy, who, after the decay of the western empire, began to flourish in trade, and among whom a republican form of government was early established.

In France, on the other hand, the introduction of a great mercenary army, during the administration of Cardinal Richelieu, which was necessary for the defence of the country, enabled the monarch to establish a despotical power. In the beginning of the reign of Lewis XIII. was called the last convention of the states general which has ever been held in that country: and the monarch has, from that period, been accustomed to exercise almost all the different powers of government. Similar effects have arisen from the establishment of standing forces in most of the great kingdoms of Europe.

The fortunate situation of Great Britain, after the accession of James I. gave her little to fear from any foreign invasion, and superseded the ne-<240>cessity of maintaining a standing army, when the service of the feudal militia had gone into disuse. The weakness and bigotry of her monarchs, at that period, prevented them from employing the only expedient capable of securing an absolute authority. Charles I. saw the power exercised, about this time, by the other princes of Europe; but he did not discover the means by which it was obtained. He seems to have been so much convinced of his divine indefeasible right as, at first, to think that no force was necessary, and afterwards, that every sort of duplicity was excuseable, in support of it. When at the point of a rupture with his parliament, he had no military force upon which he could depend; and he was therefore obliged to yield to the growing power of the commons.

The boldness and dexterity, joined to the want of public spirit, and the perfidy of Oliver Cromwell, rendered abortive the measures of that party, of which he obtained the direction; but the blood that had been shed, and the repeated efforts that were made by the people in defence of their privileges, cherished and spread the love of liberty, and at last produced a popular government, after the best model, perhaps, which is practicable in an extensive country.

Many writers appear to take pleasure in remarking that, as the love of liberty is natural to man, it is to be found in the greatest perfection among<241> barbarians, and is apt to be impaired according as people make progress in civilization and in the arts of life. That mankind, in the state of mere savages, are in great measure unacquainted with government, and unaccustomed to any sort of constraint, is sufficiently evident. But their independence, in that case, is owing to the wretchedness of their circumstances, which afford nothing that can tempt any one man to become subject to another. The moment they have quitted the primitive situation, and, by endeavouring to supply their natural wants, have been led to accumulate property, they are presented with very different motives of action, and acquire a new set of habits and principles. In those rude ages when the inhabitants of the earth are divided into tribes of shepherds, or of husbandmen, the usual distribution of property renders the bulk of the people dependent upon a few chiefs, to whom fidelity and submission becomes the principal point of honour, and makes a distinguishing part of the national character. The ancient Germans, whose high notions of freedom have been the subject of many a well-turned period, were accustomed, as we learn from Tacitus, to stake their persons upon the issue of a game of hazard, and after an unlucky turn of fortune, to yield themselves up to a voluntary servitude. Whereever men of inferior condition are enabled to live in affluence by their own industry, and, in procuring their livelihood, have little occasion to court<242> the favour of their superiors, there we may expect that ideas of liberty will be universally diffused. This happy arrangement of things is naturally produced by commerce and manufactures; but it would be as vain to look for it in the uncultivated parts of the world, as to look for the independent spirit of an English waggoner among persons of low rank in the highlands of Scotland.<243>

CHAPTER VI

The Authority of a Master over His Servants

SECTION I

The condition of Servants in the primitive ages of the world.

In the foregoing chapters we have surveyed the principal distinctions of rank which occur among the free inhabitants of a country, and have endeavoured to mark the progress of society, with regard to the power of the husband, the father, and the civil magistrate. It may now be proper to consider the state of the servants, and to observe the degrees of authority which the laws and customs of different nations have bestowed upon the master.

From the situation of mankind in rude and barbarous countries, we may easily conceive in what manner any one person is, at first, reduced to be the servant of another. Before the manners of men are civilized, and a regular government has been established, persons of small fortune are subject to great inconveniencies from the disorder and violence of the times, and are frequently obliged to solicit the assistance and protection of some<244> powerful neighbour, by whom they are entertained in the station of vassals or military dependents. But those who, from their idleness, have acquired nothing, or who, by accident, have been deprived of their possessions, are necessarily exposed to much more severe calamities. They have no room or encouragement for the exercise of those beneficial trades and professions, the effects of luxury and refinement, by which, in a polished nation, a multitude of people are enabled to live in a comfortable manner. In many cases, therefore, they are under the necessity of serving some opulent person, who, upon account of their labour, is willing to maintain them; and as they are entirely dependent upon him for their subsistence, they are engaged, according to his circumstances, and according to the qualifications they possess, in all the mean and servile occupations which may be requisite for the convenience and support of his family.

In early ages, when neighbouring tribes or nations are almost continually engaged in mutual hostilities, it frequently happens that one of the parties is totally reduced under the power of another. The use that is made of a victory, upon these occasions, is such as might be expected from a fierce and barbarous people, who have too little experience or reflection to discover the utility of carrying on the trade of war with some degree of humanity. The vanquished are often put to death,<245> in order to gratify a spirit of revenge; or, if they are spared, it is only from the consideration that their future labour and service will be of more advantage to the conqueror. As in those times every individual goes out to battle at his own charges, so he claims a proportional share of the profits arising from the expedition; and of consequence obtains the absolute disposal of the captives whom he has procured by his valour, or who, in a division of the booty, are bestowed upon him as the reward of his merit.

This ancient acquisition of servants by captivity gave rise, in subsequent periods, to another method of acquiring them, by the sentence of a judge. In the primitive state of society, the public was not invested with sufficient power to punish the crimes that were committed; and when a difference arose between individuals, the injured party had frequently no other way of procuring redress than by making war upon the offender, and reducing him into captivity. In more civilized ages, when the magistrate was enabled to restrain these disorders, he sometimes afforded the same redress by his own authority, and assigned the labour and service of the criminal as an indemnification to the sufferer for the loss he had sustained.

By these three methods, by captivity, by the voluntary submission of the indigent, or by the sentence of a judge, many are reduced into a state of unlimited subjection, and become the servants of<246> those who are opulent and prosperous.1 It may be questioned, in such a case, how far a person is entitled to make use of that power which fortune has put into his hands. It is difficult to ascertain the degree of authority which, from the principles of justice and humanity, we are, in any situation, permitted to assume over our fellow-creatures. But the fact admits of no question, that people have commonly been disposed to use their power in such a manner as appears most conducive to their interest, and most agreeable to their predominant passions. It is natural to suppose that the master would set no bounds to his prerogative over those unhappy persons who, from their circumstances, were under the necessity of yielding an implicit obedience to his commands. He forced them to labour as much, and gave them as little in return for it, as possible. When he found them negligent of their employment, he bestowed upon them such correction as he thought proper; and, actuated by the boisterous dispositions of a savage, he was in some cases provoked to chastise them with a degree of severity, by which they might even be deprived of their life. When he had no use for their work, or when a good opportunity was presented, he endeavoured by a sale to dispose of them to the highest advantage. When he chose to increase the number of his servants, he sometimes encouraged and directed their multiplication; and the same authority which he exercised over the parents was<247> extended to their offspring, whom he had been at the trouble of rearing, and who were equally dependent upon him for their subsistence.

To be a servant, therefore, in those primitive times, was almost universally the same thing as to be a slave. The master assumed an unlimited jurisdiction over his servants, and the privilege of selling them at pleasure. He gave them no wages beside their maintenance; and he allowed them to have no property, but claimed to his own use whatever, by their labour or by any other means, they happened to acquire.

Thus the practice of domestic slavery appears to have been early established among the nations of antiquity; among the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Jews, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans.

The same practice obtains at present among all those tribes of barbarians, in different parts of the world, with which we have any correspondence.

There are indeed but few slaves among the greater part of the savages of America; because, from the situation of that people, they have no opportunity of accumulating wealth for maintaining any number of servants. As, in ordinary cases, they find it burdensome to give subsistence to an enemy whom they have subdued, they are accustomed to indulge their natural ferocity by putting him to death, even in cold blood. If ever they behave with humanity to their captives, it is only when,<248> being greatly reduced by the calamities of war, or by uncommon accidents, they are under the immediate necessity of recruiting their strength; and as this rarely happens, the persons whose lives have been thus preserved, are not distinguished from the children of the family into which they are brought, but are formally adopted into the place of the deceased relations, whose loss they are intended to supply.*

The Tartars, on the other hand, who have great possessions in herds and flocks, find no difficulty in supporting a number of domestics. For this reason they commonly preserve their captives, with a view of reaping the benefit that may arise from their labour; and the servitude established among that people disposes them to treat their enemies with a degree of moderation, which otherwise could hardly be expected from their fierce and barbarous dispositions.†

The same observation may be extended to the negroes upon the coast of Guinea, who, from their intercourse with the nations of Europe, derive yet greater advantages from sparing the lives of their<249> enemies. At the same time it cannot be doubted, that, as the encounters of those barbarians have upon this account become less bloody, their wars have been rendered more frequent. From the great demand for slaves to supply the European market, they have the same motives to seize the person of their neighbours, which may excite the inhabitants of other countries to rob one another of their property.* <250>

SECTION II

The usual effects of opulence and civilized manners, with regard to the treatment of Servants.

These institutions and customs are such as might be expected from the limited experience, as well as from the rude manners of an early age. By reducing his servants into a state of slavery, the master appears, at first sight, to reap the highest advantage from their future labour and service. But when a people become civilized, and when they have made considerable progress in commerce and manufactures, one would imagine they should entertain more liberal views, and be influenced by more extensive considerations of utility.

A slave, who receives no wages in return for his labour, can never be supposed to exert much vigour or activity in the exercise of any employment. He obtains a livelihood at any rate; and by his utmost assiduity he is able to procure no more. As he works merely in consequence of the terror in which he is held, it may be imagined that he will be idle as often as he can with impunity. This circumstance may easily be overlooked in a country where the inhabitants are strangers to improvement. But when the arts begin to flourish, when the wonderful effects of industry and skill in cheapening commodities, and in bringing them<251> to perfection, become more and more conspicuous, it must be evident that little profit can be drawn from the labour of a slave, who has neither been encouraged to acquire that dexterity, nor those habits of application, which are essentially requisite in the finer and more difficult branches of manufacture.

This may be illustrated from the price of labour in our West-India islands, where it will not be doubted that the inhabitants are at great pains to prevent the idleness of their slaves. In Jamaica, the yearly labour of a field-negro, when he is upheld to the master, is rated at no more than nine pounds, currency of that island. When a negro has been instructed in the trade of a carpenter, the value of his yearly labour will amount at the utmost to thirty-six pounds; whereas a free man is capable of earning seventy pounds yearly in the very same employment.* <252>

It is further to be observed, that, in a polished nation, the acquisition of slaves is commonly much more expensive than among a simple and barbarous people.

After a regular government has been established, the inhabitants of a country are restrained from plundering one another; and, under the authority of the magistrate, individuals of the lowest rank are sufficiently secured from oppression and injustice. In proportion to the improvement of commerce and manufactures, the demand for labour is increased, and greater encouragement is given to industry. The poor have more resources for procuring a livelihood, by such employments as are productive of little subjection or dependence. By degrees, therefore, people of inferior condition are freed from the necessity of becoming slaves in order to obtain subsistence; and the ancient agreement by which a free person resigned his liberty, and was reduced under the power of a master, being rendered more and more unusual, is at length regarded as inconsistent with the natural rights of a citizen.

Thus among the Romans, during the common-<253>wealth, and even under the emperors, no free citizen was allowed, by contract, to become the slave of another.* It was consistent with the refined laws of that people, which rescinded those unequal contracts where one party had gained an undue advantage, or even obtained an unreasonable profit at the expence of the other, to declare that a bargain by which a man surrendered all his rights to a master, and consequently received nothing in return, should have no support or encouragement from the civil magistrate.

As men begin to experience the happy effects of cultivating the arts of peace, and are less frequently employed in acts of hostility, they have less occasion to acquire any number of slaves by captivity. The influence of civilization upon the temper and dispositions of a people has at the same time a tendency to produce a total revolution in the manner of conducting their military operations. That ancient institution, by which every one who is able to bear arms is required to appear in the field at his own charges, becomes too heavy a burden upon those who are enervated with pleasure, or engaged in lucrative professions; and the custom of employing mercenary troops in defence of<254> the country is therefore gradually established. As an army of this kind is maintained by the government; as the soldiers receive constant pay, which is understood to be a full equivalent for their service; they appear to have no title to the extraordinary emoluments arising from the spoil of the enemy; and therefore the captives, though reduced into servitude, are no longer held as belonging to those particular persons by whom they have been subdued, but to the public, at whose expence and hazard the war is supported.†

We may take notice of a similar change in the acquisition of slaves by the sentence of a judge. In rude times, the chief aim of punishment was to gratify the resentment of the private party: and if a person accused of a crime had been found guilty, he was, for that reason, frequently delivered up as a slave to the plaintiff. But upon greater improvement of manners, the interpositions of the magistrate came to be influenced more by considerations of general utility; and as the crimes of individuals were principally considered in the light of offences against the society, it was agreeable to this idea that a criminal should become the slave of the public, and should either be employed in public works, or disposed of in the manner most advantageous to the revenue of the community.<255>

The inhabitants of a civilized country, being thus in a great measure deprived of the primitive modes of acquisition, are obliged to acquire the bulk of their slaves, either by a purchase from their poorer and more barbarous neighbours, or by propagating and rearing from the original stock which they possess. In such a situation, therefore, when we compute the expence attending the labour of a slave, not only the charge of his maintenance, but also the money laid out in the first acquisition, together with all the hazard to which his life is exposed, must necessarily be taken into the account.

When these circumstances are duly considered, it will be found that the work of a slave, who receives nothing but a bare subsistence, is really dearer than that of a free man, to whom constant wages are given in proportion to his industry.2

Unhappily, men have seldom been in a condition to examine this point with proper attention, and with sufficient impartiality. The practice of slavery being introduced in an early age, is afterwards regarded with that blind prepossession which is commonly acquired in favour of ancient usages: its inconveniencies are overlooked, and every innovation, with respect to it, is considered as a dangerous measure. The possession of power is too agreeable to be easily relinquished. Few people will venture upon a new experiment; and, amidst the general prejudices of a country, fewer still are ca-<256>pable of making it with fairness. We find, accordingly, that this institution, however inconsistent with the rights of humanity, however pernicious and contrary to the true interest of the master, has generally remained in those countries where it was once established, and has been handed down from one generation to another, during all the successive improvements of society, in knowledge, arts, and manufactures.

The advancement of a nation, in these particulars, is even frequently attended with greater severity in the treatment of the slaves.3 The simplicity of early ages admits of little distinction between the master and his servants, in their employments or manner of living; and though, from the impetuosity and violence of his temper, they may, on some occasions, be subjected to hardships, he enjoys no great superiority over them, in their dress, their lodging, or ordinary entertainment. By the introduction of wealth and luxury, this equality is gradually destroyed. The various refinements which tend to multiply the comforts and conveniencies of life; whatever contributes to ease, to pleasure, to ostentation, or to amusement, is in a great measure appropriated to the rich and the free, while those who remain in a state of servitude are retained in their primitive indigence. The slaves are no longer accustomed to sit at the same table with their master. They must look upon him as a being of a superior order, whom they are seldom permitted to approach,<257> and with whom they have hardly any thing in common; who beholds with indifference the toil and drudgery to which they are subjected, and from whom they can with difficulty procure a scanty subsistence.

Ipse dominus dives operis, et laboris expers,
Quodcunque homini accidit libêre, posse retur:
Aequom esse putat: non reputat laboris quid sit:
Nec, aequom anne iniquom imperet, cogitabit.*

What a painful and humbling comparison, what mortifying reflections does this afford to those wretches who are reduced into a state of bondage! reflections which cannot fail to sour their temper, to inspire them with malevolent dispositions, and to produce an untoward and stubborn behaviour; for it is impossible that man, by any system of management, should be so inured to oppression as, like a beast of burden, to submit entirely to the yoke, and not, on some occasions, to feel and testify resentment against the oppressor. A more severe discipline is thus rendered necessary, to conquer the obstinacy of persons, unwilling to labour in their employments. Besides, from the number of slaves which are usually maintained in a wealthy and luxurious nation, they become formidable to the state; and it is requisite that they should be strictly watched, and kept in the utmost subjection,<258> in order to prevent those desperate attempts to which they are frequently instigated in revenge of their sufferings. This is at least the pretence for that shocking barbarity to which the negroes in our colonies are frequently exposed, and which is exhibited even by persons of the weaker sex, in an age distinguished for humanity and politeness.

The prodigious wealth acquired by the Romans towards the end of the commonwealth, and after the establishment of despotism, gave rise to a degree of cruelty and oppression, in the management of their slaves, which had been unknown in former times.

—Hic frangit ferulas, rubet ille flagellis,
Hic scutica: sunt quae tortoribus annua praestant.
Verberat, atque obiter faciem linit, audit amicas,
Aut latum pictae vestis considerat aurum,
Et caedit, donec lassis caedentibus, exi
Intonet horrendum, jam cognitione peracta:
Praefectura domus Sicula non mitior aula.*

It was to be expected, however, that particular enormities of this kind would at length excite the attention of the public, and would be in some<259> measure restrained by the gradual progress of government. Although the institution of slavery was permitted to remain, regulations came to be made, by which the master was prevented from such wanton exercise of his power as must have been highly prejudicial to his interest, and could only be regarded as an absurd abuse of his property.

In the Jewish law, we meet with some regulations for this purpose at an early period.

“If a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall surely be punished.

“Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

“And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.

“And if he smite out his man-servant’s tooth, or his maid-servant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.”*

At Athens, the slaves who had been barbarously treated by their master were allowed to fly for sanctuary to the temple of Theseus, and to com-<260>mence a suit at law against their master, who, if their complaint appeared well founded, was laid under the necessity of selling them.†

Various equitable laws, upon this subject, were made by the Roman emperors. At Rome, the absolute power of the master was first subjected to any limitation in the reign of Augustus, who appointed that the Praefectus urbi should afford redress to such of the slaves as had been treated with immoderate severity. In the reign of the emperor Claudius, it was enacted, that if a master abandoned the care of his slaves during their sickness, he should forfeit the property of them; and that if he put them to death, he should be held guilty of homicide. Soon after, the inhuman practice of obliging the slaves to fight with wild beasts, which was carried to a prodigious height, and which appears to have afforded a favourite entertainment to men of all ranks, was in some measure restrained. Other statutes were afterwards made, in the reigns of Adrian, of Antoninus Pius, and of Constantine, by which it was finally established, that the master who killed his own slave by design, and not from the accidental excess of chastisement, should suffer the ordinary punishment of murder.* <261>

SECTION III

Causes of the freedom acquired by the labouring people in the modern nations of Europe.

By what happy concurrence of events has the practice of slavery been so generally abolished in Europe? By what powerful motives were our forefathers induced to deviate from the maxims of other nations, and to abandon a custom so generally retained in other parts of the world?

The northern barbarians, who laid the foundation of the present European states, are said to have possessed a number of slaves, obtained either by captivity or by voluntary submission, and over whom the master enjoyed an unlimited authority.* <262>

When these nations invaded the Roman empire, and settled in the different provinces, they were enabled by their repeated victories to procure an immense number of captives, whom they reduced into servitude, and by whose assistance they occupied landed estates of proportionable extent. From the simple manner of living to which those barbarians had been accustomed, their domestic business was usually performed by the members of each family; and their servants, for the most part, were employed in cultivating their lands.

It appears that, upon the settlement of these invaders in the Roman empire, no immediate change was produced in their notions with respect to slavery, and that the slaves which they gradually acquired by the success of their arms were, at first, in the same condition with those which they had anciently possessed. The master exercised an unlimited power of chastising them, and might even put them to death with impunity. They were liable to be alienated, or impledged by the master at pleasure, and were incapable, either of marrying, or of entering into any other contract, without his consent. They were so much his property, that he might claim them from every possessor, by the ordinary action which was given for the recovery<263> of his goods; and in consequence of this, it was held they could have no civil rights; so that whatever was acquired by their labour belonged to the master, from whom they usually received nothing but a precarious subsistence. In a public capacity, the people of this class were viewed in a light no less humiliating; they enjoyed none of the privileges of a citizen, and were seldom permitted to give evidence against a free man in a court of justice.*

The situation, however, of these bond-men, and the nature of the employment in which they were usually engaged, had a tendency to procure them a variety of privileges from their master, by which, in a course of ages, their condition was rendered more comfortable, and they were advanced to higher degrees of consideration and rank.

As the peasants belonging to a single person could not be conveniently maintained in his house, so in order to cultivate his lands to advantage, it was necessary that they should be sent to a distance, and have a fixed residence in different parts of his estate. Separate habitations were therefore assigned them; and particular farms were committed to the care of individuals, who from their residing in the neighbourhood of one another, and forming small villages or hamlets, received the appellation of “villains.”<264>

It may easily be imagined that, in those circumstances, the proprietor of a large estate could not oversee the behaviour of his servants, living in separate families, and scattered over the wide extent of his demesnes; and it was in vain to think of compelling them to labour by endeavouring to chastise them upon account of their idleness. A very little experience would show that no efforts of that kind could be effectual; and that the only means of exciting the industry of the peasants would be to offer them a reward for the work which they performed. Thus, beside the ordinary maintenance allotted to the slaves, they frequently obtained a small gratuity, which, by custom, was gradually converted into a regular hire; and, being allowed the enjoyment and disposal of that subject, they were at length understood to be capable of having separate property.

After the master came to reside at a distance from the bulk of his servants, and had embraced the salutary policy of bribing them, instead of using compulsion, in order to render them active in their employment, he was less apt to be provoked by their negligence; and as he had seldom occasion to treat them with severity, the ancient dominion which he exercised over their lives was at length entirely lost by disuse.

When a slave had been for a long time engaged in a particular farm, and had become acquainted with that particular culture which it required, he<265> was so much the better qualified to continue in the management of it for the future; and it was contrary to the interest of the master that he should be removed to another place, or employed in labour of a different kind. By degrees, therefore, the peasants were regarded as belonging to the stock upon the ground, and came to be uniformly disposed of as a part of the estate which they had been accustomed to cultivate.

As these changes were gradual, it is difficult to ascertain the precise period at which they were completed. The continual disorders which prevailed in the western part of Europe, for ages after it was first over-run by the German nations, prevented for a long time the progress of arts among the new inhabitants. It was about the twelfth century that a spirit of improvement, in several European countries, became somewhat conspicuous; and it may be considered as a mark of that improvement, with respect to agriculture, that about this time, the villains had obtained considerable privileges; that the master’s power over their life was then understood to be extinguished; that the chastisement to which they had been formerly subjected was become more moderate; and that they were generally permitted to acquire separate property.* <266>

The effect of the foregoing circumstances is even observable in the history of the Greeks and Romans, among whom the peasants were raised to a better condition than the rest of their slaves. They were indeed bound to serve the proprietor during life, and might have been sold along with the ground upon which they were employed; but their persons were not subject to the absolute jurisdiction of their master; they had the privilege of marrying without his consent; they received wages in return for their labour, and were understood to have a full right of property in whatever goods their industry had enabled them to accumulate.†

It should seem, however, that the limited territory possessed by these ancient nations prevented the farther extension of the privileges bestowed upon their peasants: seven acres were originally the utmost extent of landed property which a Roman citizen was permitted to enjoy; a portion which he was able to cultivate with his own hands, or with no other assistance but that of his own<267> family; and there is reason to believe that, for several centuries, no individual acquired such an estate as gave occasion to his retaining many servants for the management of it, or could render the inspection and government of those whom he employed a matter of great trouble or difficulty.*

But after the wide and populous countries under the Roman dominion were subdued and laid waste by the small tribes of the Germans, very extensive landed estates, together with an adequate number of slaves, were immediately acquired by particular persons. As the people retained their primitive simplicity of manners, and were in a great measure strangers to commerce, these large possessions remained for ages without being dismembered. And thus, during all the successive improvements of agriculture, the proprietor of an estate, embarrassed with the multitude of his villains, was obliged to repose a confidence in them, and came by degrees to discover more clearly the utility of exciting them to industry by the prospect of their own private advantage.

The same motives, by which the master was induced to reward his slaves for their labour, determined him afterwards to increase his bounty in proportion to the work which they performed. Having no opportunity of looking narrowly into their management, he was commonly led to esti-<268>mate their diligence according to their success; and therefore, when they brought him a good crop, he made an addition to their wages, at the same time that he allowed them to expect a suitable compensation for their future labour and economy. This at length gave rise to an express stipulation, that their profits should depend upon the fertility of their different farms, and that, in all cases, they should be permitted to retain a certain share of the produce, in consideration of their labour.

An expedient so obvious and well calculated for promoting the industry of the peasants, could hardly fail to be generally embraced in all the countries of Europe, as soon as the inhabitants became attentive to the improvement of their estates. The remains of this practice are still to be found in Scotland, where, in some cases, the landlord is accustomed to stock the farm, and the tenant pays him a rent in kind, consisting of a certain proportion of the fruits.*

By this alteration, the villains entered into a sort of copartnership with their master; and having always a prospect of gain, according to the vigour or talents which they exerted, they were enabled to earn a more comfortable subsistence, and were even gradually raised to affluence. The acqui-<269>sition of wealth paved the way to a farther extension of their privileges. Those who had obtained something considerable found themselves in a condition to stock their own farms, and to offer a fixed rent to the master, upon condition of their being allowed to retain the surplus for their own emolument. An agreement of this kind, so advantageous to both parties, was concluded without any difficulty. As the tenant secured to himself the whole profit arising from his industry, the landlord was freed from the hazard of accidental losses, and obtained not only a certain, but frequently an additional revenue from his lands.4

Thus, by degrees, the ancient villanage came to be entirely abolished. The peasants, who cultivated their farms at their own charges, and at their own hazard, were of course emancipated from the authority of their master, and could no longer be regarded as in the condition of servants. Their personal subjection was at an end. It was of no consequence to the landlord how they conducted themselves; and, provided they punctually paid his rent, nothing farther could be required of them. There was no reason to insist that they should remain in the farm longer than they pleased; for the profits it afforded made them, commonly, not more willing to leave it than the proprietor was to put them away. When agriculture became so beneficial a trade, when the state of those who followed that profession had been rendered so comfortable, no<270> person had any difficulty to procure a sufficient number of tenants to labour his estate. It was, on the contrary, sometimes difficult for the farmer to obtain land sufficient for the exercise of his employment; and, after he had been at pains to improve the soil, he was in danger of being dispossessed by the proprietor, before he was indemnified for the trouble and expence which he had sustained. This made it necessary to stipulate that he should be allowed to remain for a certain time in the possession, and gave rise to leases, for a term of years, and even sometimes for life, or for a longer period, according to the circumstances or inclination of the parties.

The modern nations of Europe continued for a long time to be almost entirely unacquainted with manufactures; and, as they had no other slaves but those which were employed in agriculture, the privileges acquired by the villains had therefore a tendency to produce a total extinction of servitude. By degrees, however, as the people began to improve their circumstances, and to multiply the comforts and conveniencies of life, their attention was more and more diverted to other employments. At the same time that the villains were engaged in cultivating the ground, they were also bound to perform any other services which the master thought proper to require, and were often called to assist him in practice of those few mechanical arts which were then understood. Particular persons acquiring a singular dexterity in these occupa-<271>tions, were distinguished upon that account, and came to be more frequently employed than their neighbours. In proportion to the liberty which they enjoyed as peasants, they were enabled with more advantage to prosecute this collateral business; and while they received a reward for the crop which they produced upon their farms, they were not restrained from working, for hire, in that peculiar trade or profession which they were qualified to exercise. As the progress of luxury and refinement multiplied these occupations, and rendered the profits which they afforded superior in many cases to those which were derived from agriculture, individuals were gradually led to quit the latter employment, and to attach themselves entirely to the former. In that state of the country, the children of farmers were frequently bred to manufactures; and a number of tradesmen and artificers, having arisen in different villages, were advanced to consideration and esteem, in proportion as their assistance became more essentially necessary in supplying the wants of mankind. According to the wealth which this new order of men had accumulated, they purchased immunities from their master; and, by permitting him to levy tolls and duties upon their commerce, they were enabled to secure his patronage and protection. Thus the privileges acquired by the peasants appear to have given rise to domestic freedom, which was communicated to the trading part of the inhabitants; while the em-<272>ployment of the latter became, on the other hand, the source of great opulence and contributed, as has been formerly observed, to raise the people of inferior rank to political independence.

Other circumstances may be mentioned, which, in a subordinate manner, have, perhaps, contributed something to this remarkable change of European manners.

The establishment of Christianity has been supposed by many to be the principal circumstance which rooted out the practice of slavery, so universally permitted and encouraged among all the heathen nations. There is no doubt that the spirit of this religion, which considers all mankind as children of the same Father, and as all equally the objects of his paternal care and affection, should inspire them with compassion for the miseries of each other, and should teach the opulent and the proud to consider those who are depressed with labour and penury as creatures of the same species, to treat them with mildness and humanity, and to soften the rigours to which their severe and unequal fortune has unavoidably subjected them. But it does not seem to have been the intention of Christianity to alter the civil rights of mankind, or to abolish those distinctions of rank which were already established. There is no precept of the gospel by which the authority of the master is in any respect restrained or limited; but, on the contrary, there are several passages from which it<273> may be inferred that slaves, even after they had embraced the Christian religion, were not absolved from any part of the duties formerly incumbent upon them.*

We accordingly find that slavery remained all over Europe for several centuries after Christianity became the established religion: not to mention that this institution is still retained in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary, and in several parts of Germany; and that it is at present admitted without limitation, in the colonies which belong to the European nations, whether in Asia, Africa, or America. The Quakers of Pennsylvania, are the first body of men in those countries, who have discovered any scruples upon that account, and who seem to have thought that the abolition of this practice is a duty they owe to religion and humanity.*

It has likewise been imagined that the state of the clergy, their great influence and ambition, to-<274>gether with that opposition between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which subsisted for a long time in most of the nations of Europe, were favourable to the lower ranks of men, and contributed to limit and destroy the ancient practice of villanage. The learning, the ideas of policy, and, above all, the peaceable manners of ecclesiastics, naturally produced an aversion to the disorders incident to the feudal governments, and disposed them to shelter the weak and defenceless from the tyranny of their superiors.

In those dark and superstitious ages, the church was, at the same time, most successful in establishing her authority over the lowest and most ignorant of the people, and was therefore led, in a particular manner, to exert her power and abilities in protecting that order of men by which she was most firmly supported. As dying persons were frequently inclined to make considerable donations for pious uses, it was more immediately for the interest of churchmen, that people of inferior condition should be rendered capable of acquiring property, and should have the free disposal of what they had acquired.

The progress of ecclesiastical rapacity seems at length to have produced a custom that villains, who obtained their liberty by the influence of the clergy, should reward their benefactors; and that the manumission should, for this reason, be confirmed by the church. In these circumstances,<275> the ministers of religion did not fail to recommend the manumission of slaves, as an action highly proper to atone for the offences of a sinner; and ecclesiastical censures were, in some cases, inflicted upon the master, when he refused to allow his villains the liberty of alienating their goods by a testament. So much does this appear to have been an object of attention, that a bull was published by Pope Alexander III exhorting the Christian world to a general emancipation of the villains.*

It was not, however, to be expected that, from such interested views, the clergy would be disposed to strike at the root of servitude, or to employ their casuistry in overthrowing an institution upon which so great a part of their own property depended. Like physicians, they were far from thinking it necessary to swallow that medicine which they had prescribed to the people; and while they appeared so extremely liberal with regard to the estates of the laity, they held a very different conduct with relation to the villains in their own possession. These being appropriated to pious uses, and being only held in usufruct, were not to be alienated by the present incumbent. Thus we meet with many ecclesiastical regulations, both in France and Germany, by which it is provided that no bishop, or priest, shall manumit a slave in the patrimony of<276> the church, without purchasing two others of equal value to be put in his place.*

The state of the civil government, in most of the countries of Europe, may be regarded as another circumstance which had some influence in abolishing domestic slavery. From the aristocratical constitution established in these kingdoms, the sovereign was engaged in long and violent<277> struggles with his barons; and being often incapable of carrying his measures by direct force, he was obliged to employ every artifice that his situation would admit, in order to humble his rivals, and reduce them under subjection. For this purpose he frequently exerted his authority in protecting the villains from the tyranny of the master; and thus endeavoured to undermine the power of the nobles, by withdrawing the submission of their immediate dependents.

While the monarch was, upon this account, endeavouring to protect the villains possessed by his barons, and to raise them to such a condition as might render them less dependent upon their masters, he found means of deriving some revenue from the people of that class, upon pretence of confirming, by royal authority, the privileges that were bestowed upon them. Other reasons, in the mean time, induced the sovereign to give particular encouragement to the bond-men upon his own demesnes; as these, under the shelter of the crown, had been enabled to acquire a degree of opulence, not only by their advances in agriculture, but also by their application to trade and manufactures, and consequently were in a condition to purchase freedom and immunities by pecuniary compositions, or by submitting to regular duties for the support of government. From such political considerations, we find that repeated efforts were made, and many regulations were introduced by different<278> princes of Europe, for extending and securing the liberties and rights of the lower and more industrious part of their subjects.*

In this manner domestic slavery, having gradually declined for ages, has at last been exploded from the greater part of Europe. In several European kingdoms, this has happened, from the natural progress of manners, and without any express interposition of the legislature. Thus in England, the peasants having, in consequence of their situation, acquired successive privileges, many of them were promoted to the rank of vassals or free-holders, while the rest, advancing more slowly, have remained in the condition of those who are called copy-holders at present. So late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth it appears that real bond-men were still to be found in many parts of the kingdom.†

In Scotland the slavery of the villains, which was probably of a similar nature to what obtained in the other countries of Europe, appears in like manner to have gone into disuse without any aid of statute; but the period when this change was effected has not been ascertained by lawyers or historians.* <279>

The remains of bondage which are still to be found in the case of colliers and salters in Scotland, and of those who work in the mines in some other parts of Europe, are sufficient to point out the chief circumstance, from which, in all other cases, the ancient institution has been so generally abolished. In a coal-work, as the different workmen are collected in one place, instead of being scattered, like the ordinary peasants, over an extensive territory, they were capable of being put under the care of an overseer, who might compel them to labour; and the master did not so immediately feel the necessity of resigning that authority over them with which he was invested.†

After domestic liberty had been thus, in a great measure, established in those European nations which had made the greatest improvement in agriculture, America was discovered; the first settlers in which, from their distance, and from the little attention that was paid to them by the government of their mother countries, were under no necessity of conforming to the laws and customs of Europe. The acquisition of gold and silver was the great object by which the Spaniards were directed in their settlements upon that continent; and the native inhabitants, whom they had conquered, were reduced into slavery and put to work in the mines.<280> But, these being either exhausted by the severity with which they were treated, or not being thought sufficiently robust for that kind of labour, negro-slaves were afterwards purchased for this purpose from the Portuguese settlements on the coast of Africa. When sugar-plantations were erected, the same people were employed in these, and in most other kinds of work which came to be performed in that part of the world. Thus the practice of slavery was no sooner extinguished by the inhabitants in one quarter of the globe, than it was revived by the very same people in another, where it has remained ever since, without being much regarded by the public, or exciting any effectual regulations in order to suppress it.*

It merits particular attention, that the chief circumstance which contributed to procure freedom to the slaves in Europe, had no place in our American plantations. From the manner of working the mines, a number of slaves are usually collected together, and may therefore be placed under the command of a single person, who has it in his power to superintend their behaviour, and to punish their negligence. The same observation is applicable to the planting of sugar, and to the other occupations in our colonies, in which the negroes perform the same sort of work which in Europe is<281> commonly performed by cattle, and in which, of consequence, many servants are kept upon the same plantation. As the slaves are continually under the lash of their master, he has not been forced to use the disagreeable expedient of rewarding their labour, and of improving their condition by those means which were found so necessary, and which were employed with so much emolument, to encourage the industry of the peasants in Europe.<282>

SECTION IV

Political consequences of Slavery.

In the history of mankind, there is no revolution of greater importance to the happiness of society than this which we have now had occasion to contemplate. The laws and customs of the modern European nations have carried the advantages of liberty to a height which was never known in any other age or country. In the ancient states, so celebrated upon account of their free government, the bulk of their mechanics and labouring people were denied the common privileges of men, and treated upon the footing of inferior animals. In proportion to the opulence and refinement of those nations, the number of their slaves was increased, and the grievances to which they were subjected became the more intolerable.

The citizens of Athens, according to an enumeration of Demetrius Phalerius, are said to have amounted to 21,000, the strangers residing in that city to 10,000, and the slaves possessed by the whole people, to no less than 400,000.* There is reason to believe, however, that, in this enumeration of the free men, none but the heads of families are<283> included, and in that of the slaves, every individual is comprehended; for an account of the former would probably be taken with a view to the taxes imposed upon each head of a family, and the latter, it is most likely, would be numbered, like cattle, in order to ascertain the wealth of each proprietor. Thus, allowing five persons to each family, the Athenian slaves exceeded the free men in the proportion of between two and three to one.†

In the most flourishing periods of Rome, when luxury was carried to so amazing a pitch, the proportion of the inhabitants reduced into servitude was in all probability still greater. The number of slaves possessed by particular Roman citizens was prodigious. T. Minucius, a Roman knight, is said to have had 400.* Pliny mentions one Caecilius, who bequeathed in his testament upwards of 4000 slaves.† And Athenaeus takes notice, that the Roman slaves, belonging to individuals, often<284> amounted to 10,000, or even to 20,000; and sometimes, to a greater number.‡

The negro-slaves in the West-Indies are commonly said to exceed the free people nearly as three to one; and it has been supposed that the disproportion between them is daily increasing.

It may in general be observed, that according as men have made greater progress in commerce and the arts, the establishment of domestic freedom is of greater importance; and that, in opulent and polished nations, its influence extends to the great body of the people, who form the principal part of a community, and whose comfortable situation ought never to be overlooked in the provisions that are made for national happiness and prosperity.

In whatever light we regard the institution of slavery, it appears equally inconvenient and pernicious. No conclusion seems more certain than this, that men will commonly exert more activity when they work for their own benefit, than when they are compelled to labour for the benefit merely of another. The introduction of personal liberty has therefore an infallible tendency to render the inhabitants of a country more industrious; and, by producing greater plenty of provisions, must necessarily increase the populousness, as well as the strength and security of a nation.

Some persons have imagined that slavery is conducive to population, on account of the frugality<285> with which the slaves are usually maintained, and on account of the attention which is given by the master to their multiplication.

With regard to the former circumstance, it ought to be considered, that the work of a labourer depends very much upon the subsistence which he receives. As by living in too great affluence he may occasion an useless consumption of provisions, so by obtaining too little he is rendered less fit for the exercise of those employments by which mankind are supported. To promote the populousness of a country, the mechanics and labouring people should be maintained in such a manner as will yield the highest profit from the work which they are capable of performing; and it is probable that they will more commonly procure the enjoyments of life according to this due medium, when they provide their own maintenance, than when it depends upon the arbitrary will of a master, who, from narrow and partial views, may imagine that he has an interest to diminish the expence of their living as much as possible. To those who have occasion to know the extreme parsimony with which the negro-slaves in our colonies are usually maintained, any illustration of this remark will appear superfluous.

With respect to the care of the master to encourage the multiplication of his slaves, it must be obvious that this is of little moment, unless it be accompanied with an increase of the means of their<286> subsistence. If slavery be always unfavourable to industry, and tend to hinder the improvement of a country, the number of inhabitants will be proportionably limited, in spite of all the regulations that can be made, and of all the encouragement that can be given to the propagation of the species. It is impossible even to multiply cattle beyond a certain extent, without having previously enriched the pastures upon which they are fed.

But slavery is not more hurtful to the industry than to the good morals of a people. To cast a man out from the privileges of society, and to mark his condition with infamy, is to deprive him of the most powerful incitements to virtue; and, very often, to render him worthy of that contempt with which he is treated. What effects, on the other hand, may we not expect that this debasement of the servants will produce on the temper and disposition of the master? In how many different ways is it possible to abuse that absolute power with which he is invested? And what vicious habits may be contracted by a train of such abuses, unrestrained by the laws, and palliated by the influence of example. It would seem that nothing could exceed the dishonesty and profligacy of the Roman slaves, unless we except the inhumanity and the extravagant vices which prevailed among the rest of the inhabitants.

Various statutes were made to restrain the manumission of slaves, and to prevent the dignity of<287> a Roman citizen from being communicated to such infamous persons. “Such is the confusion of our times,” says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “so much has the Roman probity degenerated into shameful meanness, that some, having gathered money by robberies, prostitutions, and all kinds of wickedness, are enabled to procure their freedom, and to become Romans; others, associating with their masters, in poisonings, murders, and crimes committed both against the gods and the commonwealth, are rewarded in the same manner.”*

It has been alledged that, in one respect, the institution of slavery is beneficial to a nation, as it affords the most convenient provision for those who are become unable to maintain themselves. The maintenance of the poor, is doubtless, a very important object, and may be regarded as one of the most difficult branches in the police of a country. In the early periods of society, when family-attachments are widely extended, the rich are commonly willing to take care of their indigent relations; and from the dispositions of a people unacquainted with luxury, those persons who have no other resource may expect relief from the occasional charity of their neighbours. But in a commercial and populous nation, in which the bulk of the people must work hard for their livelihood, many individuals are, by a variety of accidents, reduced to indi-<288>gence; while at the same time, from their numbers, as well as from the prevailing spirit of the age, their misery is little regarded by their fellow-creatures. The cunning impostor, in such a case, may sometimes carry on a profitable trade of begging; but the real object of distress is apt to be overlooked, and without some interposition of the public, would often perish from want. Poors-rates therefore, in some shape or other, must be established; and from the nature of such an establishment, it is usually attended with much expence, and liable to many abuses. In a country where slavery is practised, no such inconvenience is felt. As the master may be obliged, in all cases, to maintain his slaves, no assessment is necessary, no charges are incurred in collecting and distributing money, for the benefit of the poor: not to mention, that the nuisance of common begging is thus effectually removed.

It must be owned that this is a frugal regulation; but that it will answer the purpose is far from being so evident. When the same person, who is subjected to a tax, is also entrusted with the application of the money, what security is there that he will ever apply it to the uses for which it is intended? When a master is ordered to support his slaves, after they have become unfit for labour, what measures can be taken to secure their obedience? As it is plainly his interest to get free of this burden, what reason have we to expect that<289> he will submit to it longer than he thinks fit? In a matter of domestic economy, how is it possible for the public to watch over his conduct, or to observe one of a thousand instances in which he may neglect his decayed servants, or withhold from them the common necessaries of life? Instead of maintaining the poor, therefore, this is only a method of starving them in the most expeditious, and perhaps in the most private manner. In perusing the Roman history, with relation to this subject, we meet with enormities which fill the mind with horror. Among that people it appears that, notwithstanding all the laws that were made by emperors, of the best intentions and possessed of absolute power, the master did not even think it necessary to conceal his barbarity, or to show more regard to his slaves, than is usually shown to cattle which, from age or diseases, are no longer of service to the owner.

Considering the many advantages which a country derives from the freedom of the labouring people, it is to be regretted that any species of slavery should still remain in the dominions of Great Britain, in which liberty is generally so well understood, and so highly valued.

The situation of the colliers and salters in Scotland may seem of little consequence, as the number of persons engaged in that employment is not very great, and their servitude is not very grievous. The detriment, however, which arises from thence to the proprietor of such works is manifest. No<290> man would choose to be a slave if he could earn nearly the same wages by living in a state of freedom. Each collier, therefore, must have an additional premium for his labour, upon account of the bondage into which he is reduced: otherwise he will endeavour to procure a livelihood by some other employment.* <291>

Many of the coal-masters begin to be sensible of this, and wish that their workmen were upon a different footing; although, with a timidity natural to those who have a great pecuniary interest at stake, they are averse from altering the former practice, until such alteration shall be rendered universal by an act of parliament. But whatever advantages might accrue to them from a general law abolishing the slavery of the colliers, it seems evident that these advantages would be reaped in a much higher degree by any single proprietor who should have the resolution to give liberty to his workmen, and renounce the privileges which the law bestows upon him, with respect to those who might afterwards engage in his service. If the slavery of the colliers tends to heighten their wages, surely any one master who should be freed from this inconvenience before the rest, would be in the same circumstances with a manufacturer who produces a commodity at less expence than his neighbours, and who is thereby enabled to undersell them in the market.*

The slavery established in our colonies is an object of greater importance, and is, perhaps, attended with difficulties which cannot be so easily<292> removed. It has been thought, that the management of our plantations requires a labour in which free men would not be willing to engage, and which the white people are, from their constitution, incapable of performing. How far this opinion is well founded, according to the present manner of labouring in that part of the world, seems difficult to determine, as it has never been properly examined by those who are in a condition to ascertain the facts in question. But there is ground to believe that the institution of slavery is the chief circumstance that has prevented those contrivances to shorten and facilitate the more laborious employments of the people, which take place in other countries where freedom has been introduced.

Notwithstanding the connection between our colonies and the mother-country, the instruments proper for some of the most common branches of labour are little known in many parts of the West Indies. In Jamaica the digging of a grave gives full employment to two men for a whole day; as from the want of proper tools it is necessary to make a large hole no way adapted to the human figure. I am informed, that, unless it has been procured very lately, there is hardly a spade in the whole island. In procuring firewood for boiling sugar, &c. a work that takes up about five or six weeks yearly, no use is made of the saw, but the trees are cut with an ax into logs of about 30 inches in length. Instead of a flail the negroes<293> make use of a single stick in threshing the Guinea-corn; so that in this and in winnowing, ten women are capable of doing no more work in a day, than, with our instruments and machinery, two men would perform in two hours. From the want of a scythe or sickle, they are obliged every night to cut with a knife, or pull with their hands, a quantity of grass sufficient to serve their horses, mules, and black cattle.†

With regard to the planting of sugar, experiments have been made, in some of the islands, from which it appears that, in this species of cultivation, cattle might be employed with advantage, and that the number of slaves might be greatly diminished.* But these experiments have been little regarded, in opposition to the former usage, and in opposition to a lucrative branch of trade which this innovation would in a great measure destroy.

At any rate, the interest of our colonies seems to demand that the negroes should be better treated, and even that they should be raised to a better condition. The author of a late elegant account of our American settlements has proposed, that small wages should be given them as an encouragement to industry.5 If this measure were once be-<294>gun, it is probable that it would gradually be pushed to a greater extent; as the master would soon find the advantage of proportioning the wages of the slaves to the work which they performed. It is astonishing that so little attention has hitherto been paid to any improvements of this nature, after the good effects of them have been so fully illustrated in the case of the villains in Europe. The owner of a sugar or tobacco plantation, one would think, might easily estimate the average value of the crop which it had formerly yielded, and could run no hazard, whatever profit he might reap, by allowing the people employed in the cultivation to draw a share of any additional produce obtained by their labour and frugality.

It affords a curious spectacle to observe, that the same people who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow-creatures into circumstances by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost of every species of right. Fortune perhaps never produced a situation more calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles.

In those provinces, however, of North America, where few slaves have ever been maintained, and where slavery does not seem to be recommended<295> by the nature of those employments in which the people are usually engaged, there may be some ground to expect that its pernicious effects upon industry will soon be felt, and that the practice will of course be abandoned. It is said that some of the provincial assemblies in that country have lately resolved to prevent or discourage the importation of negroes; but from what motives this resolution has proceeded, it is difficult to determine.*

The advancement of commerce and the arts, together with the diffusion of knowledge, in the present age, has of late contributed to the removal of many prejudices, and been productive of enlarged opinions, both upon this and upon a variety of other subjects. It has long been held, in Britain, that a negro-slave, imported into this country, obtained thereby many of the privileges of a free man. But by a late judgment in the court of king’s-bench, it was found that the master could not recover his power over the servant by sending him abroad at pleasure.†

By a still more recent decision of the chief court in Scotland, it was declared, “That the dominion assumed over this negro, under the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in<296> this country to any extent: that therefore the defender had no right to the negro’s service for any space of time; nor to send him out of the country against his consent.”‡

This last decision, which was given in 1778, is the more worthy of attention, as it condemns the slavery of the negroes in explicit terms, and, being the first opinion of that nature delivered by any court in the island, may be accounted an authentic testimony of the liberal sentiments entertained in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

the end.

APPENDIX 1

Note on the Editions

Millar’s Ranks went through notable transformations in three lifetime editions and in the fourth, posthumous edition reproduced here. It also was translated into German twice and into French once.

The first edition was divided into five chapters.1 The second edition added further section headings within the chapters and important new material in the footnotes. For example, the strikingly Humean discussion of liberty concluding the fifth chapter of the third edition was added as a lengthy footnote in the second edition. The third edition had a new title, a new chapter division, and extensive new material. Most notably, Millar thought his discussion of “The Changes Produced in the Government of a People, by their Progress in Arts, and in Polished Manners” to be sufficiently important to merit its own chapter and so separated the fourth chapter in the prior edition into two distinct chapters. He also moved many of the quotations that were in footnotes into the main body of the text and added many additional citations in the final chapter as a result of momentous changes in slavery laws between the publication of the first and the third edition. The fourth, posthumous edition is essentially the third edition with the addition of Craig’s “Life.” The printings of the three lifetime editions were as follows:

1. Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society

By John Millar, Esq.

Professor of Laws in the University of Glasgow.

London:

Printed by W. and J. Richardson,

For

John Murray, No 32, Fleet-Street,

Opposite St. Dunstan’s Church.

M.DCC.LXXI.

xv, 242 pp.

1a. Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society

By John Millar, Esq.

Professor of Laws in the University of Glasgow.

Dublin: Printed by T. Ewing, in Capel-Street

M.DCC.LXXI

xiv, 240 pp.

[The Dublin edition is almost identical to the London edition. The type used is the same; the line spacing is slightly different. Lehmann suggests it may be a pirated volume.]

2. Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society

By John Millar, Esq.

Professor of Law in the University of Glasgow

The Second Edition, Greatly Enlarged.

London: Printed for J. Murray, No 32, Fleet Street, Opposite St. Dunstan’s Church.

M.DCC.LXXIII.

xxii, 312 pp.

3. The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks; or, An Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to Influence and Authority in the Different Members of Society

By John Millar, Esq. Professor of Law in the University of Glasgow.

The Third Edition,

Corrected and Enlarged.

London

Printed for J. Murray, No. 32, Fleet Street, Facing St. Dunstan’s Church.

MDCCLXXXI

viii, 362 pp.

3a. The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks; or, An Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to Influence and Authority in the Different Members of Society.

By John Millar, Esq. Professor of Law in the University of Glasgow.

Basil:

Printed and sold by J. J. Tourneisen

MDCCXCIII

iv, 284 pp.

[This is a reprint of the third edition.]

There were two German translations:

Johann Millar, Esquire, Bemerkungen über den Unterschied der Stände in der bürglichen Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Engelhart Benjamin Schwidert, 1772), iii, 237 pp. [a translation of the first edition].

John Millar, Aufklärungen über Ursprung und Fortschritte des Unterschieds der Stände und des Ranges, in Hinsicht auf Kultur und Sitten bei den vorzüglichsten Nationen (Leipzig: Weygand, 1798), viii, 392 pp. [a translation of the third edition].

And one French translation:

John Millar, Observations sur les commencemens de la société (Amsterdam: Arkstée et Merkus, 1773), xxiv, 423 pp. [a translation of the second edition, published in Paris under a false imprint; Millar’s French translator was the great Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard, who translated Hume, Robertson, and Macpherson as well].

APPENDIX 2

Millar’s Preface to the First Edition

Millar drastically rewrote his introduction to the Ranks for the third edition. The introduction to the first edition is very much worth reading because it is one of the most compact and erudite descriptions ever written of the empiricist attitude in the human sciences. It is reproduced here with Millar’s original title of “Preface.”

Preface<i>

Those who have examined the manners and customs of nations have had chiefly two objects in view. By observing the systems of law established in different parts of the world, and by remarking the consequences with which they are attended, men have endeavoured to reap advantage from the experience of others, and to make a selection of those institutions and modes of government which appear most worthy of being adopted.<ii>

To investigate the causes of different usages, hath also been esteemed an useful as well as an entertaining speculation. When we contemplate the amazing diversity in the manners of different countries, and even of the same country at different periods; when we survey the distinctions of national characters, and the singular customs that have prevailed; we are led to discover the various dispositions and sentiments with which man is endowed, the various powers and faculties which he is capable of exerting. When at the same time we consider how much the character of individuals is influenced by their education, their professions, and their peculiar circumstances, we are enabled, in some measure, to account for the behaviour of different nations. From the situation of a people in different ages and countries, they are presented with particular views of expediency; they form<iii> peculiar maxims, and are induced to cultivate and acquire a variety of talents and habits. Man is every where the same; and we must necessarily conclude, that the untutored Indian and the civilized European have acted upon the same principles.

Thus, by real experiments, not by abstracted metaphysical theories, human nature is unfolded; the general laws of our constitution are laid open; and history is rendered subservient to moral philosophy and jurisprudence. The manners and customs of people may be regarded as the most authentic record of their opinions, concerning what is right or wrong, what is praise-worthy or blamable, what is expedient or hurtful. In perusing such records, however, the utmost caution is necessary; and we must carefully attend to the circumstances in which they were<iv> framed, in order to ascertain the evidence which they afford, or to discern the conclusions that may be drawn from them. As the regulations of every country may have their peculiar advantages, so they are commonly tinctured with all the prejudices and erroneous judgments of the inhabitants. It is therefore by a comparison only of the ideas and the practice of different nations, that we can arrive at the knowledge of those rules of conduct, which, independent of all positive institutions, are consistent with propriety, and agreeable to the sense of justice.

When these enquiries are properly conducted, they have likewise a tendency to restrain that wanton spirit of innovation which men are apt to indulge in their political reasonings. To know the laws already established, to discern the causes from which they have arisen, and the<v> means by which they were introduced; this preliminary step is essentially requisite, in order to determine upon what occasions they ought to be altered or abolished. The institutions of a country, how imperfect soever and defective they may seem, are commonly suited to the state of the people by whom they have been embraced; and therefore in most cases, they are only susceptible of those general improvements, which proceed from a gradual reformation of the manners, and are accompanied with a correspondent change in the condition of society. In every system of law or government, the different parts have an intimate connection with each other. As it is dangerous to tamper with the machine, unless we are previously acquainted with the several wheels and springs of which it is composed, so there is reason to fear, that the violent alteration of any single part may<vi> destroy the regularity of its movements, and produce the utmost disorder and confusion.

The following observations are intended to illustrate the natural history of mankind in several important articles. This is attempted, by pointing out the more obvious and common improvements in the state of society, and by showing the influence of these upon the manners, the laws, and the government of a people.

In the first chapter the author has considered the ideas entertained in different ages, with respect to the rank and condition of the two sexes. From these, the chief regulations concerning marriage, and the rights of the husband and wife, are evidently derived.<vii>

He has endeavored, first of all, to show the effects of poverty and barbarism, with regard to the passions of sex, with regard to the general occupations of a people, and with regard to the degree of consideration which is paid to the women as members of society.

He has next proceeded to take notice of the refinements in the state of our passions, arising from the acquaintance of wealth; first in moveables, by the invention of pasturing cattle; and afterward in land, by the application of mankind to the cultivation of the earth.

In the third place, he has examined the alterations produced, in the condition of the fair sex, by the improvement of the more necessary arts and manufactures, and by the influence of civilization and regular government.<viii>

Lastly, he has attempted to delineate the changes, in this respect, introduced by the cultivation of the elegant arts, and by the progress of a people in opulence and luxury.

After the rights of the husband and wife, those that subsist between parents and their children come next to be examined. In the second chapter, some observations are made, concerning the authority which, in the rudest periods, a father is accustomed to exercise over his children. The limitations, upon the branch of jurisdiction, arising from the improvements of a later age, are afterwards considered.

Having reviewed the primitive government of a family, the author has proceeded, in the third chapter, to enquire into the state of a tribe or village, composed of several families; to point out the origin of a chief, who is raised to the head of their society;<ix> and the various branches of authority assumed by the early magistrate, according to the different species of property which the people have had an opportunity of acquiring.

By the union of several tribes, a larger society is formed, requiring a greater variety of regulations, for securing the rights of individuals, and for maintaining the publick tranquility. This makes the subject of the fourth chapter; which may be divided into two parts:

The first relates to the political constitution, derived from a simple confederacy among these independent communities. As in the different governments, produced by an association of this sort, we every where observe a great degree of uniformity; we may also discover certain peculiar circumstances, by which the constitution of some<x> states is particularly distinguished. One of the most remarkable of these is the establishment of the feudal law; which makes so great a figure in the history of Europe, and has been the subject of so much investigation and controversy. Concerning the origin of the feudal institutions, and concerning the time and manner in which they were introduced, the author has ventured to deliver an opinion, which has the appearance of reconciling the different facts, collected by antiquaries and lawyers in support of their various and opposite conjectures.

The second part of that chapter contains remarks upon the alterations in the police and government of a country, arising from the progress of its inhabitants, in manufactures and commerce, and in that refinement of manners which is the natural consequence of affluence and security.<xi>

The consideration of the distinctions of rank, among the free inhabitants of a country, is followed by an enquiry into the state of persons of inferior condition, who, in order to procure subsistence, are obliged to labour in the service of others, and who form the great body of the people. In prosecuting this enquiry, the author has first considered the state of servants, in the primitive ages of the world. He has next attempted to point out those variations in their condition, which have proceeded from the usual improvements of society, in law and government; and, lastly, to give an account of that singular revolution, by which the laws of Europe are, in this respect, so eminently distinguished.

Upon the whole it has been the author’s design to explain the causes of various manners and customs, rather than to enter<xii> into any formal discussion concerning the political advantages or disadvantages of which they have been productive; and it appeared unnecessary to give a separate detail of the laws of any one country, or to take notice of particular institutions, further than as they contributed to show the natural progress of human society.

[The final paragraph is identical with the final paragraph of the text of the fourth edition.]

APPENDIX 3

Millar’s “Lectures on Government”

As mentioned in the Introduction to this volume, the Ranks grew out of Millar’s Lectures on Government. The university regularly published outlines of the courses. Below is the first section of the course in 1771, the year of publication of the Ranks. I have presented the first section of the 1771 course and the section headings of the succeeding topics in order that the reader might see the place of the Ranks in Millar’s system of teaching and its connection to the Historical View. I have followed the 1771 course with the corresponding sections of the course outline twenty years later to indicate how it had changed.

1.

A Course of Lectures on Government; Given Annually in the University. Glasgow. M.DCC.LXXI

Part I.

Of the Origin and Progress of Government in Society.

Lecture 1.	The origin of influence and authority among mankind.
2.	The primitive government of a family.
3.	The government of a tribe or village of savages.
4.	The progress of government among independent tribes of shepherds and husbandmen.
5.	The government arising from the union of different tribes, or small societies.
6.	Changes produced in the state of society by the improvement of arts, manufactures, and commerce.
7.	Influence of these changes upon the government of a people.
8.	— with regard to the provisions that are made for national defence.
9.	— with regard to the distribution of justice.
10.	— with regard to the exercise of the legislative power.
11.	Remarks upon the decline of nations.

Part II.

This subject illustrated from a view of particular Governments.

[Eighteen historical lectures on governments ranging from those of Athens, Sparta, and Rome to that of contemporary Scotland.]

Part III.

Present state of Government in Great Britain.

[Thirteen lectures on British government.]

2.

A Course of Lectures on Government; Given Annually in the University.

By John Millar,

Professor of Law.

Glasgow 1792

Part I.

Of the Origin and Progress of Government in Society.

Lecture 1.	Order of the following Lectures—General principles of government.
Lecture 2.	—Continuation of the same subject.
Lecture 3.	State of government among savages.
Lecture 4.	Advancement of political society in the pastoral ages.
Lecture 5.	Progressive improvements in government, arising from the introduction of agriculture—In a single independent tribe of husbandmen.
Lecture 6.	—In a rude nation, composed of different tribes.
Lecture 7.	Changes produced in the state of society, by the improvement of manufactures, commerce, and the liberal arts—Causes of this improvement—Principal steps in the advancement of manufactures—of commerce—of the liberal arts.
Lecture 8.	Effect of these changes upon the general state of society.
Lect. 9.	Influence of manufactures, commerce, and the arts, upon the intellectual improvements—and upon the morals of a people.
Lect. 10.	Their influence upon the manners, the temper, and the deportment of mankind.
Lect. 11.	In what manner the government of a people is affected by these changes.
Lect. 12.	Effect of these changes upon the different powers of government—The legislative, or supreme directing power.
Lect. 13.	—Upon the ministerial powers of government.
Lect. 14.	—Upon the establishments for the distribution of justice.
Lect 15.	Remarks upon the decline of nations.
Lect 16.	The same subject continued.

Part II.

The History of Government illustrated from a view of the Constitution in particular contries.

[Twenty-one historical lectures on government.]

Part III.

Present state of Government in Great Britain.

[Fourteen lectures on British government.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Modern Texts

The following texts are the works that Millar drew on in the footnotes to Ranks. They are not necessarily the editions Millar consulted, although I have tried to use the editions he would likely have used whenever I could identify them. I have also included ancient works that Millar cites in a specific contemporary edition, for example, Gillies’ Lysias or Pope’s Odyssey and Iliad. The remaining ancient works are listed in a separate section.

Anderson, Adam. An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce. 2 vols. London, 1764.
Anonymous. A Curious Collection of Voyages, Selected from the Writers of All Nations. 9 vols. London, 1761.
Anonymous. Travels of the Jesuits, into various parts of the world: particularly China and the East Indies. 2nd ed., 2 vols. Trans. Mr. Lockman. London, 1762. [Abridged and translated from Lettres édifiantes et curieuses écrites des missions étrangères, par quelques missionaires de la Compagnie de Jésus. 34 vols. Paris, 1703–76.]
Anson, George. A Voyage Around the World. Ed. R. Walter. London, 1748.
Arvieux, Laurent de. The Travels of the Chevalier d’Arvieux in Arabia the desart, written by himself, and published by Mr. De Roque. … To which is added, a general description of Arabia, by Sultan Ishmael Abulfeda. 2nd ed. London, 1732.
Benezet, Anthony. A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies, in a short representation of the calamitous state of the enslaved Negroes in the British dominions. Philadelphia, 1766.
———. Observation on the inslaving, importing and purchasing of Negroes. Germantown, Pa., 1759.
———. A short account of that part of Africa, inhabited by the negroes. Philadelphia, 1762.
———. Some historical account of Guinea, its situation, produce and the general disposition of its inhabitants. Philadelphia, 1771.
Bossu, Jean-Bernard. Nouveaux voyages aux Indes Occidentales; contenant une relation des differens peuples qui habitent les environs du grand fleuve Saint-Louis, appellé vulgairement le Mississippi; leur religion; leur gouvernement; leurs moeurs; leurs guerres & commerce. 2 vols. Paris, 1768.
Boulainvilliers, Henri, comte de. Histoire des anciens Parlemens de France, ou États Généraux du royaume … London, 1737.
———. An historical account of the antient parliaments of France, or States-general of the kingdom … 2 vols. London, 1739.
———. Lettres sur les anciens parlemens de France que l’on nomme États-généraux. 2 vols. London, 1753.
Bouquet, Pierre. Le droit public de France, éclairci par les monuments de l’antiquité. Paris, 1756.
Brisson, Barnabé. Opera Minorae Varii Argumenta. Lugduni Batavorum, 1747.
Brosses, Charles de. Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes. 3 vols. Paris, 1756.
Bruce, James. An Interesting Narrative of the Travels of James Bruce into Abyssinia, to discover the source of the Nile. 2nd ed. Boston, 1798.
Bynkershoek, Cornelius van. Opera Omnia. 2 vols. Lugduni Batavorum, 1767. [“De jure occidendi et exponendi liberos apud veteres Romanos” first appeared in 1723.]
Byron, John. The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (Commodore in the Late Expedition around the World) Containing an Account of the Great Distresses Suffered by Himself and His Companions on the Coast of Patagonia From the Year of 1740, till their Arrival in England, 1746. London, 1768.
Callander, John. Terra australis cognita; or, voyages to the Terra Australis, or southern hemisphere, during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1766–68. [This is actually Callander’s translation, with additions, of de Brosse’s Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes.]
Chantereau-Lefebvre, Louis. Traité des fiefs. Paris: L. Billaine, 1662.
Chardin, Jean. Voyage de Paris à Ispahan. 4 vols. Amsterdam, 1735. [First published in both French and English in 1686.]
Charlevoix, Père Pierre-François-Xavier de. Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle-France, avec le Journal historique d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique Septentrionale. 3 vols. Paris, 1744.
Dampier, William. A new voyage around the world: describing particularly the isthmus of America, several coasts and islands in the West Indies, the isles of Cape Verd, the passage by Terra del Fuego, the South Sea coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, the isle of Guam, one of the Ladrones, Mindanao, and other Philippine and East-India islands near Cambodia, China, Formosa, Luconia, Celebes &c., New Holland, Sumatra, Nicobar Isles, the Cape of Good Hope, and Santa Hellena … London, 1697.
De Pauw, Cornelius. Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains. 3 vols. Berlin, 1768–70.
Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste. The general history of China. Containing a geographical, historical, chronological, political and physical description of the empire of China, Chinese-Tartary, Corea and Thibet … 3rd ed., 4 vols. Trans. Richard Brookes. London: J. Watts, 1741. [First published in French in 1735.]
Filmer, Sir Robert. Patriarchia. 1680.
Fontenelle, Bernard de. Oeuvres. 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1764.
Gillies, John, ed. and trans. The orations of Lysias and Isocrates, translated from the Greek: with some account of their lives; and A discourse on the history, manners, and character of the Greeks, from the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, to the Battle of Chaeronea. London: J. Murray, 1778.
Gmelin, Johann Georg. Voyage en Sibérie; contenant la description des moeurs & usages des peuples de ce pays. 2 vols. Trans. M. de Keralio. Paris, 1767. [First published in German in 1751–52.]
Goguet, Antoine-Yves. The Origin of Laws, Arts and Sciences among the most ancient Nations. Edinburgh: A. Donaldson & J. Reid, 1761. [First published in French in 1758.]
Grotius, Hugo. Annotationes in Vetus & Novum Testamentum juxta editionem amstelaedamensem, MDCLXXIX, in compendium redactae. London, 1727.
Hawkesworth, John, ed. An account of the voyages undertaken by the order of His present Majesty for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere: and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavor, drawn up from the journals which were kept by the several commanders, and from the papers of Joseph Banks, Esq. 3 vols. London, 1773.
Heineccius, Johann Gottlieb. Antiquitatum Romanarum Jurisprudentiam. 2nd ed. Argentotati, 1724.
———. Elementa iuris Germanici. 2 vols. Halae, 1736–37.
Hénault, Charles Jean François. Nouvel abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France. 2nd ed. Paris, 1746.
Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de. The general history of the vast continent and islands of America, commonly call’d, the West-Indies, from the first discovery thereof. 2nd ed., 6 vols. Trans. Capt. John Stevens. London, 1740.
Hume, David. Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. 2 vols. London, 1768. (Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Rev. ed. Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987.)
Kames (Henry Home), Lord. Elements of Criticism. 6th ed. 2 vols. Edinburgh: J. Bell and W. Creech, 1785. (Elements of Criticism. Edited by Peter Jones. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005.)
———. Historical Law-Tracts. 2 vols. Edinburgh: A. Kincaid and J. Bell, 1758.
Kolb, Peter. The present state of the Cape of Good Hope: or, A particular account of the several nations of the Hottentot. 2 vols. Trans. Mr. Medley. London, 1731. [First published in German in 1719.]
Krasheninnikov, Stepan Petrovitch. The History of Kamtschatka, and the Kurilski Islands. Gloucester: T. Jefferys, 1764.
Lafitau, Père Joseph-François. Moeurs des sauvages Amériquains. 4 vols. Paris, 1724.
Le Comte, Louis. Memoirs and observations topographical, physical, mathematical, mechanical, natural, civil, and ecclesiastical made in a late journey through the empire of China. 3rd ed. London, 1699.
Le Gobien, Père Charles. Histoire des isles Marianes, nouvellement converties à la religion chrestienne; & du martyre des premiers a-postres qui y ont prêché la foy. Paris, 1700.
Lockman, John. Travels of the Jesuits, into various parts of the world: particularly China and the East-Indies. 2d ed. London: T. Piety, 1762.
Loyseau, Charles. Traité des seigneuries. 3rd ed. Paris, 1620.
Mably, Abbé de. Observations sur l’histoire de France. 2 vols. Geneva, 1765.
Macpherson, James. The Poems of Ossian and Related Works. Ed. Howard Gaskill. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. [The poems in this volume began to appear in 1762.]
Mexía, Pedro, et al. Archaio-ploutos. Containing, ten follovving bookes to the former Treasurie of auncient and moderne times: being the learned collections, iudicious readings, and memorable obseruations, not onely diuine, morall, and philosophicall, but also poeticall, martiall, politicall, historicall, astrologicall, &c. London, 1619.
Mézeray, François Eudes de. Histoire de France avant Clovis. Amsterdam: A. Wolfgang, 1692.
Mitchell, John, and Arthur Young. American Husbandry. Containing an Account of the Soil, Climate, Production and Agriculture of the British Colonies in North-America and the West-Indies. London: J. Bew, 1775.
Montaigne, Michel de. Essais. 8 vols. Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1604.
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de. L’Esprit des Loix. Geneva, 1748.
Noodt, Gerard de. Julius Paulus, sive De partus expositione et nece apud veteres liber singularis. Leiden, 1710.
Noort, Olivier van. Voyage autour du monde, par le d’étroit de Magellan, en 1598. Amsterdam, 1705.
Perizonius, Jacobus. Ant. Fil. Dissertationum Septem. Halae Magdeburgiae, 1722.
Petit, Pierre. De Amazonibus dissertatio, quâ an verè extiterint, necne, variis ultro citroque conjecturis & argumentis disputatur. Multa etiam ad eam gentem pertinentia, ex antiquis monumentis eruuntur atque illustrantur. Paris, 1685.
Poivre, Pierre. The Travels of a Philosopher. London, 1769. [First published in French in 1768.]
Pope, Alexander, trans. Homer’s Iliad. 6 vols. London, 1715–20.
———. Homer’s Odyssey. 5 vols. London, 1760.
Potgieser, Joachim. Commentariorum iuris Germanici de statu servorum veteri perinde atque novo libri quinque. Lemgoviae, 1736.
Potter, John. Archaeologia graeca: or, The antiquities of Greece. 2 vols. Oxford, 1697.
Potter, R., ed. and trans. The Tragedies of Aeschylus. Norwich, 1777.
Prévost d’Exile, Abbé. Histoire générale des voyages; ou, Nouvelle collection de toutes les relations de voyages par mer et par terre qui ont été publiées jusqu’à present dans les différentes langues de toutes les nations connues … 2 vols. Paris, 1746–89.
Racine, Jean. Phèdre. Paris, 1677.
Renneville, Constantin de. Recueil des voyages qui ont servi a l’établissement et aux progrès de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales, formée dans les Provinces Unies des Païs-Bas. 7 vols. Amsterdam, 1702–7.
Ricaut, Paul. The present state of the Ottoman Empire: containing the maxims of the Turkish polity, the most material points of the Mahometan religion, their sects and heresies, their convents and religious votaries, their military discipline: with an exact computation of their forces both by sea and land. London, 1682.
Richardson, S., et al. The Modern Part of an Universal History: From the Earliest Account of Time. 44 vols. London, 1759–66.
Rush, Benjamin. An address to the inhabitants of the British settlements: on the slavery of the negroes in America. To which is added, A vindication of the address, in answer to a pamphlet entitled, “Slavery not forbidden in Scripture; or, A defence of the West India planters.” 2nd ed. Philadelphia, 1773.
Sainte-Palaye, Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de. Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie. 3 vols. Paris: Duchesne, 1759–81.
Salvaing de Boissieu, Denis. De l’usage des fiefs et autres droits seigneuriaux. 3rd ed. 1644; Avignon, 1731.
Shaw, Thomas. Travels or Observations relating to several parts of Barbary and the Levant. 2nd ed. London, 1757.
Sigonio, Carlo. De Antiquo Iure Civium Romanorum Libri Duo. Venice, 1562.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. 1759; Oxford, 1976. (The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984.)
Smith, Thomas. The common-vvelth of England, and maner of gouernment thereof. London, 1589. [English translation of De republica anglorum, 1583.]
Spelman, Sir Henry. Glossarium archaiologicum: continens latino-barbara, peregrina, obsoleta, & novatae significationis vocabula, quae post labefactatas a gothis, vandalisque res Europaeas, in ecclesiasticis, profanisque scriptoribus, variarum item gentium legibus antiquis municipalibus, chartis, & formulis occurrunt, scholiis & commentariis illustrata, in quibus prisci ritus quam-plurimi, magistratus, dignitates, munera, officia, mores, leges ipsae, &c. consuetudines enarrantur. 3 vols. London, 1687.
———. Reliquiae Spellmannianae: The posthumous works of Sir Henry Spelman Kt. Relating to the laws and antiquities of England. 2 vols. Ed. Edmund Gibson. Oxford/London, 1723.
Stuart, Gilbert. Historical dissertation concerning the antiquity of the English constitution. Edinburgh, 1768.
Ulloa, Antonio de, and George Juan. A Voyage to South America: Describing at Large the Spanish Cities, Towns, Provinces, &c. on that extensive Continent. 2 vols. London, 1758.
Velly, Abbé Paul François. Histoire de France, depuis l’établissement de la monarchie Jusqu’au règne de Louis XIV. 30 vols. Paris, 1755–86.
Wallace, Robert. A dissertation on the numbers of mankind in antient and modern times: in which the superior populousness of antiquity is maintained. With an appendix, … and some remarks on Mr. Hume’s Political discourse. Edinburgh, 1753.
Weber, Friedrich Christian. The Present State of Russia. 2 vols. London, 1722–23. [First published in German in 1715.]
Wright, Sir Martin. An introduction to the law of tenures. 3rd ed. Dublin: M. Owen, 1750.

Ancient Texts

I have given Roman titles in Latin and Greek titles in English because for the most part Millar did not cite Greek works by Greek titles. Millar cited ancient titles in abbreviated form, but his abbreviations should become evident when compared with this list.

Aelian, Varia Historia
Aelius Donatus, Commentum Terenti
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics
Athenaeus, History
Caesar, De Bello Gallico
Cicero, De Senectute, Pro Flacco, In Verrem
Cornelius Nepos, De Viris Illustribus
Diodorus Siculus, History
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae
Herodian, History of the Roman Empire
Herodotus, History
Homer, Iliad, Odyssey
Horace, Sermones [cited as Satires]
Juvenal, Saturae
Lucan, Pharsalia
Lysias, Orations
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Plautus, Amphitryon
Pliny, Naturalis Historia
Plutarch, Lives of Eminent Men
Seneca, De Beneficiis, De Tranquilitate
Strabo, Geography
Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum
Tacitus, De Origine et Situ Germanorum [Millar knew Tacitus’s work as De Moribus Germanorum and cited it accordingly.]
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabiliorum
Virgil, Aeneid

Roman, German, and Medieval Legal Works and Other Sources

Besides the omnipresent Digest, Codex, and Institutes of Justinian, Millar made use of the Codex Theodosianus, Gaius’s Institutionem iuris civilis Commentarii, Ulpian’s Fragments, the Lex Salica and Lex Burgundionum, Marculfus’s Formulae, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament.

Translations Used in Preparation of This Edition

Edwards, H. J., trans. and ed. Julius Caesar: The Gallic War. Cambridge: Loeb, 1917.
Grene, David, trans. Herodotus: The History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Mandelbaum, Allen, trans. The Aeneid of Virgil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
———. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.
Rackham, H., trans. Aristotle: Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1944.
Ramsay, G. G., trans. and ed. Juvenal and Persius. Cambridge: Loeb, 1918.
Rives, J. B., trans. and ed. Tacitus: Germania. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
Rowe, Nicholas, trans. Lucan: The Civil War. London: J. M. Dent, 1998. [Reissue of Rowe’s edition of 1719.]
Watson, Alan, trans. The Digest of Justinian. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.

This book is set in Adobe Garamond, a modern adaptation by Robert Slimbach of the typeface originally cut around 1540 by the French typographer and printer Claude Garamond. The Garamond face, with its small lowercase height and restrained contrast between thick and thin strokes, is a classic “old-style” face and has long been one of the most influential and widely used typefaces.

Printed on paper that is acid-free and meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48-1992. (archival)

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[1. ]There is a growing secondary literature on Millar. In preparing this edition I have benefited particularly from, and drawn extensively on, Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chap. 5; William Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow 1735–1801: His Life and Thought and His Contributions to Sociological Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960); John Cairns, “John Millar’s Lectures on Scots Criminal Law,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 8.3 (1988): 364–400; Michael Ignatieff, “John Millar and Individualism,” in Wealth and Virtue, Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 317–43; Duncan Forbes, “ ‘Scientific Whiggism’: Adam Smith and John Millar,” Cambridge Journal 7 (1953–54): 643–70; Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

[2. ]The distinction between natural and adventitious states, duties, and rights was common in natural law, adventitious rights being “those which arise or are made out of some human institution.” See Francis Hutcheson, Philosophia Moralis Institutio Compendiaria (translated as A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy), II.5.1. The Institutio was the textbook for Hutcheson’s moral philosophy courses and was used also by Smith for his first course in 1751–52 when he filled in for the ailing Thomas Craigie (Ian S. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], 111–12). In his biography of Millar, John Craig notes that Millar attended these lectures; see pp. 8–9 below.

[3. ]The question was debated in natural law theory (see p. 171 note). Hume discussed it in “A Dialogue” (David Hume, Enquiries, 3rd ed., ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], 324–28), Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (V.2.15).

[4. ]David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, rev. ed., ed. Eugene V. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 131–34.

[5. ]Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), LJ (A), i.27. Following standard practice, Smith’s Lectures of 1762–63 are abbreviated “LJ (A),” and Smith’s Lectures of 1766 “LJ (B).”

[6. ]“Moral duties, originally weak and feeble, acquire great strength by refinement of manners in polished societies.” Henry Home, Lord Kames, Historical Law-Tracts (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid and J. Bell, 1758), I:92.

[7. ]Johann Gottlieb Heineccius (1681–1741) was a widely read and erudite natural lawyer. Millar used two works by Heineccius in structuring his civil law course: Elementa juris civilis secundum ordinem Institutionem (1725) and Elementa juris civilis secundum ordinem Pandectarum (1727).

[8. ]Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, LJ (A), i.27, iv–v, 200–330. Kames also used a stadial scheme in the Historical Law-Tracts (I:28).

[9. ]“Ranks” means not just social or economic classes but any consistent, enduring ordering recognized and approved of by spectators.

[10. ]Hume had stressed, as well, the rise of romantic love in connection with the progress of society (Hume, “Rise and Progress,” Essays, 131–34).

[11. ]This point was so important for Millar that he changed the neat rights-centered chapter structure of the first two editions of Ranks and added a separate chapter on the subject (chap. V).

[12. ]“The excessive opulence of Rome, about the end of the Commonwealth, and after the establishment of the despotism, gave rise to a degree of debauchery of which we have no example in any other European nation” (<103>). It is notable that Millar’s main objection to debauchery in this context was that it restricts women to being viewed as sexual objects, a criticism possible only from an enlightened stage of commerce. Millar criticized “the voluptuousness of Eastern nations” (<102>) for reducing women to a state of “slavery and confinement” as well. For parallel criticisms, see Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), III.iii; and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), II.iii. Millar’s main objection seems to have been that “the chief effect of debauchery … has been to turn the attention, from the pursuits of business or ambition, to the amusements of gallantry” (<108>). Although Millar did not mention the impartial spectator, given Smith’s influence it seems that the criticism of prior stages of society was made with reference to an impartial spectator who approves and recognizes useful and agreeable qualities in the Age of Commerce, and criticizes their neglect or destruction in prior stages.

[13. ]See pp. 85–86 below.

[14. ]Cf. Millar’s discussion of polygynous and matrifocal societies as a variant on the normal patriarchal structure of the first stage of society (<53–54>).

[15. ]See Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy, chap. 5.

[16. ]Millar has had important if scant admirers since his death, including James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Werner Sombart. See Lehman, John Millar of Glasgow, chap. 14.

[17. ]Thanks to Knud Haakonssen for supplying me with information on Craig.

[18. ]David Hume, “Letter 176,” in J. Y. T. Greig, The Letters of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I:328–31. Hume’s argument is in part stadial: barbarians of the type Macpherson described would be incapable of this sort of poetry. In the letter Hume also implied that Smith accepted the authenticity of the first volumes of the Ossianic poems (which were, in fact, the most authentic).

[19. ]“Millar to David Douglas 10 August 1790,” in Millar, Letters and Occasional Writings, ed. Cairns and Garrett (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, forthcoming).

[1. ]Young (d. 1820) was one of Millar’s closest friends and a student of Adam Smith’s.

[3. ]James Millar (1701–85).

[4. ]Ann.

[5. ]William Cullen (1710–90), first a professor of medicine at Glasgow then professor of chemistry at Edinburgh, was the main reforming influence on the teaching of medicine in Scottish universities as well as a celebrated medical researcher.

[6. ]James Watt (1736–1819) was the discoverer of the steam engine and instrument maker to the University of Glasgow.

[* ]See Historical view of the English Government, Book ii. Chap. 10. Note. [[“I am happy to acknowledge the obligations I feel myself under to this illustrious philosopher, by having, at an early period of life, had the benefit of hearing his lectures on the History of Civil Society, and of enjoying his unreserved conversation on the same subject.—The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the Lord Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton.”]]

[† ]See Mr. Stewart’s Life of Dr. Smith, at the conclusion. [[David Douglas (1769–1819), later Lord Reston as a senator of the College of Justice (i.e., judge in the Court of Session), was Smith’s heir. See Dugald Stewart, “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D.” included in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. L. D. Wightman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 331–32.]]

[* ]I am indebted for this information to Lord Kames’ son, G. Drummond Home, Esq.

[7. ]Baron David Hume (1757–1838), author of Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland (1797).

[* ]The supreme Civil Court, composed of all the fifteen Judges. A lawyer is often many years at the Bar before he has an opportunity of speaking, except in the Outer House where all causes are tried in the first instance, by a single Judge, without a jury.

[8. ]Hercules Lindesay (d. 1761).

[9. ]“(as a place for legal study);” appeared here in the third edition.

[10. ]See the introduction.

[11. ]For a partial listing of the contents of the course, see appendix 3.

[12. ]Appeared as “different classes of their virtues” in the third edition.

[13. ]Cf. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. 1.

[* ]Lord Kames, in the Introduction to the Elements of Criticism. [[“[A] taste in fine arts goes hand in hand with the moral sense” (Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, 3rd ed. [Edinburgh, 1765], 5).]]

[14. ]Appeared as “The rules of virtue” in the third edition.

[* ]See the Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, Chap. II. Sect. II.

[* ]In the Introduction to the Origin of the Distinction of Ranks. With regard to the direct effects of climate on the human mind, see Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part I. Essay XXI. [[“Of National Characters,” in David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, rev. ed., ed. Eugene V. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 197–215. Passages from Hume’s Essays are cited by essay number and paragraph number as well as page number.]]

[* ]Life of Dr. Smith, page 34. [[Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 293.]]

[15. ]Adam Smith and Lord Kames. See the introduction.

[* ]See Hume’s Essays, Part I. Essay 5. [[“Of the Original Contract,” in Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, 465–87.]]

[† ]See the Historical View of the English Government, Vol. IV. chap. 7.

[16. ]Semimythical founder of the Spartan legal code.

[* ]See Mr. Stewart’s Life of Dr. Smith, page 36. [[Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 295.]]

[† ]Some account of Mr. Millar’s views of the feudal system may be found in the Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, chap. IV. and V. They are much more fully illustrated in the Historical view of the English Government, where his opinions, respecting the progress of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, are also detailed. [[See An Historical View, II:4.]]

[* ]For obvious reasons, I have avoided mentioning the names of any professors still alive, otherwise I should have had much pleasure in bearing testimony to the distinguished abilities of some gentlemen whom I have the honour to rank among my personal friends. [[Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), Smith (1723–90), and Thomas Reid (1710–96) were the three most famous holders of the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow and three of the most eminent philosophers of the eighteenth century. James Moor (1712–79), the professor of Greek at Glasgow, and George Muirhead (1715–73), the professor of Oriental languages at Glasgow, together produced the renowned Foulis edition of Homer (1747). Alexander Wilson was the type-founder of the Foulis press and later professor of practical astronomy and observer. Craig is likely referring to Wilson’s discoveries of sunspots. Robert Simson (1687–1768) was a professor of mathematics at Glasgow and a geometer (much admired by Adam Smith) who produced an important edition of Euclid’s Elements, also with the Foulis press (1756). Joseph Black, one of Smith’s closest friends (1728–99), was among the most celebrated chemists of the eighteenth century; his discoveries in thermal chemistry led to Watts’s steam engine. All of these professors and intellectuals socialized together in Glasgow’s clubs and intellectual societies.]]

[17. ]The Literary Society was one of the main meeting places for Glasgow intellectuals. Black, Smith, Watt, and others initially presented some of their most influential research to the society.

[* ]In saying that Mr. Millar adopted Mr. Hume’s metaphysical opinions, I chiefly allude to those contained in his Essays. It is not a little surprising, that, even after this author had expressly stated his desire that these writings alone should be considered as containing his philosophical opinions, his opponents should still continue to refer to the Treatise of Human Nature; a work of equal or perhaps still greater ingenuity, but wanting the elegance, and accuracy of expression, which distinguish Mr. Hume’s later publications. [[See David Hume, “Advertisement,” Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (London, 1777), II:2. By “opponents,” Millar seemed to have James Beattie, John Oswald, and, perhaps, Thomas Reid in mind. As the volume of the Essays to which the “Advertisement” was appended included the Enquiries, Hume was suggesting that his opponents read the Enquiries as opposed to the Treatise for his most current views. It is notable that Craig remarks that the Treatise is of “greater ingenuity,” showing, pace common opinion, that the Treatise did not go completely unappreciated by Hume’s readers.]]

[* ]Dr. Wight, a man of most engaging manners and amiable character, was first Professor of Church History, and afterwards of Divinity. [[William Wight (1730–82), professor of church history, later of divinity, at Glasgow.]]

[18. ]The 5th Baronet of Caldwell (d. 1789).

[19. ]James (d. 1778) and Dorothea Baillie (the sister of William and John Hunter). James was elected professor of divinity at Glasgow in 1775.

[20. ]Their son, Matthew Baillie (1761–1823), was the author of the first work on morbid anatomy and later physician extraordinary to George III. Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) was a well-known playwright and poet.

[* ]Professor of Logic. To this Gentleman I am indebted for many particulars of Mr. Millar’s life, and for the free use of a memoir which he read in the Literary society, at the first meeting after Mr. Millar’s death; a memoir, which, had it not been composed with a particular view to the society, might have rendered this essay unnecessary. [[George Jardine (1742–1827) was a younger colleague of Millar’s. He moved the Glasgow logic curriculum away from traditional formal logic and toward the modern subject of the mental faculties for language and taste.]]

[* ]During the struggle between the Brissotines and Terrorists, 1792. [[The Brissotines, more commonly referred to as the Girondists, were a moderate revolutionary faction (associated with Jacques-Pierre Brissot) who struggled for control of the revolution with Robespierre and the “Mountain,” in particular following the massacres of September 2–6, 1792. Many leading Brissotines were subsequently expelled from the Convention and fled to the provinces (their main base of support) or were guillotined (including Brissot himself). Dominique Joseph Garat was the minister of justice during this period—the period of the trial and execution of Louis XVI—and read the king his death verdict. He was not a member of the most radical faction of the revolution, and was imprisoned during the Terror. It appears that Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard, not Garat, translated the work. Garat and Suard were friends, and Garat later wrote a well-known work about his friend Suard, Mémoires historiques sur la vie de M. Suard, sur ses écrits et sur le XVIIIe siècle (1820). Whether true or not, the association of the work with a regicide would be embarrassing!]]

[21. ]This likely refers to Gilbert Stuart, An Historical Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the English Constitution (Edinburgh, 1768).

[* ]Mr. Jardine.

[22. ]“The true design of a Literary Journal is, in our opinion, to give such an account of new publications, as may enable the reader to judge of them for himself” (Prospectus of the Analytical Review [London, 1788], i).

[* ]In Scotland, the counsel for the prisoner is allowed to address the jury upon the whole evidence, as well as to state the nature of the defence in an opening speech.

[* ]See the Historical View, vol. iv. chap. 3. and Lord Lauderdale on Public Wealth, chap. 3. [[James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale, An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (Edinburgh, 1804). Smith had argued (Wealth of Nations, I.vi.9) that profit derived from stock was actually derived from the labor added by the workman to the raw materials. Lauderdale argued, against Smith and Turgot, that “in every instance where capital is so employed as to produce a profit, it uniformly arises, either—from its supplanting a portion of labour, which would otherwise be performed by the hand of man; or—from its performing a portion of labour, which is beyond the reach of the personal exertion of man to accomplish” (161).]]

[23. ]John Moore (1729–1802).

[* ]This was almost the only regular correspondence in which Mr. Millar ever engaged. When absent from his family, he indeed wrote letters calculated for their amusement, and remarkable for the same playfulness which distinguished his conversation; but he was very averse to the preservation of any of his letters. His numerous avocations rendered it impossible for him to correspond with his friends, except when some kind of business required it.

[24. ]Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–94), discoverer of oxygen, executed in the Terror.

[* ]It is surprising that Dr. Johnson seems never to have perceived this beauty in Prior. The same blending of ideas of pleasure and of melancholy constitutes the greatest charm in the writings of Horace and in the beautiful little odes of Cheaulieu. [[Mark Akenside (1721–70) was a celebrated poet and doctor best known for the “Pleasures of Imagination”; James Thomson (1700–1748) was a Scottish poet best known for The Seasons and probably the author of “Rule Britannia”; Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu (1639–1720) was a well-known French poet. Johnson said of Matthew Prior (1664–1721): “Whatever Prior obtains above mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil” (Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill [New York: Octagon Books, 1967; reprint of the 1905 Clarendon Press edition], II:209.)]]

[* ]I am not at liberty to give the particulars of this transaction, but I pledge myself to its truth.

[* ]It was in this view, that the French Economists favoured despotical government. They thought it easier to convince a monarch, than a whole nation, of the truth of those abstract principles, on which they had founded their system. [[Craig is describing the doctrine of legal despotism as exemplified in François Quesnay’s Despotisme de la Chine (1767).]]

[25. ]Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquess of Rockingham (1730–82), and Charles James Fox (1749–1806) were leaders of the Whig faction successively named after them. Rockingham and Fox vigorously opposed the war against America and attempted to constrain the authority of George III. Fox strongly supported the French Revolution.

[* ]See Hist. View of the English Gov. vol. iv. chap. ii.

[* ]Hume’s Essays, Part I. Essay 7. [[“Whether the British Monarchy Inclines More to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” in Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, p. 53 (I.vii.7).]]

[26. ]Craig describes one of the most heated dramas in late-eighteenth-century British politics. Frederick, Lord North (1732–92), was prime minister of England between 1770 and 1782, including the years of Britain’s disastrous defeat by the colonies. North resigned after Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown and was followed in short order by Rockingham and a coalition of Fox and North. The king loathed Fox, and so took Rockingham’s death in 1782 as the chance to make Shelburne prime minister and to bring William Pitt into the government. Fox went into opposition but then in 1783, following upon Shelburne’s unpopular negotiations with the colonies, formed a government with his erstwhile opponent Lord North. The cohabitation was necessary as neither North nor Fox had enough votes to form a government on his own, but it was shocking to important parts of the Whig constituency and abhorred by George III. The defeat of Edmund Burke’s reform bill for India in 1783 gave Pitt and George III the upper hand in the 1784 elections and for many years after. Craig intimates that had Fox not cohabited with North, a Shelburne-North government dominated by George III would have resulted. It is notable that in spite of Craig’s comments Shelburne was a complete, confirmed Smithian: “I owe a Journey I made with Mr. Smith from Edinburgh to London, the difference between light and darkness through the best part of my life. The novelty of principles, added to my youth and prejudice, made me unable to comprehend them at the time, but he urged them with so much benevolence, as well as eloquence, that they took a certain hold, which, though it did not develop itself so as to arrive at full conviction for some few years after, I can fairly say, has constituted, ever since, the happiness of my life, as well as any consideration I may have enjoyed in it” (Dugald Stewart, “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D.,” in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. L. D. Wightman [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], 347). Shelburne’s attempt to resume trade relations quickly with the colonies after the British surrender, and his antimercantilist, antimonopolist rhetoric, were fully Smithian. Cf. “Speech on Preliminary Articles of Peace,” in On the Wealth of Nations: Contemporary Responses to Adam Smith, ed. Ian S. Ross (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1998), 149–51.

[* ]If this required any proof, it has been abundantly furnished by the official documents lately published.

[27. ]The French instituted the Directory in 1795, following the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror in 1794; it lasted until Bonaparte’s coup in 1799. It was widely, if not entirely fairly, reviled for incompetence and corruption.

[* ]Hist. View of the English Gov. Vol. IV. Chap. 7.

[* ]The rest of his family, three sons and six daughters, survived him. His eldest son [[James Millar (1762–1832) is Professor of Mathematics in the University of Glasgow; the second William Millar is a Major of Artillery, and the third Archibald Millar a writer to the signet in Edinburgh: one of his daughters Agnes is married to Mr. James Mylne (1757–1839), Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow; and another Margaret to Mr. John Thomson (1765–1846, Professor of Surgery in Edinburgh. With that attention to the comfort of his family which ever guided his conduct, Mr. Millar directed by his will, that Milheugh, to which they were so fondly attached should continue to be the place of residence of his unmarried daughters. There was a son older than James, John (1760–96), who wrote Elements of the Law Relating to Insurances (1787). Craig left him off the list of Millar’s children because he did not survive his father.]]

[* ]Several circumstances prevented the publication of Mr. Millar’s posthumous works till late in spring, 1803; and then the distance we all were from London induced us to trust the publication too much to others. In consequence of this, there are such blunders in the edition, as, though they do not obscure the sense, require an apology to the public. It was originally intended that the posthumous work should appear alone under the title of A Historical View of the English Government from the Accession of the House of Stewart: but afterwards it was thought better to give a uniform edition of the whole work. The present title page was therefore sent up, with orders, which were neglected, to entitle the third volume Book III. of the Historical View, and to publish the fourth volume as separate Dissertations. As to the verbal errors, they were occasioned by the absence of the Publisher from London, while the work was in the press.

[28. ]Appeared as “still a wanting” in the third edition.

[29. ]R. Potter, ed. and trans., The Tragedies of Aeschylus (Norwich, 1777), 262. [Translation of Agamemnon 846–50.]

[1. ]“Whatever it be that forms the manners of one generation, the next must imbibe a deeper tincture of the same dye; men being more susceptible of all impressions during infancy, and retaining these impressions as long as they remain in the world” (“Of National Characters,” I.XXI.9).

[2. ]“First, If you suppose a dye to have any biass, however small, to a particular side, this biass, though, perhaps, it may not appear in a few throws, will certainly prevail in a great number, and will cast the balance entirely to that side. In like manner, when any causes beget a particular inclination or passion, at a certain time, and among a certain people; though many individuals may escape the contagion, and be ruled by passions peculiar to themselves; yet the multitude will certainly be seized by the common affection, and be governed by it in all their actions” (“Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” I.XIV.3). Millar’s Introduction is full of Humean language throughout.

[3. ]This refers to Montesquieu’s doctrine that national character is partially formed by physical causes (The Spirit of the Laws, XIV.2).

[* ]A late ingenious author imagines that this coldness of constitution is peculiar to the natives of America; and he accounts for it, in a most whimsical manner, from the moisture of the climate, by which the inhabitants of that country are, in his opinion, rendered inferior, both in mind and body, to those of the old world. [[Cornelius De Pauw. [Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains.] I:23 De Pauw, a diplomat in the court of Frederick the Great, argued in this widely read work that America was an enervated and degenerate continent due to its climate. But though it must, perhaps, be admitted that particular climates have some influence upon the passions of sex, yet, in most parts of the world, the character of savages, in this respect, exhibits a remarkable uniformity. [See an account of the Samoiedes, histoire generale des voyages, tome 18. p. 509, 510.—Of the inhabitants of Kamtschatka, ibid. tome 19. liv. 2. chap. 4.]

Even among people somewhat advanced beyond the mere savage life, we frequently meet with traces of a similar temperament. “Sera juvenum Venus,” says Tacitus of the Germans, “eoque inexhausta pubertas, nec virgines festinantur. Ergo septa pudicitia agunt, nullis spectaculorum illecebris, nullis conviviorum irrationibus corruptae.” Tacit. de mor. Germ. §. 19, 20. “Love comes late to the young men, and their virility is not drained thereby. Nor are maidens hurried along (§20). … Accordingly they lead lives of well-protected chastity, corrupted by none of the temptations of banquets (§19).” (J. B. Rives, trans.)

The same circumstance is mentioned by Caesar concerning the character of the ancient Gauls. “Qui diutissime impuberes permanserunt, maximam inter suos ferunt laudem: hoc ali staturam, ali vires, nervosque confirmari putant. Intra annum vero vicesimum feminae notitiam habuisse, in turpissimis habent rebus.” Caes. de bell. Gall. lib. 6. §. 21. “They who remain longest in chastity win greatest praise among their kindred; some think that stature, some that strength and sinew are fortified thereby. Furthermore, they deem it a most disgraceful thing to have had knowledge of a woman before the twentieth year.” (H. J. Edwards, trans.) The passage actually describes the Germans, not the Gauls as Millar suggests.]]

[* ]It seems unnecessary to observe, that what is here said with regard to marriage, together with many other Remarks which follow concerning the manners of early nations, can only be applied to those who had lost all knowledge of the original institutions, which, as the sacred scriptures inform us, were communicated to mankind by an extraordinary revelation from heaven.

[* ]Cicero pro Flacco [[XXVII § 84, Heinec. antiq. Roman. Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, Antiquitatum Romanarum Jurisprudentiam, I.X.14.]]

[† ]See Brisson. de vet. rit. nuptiar. [[Barnábe Brisson, “De Veteri Ritu Nuptiarum et Jure Connubiorum,” in Opera Minorae Varii Argumenta, 304.]]

[‡ ]Travels through the Russian empire and Tartary, by John Cook, M. D. vol. I. chap.= 56.

[* ]Lafitau, moeurs des sauvages Ameriquains, 4to. tom. 1. pag. 564. Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 3. liv. 7. cap. 13. §. 1. Ibid. tom. 6. liv. 14. cap. 3. §. 4. Travels of the Jesuits, vol. 2. p. 446.

Father Lafitau takes notice of a particular custom among the savages of America, which shows the indifference with which their marriages are usually contracted, and marks, at the same time, the inattention of that people to the gratification of their passions. “Il est de l’ancien usage, parmi la plûpart des nations sauvages, de passer la premiere année, aprés le mariage contracté, sans le consommer. La proposition avant ce tems-là, seroit une insulte faite à l’epouse, qui lui feroit comprendre, qu’on auroit recherché son alliance, moins par estime pour elle, que par brutalité. Et quoique les epoux passent la nuit ensemble, c’est sans prejudice de cet ancien usage; les parens de l’epouse y veillent attentivement de leur part, et ils ont soin d’entretenir un grand feu devant leur natte, qui éclaire continuellement leur conduite, et qui puisse servir de garand, qu’il ne se passe rien contre l’ordre prescrit.” Moeurs des sauvages Amer. tom. 1. p. 564. [[“The ancient custom, amongst most of the savage nations, is to spend the first year after the marriage has been contracted, without consummation. To attempt to consummate the marriage before that time would be an insult to the bride, leading her to believe that union with her was sought less out of esteem for her than out of animal considerations. Even though the wedded couple spend the night together, it is without contravening this ancient custom; the parents of the bride carefully keep watch, and maintain a great fire in front of the marriage bed, which sheds light on their conduct, and serves as a guarantee, that nothing takes place that goes against these rules.” In some parts of Great Britain, the common people hold it a point of decorum, that, after the ceremony of marriage, the married persons should sleep together one night without consummation.]]

[* ]Ulloa’s voyage to South America. [[George Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, VI.v (I:429).]]

[† ]Herodot. lib. 1. [[Herodotus History I.93.]]

[‡ ]Strabo, lib. 16. [[Geography XVI.20.—See also Herodotus, lib. 1. who describes the form of this wonderful institution with his usual simplicity. I.199: “The ugliest of the customs among the Babylonians is this: every woman who lives in that country must once in her lifetime go to the temple of Aphrodite and sit there and be lain with by a strange man. Many of the women who are too proud to mix with the others—such, for instance, as are uplifted by the wealth they have—ride to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams and stay there then with a great mass of attendants following them. But most of the women do thus: they sit in the sacred precinct of Aphrodite with a garland round their heads made of string. There is constant coming and going, and there are roped-off passages running through the crowds of women in every direction, through which the strangers walk and take their pick. When once a woman has taken her seat there, she may not go home again until one of the strangers throws a piece of silver into her lap and lies with her, outside the temple. As he throws a coin, the man says, ‘I summon you in the name of Mylitta.’ (The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta.) The greatness of the coin may be what it may, for it is not lawful to reject it, since this money, once it is thrown, becomes sacred. The woman must follow the first man who throws the money into her lap and may reject none. Once she has lain with him, she has fulfilled her obligation to the goddess and gets gone to her home. From that time forth you cannot give her any sum large enough to get her. Those women who have attained to great beauty and height depart quickly enough, but those who are ugly abide there a great while, being unable to fulfil the law. Some, indeed, stay there as much as three or four years.” David Grene, trans.]]

[* ]Herodot. lib. 1. [[Ibid.]]

[† ]Herodot. Ibid. [[I.216.]]

[‡ ]Diod. Sicul. hist. lib. 1. [[Actually III.32.]]

[* ]“Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus, parentesque cum liberis: sed si qui sunt ex his nati, eorum habentur liberi, quo primum virgo quaeque deducta est.” [[“Groups of ten or twelve men have wives together in common, and particularly brothers along with brothers, and fathers with sons; but the children born of the unions are reckoned to belong to the particular house to which the maiden was first conducted.” Edwards, trans. Caesar de bell. Gall. lib. 5. §. 14.]]

[† ]Plutarch. in vita Lycurg. [[XV [13].

Interea, Phoebo gelidas pellente tenebras,
Pulsatae sonuere fores: quas sancta relicto
Hortensi moerens irrumpit Marcia busto;
Quondam virgo toris melioris juncta mariti;
Mox ubi connubii pretium, mercesque soluta est,
Tertia jam soboles, alios fecunda penates
Impletura datur, geminas, et sanguine matris
Permixtura domos. Sed postquam condidit urna
Supremos cineres, miserando concita vultu,
Effusas laniata comas, contusaque pectus
Verberibus crebris, cineresque ingesta sepulchri,
Non aliter placitura viro, sic moesta profatur:
Dum sanguis inerat, dum vis materna, peregi
Jussa, Cato, et geminos excepi foeta maritos.
Visceribus lassis partuque exhausta, revertor
Jam nulli tradenda viro. Da foedera prisci
Inlibata tori:———
Hae flexere virum voce, &c. Lucan. Pharsal. lib. 2.
Now ’gan the sun to lift his dawning light
Before him fled the colder shades of night,
When lo, the sounding doors are heard to turn—
Chaste Marcia comes from dead Hortensius’ urn
Once to a better husband’s happier bed
With bridal rites a virgin was she led.
When every debt of love and duty paid,
And thrice a parent by Lucina made,
The teeming matron, at her lord’s command,
To glad Hortensius gave her plighted hand,
With a fair stock his barren house to grace,
And mingle by the mother’s side the race.
At length this husband in his ashes laid,
And every rite of due religion paid,
Forth from his monument the mournful dame,
With beaten breasts and locks dishevelled, came;
Then with a pale, dejected, rueful look,
Thus pleasing, to her former lord she spoke:
“While nature yet with vigour fed my veins,
And made me equal to a mother’s pains,
To thee obedient, I thy house forsook,
And to my arms another husband took;
My powers at length with genial labours worn,
Weary to thee and wasted I return.
At length a barren wedlock let me prove—
… She said. The hero’s manly heart was moved.
Lucan, Civil War, trans. Nicholas Rowe, II.326–42

]]

[* ][[Krasheninnikov, History of Kamtschatka. p. 224.—Dampier’s travels. William Dampier, Voyage around the World, chap. XIV, p. 395.]]

[* ]Της γαρ επιθυμὴσει γυναικός Μασσαγέτης ανηρ, τον Φαρετρεωνα απικρεμασας προς της ἁμαξας, μίσγεται αδεως. Herodot. B. I. [[“When a man of the Massagetae desires a woman, he hangs his quiver on the front of her wagon and lies with her, fearlessly.” I.216. David Grene, trans.]]

[* ]Cujus rei nulla est occultatio; quod et promiscue in fluminibus perluuntur, et pellibus, aut parvis renonum tegumentis utuntur, magna corporis parte nuda. Caes. de bell. Gall. lib. 6. [[“And there is no secrecy in the matter, for both sexes bathe in the river and wear skins or small cloaks of reindeer hide, leaving great part of the body bare.” Edwards, trans., VI.21.]]

[† ][[Peter Kolb Kolben. present state of Cape of Good Hope, ch. 13.]]

[‡ ][[Hawkesworth, ed., Voyages for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, vol. 2. chap. 12.

In the same publication, an account of a still more remarkable exhibition, made in that Island, is given as follows: “A young man, near six feet high, performed the rites of Venus with a little girl about eleven or twelve years of age, before several of our people, and a great number of the natives, without the least sense of its being indecent or improper, but, as appeared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place. Among the spectators were several women of superior rank, particularly Oberea, who may properly be said to have assisted at the ceremony; for they gave instructions to the girl how to perform her part, which, young as she was, she did not seem to stand in need of.” Ibid.]]

[* ]Columbus’s voyages. Herrera says, that both men and women were perfectly naked. [[Herrera y Tordesillas, The General History of … America, I:48; A Curious Collection, 13.]]

[† ]Pope’s translation of the Odyssey, b. 4. l. 58.

[‡ ]Ruth, chap. iii. ver. 7, 8, 9.

[1. ]“It is indeed observable, that, among all uncultivated nations, who have not as yet had full experience of the advantages attending beneficence, justice, and the social virtues, courage is the predominant excellence; what is most celebrated by poets, recommended by parents and instructors, and admired by the public in general” (Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, VII:255).

[* ]Εν δε τοι̑ς βαρβάροις τὸ θη̑λυ και δουλον τὴν ἀυτὴν ἐχεὶ τάξιν. Aristot. Polit. lib. 1. cap. 2. [[“Yet among barbarians the female and the slave have the same rank” (Aristotle, Politics, Rackham, trans., I.1 [1252b1]).]]

[* ]See Kolben’s voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. [[XIV.3, 161.—Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 5. liv. 14. chap. 3 §. 4. Ibid. tom. 3. liv. 7. chap. 13. §. 1. Ibid. tom. 4. liv. 10. ch. 4.—Sale’s voyage to North America. Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle (1643–87).]]

[† ]Hist. gener. des voy. tom. 4. liv. 10. ch. 3.

[‡ ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 4. liv. 13. ch. 3. §. 2. Ibid. tom. 3. liv. 7. chap. 13. §. 1.

[§ ]Kolben’s voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, chap. 15. §. 6.

[* ]Byron’s Narrative [[143.]]

[† ]See Kolben’s voyage. [[XIII.7, pp. 156–57.—Modern Universal History, vol. 16. p. 374. Ibid. vol. 17.—Hist. gen. des voy. tom. 3. 4.]]

[‡ ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 9. liv. 4. chap. 2. §. 6. page 318.—Vide Perizon de leg. Vocon. [[Jacobus Perizonius, “Dissertation II. De Lege Voconia Feminarumque apud Veteres Hereditatibus,” p. 133 in Ant. Fil. Dissertationes Septem.]]

[* ]Numbers, chap. xxvii. ver. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

[† ]Tacit. de mor. German [[20.3.]]

[* ]This practice obtains in the kingdom of Pegu. See Modern Universal Hist. vol. 7 [[pp. 52–53.—In Siberia. See professor Gmelin’s travels into Siberia, vol. 1. p. 29.— Among the Tartars. Dr. Cooke’s travels through the Russian empire, &c. vol. 2. chap. 21. Hist. gen. des voy. tom. 9.—Among the negroes on the coast of Guinea. Ibid. tom. 4.—Among the Arabs. See D’Arvieux travels. d’Arvieux, The Travels of the Chevalier d’Arvieux, 230.

“Illud etiam praesenti lege placuit contineri, ut si mulier maritum habens sine filiis hac luce transierit, maritus defunctae uxoris pretium, quod pro illa datum fuerit, non requirat.” Leges Burgundior. tit. 14. l. 3. “De Succesionibus et sanctimonialibus,” in Monumentae Germaniae Historica: Leges, ed. G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1863), III.539. The Lex Burgundionum was the legal code of the Kingdom of Burgundy promulgated by Gundobad in the early sixth century.]]

[† ]Tacit. de mor. German. [[18.2: “The wife does not bring a dowry to the husband, but the husband offers a dowry to the wife.”]]

[‡ ]Genesis, chap. xxiv. ver. 11, 12.

[§ ]1 Samuel, chap. xviii. ver. 25.

[‖ ]See P. Le Compte’s Memoirs of China [[p. 267.]]

[* ]The Common-wealth of England, b. 3. chap. 8. [[Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77), classicist, Regius Professor of Law at Cambridge, secretary of state under Queen Elizabeth. De Republica Anglorum (1583) was the most important Tudor account of the English Constitution and was used extensively by Millar in volume II of the Historical View.]]

[† ]“Le futur epoux devoit offrir une somme aux parens de la fille.” M. L’Abbe Velly Hist. de France, tom. 1. 8vo, p. 268. [[“The future groom had to give a sum of money to the parents of the girl.”]]

[‡ ]This is the case in the kingdom of Congo. Modern Univer. Hist. [[XVI:406.—Upon the slave coast. Hist. gen. des voy. Among the Samoiedes, Le Brun. Observ. on Russia Le Brun is included in Weber, The Present State of Russia, II:382.—The Ostiacks. Present state of Russia. pub. 1722 II:72.—At Bantam—and in the island of Banda. Recueil des voyages qui ont servi a l’etablissement de la comp. des Indes Orient. dans les Païs Bas, 8vo, tom. 2. p. 41. p. 216.]]

[* ]“Viri in uxores, sicuti in liberos, vitae necisque habent potestatem; et quum paterfamilias illustriore loco natus decessit, ejus propinqui conveniunt, et de morte, si res in suspicionem venit, de uxoribus in servilem modum quaestionem habent.” Caes. de bell. Gall. lib. 6. §. 18. [[Actually VI.19: “Men have the power of life and death over their wives, as over their children; and when the father of a house, who is of distinguished birth, has died, his relatives assemble, they make inquisition of his wives as they would of slaves.” Edwards, trans.]]

[† ]She was said “conveniri in manum mariti,” [[“to come into the power of her husband”; cf. table VI, fragment 4 and was precisely in the same condition with a “filia-familias.” A daughter under the power of the father.]]

[‡ ]The ceremonies of “coemptio.” [[The ceremony of coemptio—a kind of Roman marriage in which the husband gained a sort of property ownership (manus) of the wife and from which the wife needed to be emancipated in order to change this status—was a simulated purchase. Coemptio was distinguished from two other kinds of marriage in which a woman was transferred from the manus of her father to her husband: confarreatio, which involved an elaborate ceremony but no bridal purchase, and usus, which could be invoked after a year of cohabitation.]]

[* ]Vide Heinec. antiq. Roman. [[I.x.6.]]

[* ]Herodot. hist. lib. 1.—See Goguet’s Origin of Laws, &c. vol. 2. book. 1.—Charlevoix Journal historique d’un voyage de l’Amer. [[Letter XVIII (III:268). Bossu, nouveaux voyage aux Indes Orientales, tom. 2 p. 20. The actual title is Nouveaux voyages aux Indes Occidentales.—Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. 6. “Account of the Inhabitants of the Coast of Malabar” p. 561.

Vestiges of the same practice are also to be found in the writings of the Roman Lawyers. “Qui ex duobus igitur campanis parentibus natus est, campanus est. Sed si ex patre compano, matre puteolana, aeque municeps campanus est: nisi forte privilegio aliquo materna origo censeatur: tunc enim maternae originis erit municeps. Utputa illiensibus concessum est, ut qui matre iliense est, sit eorum municeps. Etiam Delphis hoc idem tributum et conservatum est. Celsus etiam refert, Ponticis ex beneficio Pompeii magni competere, ut qui Pontica matre natus esset, Ponticus esset: quod beneficium ad vulgo quaesitos solos pertinere quidam putant: quorum sententiam Celsus non probat: neque enim debuisse caveri ut vulgo quaesitus matris conditionem sequeretur: quam enim aliam originem hic habet? sed ad eos qui ex diversarum civitatum parentibus orirentur,” l. 1. §. 2. Dig. ad Municipal. “Anyone who is born from two parents who are Campani is a Campanus. But if he is born from a father who is a Campanus and a mother who is a Puteolana, he is still a municeps Campanus, unless it happens that by some special dispensation the place of origin of the mother is taken into account; for then he will be a municeps [citizen] of the place of origin of the mother. Thus, for instance, it has been granted to the Iliensis that anyone who is born from a mother who is an Iliensis is one of their municeps. This dispensation has been granted to Delphi and also still exists there. Celsus also reports that the people of Pontus, by a grant of Pompeius Magnus, can regard anyone who is born from a mother from Pontus as being from Pontus. Some people hold that this grant only relates to children born out of wedlock; Celsus, however, does not agree with this view. For it would have been necessary to observe that a child born out of wedlock should have the status of the mother; for what other provenance can such a person have? But the grant relates to those who are born from parents of different communities” (The Digest of Justinian, L.1.2). See also l. 51. l. 61. These two references seem to be mistaken. Cod. Theod. de decurion. Codex Theodosianus V.2.2.]]

[* ]Du Halde, vol. 1. p. 179. [[The General History of China.]]

[† ]See the extract of a Spanish relation, printed by order of the Bishop of the city Della Paz, published in the Travels of the Jesuits, by Mr. Lockman, vol. 2. p. 446.

[‡ ]Father Gobien’s history of the Ladrone or Marian islands. [[II:59–61.—See Callender’s coll. vol. 3. p. 51, 52.]]

[* ]Charlevoix, journal historique de l’Amer. let. 19.

[† ]See Goguet’s origin of laws, &c. vol. 2. book 1.

[* ]Strabo, lib. 11. [[Geography, XI.13.12.]]

[* ]Modern Universal History, vol. 16. [[It is in fact VI:561.—Capt. Hamilton says, that upon the coast of Malabar a woman is not allowed to have more than twelve husbands.]]

[† ]Charlevoix, journal hist. [[Letter XIX.]]

[‡ ]Father Tachard, superior of the French Missionary Jesuits in the East Indies, gives the following account of the inhabitants in the neighbourhood of Calicut. “In this country,” says he, called Malleami, “there are castes, as in the rest of India. Most of them observe the same customs; and, in particular, they all entertain a like contempt for the religion and manners of the Europeans. But a circumstance, that perhaps is not found elsewhere, and which I myself could scarce believe, is, that among these barbarians, and especially the noble castes, a woman is allowed, by the laws, to have several husbands. Some of these have had ten husbands together, all whom they look upon as so many slaves that their charms have subjected.” [[Travels of the Jesuits. Lettres edifiantes et curieuses, translated by Mr. Lockman, vol. 1. p. 168.]]

[§ ]Vide Petit. dissert. de Amazon. [[Petit, De Amazonibus dissertatio, passim.]]

[2. ]Virgil Aeneid II.490–93.

Penthisilea in her fury leads,
The ranks of crescent-shielded Amazons.
She flashes through her thousands; underneath
Her naked breast, a golden girdle; soldier,
Virgin and queen, daring to war with men.
(Mandelbaum, trans.)

[* ]History of Kamtschatka [[215, 223.]]

[† ]Genesis, chap. xxix. ver. 18, 19, 20.

[‡ ][[James Macpherson, “The Battle of Lora, a Poem,” in The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, ed. Howard Gaskill (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 122–23. James Macpherson (1736–96) was a poet of Highland origins who wrote a series of poems, putatively sung by a bard named Ossian and putatively belonging to a larger epic, that drew on Gaelic sources but were mainly the product of Macpherson’s own imagination. The poems, combining Gaelic imagery and a long list of Gaelic names with a faux Homeric style, presented many of the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment—John Home, Hugh Blair, Lord Kames, and others—with the primitive, natural rough-hewn genius they had hoped for. Hume dissented from acclaiming the poem, but Millar clearly viewed it as genuine. As this poet was chiefly employed in describing grand and sublime objects, he has seldom had occasion to introduce any images taken from the pastoral life. From the following passages, however, there can be no doubt that, in his time, the people in the West-Highlands of Scotland, as well as upon the neighbouring coast of Ireland, were acquainted with pasturage. “The deer descend from the hill. No hunter at a distance is seen. No whistling cow-herd is nigh.” Carric-thura.

“Let Cuchullin,” said Cairbar, “divide the herd on the hill. His breast is the seat of justice. Depart, thou light of beauty. I went and divided the herd. One bull of snow remained. I gave that bull to Cairbar. The wrath of Deugala rose.” Fingal, B. II. Ibid., 69.

I am informed that, in the Erse language, the word used to denote a man who has nothing, signifies properly one who has no head of cattle; which affords a presumption that, in the countries where this language was spoken, pasturage was nearly coeval with property. It is, at the same time, difficult to imagine, that people should possess the art of managing a chariot drawn by horses, without having previously learnt something of the management of herds and flocks: Not to mention, that, in those parts of Britain which were known to the Romans, the pasturing of cattle was understood for ages before the time when Ossian is supposed to have lived.]]

[* ]The battle of Lora. [[Ibid., 123.]]

[3. ]Ovid Metamorphoses I.94–108.

In those times,
Upon its native mountain heights stood unfilled;
no wood had yet been hauled
Down to the limpid waves, that it might sail
To foreign countries; and the only coasts
That mortals knew in that age were their own.
The towns were not yet girded by steep moats;
There were no curving horns of brass, and no
Brass trumpets—straight, unbent; there were no swords,
No helmets. No one needed warriors;
The nations lived at peace, in tranquil ease.
Earth of itself—and uncompelled—untouched
By hoes, not torn by ploughshares, offered all
That one might need: men did not have to seek:
They simply gathered mountain strawberries
And the arbutus’ fruit and cornel cherries;
And thick upon prickly stems, blackberries;
And acorns fallen from Jove’s sacred tree.
There spring was never-ending. The soft breeze
Of tender zephyrs wafted and caressed
The flowers that sprang unplanted, without seed.
(Mandelbaum, trans.)

[* ]Iliad, book 3. l. 100. 127. 355.

[* ]

How to Icarius, in the bridal hour,
Shall I, by waste undone, refund the dower!
Pope’s Odyss. book 2. l. 153

[† ]Pope’s Odyssey, book 1. l. 453.

[* ]Among the Franks, so early as the compilation of the Salique law, it appears that a high degree of reserve was practised between the sexes. M. L’Abbé Velly quotes, from that ancient code, the following article, “Celui qui aura serré la main d’une femme libre, sera condamné à une amende de quinze sous d’or.” [[“He who has shaken the hand of a free woman, shall pay a fine of fifteen golden sous.” And he adds, “On conviendra que si notre siecle est plus poli que celui de nos anciens legislateurs, il n’est du moins ni fi respectueux, ni sì reservè.” “One will agree that while our century is more polite than that of our ancient legislators, it is neither as respectful, nor as reserved.” Histoire de France, tom. 1. p. 134.]]

[4. ]Milton, “L’Allegro,” p. 124.

[* ]M. de la Curne de Sainte Palaye has collected some extraordinary instances of that zeal with which those who enjoyed the honour of knighthood endeavoured to expose any lady who had lost her reputation—“Et vous diray encore plus,” says an old author, “comme j’ay ouy racompter à plusieurs Chevaliers qui virent celluy Messire Geoffroy, qui disoit que quant il chevauchoit par les champs, et il veoit le chasteau ou manoir de quelque Dame, il demandoit tousjours à qui il estoit; et quant on lui disoit, il est a celle, se la Dame estoit blasmee de son honneur, il se fust plustost detournè d’une demie lieue qu’il ne fust venu jusques devant la porte; et là prenoit ung petit de croye qu’il portoit, et notoit cette porte, et y faisoit ung signet, et l’en venoit.” [[“And you will say too, as I heard from many knights who saw Sir Geoffroy, that when he went riding in the fields, and saw the castle or manor of a Lady, he always asked who it belonged to; and when he was told that it belonged to a Lady who had been ‘blamed in her honor,’ he would rather ride a half [lieue] further than pass in front of her door; he would also take out a piece of chalk and mark the door, before leaving” (I:124–25 [note 43]).]]

[† ]Memoires sur l’ancienne chevalrie, par M. de la Curne de Ste. Palaye. [[I:118 (note 40).]]

[* ]Trouverres ou Troubadours.

[† ]Chanterres et Iongleoŭrs. [[Singers and Jugglers.]]

[‡ ]Histoire du theatre François, par. M. de Fontenelle. [[Oeuvres, III:2–3.]]

[5. ]La Chanson de Roland.

[6. ]Luigi Pulci’s Morgante (1480), Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato (1483), and Ludovico Ariosto’s continuation of Boiardo’s poem, Orlando Furioso, were three of the greatest comic works of the Italian Renaissance.

[7. ]Torquato Tasso’s epic poem, published in 1581, describing the First Crusade.

[8. ]Millar had a further reference to Edmund Spenser’s poem (1590) in the earlier edition of the Ranks.

[* ]Proverbs, chap. xxxi. ver. 13, &c.

[† ]Cornel. Nep. pref. [[De Viris Illustribus 6–8.—Cicero in Verrem. The most likely passage is III.xxxiii–xxxxv.]]

[‡ ]Thucydides, lib. 2. [[II.xlv [2].]]

[* ]Lys. Orat. cont. Diagit. [[“On an Indictment against Diogeiton,” in Gillies, The Orations of Lysias, 456.]]

[* ]See the oration of Lysias, in defence of Euphiletus, translated by Dr. Gillies [[420.]]

[† ]See Potter’s Greek antiquities [[I:171.]]

[9. ]Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, IV:208.

[* ]Menander apud Stobaeum. [[Millar appears to have taken this reference wholesale from Hume, “Of National Characters,” Essays, 99, n. 2. (I.xxi).]]

[10. ]Juvenal Satire VI.298–300. (“Filthy money imported obscene foreign morals. Effeminate wealth has shattered our age with venal luxury. When Venus is drunk she’s ready for anything.”)

[* ]What is here said with respect to polygamy is only applicable to that institution as it takes place among opulent and luxurious nations; for in barbarous countries, where it is introduced in a great measure from motives of conveniency, and where it is accompanied with little or no jealousy, it cannot have the same consequences.

[† ]“Helvius Cinna Trib, pleb. plerisque confessus est, habuisse scriptam paratamque legem, quam Caesar ferre jussisset, cum ipse abesset, uti uxores liberorum quaerendorum causa, quas et quot vellet, ducere liceret.” Suetonius in Julio, c. 52. [[“Helvius Cinna, tribune of the plebeians, had confessed to many that he had written and prepared a law for approval, that Caesar had ordered him to present, while he himself was absent, allowing Caesar to marry whomever he might like, and how many wives he might like, in order to produce legal heirs” (De Vita Caesarum LII [3]).]]

[* ]By the Roman law, about this period, divorces were granted upon any pretence whatever, and might be procured at the desire of either party. At the same time, the manners, which produced this law, disposed the people very frequently to lay hold of the privilege which it gave them; in so much that we read of few Romans of rank who had not been once divorced, if not oftener. To mention only persons of the gravest and most respectable character: M. Brutus repudiated his wife Claudia, though there was no stain upon her reputation. Cicero put away his wife Terentia, after she had lived with him thirty years, and also his second wife Publilia, whom he had married in his old age. His daughter Tullia was repudiated by Dolabella. Terentia, after she was divorced from Cicero, is said to have had three successive husbands, the first of whom was Cicero’s enemy, Sallust the historian. It was formerly mentioned that M. Cato, after his wife Marcia had brought him three children, gave her away to his friend Hortensius. Many of those trifling causes which gave rise to divorce are taken notice of by Valerius Maximus. Seneca declares that some women of illustrious rank were accustomed to reckon their years, not by the number of consuls, but of husbands [De beneficiis [[III.16.] As a further proof of the profligacy of that age, it is observed that men were sometimes induced to marry from the prospect merely of enriching themselves by the forfeiture of the wife’s dower, when she committed adultery. Valer. Max. lib. 6. c. 3.]]

[† ]The action for the recovery of such stolen goods was not called conditio furtiva [[an action against a thief or the heirs of a thief for the recovery of property, whether they still possessed it or not (Institutes IV.1.19), but actio rerum amotarum actions for property unlawfully removed, specifically when the wife removed property in expectation of a divorce and after the divorce the husband wished to recover the property granted him (Digest XXV:2); the “softening” Millar describes is from theft (furtiva) to removal (amotarum).]]

[* ]Heredipetae.

[† ]

———Tu protenus, unde
Divitias aerisque ruam, dic augur, acervos.
Dixi equidem, et dico. Captes astutus ubique
Testamenta senum; neu, si vafer unus et alter
Insidiatorem praeroso fugerit hamo,
Aut spem deponas, aut artem illusus omittas.

[[“Tell me, augur, tell me pronto, how I can scrape together a heap of riches and money. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Angle about, cunningly, for the wills of old men. If one or another sly lurker escapes by nibbling the bait off the hook, don’t lose hope, or stop purveying this art” (Satires II.5, 21–26). [See the whole of the 5th Satire, B. 2. of Horace.]

The Volpone, of Johnson, is entirely founded upon this part of ancient manners; but the ridicule of that performance is in a great measure lost, as the original from which it is drawn, and of which it is a faithful copy, has no place in any modern country. In Ben Jonson’s (1572–1637) Volpone (1606), the protagonist convinces his acquisitive neighbors that he is dying so that they will bring him gifts in hope of getting into his will. It is unclear why Millar thinks this is no longer a comprehensible plot device!]]

[* ]Lathmon. [[Poems of Ossian, 177.]]

[† ]Leviticus, chap. xix. ve. 32.

[‡ ]Job, chap. xxxii.

[§ ]Histoire generale des voyages. [[Histoire Generale des Voyages volume XIX contains Gmelin’s Travels, but I have been unable to find the passage in question.]]

[‖ ]This was the case among the Jews.—Among the North Americans, see Charlevoix [[Histoire et description générale, letter XVII.—Among the ancient Romans the elders formed the senate, and were called Patres.]]

[¶ ]In the language of the Arabs, see D’Arvieux trav. Arab. [[The Chevalier d’Arvieux’s Travels, 99. This also is the case in the German and most of the modern languages of Europe.]]

[* ]Notwithstanding that old men are commonly so much respected among savages, they are sometimes put to death when so far advanced in years as to have lost the use of their faculties. This shows, that the estimation in which they are held does not proceed from a principle of humanity, but from a regard to the useful knowledge they are supposed to possess. [[The anecdote is from Cicero De Senectute 18.]]

[* ]Pope’s translation of the Iliad, book 9. l. 582.

[† ]Genesis, chap. xxvii. ver. 38.

[* ]Operae officiales. [[This is the technical term in Roman law for the relation Millar describes in the body of the text.]]

[† ]Vide Heineccii antiq. Rom. lib. 1. Tit. 6. §. 9. Dig. Tit. de oper. libert. [[Digest XXXVIII.1 “De operas libertorum.” Inst. §. 1. de cap. deminut. l. un. I.xvii. De capitis minutione. Cod. de ingrat. liber. Codex VIII.49 “De Ingratis Liberis.”]]

[* ]Caesar de bel. Gall. lib. 6.

[† ]See Heineccius elem. jur. German. [[Elementa Iuris Germanici, Tum Veteris, Tum Hodierni (Naples, 1770), I.VI § CXXXV.]]

[‡ ]Genesis, chap. xlii. ver. 37.

[* ]Deuteronomy, chap. xxi. ver. 18.

[† ]Exodus, chap. xxi. ver. 7.

[‡ ]Sigon. de antiq. jur. civ. Roman. lib. 1. cap. 10. [[Carlo Sigonio, De Antiquo Iure Civium Romanorum Libri Duo.]]

[§ ]See [[Friedrich Christian Weber Present State of Russia, published 1722 201, 221.]]

[‖ ]Histoire generale des voyages [[vol. IX.—Chardin. tom. 1. Jean Chardin, Journal du Voyage du chevalier Chardin (no passage corresponds exactly).]]

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 4. liv. 10. chap. 3.

[† ]Narrative of the honourable John Byron [[148–49.]]

[* ]Aelian mentions the Thebans alone as having made a law forbidding the exposition of infants under a capital punishment, and ordaining, that if the parents were indigent, their children, upon application to the magistrate, should be maintained and brought up as slaves. Aelian var. hist. lib. 2. cap. 7. [[Aelian Varia Historia. See also Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, V.2.15.]]

[† ]Dion. Halicar. lib. 11. l. 11. Dig. de lib et postum. § 3. [[Digest XXVIII.2 “De liberis et postumis heredibus instituendis vel exheredandis.” Inst. per quas person. cuiq. adquir. l. ult. Institutes II.9 “Per quas personas nobis adquiritur.” Cod. de impub. et al. subst. l. 4. Codex “De impuberum et de aliis sustitutionibus.” Dig. de judic. § 6. Digest VI.26 “De iudiciis: ubi quisque agere vel conveneri debeat.” Inst. de inut. stip. Institutes III.19 “De inutilibus stipulationibus.”

Upon the same principle a father might claim his son from any person, by the ordinary action upon property, lib. 1. § 2. Dig. de rei vind. Digest VI.1 “De rei vindicatione.” If a son had been stolen from his father, the “actio furti” was given against the thief, l. 38. Dig. de furt. Digest 47.2 “De furtis.” When children were sold by their father, the form of conveyance was the same which was used in the transference of that valuable property which was called “res mancipi,” Cai Inst. l. 6. 3. Gaius’s Commentary I.18–19 on Institutes I.6 “Qui quibus et causis manumittere non possunt.”]]

[* ]This statute, which was afterwards transferred into the twelve tables, is thus handed down to us. “Endo liberis justis jus vitae, necis, venumdandique potestas ei esto. Si pater filium ter venumduit, filius a patre liber esto.” Ulp. frag. 10. 1. [[“Concerning the right of life or death and the power of selling, belonging to just free men. If the father sells the son three times, the son is free from the father.” This is from the fourth of the twelve tables, the oldest extant written Roman Law, which is preserved only in fragments. The writings of Ulpian (d. 228), one of the most important Roman jurists and legal editors, make up a large portion of the Digest.]]

[* ]See the treatise of Noodt, entitled Julius Paulus.—And that of Binckershook de jure occidendi liberos. [[In 1719 Cornelius van Bijnkershoek wrote Opusculum de Jure Occidendi Liberos against Gerard de Noodt’s Julius Paulus concerning the power of the father to expose infants in ancient Rome and Greece. The natural lawyer De Noodt had argued that positive laws had their value insofar as they responded to and expressed the natural law. Bijnkershoek felt that de Noodt had undermined the authority of the Corpus Juris by stressing the legality of the obviously immoral practice of exposure.]]

[* ]It was called “peculium castrense.” [[A peculium was essentially an allowance given a slave or son under parental power by the head of the household. The peculium castrense, or “military peculium,” was, unlike an ordinary peculium, within the power of the son, as was the peculium quasi castrense. Cf. Digest XV and XLIX.17.]]

[† ]Peculium quasi castrense. [[See previous note.]]

[1. ]“Usufruct” is the right to use without impairing the substance, in this case the right of the father to use what the son has acquired (Digest VII.1).

[‡ ]The subject so acquired was called peculium adventitium. Constantine made the first regulations concerning it, which were extended by his successors, especially by the emperor Justinian. Vid. Tit. Cod. de bon. matern. [[Codex VI.60 “De bonis maternis et materni generis.”—Tit. de bon. quae lib. Codex VI.61 “De bonis quae liberis in potestate patris.”]]

[§ ]L. 1. C. de pat. qui fil. distrax. l. 2. eod. [[Codex IV.43 “De patribus qui filios distraxerunt.” The chronology of the abolishment of the right of the father to sell his children as slaves is interesting insofar as it downplays the role of Christianity and shows the limiting of paternal power to have come about through a gradual process stretching from Hadrian (117–38) at the height of the pagan empire to the first Christian emperor Constantine (280–337).]]

[* ]L. 3. C. ne patr. potest. l. un. [[Codex VIII.46 “De patria potestate.” C. de his qui parent. Codex IX.17 “De his qui parentes vel liberos occiderunt.”]]

[2. ]The case that Millar’s readers would have in mind would be Brutus’s killing of his sons for attempting to overthrow the republic and restore the Tarquin tyranny (cf. Livy Ab Urbe Condita [History of Rome] II.5).

[* ]Vid. l. ult. Cod. de. pat. Potest.

[† ]Aristot. Ethic. lib. 6. cap. 10.

[‡ ]Though in China a man is not allowed to have more wives than one, yet he may have any number of concubines; which, in the point under consideration, must have nearly the same effect. Le Compte’s memoirs of China. [[Le Comte, Memoirs, 302.]]

[§ ]Ibid.

[* ]Travels of the Jesuits, compiled from their letters, translated by Lockman, vol. 1. p. 448.

[3. ]Cf. Robert Filmer, Patriarcha (1588–1653), passim (published posthumously in 1680). The best known responses to Filmer were James Tyrell’s Patriarcha Non Monarcha (1680), Algernon Sidney’s Discourse Concerning Government (1698), and John Locke’s First Treatise on Government (1689).

[* ]Mr. Kolben relates, that one of the Dutch governors at the Cape of Good Hope brought up an Hottentot according to the fashions and customs of the Europeans, teaching him several languages, and instructing him fully in the principles of the Christian religion, at the same time clothing him handsomely, and treating him in all respects as a person for whom he had an high esteem, and whom he designed for some beneficial and honourable employment. The governor afterwards sent him to Batavia, where he was employed under the commissary for some time, till that gentleman died; and then he returned to the Cape of Good Hope. But having paid a visit to the Hottentots of his acquaintance, he threw off all his fine clothes, bundled them up, laid them at the governor’s feet, and desired he might be allowed to renounce his Christianity, and to live and die in the religion and customs of his ancestors; only requesting that he might be permitted to keep the hanger and collar which he wore, in token of his regard to his benefactor. While the governor was deliberating upon this, scarce believing the fellow to be in earnest, the young Hottentot took the opportunity of running away, and never afterwards came near the Cape, thinking himself happy that he had exchanged his European dress for a sheep-skin, and that he had abandoned the hopes of preferment for the society of his relations and countrymen. [[Peter Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good-Hope, VIII.7 (pp. 106–7).

The English East-India Company made the like experiment upon two young Hottentots, but with no better success.]]

[* ]“Lorsqu’ils se soulevérent, et qu’il fut question d’élire un capitaine entre eux, ils prirent une grosse poutre, le chargérent sur leur épaules tour a tour, et celui qui la soutint le plus long tems, eut le commandement sur eux. Il y en eut beaucoup qui la soutirent 4. 5. et 6. heures; mais enfin il y en eut un la soutint 24. heures; et celui-la fût reconnu pour chef.” Voyage d’Olivier de Noort. Recueil de voy. qui ont. servi a l’etab. de la comp. dans les Indes Orient. des Pais Bas. [[“Once they rose up, and needed to elect a captain amongst them, they took a heavy beam, each one bore it on their shoulders in turn, and he who held it the longest obtained the command of the others. Many could hold the beam for 4, 5 or 6 hours; but one held it for 24 hours, and he was recognized as chief” (Voyage autour du monde, 65).]]

[† ]Montaigne’s essays. p. 169. Paris, 1604, 8vo. [[The passage is from “On the Cannibals,” in Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1987), 240.

It has been remarked, that all animals which live in herds or flocks are apt to fall under the authority of a single leader of superior strength or courage. Of this a curious instance is mentioned by the author of Commodore Anson’s voyage. “The largest sea-lion,” says he, “was the master of the flock; and, from the number of females he kept to himself, and his driving off the males, was stiled by the sea-men the bashaw. As they are of a very lethargic disposition, and are not easily awakened, it is observed, that each herd places some of their males at a distance in the manner of centinels, who always give the alarm whenever any attempt is made either to molest or approach them, by making a loud grunting noise like a hog, or snorting like a horse in full vigour. The males had often furious battles with each other, chiefly about the females; and the bashaw just mentioned, who was commonly surrounded by his females, to which no other male dared to approach, had acquired that distinguished pre-eminence by many bloody contests, as was evident from the numerous scars visible in all parts of his body.” Anson, A Voyage Around the World, 174.

In a herd of deer, the authority of the master-buck, founded upon his superior strength, is not less conspicuous.]]

[* ]Judges, chap. x. ver. 18; chap. xi. ver. 1. &c.

[* ]1 Samuel, chap. x. ver. 23, 24.

[† ]1 Samuel, chap. xviii. ver. 6, 7.

[‡ ]The admiration and respect derived from the possession of superior fortune, is very fully and beautifully illustrated by the eloquent and ingenious author of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments.” [[Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.iii.3.]]

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 9. liv. 3. chap. 3. p. 33.

[* ]Genesis, chap. xiii. ver 9.—We read, however, of Abraham’s buying a field for the particular purpose of a burying place, and of his having weighed, as the price, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant.

[† ]See D’Arvieux’s travels [[182.]]

[‡ ]See Professor Gmelin’s travels into Siberia [[chap. 15, I:303–4.]]

[§ ]That land is appropriated by tribes before it becomes the property of individuals, has been observed by Dr. Stuart, in his acute dissertation concerning the antiquity of the English constitution. [[Stuart, Historical Dissertation, 30–31.]]

[‖ ]Modern universal history, vol. 9. [[“Conquests and Settlements of the Portuguese in the East Indies,” 333.]]

[* ]Suevorum gens est longe maxima et bellicosissima Germanorum omnium. Ii centum pagos habere dicuntur: ex quibus quotannis singula millia armatorum, bellandi causa, suis ex finibus educunt. Reliqui domi manent: pro se atque illis colunt. Hi rursus invicem anno post in armis sunt: illi domi remanent. Sic neque agricultura, neque ratio, neque usus belli intermittitur. Sed privati et separati agri apud eos nihil est; neque longius anno remanere uno in loco, incolendi causa, licet: neque multum frumento, sed maximam partem lacte atque pecore vivunt, multumque sunt in venationibus. Caesar de bell. Gall. lib. 4. cap. 1.

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 3. liv. 7. chap. 13.

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 4. liv. 9. chap. 7. §. 5.

[* ]“Illum defendere, tueri, sua quoque fortia facta gloriae ejus assignare, praecipuum sacramentum est. Principes pro victoria pugnant; comites pro principe.” Tacit. de mor. German. [[XIV.1.]]

[1. ]“Litis contestatio” was a sort of preliminary hearing with a judge in which the plaintiff and the defendant presented their assertions and the case was formulated between them, allowing the hearing to move forward toward a judgment. See Gaius Institutionem iuris civilis Commentarii III.180.

[* ]Obtorto collo. [[Literally, “with a twisted neck.”]]

[2. ]The defendant who refused to speak was put in a prone position and stones were piled on her/him until s/he testified, was crushed, or both.

[* ]This is particularly the case among the Hurons and Natchez. Journal historique d’une voyage de l’Amerique, par Charlevoix, let. 30. [[Bossu, Nouveaux voyage aux Indes orientales, tom. 1. p. 42.]]

[† ]Modern Universal History, vol. 16. p. 300.

[3. ]

Noble and glorious progenitor of a sad line,
You, whom my mother boasted to be your daughter,
Who would likely blush to see me in this plight,
Sun, I come to look on you for the last time!
Racine, Phédre, 11.169–72.

[* ]“L’autorité des chefs s’étend proprement sur ceux de leur tribu, qu’ils considerent comme leurs enfans.”—“Leur pouvoir ne paroît avoir rein d’absolu, et il ne semble pas qu’ils ayent aucune voie de coaction pour se faire obeir en cas de résistance, on leur obéit cependant, et ils commandent avec autorité; leur commandement a force de prieres, et l’obeissance qu’on leur rend, paroît entierement libre.”—“Bien que les chefs n’ayent aucune marque de destinction et de superiorité, qu’on ne puisse pas le distinguer de la foule par les honeurs qu’on devroit leur rendre, à l’exception de quelques cas particuliers, on ne laisse pas d’avoir pour eux un certain respect; mais, c’est surtout dans les affaires publiques que leur dignité se soûtient. Les conseils s’assemblent par leurs ordres; ils se tiennent dans leurs cabanes, à moins qu’il n’y ait une cabane publique, destinée uniquement pour les conseils, et qui est comme une maison de ville; les affaires se traitent en leur nom; ils président à toutes sortes d’assemblées; ils ont une part considerable dans les festins, et dans les distributions generales.”—“De peur que le chefs n’usurpassent une autorité trop grande, et ne se rendissent trop absolus, on les a comme bridés, en leur donnant des adjoints, qui partagent avec eux la souveraineté de la terre, et se nomment Agoianders comme eux.”—“Après les Agoianders, vient le Sênat, composé des vieillards, ou des anciens, nommés dans leur langue Agokstenha: le nombre des ces senateurs n’est point dèterminê: chacun a droit d’entrer au conseil pour y donner son suffrage.” P. Lafitau moeurs de sauvages Ameriquains, 4to à Paris, 1724. tom. 1. p. 472–475. [[“The authority of the chiefs extends to their tribe proper, whom they consider as their children”;—“Their power does not appear to be absolute, and they do not seem to have any form of coercion at their disposal in case of resistance, yet they are obeyed, and they command with authority; their commands have the force of prayers, and the obedience they receive seems to be entirely free”—“Even though the chiefs have no marks of distinction or superiority, and one cannot distinguish them from others in a crowd by the honor due them, except in some particular cases, their people never cease to have a certain respect for them; but it is above all in public matters that their dignity is apparent. Councils are assembled by their orders; they are held in their cabins, unless there is a public cabin, intended solely for councils, and which is like a town hall; business is discussed in their name; they preside over all sorts of assemblies; they take considerable part in the feasts, and in the [general distributions.]”—“So as to prevent the chiefs from assuming too great an authority, of too absolute a kind, they have been partly thwarted by the attribution of adjuncts, who share with them the sovereignty over the earth, and are named Agoianders like them”; “After the Agoianders comes the Senate, composed of the old ones or ancients, known in their tongue as Agokstenha; the number of these senators is not fixed; each one can sit in the council to give his suffrage.”]]

[* ]Ibid. tom. 2. p. 167.—“La décision des affaires criminelles apartient immédiatement à ceux de la cabane des coupables, par rapport aux coupables même, quand quelqu’un d’une cabane en a tué un autre de la même cabane: comme on suppose qu’ils ont droit de vie et de mort les uns sur les autres, le village semble ne prendre nul interêt au disordre qui est arrivé—L’affaire change bien de nature, si le meurtre a été commis à l’egard d’une personne d’une cabane differente, d’une autre tribu, d’une autre village et encore plus d’une nation étrangere; car alors cette mort funeste interesse tout le public; chacun prend fait et cause pour le défunt, et contribue en quelque chose pour refaire l’esprit (c’est leur expression) aux parens aigris par la perte qu’ils viennent de faire; tous s’interessent aussi pour sauver la vie au criminel, et pour mettre les parens de celui-ci à couvert de la vengeance des autres, qui ne manqueroit pas d’éclater tôt ou tard si on avoit manquè à faire la satisfaction prescrite, dans des cas semblables, par leurs loix, et par leurs usages.”—“Il est des occasions où le crime est si noir, qu’on n’a pas tant d’egard pour garantir le meurtrier, et où le conseil, usant de son autorité suprême, prend soin d’en ordonner la punition.”—Ibid. tom. 1. p. 486, 487, 490, 495. [[“Decisions in criminal matters belong directly to those in the cabin of the guilty party, in relation to the guilty themselves, when someone in one cabin has killed another from the same cabin; as one assumes that they have the right of life and death over each other, the village does not seem to take much concern with such disorderly occurrences. The matter is quite different, however, if the murder victim was from a different cabin, tribe, village, or even more, from a foreign nation; then this untimely death is of concern to all; every one takes the side of the deceased party, and contributes something so as to ‘remake the mind’ (as they say) of the relatives who are embittered by their recent loss; all are also concerned with saving the life of the criminal, and protecting his relatives from the revenge of others, which would erupt without fail if satisfaction had not been given, according to their laws and customs.” “There are cases when the crime is so heinous that less care is taken to protect the murderer, and the council, by its supreme authority, is careful to order its punishment.”

See also the view which is given of the state of government among the Americans, by P. Charlevoix Journal historique d’un voyage de l’Amerique, let. 13. 18.]]

[* ]“The Arabian tribes, though they have been for many ages under the Turkish yoke, are rarely interrupted, either in what may concern the course of justice, or in the succession to those few offices and dignities that belong properly to themselves.—Every Dou-war (i.e. village or encampment) therefore may be looked upon as a little principality, over which it is usual for that particular family, which is of the greatest name, substance, and reputation, to preside. However, this honour does not always lineally descend from the father to son; but, as it was among their predecessors the Numidians, when the heir is too young, or subject to any infirmity, then they make choice of the uncle, or some other relation, who, for prudence and wisdom, is judged to be the fittest for that employ. Yet, notwithstanding the despotic power which is lodged in this person, all grievances and disputes are accommodated in as amicable a manner as possible, by calling to his assistance one person or two out of each tent; and as the offended is considered as a brother, the sentence is always given on the favourable side; and even in the most enormous crimes, rarely any other punishment is inflicted than banishment.” Shaw’s Travels, chap. 4. p. 310.

[† ]See Kolben’s History of the Cape of Good Hope.—[[VII.2, 85–86. Histoire general des voyages. The first edition of the Ranks lists 5, 6, 9 as the location.—Montesquieu, Esprit de Loix, liv. 18. chap. 19.]]

[* ]“Reges ex nobilitate; duces ex virtute sumunt. Nec regibus infinita aut libera potestas; et duces exemplo potius quam imperio, si prompti, si conspicui: si ante aciem agant, admiratione praesunt.” Tacitus de mor. German. §. 7. [[“Kings they choose for their birth, generals for their valour. But the kings do not have unlimited power without restriction, while the generals lead more by example than command; if they are energetic and seen by all, if they are active in the front ranks, their men look up to them” (VII.1). Cited by Smith in the same context in Lectures on Jurisprudence, iv.14. The two passages from Tacitus which follow are discussed by Smith in iv.18, i.e., all within the same day’s lecture. “De minoribus rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes. Ita tamen, ut ea quoque, quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertractentur.—Ut turbae placuit, considunt armati. Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus tum et coercendi jus est, imperatur. Mox rex vel principes prout aetas cuique, prout nobilitas, prout decus bellorum, prout facundia est, audiuntur, auctoritate suadendi magis quam jubendi potestate.” Ibid. §. 11. “The leading men take counsel over minor issues, the major ones involve them all; yet even those decisions that lie with the commons are considered in advance by the elite. Unless something unexpected suddenly occurs, they gather on set days.—At the command of the priest there is silence, since at this time too they have the right of enforcement. Then, according to his age, birth, military distinction, and eloquence, the king or leading man is given a hearing, more through his influence in persuasion than his power in command” (XI.1, 3). “Licet apud concilium accusare quoque, et discrimen capitis intendere. Distinctio poenarum ex delicto: proditores et transfugas arboribus suspendunt. Ignavos, et imbelles, et corpore infames, coeno ac palude, injecta insuper crate, mergunt.—Eliguntur in iisdem consiliis et principes, qui jura per pagos vicosque reddunt. Centeni singulis ex plebe comites, consilium simul et auctoritas adsunt.” Ibid. §. 12. “The assembly is also the place to bring charges and initiate trials in capital cases. Penalties are classed according to offence: traitors and deserters they hang from trees, but the cowardly and unwarlike and those who disgrace their bodies they submerge in the mud of a marsh, with a wicker frame thrown over it.—Likewise in these assemblies are chosen the leaders who administer justice in the cantons and hamlets; each has a hundred associates from the commons, who provide influence as well as advice.” Rives trans.

“Quum bellum civitas aut inlatum defendit, aut infert; magistratus, qui ei bello praesint, ut vitae necisque habeant potestatem, deliguntur. In pace, nullus est communis magistratus; sed principes regionum atque pagorum inter suos jus dicunt, controversiasque minuunt—ubi quis ex principibus in concilio dixit se ducem fore; qui sequi velint, profiteantur; consurgunt ii, qui et causam et hominem probant, suumque auxilium pollicentur; atque ab multitudine conlaudantur: qui ex iis secuti non sunt, in desertorum ac proditorum numero ducuntur; omniumque iis rerum postea fides derogatur.” Caesar, de bell. Gall. 6. §. 23. “When a state makes or resists aggressive war, officers are chosen to direct it, with the power of life and death. In time of peace there is no general officer of state, but the chiefs of districts and cantons do justice among their followers and settle disputes.—When any of the chiefs has said in public assembly that he will be the leader, [he proclaims,] “Let all those who will follow declare it,” and then all who approve the cause and the man rise together to his service and promise their own assistance, and win the general praise of the people. Any of them who have not followed, after their promise, are reckoned as deserters and traitors, and in all things afterwards trust is denied them.” Edwards, trans.]]

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, 4to. tom. 3. liv. 8. chap. 3. § 4.—Ibid. tom. 4. liv. 9. chap. 7. § 8.—liv. 10. chap. 2. 6.—See also Calendar’s collection of voyages, vol. 1. p. 67, 68.

[* ]

Δώδεκα γὰρ κατὰ δη̑μον ὰριπρεπέες βασιλη̑ες
Α’ρχοὶ κραίνουσι, τρισκαιδέκα ος δ’ ἐγὼ αὐτός
[[“For twelve distinguished kings have we had in our land as rulers, and I am the thirteenth.”
Odyss. lib. 8. v. 390.

]]

[† ]Pope’s Odyss. book 2. l. 19.

[‡ ]See Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian war, book 1. 2.

[1. ]Cecrops, traditionally the first king of Attica, was a mythic figure who interacted with the gods and was portrayed as having the body of a man above the waist and that of a snake below. He was associated with the institution of marital, funerary, and property customs.

[* ]Vid. Sigon. de repub. Atheniens. lib. 1. cap. 2.———Thucyd. hist. lib. 2 [[15[2].— Plutarch. in vit. Thesei 24.]]

[† ]See the account which is given of the forum originis, by the author of the historical law-tracts; whose acute and original genius has been employed in uniting law with philosophy, and in extending the views of a gainful profession to the liberal pursuits of rational entertainment. [[Lord Kames, Historical Law-tracts, chap. of courts I:363–67.]]

[‡ ]Dion. Halicarn. antiq. Rom. lib. 2. § 10.

[§ ]Dion. Halicarn. antiq. Rom. lib. 2. [[§ 3.—Polyb. hist. lib. 6. 13–17.—Hein. antiq. Rom. Hein I.II.46.]]

[* ]“In Gallia non solum in omnibus civitatibus, atque pagis, partibusque, sed pene etiam in singulis domibus, factiones sunt: earumque factionum sunt principes, qui summam auctoritatem eorum judicio habere existimantur: quorum ad arbitrium, judiciumque, summa omnium rerum consiliorumque redeat. Idque ejus rei causa antiquitus institutum videtur, ne quis ex plebe contra potentiorem auxilii egeret. Suos enim opprimi quisque, et circumveniri non patitur; neque, aliter si faciat, ullam inter suos habeat auctoritatem. Haec eadem ratio est in summa totius Galliae. Namque omnes civitates in duas partes divisae sunt.” [[“In Gaul there are factions not only in each state, canton, and district, but indeed in nearly every house, and the leaders of these factions are those who are esteemed by the judgments of their compatriots to have the greatest authority; they are those individuals to whose judgment and will the most important matters and counsels are referred. And this seems to have arisen from ancient institutions, that no one of the people should be lacking in strength against someone more powerful. For no one wants those close to him to be cheated and oppressed, for if he allows this he will have no authority among them. This holds for all of Gaul as well. For all the states are divided into two parts.” Caes. de bell. Gall. lib. 6. 11. See Treasurie of auncient and moderne Times. Pub. 1619. “Chapter 6: Of the Ancient Gaules,” in Mexia et al., Archaio-ploutos, 17.]]

[* ]Different authors have entertained very different opinions concerning the primitive state of landed property, and the origin of feudal tenures, in the modern nations of Europe. The antiquaries who first turned their attention to researches on this subject, those of France in particular, living under an absolute monarchy, appear to have been strongly prepossessed by the form of government established in their own times, and their conjectures, with regard to the early state of the feudal institutions, were for a long time almost implicitly followed by later writers. They suppose that, when any of the German nations settled in a Roman province, the king seized upon all the conquered lands: that, retaining in his own possession what was sufficient to maintain the dignity of the crown, he distributed the remainder among the principal officers of his army, to be held precariously upon condition of their attending him in war: and that these officers afterwards bestowed part of their estates upon their dependents or followers, under similar conditions of military service.

This account seems liable to great objections. 1st, It may be asked how the king came to possess so much power as would enable him, at once, to acquire the entire property of the conquered lands? For it must be remembered that the conquest extended over the ancient inhabitants of the country, not over his own followers; and with respect to these last, the accounts given by Caesar and Tacitus of the German nations, represent their princes as possessing a very limited authority.

2dly, Upon the supposition that all the conquered lands were originally held of the king during pleasure, his authority, immediately upon the settlement of these nations, must have been rendered altogether despotical. If the king had a power of dispossessing all his subjects of their landed estates, he must have been more absolute than any monarch at present upon the face of the earth. But the early history of the modern European nations, gives an account of their government very different from this, and informs us that the nobility of each kingdom enjoyed great independence, and a degree of opulence, in many cases, little inferior to that of the monarch.

The idea that the king became originally proprietor of all the conquered lands seems now, upon a fuller examination of facts, to be in a great measure relinquished; and several writers of late have made it at least extremely probable that the land in the conquered provinces was at first occupied, according to circumstances, by different individuals, or distributed by lot among the warriors of each victorious tribe; and that each possessor became the full proprietor of that portion of land which had fallen to his share. See Le droit publique de France, eclairci par les monumens de l’antiquité. Par M. Bouquet. [[12. See also observations sur l’histoire de France. Par M. L’Abbé de Mably. I:50–52.

It is true that, in the modern kingdoms of Europe, the proprietors of lands were early understood to be under an obligation of going out to war as often as the public interest required it. But this was a duty which they owed to the community as citizens, not to the king as vassals; and their attendance was required, not by an order of the monarch, but in consequence of a determination of the national assembly, of which they themselves were the constituent members.]]

[* ]In France, under the Merovingian kings, all deeds of any importance, issuing from the crown, usually contained some such expression as these: Una cum nostris optimatibus pertractavimus. De consensu fidelium nostrorum. In nostra et procerum nostrorum praesentia. [[“Together with our best we have consulted. Of our trustworthy agreement. In us and our trustworthy chiefs present.” Obser. par M. de Mably. I:238.. And there is good reason to believe that what is called the Salique Law was laid before the national assembly, and received their approbation. “Dictaverunt Salicam legem Proceres ipsius gentis, qui tunc temporis apud eam erant rectores.” Praef. leg. Sal. “Prologus” 1 § 2: “The Chiefs have spoken the Salic law of the clan, who then at that time were governed by it.” The early-sixth-century Lex Salica was the legal code of the Salian Franks. It is the only extant Germanic, pre-Christian legal code still in relatively pristine form. It is particularly important in French history as it was used to legitimate claims of royal succession, for example from the Capetians to the House of Valois. See lettres historiques sur les fonctions essentielles du parlement. Boulainvilliers let. sur le parl. de France. I:39, 126. There were references to both Hume’s and Robertson’s histories in this note in earlier editions of the Ranks.]]

[2. ]This was known as the Servian Constitution. The divisions based on wealth were traditionally attributed to the semimythical Servius, sixth king of Rome.

[* ]Fidelis Deo propitio ille, ad nostram veniens praesentiam suggessit nobis, eo quod propter simplicitatem suam, causas suas minimè possit prosequi, vel admallare, clementiae regni nostri petiit, ut inlustris vir ille omnes causas suas in vice ipsius, tam in pago, quam in palatio nostro admallandum prosequendumque recipere deberet, quod in praesenti per fistucam eas eidem visus est commendasse. Propterea jubemus, ut dum taliter utriusque decrevit voluntas, memoratus ille vir omnes causas lui, ubicumque prosequi vel admallare deberet, ut unicuique pro ipso, vel hominibus suis; reputatis conditionibus, et directum faciat, et ab aliis similiter in veritate recipiat. Sic tamen quamdiu amborum decrevit voluntas. Formul. Marculsi. 21.—Vid. Ibid. Formul. 13. [[“Trusting in gracious God, he, coming to our presence, has supplicated us, (for this reason) because on account of his simplicity he is little able to attend to his affairs or to represent himself legally, [and] he sought the clemency of our royal authority that this illustrious man in the place of the petitioner, both in the small town and in our palace, ought to undertake to represent legally and to attend to all his affairs because at the present time the petitioner seems to entrust his affairs to this same man because he has sworn per fistucam (i.e., taken a solemn, formal oath while grasping a stick [see Lex Salica, CXII]). On account of this, we order, because, as the will of each and both have decreed, the illustrious man having been reminded that all his affairs be discharged whenever he ought to attend to or legally represent him, that for each personally or for those represented he both do so directly and receive likewise from others. Once the conditions have been taken into consideration, however, this decree is valid for as long as both consent to it.” Marculfus’s Formulae Marculfi Libri Duo was a seventh-century formulary, i.e., a set of formulaic legal contracts that could be used in a variety of circumstances. See Karl Zeumer, ed., Monumenta Germaniae historica. Legum section V. Formulae (Hannover, 1886).

See also L’Esprit de Loix, liv. 31. chap 8. Montesquieu discussed Formula I.13 as part of his general comparison of Frankish constitutions and laws. Millar’s general point derives from Montesquieu, namely that Franks and Romans eagerly sought to become vassals as a means of protecting themselves from the chaos of the times.]]

[* ]“Tous les Francs indistinctement continuerent d’y avoir entrée; mais dans la suite leur nombre s’étant accru, la distinction entre les Gaulois et les Francs s’étant insensiblement effacé, chaque canton s’assembloit en particulier; et l’on n’admit plus guéres aux assemblées generales, que ceux qui tenoient un rang dans l’etat.” Let. hist. sur les parl. [[“All the Franks without distinction continued to accede to it; but subsequently, as they grew in number, and the distinction between Gauls and Franks had blurred, each canton gathered in its own assembly; thus no one was any longer admitted to the general assemblies who did not occupy a high rank in the State” (“Lettre III,” II:70).]]

[† ]In early times the Wittenagemote is called “infinita fidelium multitudo.” [[Literally, “unlimited throng of trustworthy men.”]]

[* ]Many of the French antiquaries and historians have believed that the feudal system was completed under their kings of the first race. (See Mezeray, hist. de France [[84, 36–37, 114, 277, 280.—Loyseau, traité des seigneuries I.1.15, 17–18; I.3.51.—Salvaing de l’usage des fiefs I:2.14.—) Others have supposed that military tenures were unknown during this early period, and were introduced, either about the time of Charlemagne, or towards the end of the second race of kings, or about the time of Hugh Capet. (See Boulainvilliers, lettres sur les parlemens de France. I:98–99, 108–9, 112, 118.—Chantereau de Fevre, traité des fiefs. I:6.—Henault, abr. de l’hist. de France. I:103.—Bouquet, droit public de France, &c. 1:2–3.) These various opinions appear to have arisen from a different view of the facts relating to the subject; and here, as in most other disputes, the truth probably lies in a middle between the opposite extremes. To those authors who observed that, soon after the settlement of the Franks in Gaul, the king and the great lords had a considerable number of vassals dependent upon them for protection, and liable in military service, it seemed a natural inference, that the whole land in the country was held by military tenure. Those on the contrary who discovered that, under the kings of the first and second race, the great lords were in possession of allodial estates, and who observed, that, after the reign of Hugh Capet, many of the perquisites incident to the feudal tenures were established, thought they had reason from thence to conclude that the feudal system was not introduced before this period. Hugh Capet (938–96) was the founder of the Capetian line, the kings who ruled France until the death of Charles IV in 1328.]]

[* ]From similar circumstances it has been a subject of controversy, whether the feudal system took place in England under the government of the Saxon monarchs, or whether it was not first introduced in the reign of William the Conqueror. See Wright’s Introduction to the law of tenures, chap. 2. and the authorities quoted by him upon both sides of the question.

Sir Henry Spelman having said in his Glossary, v. feodum, that fiefs were brought into England by William the Conqueror; and the judges of Ireland, in their argument in the case of defective titles, having pointed out that opinion as erroneous, this industrious antiquary was thence excited to write a treatise upon the subject, in which he explains his meaning to be nothing more but that, in England, fiefs were not rendered hereditary before the Norman conquest. Thus, after having stated the question, in the beginning of his treatise, he goes on as follows: “A feud is said to be usufructus quidam rei immobilis sub conditione fidei [[literally, “a type of usufruct of an immovable thing under the condition of trust”. But this definition is of too large extent for such kind of feuds as our question must consist upon: for it includeth two members or species greatly differing the one from the other; the one temporary and revocable (as those at will or for years, life or lives); the other hereditary and perpetual. As for temporary feuds, which (like wild fig-trees) could yield none of the feudal fruits of wardship, marriage, relief, &c. unto their lords, they belong nothing unto our argument.”—And a little after he adds, “But this kind of feud (we speak of) and no other, is that only whereof our law taketh notice, though time hath somewhat varied it from the first institution, by drawing the property of the soil from the lord unto the tenant. And I both conceive and affirm under correction, That this our kind of feuds being perpetual and hereditary, and subject to wardship, marriage, and relief, and other feudal services were not in use among our Saxons, nor our law of tenures (whereon they depend) once known unto them.” (Spelman’s treat. on feuds and tenures by knight-service, chap. 1.) In Gibson, ed., English Works, I:2. Spellman’s Glossarium Archaiologium (1664) was one of the main sources for volume I of Millar’s Historical View. The same author, in another part of his treatise, proceeds to shew that, in England among the Saxons, the estates of the nobility were denominated Boc-land, and were held in full property, but that Folc-land, or the land of the lower people, was held under condition of customary services, at the will of their lord the Thane. Ibid., chap. 5.

It is hoped the above remark will appear not improper; because the authority of Spelman, upon this point, has been considered as of much weight; and also because some writers appear to have mistaken his opinion by consulting the passage in his glossary, without attending to the subsequent treatise i.e., “The Original, Growth, Propagation and Condition of Feuds and Tenures by Knight-Service, in England”, published among his posthumous works by Dr. Gibson.]]

[* ]See Boulainvilliers, lettres sur les parl. de France. [[Lettre III, II:98.]]

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, 4to. tom. 4. 5. [[6 liv. 13. chap. 2, 3, 4.—Ibid. tom. 4. liv. 11. chap. 1. 6. § 2.—Modern Universal History 3, vol. 16. p. 81.]]

[* ]Modern Universal History, vol. 6. p. 254.

[† ]Modern Universal History, vol. 7. p. 54, 62, 64, 127, 188, 190, 225, 263, 273.

[* ]Les voyages d’une Philosophe. [[Pierre Poivre, The Travels of a Philosopher, 63.]]

[† ]See Ricault’s State of the Ottoman Empire. [[Rycault, The Present State, III. 3. 342.]]

[‡ ]Herodian. hist. lib. 6. [[5.3–4.]]

[* ]Histoire critique de l’etablissement de la monarchie Françoise dans les Gaules. [[II:381–83, 464, 466.]]

[* ]De bell. Gall. lib. 1. [[29.]]

[1. ]This paragraph and the one preceding it are perhaps the most succinct description to be found in eighteenth-century political theory of the growth of commerce and opulence, and of the subsequent democratization and breakdown of static hierarchies of ranks. But as is apparent from the next section, Millar thought that opulence in large nations tended to give more power to the sovereign than to the people.

[1. ]Smith presented five different ways of acquiring slaves in his lectures (LJ [A] iii.145–47), all of which fit into Millar’s neater threefold division.

[* ]These captives are worse treated by some of the American nations than by others; but in fact they are always retained in the condition of slaves. See Lafitau, Moeurs de Sauvages Ameriquains, 4to. tom. 2. p. 308.

[† ]See the accounts which are given of the conquests made by Genghizkhan. Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 9. liv. 3. chap. 3. § 11.

[* ]Histoire generale des voyages, tom. 3. 4. 5.

[* ]In North America, where slaves are said to be much better treated than in the West-India islands, it is believed, the expence of a negro-slave, for common labour, is not much inferior to that of a free labourer. In the Jerseys, and in New York, the expence of a negro-slave may be stated as follows:

The original price, about 100 l. currency, for which double interest allowed, at 7 per cent.	£ 14
Yearly expence of clothing	6
For medicines. &c.	3
For maintenance	15
In all	£. 38

A free labourer, in those provinces, when hired by the year, receives from 24 l. to 30 l. yearly; to which may be added 15 l. for maintenance. And in balancing this account we must take in the risk that the negro, when purchased, may not be fit for the purpose, and that his labour may be of little value.

[* ]See Hein. Ant. Rom. lib. l. tit. 5. §. 6. This regulation, however, admitted of an exception, where a man fraudulently suffered himself to be sold in order to share in the price; in which case he became the slave of the person whom he had defrauded. L. 3 Dig. quib. ad libert. proclam. non licet. [[XL. 13 Quibus ad libertatem proclamare non licet.]]

[† ]It is accordingly held, in the later Roman law, that a soldier is entitled to no part of the plunder acquired in war, unless from the special donation of the emperor. L. 20. §. 1. Dig. de capt. et postl. [[Digest XLIX.15 “De Captivis et de postliminio et redemptis ab hostibus.” l. 36. §. 1. c. de donat. Digest XXXIX.5 “De donationibus.”]]

[2. ]This passage, and much of the argument following it, parallels Smith’s “economic” argument against slavery in LJ (A) iii.112–17, LJ (B) 138, and Wealth of Nations, III.ii.9.

[3. ]“We may observe that the state of slavery is a much more tolerable one in [a] poor and barbarous country than in a rich and polished one” (Smith, LJ [A] iii.105).

[* ]Plaut. Amphitr. [[ll. 170–73:

Your wealthy master who takes no part in wealth nor toil,
Presumes that whatever happens to occur to a man can be satisfied,
He reckons that fair and doesn’t take account of how much work it is,
nor will he think whether he orders something fair or unfair.

]]

[* ]Juven. Sat. 6. [[479–86: “One will have a rod broken over his back, another will be bleeding from a strap, a third from the cat; some women engage their executioners by the year. While the flogging goes on the lady will be daubing her face, or listening to her lady friends, or inspecting the widths of a gold embroidered robe. While thus flogging and flogging, she reads the lengthy Gazette, written right across the page, till at last, the floggers being exhausted, and the inquisition ended, she thunders out a gruff, “Be off with you!” Her household is governed as cruelly as a Sicilian court.” Ramsay, trans.

Vedius Pollio, a Roman citizen, is said to have fed the fishes in his fish-ponds with the flesh of his own slaves. Donat. ad Terentii Phorm. act 2. scen. 1. This refers to Aelius Donatus’s fourth-century commentary on Terence’s comedies, Commentum Terenti. The story goes back to Seneca De Irae III.40. There are nearly identical citations in LJ (A) iii.92–93, LJ (B) 135, and Wealth of Nations, IV.7.77.

With regard to the treatment of the Roman slaves, see Mr. Hume’s learned essay on the populousness of ancient nations. “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” in Essays, 391–94 (II.xi.8–13).]]

[* ]Exodus, chap. xxi. ver. 20, 21, 26, 27. It has been a question whether the last quoted laws, in ver. 26 and 27, related to the slaves acquired from foreign nations, or only to such of the Israelites as had been reduced into a state of servitude. Grotius is of the latter opinion. Vide Grot. com. ad cit. cap. [[Grotius, Annotationes in Vetus Testamentum, XXI: 27.]]

[† ]See Potters’ Antiquities of Greece, book 1. chap. 10.

[* ]Vide Hein. antiq. Rom. lib. 1. tit. 8.

[* ]The following account is given by Tacitus, concerning the state of the slaves among the ancient Germans, “Aleam,” says he, speaking of that people, “sobrii inter seria exercent, tanta lucrandi perdendique temeritate ut cum omnia defecerunt, extremo ac novissimo jactu, de libertate, et de corpore contendant. Victus voluntariam servitutem adit. Quamvis junior, quamvis robustior, alligare se ac venire patitur; ea est in re prava pervicacia: ipsi fidem vocant: servos conditionis hujus per commercia tradunt, ut se quoque pudore victoriae exsolvant. [[“Surprisingly, gambling for them is a serious matter, in which they engage when sober; so recklessly do they win and lose that when all is gone they stake their bodily freedom on the last and final throw. The loser willingly becomes a slave; although perhaps the younger and stronger, he suffers himself to be bound and sold. Such is their persistence in a thoroughly bad business: they themselves call it honour. Slaves of this sort they exchange in trade, to free themselves from the shame of victory” (XXIV.2, Rives, trans.).

“Ceteris servis, non in nostrum morem descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit. Frumenti modum dominus, ut colono injungit: et servus hactenus paret. Cetera domus officia, uxor ac liberi exsequuntur. Verberare servum, ac vinculis et opere coercere rarum. Occidere solent, non disciplina et severitate, sed impetu et ira, ut inimicum, nisi quod impune.”“The other slaves they do not use as we do, with designated duties throughout the household; each one controls his own holding and home. The master requires from him, as from a tenant, some amount of grain or livestock or clothing, and only so far must the slave submit; the wife and children perform the other domestic chores. Seldom do they beat a slave or punish him: not through hard discipline, but in a fit of rage as they would a foe, except that the deed is unpunished” (XXV.1, Rives, trans.). Tacit. de mor. German. § 24, 25.]]

[* ]Potgiesserus de statu servorum, lib. 2. cap. 1, 3, 4, 5, 9. Ibid. cap. 10. § 3, 7, 8. Ibid. lib. 3. § 1, 3.

[* ]Potgiesserus de statu serv. lib. 2. cap. 1. § 24. A singular proof of the moderation of the masters in correcting their slaves, about this period, is mentioned by the same author, as follows:

“Quae tamen coercitio aliquando eo modo emollita fuit, ut servi non nisi fustibus crassitiem et latitudinem unius veru adaequantibus coercerentur, sicuti in codice membranaceo Werdinensi vetusto me observasse reminiscor.” Ibid.[[“Indeed punishment was lessened at some time in such a way, that slaves were not punished unless by a cudgel the thickness and breadth of one spear, thus I remember to have noted in the ancient vellum codex of Werdensis.”]]

[† ]Vide Hein. antiq. Rom. lib. 1. tit. 3. § 8.—1. un cod. de colon. Thrac. 1. 21. [[Codex XI.52 “De colonis Thracensibus.” cod. de agric. et censit. novell. 162. cap. 3. Codex XI.48 “De agricolis censitis vel colonis.”]]

[* ]See Dr. Wallace, on the numbers of mankind. [[Wallace for the most part seems to have argued against the position Millar is advocating; for example, “almost every page of antient history demonstrates the great multitude of slaves; which give occasion to a melancholy reflection, that when the world was best peopled, it was not a world of free men, but of slaves” (92). Wallace generally stressed household slavery (90), and this may be why Millar invokes him here. Hume’s “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” which Millar cited in the first and second editions of Ranks and whom Wallace argued amiably against, seems a much better support for his claim. Cf. Hume, Essays, 387–88 (II.ix.13).]]

[* ]The stock which is delivered by the master to his tenant goes under the name of “steel-bow goods” in the law of Scotland. At the end of the lease the tenant is bound to restore the same in quantity and quality to the master. [[See Stair, Institutions of the Laws of Scotland, I.11.4. Smith discussed “steel-bow” tenants in LJ (A) iii.123–26, LJ (B) 292–93, and Wealth of Nations, III.ii.13–14.]]

[4. ]See Smith, LJ (A) 128–33, LJ (B) 141, and Wealth of Nations, III.ii.12.

[* ]Thus Onesimus, notwithstanding his conversion to Christianity, is understood by the apostle Paul to continue still the slave of Philemon [[Onesimus was a runaway slave whom Paul met in prison and converted to Christianity; and it is not supposed that the master, who was also a Christian, was under an obligation to relinquish any part of his authority, far less to give liberty to his servant. See St. Paul’s epistle to Philemon. See also, to the same purpose, Rom. chap. xiii ver. 1, &c.—Ephes. chap. vi. ver. 5.—Coloss. chap. iii. ver. 22.—1 Tim. chap. vi. ver. 1, 2.—Tit. chap. ii. ver. 9, 10.—1 Pet. chap. ii. ver. 18.—1 Cor. chap. vii. ver. 21, 22. See Smith’s similar discussion of the role of Christianity in the abolition of slavery at LJ (A) iii.127–28 and LJ (B) 142.]]

[* ]See the publications on this subject by Anthony Benezet. [[A Philadelphia Quaker of French extraction, Anthony Benezet (1713–84) was the most important activist and pamphleteer of the early antislavery movement. See particularly: Observation on the inslaving, importing and purchasing of Negroes; A short account of that part of Africa, inhabited by the negroes; A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies, in a short representation of the calamitous state of the enslaved Negroes in the British dominions; Some historical account of Guinea, its situation, produce and the general disposition of its inhabitants.]]

[* ]See Boulainvil. sur les Parl. de France. let. 4. Potgiesserus de stat. serv. lib. 2. cap. 10. § 12.—Ibid. cap. 11. § 2. [[Millar is referring to Alexander III’s order in 1167 to the Muslim ruler of Valencia not to enslave Christian subjects. See Wealth of Nations, III.ii.12.]]

[* ]See the different decrees of councils referred to by Potgiesserus de stat. serv. lib. 4. cap. 2. § 4, 5.

In one of these it is enacted, “Episcopus liberos ex familiis ecclesiae, ad condemnationem suam facere non praesumat. Impium enim est, ut qui res suas ecclesiae Christi non contulit, damnum inferat, et ejus ecclesiae rem alienare contendat. Tales igitur libertos successor episcopus revocabit, quia eos non aequitas, sed improbitas absolvit.” [[“Under penalty of condemnation, the bishop should not presume to make men free from the families of the church (i.e., his parish). Indeed it is sacrilegious that someone who does not contribute property to the church of Christ, should harm it and may hasten to sell off the property of his church. Therefore each successor bishop will recall such freed men [to servitude], because the initial act of freeing them was wicked.”

In another it is said, “Mancipia monachis donata ab abbate non liceat manumitti. Injustum est enim, ut monachis quotidianum rurale opus facientibus, servi eorum libertatis otio potiantur.” “Slaves given to the monks ought not to be freed by an abbot. Indeed it is unjust that while the monks are doing their daily rural work, their slaves take possession of the leisure of liberty.” That is, since the abbot does not work he has no right to take away a working monk’s slave.

It is likely, however, that the clergy treated their slaves with greater lenity than was usual among the rest of the people. Mention is made of a bishop of Arles, who, in conformity to the Mosaical institution, never allowed above thirty-nine stripes to be given, at one time, to any of his servants.—“Solebat sanctus vir id accurate observare, ut nemo ex istis qui ipsi parebant, sive ille servi essent, sive ingenui, si pro culpa flagellandi essent, amplius triginta novem ictibus ferirentur. Si quis vero in gravi culpa deprehensus esset, permittebat quidem ut post paucos dies iterum vapularet, sed paucis.” Ciprianus in vita S. Caesarii, Cit. Potgiess. lib. 2. cap. 1. § 6. “The holy man was accustomed to see to it that no one out of those who had appeared before him, neither slaves, nor natives, if they were whipped for a crime, was beaten with more than thirty-nine stripes. But if someone was truly mired in grave sin, it was permitted indeed to flog him again after a few days, but less.”]]

[* ]See Boulanvil. lettres sur les Parl. des France. let. 4, 5.

[† ]See observations on the statutes, chiefly the more ancient: 1 Rich. II. 1377. Smith’s Commonwealth of Eng. B. 3 chap. 10.

[* ]With regard to the state of the villains, while they existed in Scotland, see Regiam Majestatem. lib. 2. cap. 11, 12, 13, 14. Quoniam Attachiamenta. cap. 56. [[Regiam Majestatem was a compilation of the old Scots law, and Quoniam Attachiamenta a manual of court procedure. Although both are fourteenth-century works, they draw together much older Scots law.]]

[† ]The right of the master, with regard to the labour of colliers and salters, is secured by statute, parl. 1606. c. 11. [[The notorious Colliers Act essentially made colliers and salters—coal miners and charcoal producers—serfs, insofar as they were bound to their masters, transferable when the mines they worked were sold, and punishable as slaves for running away (those who aided them were punished as well). The bondage of the colliers was not a vestige of old feudal practice but rather had been instituted to keep skilled laborers from leaving the mines. The act was limited in 1775 and repealed only in 1799. In other words, there was still slavery of a sort in Scotland when the last lifetime edition of the Ranks appeared. Recent research, however, has shown that the practice was not as brutal as Millar made out and that the status of colliers did not change much after 1799. See Christopher A. Whatley, “The Dark Side of the Enlightenment? Sorting out Serfdom” in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: New Perspectives, ed. T. M. Devine and J. R. Young (East Lothian, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 1999), 259–74. (Thanks to Richard Sher for the reference.)]]

[* ]See Anderson’s history of commerce, vol. 1. p. 336—The first importation of negro-slaves into Hispaniola was in the year 1508. Ibid.

[* ]Athenaeus lib. 6. cap. 20. Under the administration of Pericles the free citizens of Athens were not so numerous. See Plutarch, in Pericles. [[This remark does not appear to correspond to a particular passage in Plutarch’s Life of Pericles.]]

[† ]Mr. Hume supposes that, in the above enumeration, none but heads of families, either of the slaves or free men, are included; from which it would follow that, throwing aside the strangers, the slaves exceeded the citizens nearly as twenty to one; and as this disproportion is highly incredible, he is of opinion that the number of slaves should be reduced to 40,000. But the precise reduction to this number is entirely arbitrary; and upon the supposition which I have made, there will be no reason to suspect the account either of exaggeration or inaccuracy. [[Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays, 427 (II.xi.111).]]

[* ]Seneca de tranquillitate, cap. 8.

[† ]Lib. 33. cap. 10. [[Pliny Naturalis Historia XXXIII.47 [135].]]

[‡ ][[Athenaeus History Lib. 6. cap. 20.]]

[* ]Dion. Hal. Antiq. Rom. lib. 3. [[Actually IV.24 [5].]]

[* ]The following facts, with regard to the comparative price of the labour of colliers in Scotland and England, and of that of colliers in comparison with other labourers, in both countries, have been communicated to the author by a gentleman of great knowledge and observation. [[The “gentleman” is likely Adam Smith, since Smith discussed the colliers at LJ (A) iii.127–30 and LJ (B) 139 and provided documentary evidence of their wages. Millar presumably got this information from Smith’s lectures and personal discussion. See also Wealth of Nations, I.x.b.15.

In Scotland, a collier labouring eight hours in twenty-four, earns, exclusive of all expence, twelve shillings per week, or two shillings per day. More particularly,

In the county of Mid-Lothian, at an average, about thirteen shillings.

In the county of Fife, about twelve shillings.

In the counties of Linlithgow and Stirling, thirteen shillings.

In the county of Ayr, thirteen shillings and upwards.

It is to be observed, however, that this is not what every collier actually earns, but what every collier who works his regular task gets; and this exclusive of bearers.

The labourers in the lead-mines at Lead-hills, Wanloch-head, &c. in Scotland, working eight hours in twenty-four, earn eight shillings per week.

At Newcastle the colliers earn nine shillings per week.

Common labour at Newcastle is at six shillings per week.—In the county of Mid-Lothian in Scotland five shillings.—In the county of Fife four shillings.—In the counties of Linlithgow and Stirling five shillings.—In the county of Ayr from five shillings and sixpence to six shillings.—At Lead-hills, Wanloch-head, &c. six shillings.]]

[* ]By a late act of parliament such regulations have been made as, in a short time, will probably abolish the remains of that servitude to which this order of men have been so long subjected. [[See note p. 269.]]

[† ]These observations were made about the year 1765, and relate more immediately to the parishes of Vere, Hanover, and St. Thomas in the vale.

[* ]See American Husbandry, published in 1775. [[John Mitchell and Arthur Young, American Husbandry. Containing an Account of the Soil, Climate, Production, and Agriculture of the British Colonies in North-America and the West-Indies (London: J. Bew, 1775), II:138, 146.]]

[5. ]Benjamin Rush favorably quotes a letter from Granville Sharpe in An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements, on the Slavery of the Negroes in America, in which Sharpe suggests that slaves be paid wages one working day every week as a step in the abolition of slavery (Benjamin Rush, An Address, pp. 20–21n). Rush’s Vindication, cited by Millar in the next note, was published in a volume with An Address.

[* ]See [[Benjamin Rush a vindication of the address to the inhabitants of the British settlements on the slavery of the negroes in America, by a Pennsylvanian, printed at Philadelphia, 1773.]]

[† ]In the case of Somerset, the negro, decided in 1772. [[James Somerset was owned by Charles Stewart, a Bostonian. Stewart brought Somerset to England, where he escaped. After Somerset’s recapture, Stewart sent him on a ship to Jamaica. Granville Sharpe, the antislavery activist, convinced Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, to issue a writ of habeas corpus. The ship was stopped, Somerset returned to England, and the case proceeded. Eventually Mansfield ruled in Somerset’s favour and Somerset was freed.]]

[‡ ]Joseph Knight, a negro, against John Wedderburn, 15th January 1778. [[Sir John Wedderburn brought his slave Joseph Knight from Jamaica to Scotland where after a few years Knight petitioned the courts for his freedom. Wedderburn made a distinction between perpetual servitude—using the colliers as precedent—and slavery, and won an initial case in 1774. Knight appealed and eventually won the case in 1778.]]

[1. ]Chapter I. Of the rank and condition of women in different ages

Chapter II. Of the jurisdiction and authority of a father over his children

Chapter III. Of the authority of a chief over the members of a tribe or village

Chapter IV. Of the rise of a sovereign over an extensive society, and the advancement of a people in civilization and refinement

Chapter V. Of the condition of servants in different parts of the world

Back to Top
11: 11. Condillac, Commerce and Government Considered in Their Mutual Relationship (1776)

Étienne Bonnot, abbé de Condillac, was born in Grenoble in 1714 into a family of local and royal officials. He had a brother who was also an important philosophe, Gabriel, abbé de Mably. Poor vision seems to have kept him from reading until at least the age of twelve, when he began to be educated by a local priest and at the Jesuit collège. He went to Paris and the Sorbonne, and became a priest in 1740, though he said only one Mass. He came instead to know the salon scene (especially Rousseau, Diderot, d’Holbach, Helvétius, and Voltaire) and take up English philosophy with enthusiasm. In 1746, he wrote a sensationalist work in the Lockean and Newtonian traditions (opposed to Descartes), Essay on the origin of human knowledge, which argued that all the higher mental powers derive from the senses. In 1749, his work A Treatise on systems argued for human limits to our knowledge, against the disordered imagination of philosophical systems. A Treatise on the sensations (1754) deepened this line of thinking. His Course of Study (Cours d’étude), based on his tutorial of the child Ferdinand, son of the Duke of Parma (1758-67), applied these ideas to education. He became a member of the Académie Française. Diderot was among the many Frenchmen influenced by Condillac’s philosophy. In 1780, the Polish government invited him to write Logic, or the first developments of the art of thinking. That same year, he turned down an offer to tutor the dauphin’s sons; he died in 1780. The work excerpted here is his 1776 Le Commerce et le gouvernement considérés relativement l’un à l’autre. Notably, he makes subjective utility, not intrinsic quality, the touchstone of value and departs from the Physiocratic dogma that land alone is the source of all wealth, for which reason he was anathematized by that school. His ill-timed treatise was one of the most important general statements of market economics before Adam Smith, by whose work it was eclipsed. As such, it makes a fitting end to the present introduction. The excerpts here are chapters 1, 6, 7, and 8. and were chosen because they provide a useful introduction to his ideas on value and on the sources of wealth.

Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, Commerce and Government Considered in their Mutual Relationship, translated by Shelagh Eltis, with an Introduction to His Life and Contribution to Economics by Shelagh Eltis and Walter Eltis (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2125 on 2009-04-23

This book was originally published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 1997, copyright 1997 by Shelagh Eltis and Walter Eltis. Reprinted by permission of Edward Elgar Publishing.

PREFACE

We both read Commerce and Government for the first time in 1990, and we were astonished that such a brilliantly written and powerfully argued book had made so little impact, and that it had never been translated into English. We resolved then, six years ago, that we would produce the first English language edition.

Commerce and Government was published in the same year as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and their analysis and implications for policy have much in common. It was presented with the comparative brevity and precision of a distinguished philosopher of the French Enlightenment, who was one of the first to base value on utility, an achievement which was recognised after the marginal revolution of the 1870s.

Eighteenth-century France was not fertile ground for the demolition of dirigisme, and the advocacy of the universal benefits of competition was resisted everywhere by vested interests. The physiocrats who controlled an economic journal in which the book was reviewed took exception to Condillac’s powerful demonstration that industry and commerce and not merely agriculture contributed to the wealth of France. The reviews were dismissive, the great preferred Colbert, so Commerce and Government made little headway in France, and British political economists of the eighteenth century were unaware of it, so there was no demand for an immediate translation. The abbé Morellet sent a copy to the Earl of Shelburne, the future British Prime Minister, with the accolade that “in every part of it you will find freedom of commerce sustained.” There may have been an occasional nineteenth- or twentieth-century British Prime Minister who could plausibly be expected to wish to read 90,000 words of French political economy in French, but the eighteenth century was another world.

After 1990 we pursued detailed research, on Condillac’s life: Chapter 1 (by Shelagh Eltis) is the result; and on the impact of his economics, which is outlined in Chapter 2 (by Walter Eltis). This was preceded by conference papers on his economics in the École Normale Supérieure in St-Cloud, Paris, and in the University of Birmingham, with the subsequent publication of articles on Condillac’s economics in French and English language journals.

Condillac’s life is a revelation. He combined the respect and friendship of Voltaire and Rousseau (he is prominent in the Confessions) with the high regard of the King and the Church. He was appointed Director of Studies to Louis XV’s grandson, the Bourbon heir to the throne of Parma, and after the success of that assignment, he was invited to go on to supervise the education of the three royal children who subsequently reigned in France: Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. He declined that invitation which could have changed the world if he had had any impact.

In 1796, after the Revolution, the Minister of the Interior, no less, believed that education in France would be advanced by a complete edition of Condillac’s works which made use of all his posthumous papers. Orders were given for the preparation of an edition which appeared in 1798 in twenty-three volumes and included Commerce and Government. The story is outlined in Chapter 3. It takes a certain kind of genius to earn the admiration of liberal philosophers, a monarchy and a post-revolutionary government.

It will give us great pleasure if this first English language translation increases the attention which Condillac’s economics deservedly receives. We have had valuable help from the Taylorian Library in Oxford, the Direction des Archives Municipales in Grenoble, Professor Ramon Tortajada of the University of Grenoble, Professor Gloria Vivenza of the University of Verona, Dr Adam Brown, and the participants at the conferences in St-Cloud and Birmingham.

SHELAGH ELTIS
WALTER ELTIS
Oxford

THE LIFE AND CONTRIBUTION TO ECONOMICS OF THE ABBÉ DE CONDILLAC

1

Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, 1714–1780

Birth and Family

Étienne Bonnot, known to posterity as the abbé de Condillac, was born in Grenoble on 30 September 1714.1 He was the youngest child of a large family. His parents both came from families of lawyers and officials which entered the noblesse de robe in the early eighteenth century. The noblesse de robe was an aristocracy built on the purchase of offices under the monarchy. Such offices could be very expensive to purchase. In 1705, Gabriel Bonnot, Étienne’s father, paid 10,000 livres for that of Secretary of the King in the Court of the Parlement of the Dauphiné, which brought him noble rank with the title vicomte de Mably. Local importance, tax exemptions, freedom from having soldiers billeted on one’s household, and the income from fees payable to such officeholders all made such investments worthwhile. For the monarchy it brought desperately needed short-term income and an opportunity to recruit fresh talent.

Gabriel Bonnot amassed a fortune through this and other posts such as receiver of tailles—the main land and personal tax—and as registrar of births, etc., for the Oisan; he was also a royal castellan, though jealousy probably forced him to resign the latter two offices in 1714. He invested heavily in royal stock and in land: it has been calculated that he invested more than 85,000 livres in government stock, and, significantly, he seems to have reached the peak of his fortune in 1720. In 1719 he bought the domain of Mably for 300,000 livres and the following year that of Condillac, near Romans.

Gabriel Bonnot died in September 1726 leaving his wife and dependent children comfortably off, despite losses in his investment income following the collapse of Law’s system. Each son was bequeathed the sum of 25,000 livres on attaining the age of twenty-five. Their mother also held a life interest in annuities in their names. The income from both these sources, reckoned at 1,300 livres a year, would have given Condillac a modest competence. It also meant that he was not to be forced into the Church as a younger son whose family lacked means.

At his father’s death Étienne was nearly twelve years old and, according to the 1836 Encyclopédie des gens du monde, unable to read because his very weak eyesight had forbidden study. The same source states that he then began his studies under a good curé and learnt fast. On 29 August 1728 Étienne acted as proxy godfather to his sister Anne’s firstborn. The baptismal certificate is interesting as the first record of his using the title de Condillac, marking him out as a noble.2 Condillac’s eldest brother Jean was known as M. de Mably from 1727 at least, and his brother Gabriel became famous as the abbé de Mably.

The Young Philosopher

Condillac’s life is largely obscure until he emerges as a very successful philosopher in the 1740s. The Encyclopédie des gens du monde says that aged sixteen he joined Jean de Mably at Lyons where the latter held the office of Provost General of the Maréchaussée, or constabulary, for the Lyonnais, Forez and the Beaujolais, purchased in 1729 with his mother’s assistance. Lyons was the second city in France, and Condillac’s brother a man of standing in it. However, by 1733 Condillac had joined his brother Gabriel, six years his senior, in Paris, a new world for the young provincials, and un-charted territory for the family.

Condillac registered in the Faculty of Arts at Paris. At his graduation as an MA two years later, he is described as a clericus of Grenoble, so he will have received the tonsure in that diocese. This should not lead to the assumption that a career in the Church was already inevitable as many of the literary confraternity began as tonsured clerks, including Marmontel who married late in life, and many eighteenth-century abbés led secular lives after entering orders. Indeed, it was with this background in mind that in 1910 his family biographer, Count Baguenault de Puchesse, was eager to stress Condillac’s proper wearing of clerical garb, regular attendance at mass and general orthodoxy in a century when to some the name philosophe seemed synonymous with free-thinker.3

The stages of his studies in Philosophy, Physics, Mathematics and Theology and his studies for the priesthood have been traced across documents by the authors of Corpus Condillac, a group of scholars who have assembled all the documentary evidence they could find for his life.4 It seems probable that Condillac was at the Collège Mazarin, also known as the Four Nations, for his first two years, pursued theological studies at the Faculty of the Sorbonne and was in a Paris seminary, perhaps St Sulpice, for his preparation for the priesthood. He became a priest in 1741, though he never held cure of souls and is thought never to have said a mass.

Diderot and d’Alembert, distinguished philosophes with whom Condillac was to have close ties, had a similar education but finished their theological studies after three years and did not proceed, as did Condillac, Turgot and Morellet, to the “licence” in Theology, which required another two years’ study and the day-long defence of a thesis.

This account of his studies shows that Condillac was the very opposite of a self-taught man as his own comment that one had to begin one’s studies afresh on leaving the schools led some to suppose falsely. His remark indicated rather that he saw education as a life-long process, a view underlined when he wrote to his former pupil, the prince of Parma:
It is for you Monseigneur, to instruct yourself alone from now on. I have already prepared you for that and even made you used to doing so. . . for the best education is not that which we owe to our teachers; it is that which we have given ourselves. (Condillac, Oeuvres de Condillac, 20:540–41)

In April 1740 Jean-Jacques Rousseau entered the household of Condillac’s eldest brother, Jean Bonnot de Mably, at Lyons, as tutor to his small sons, and it is from his Confessions written in the late 1760s that some human detail about the abbé de Condillac and his brothers, Jean and Gabriel, emerges.

Many of Rousseau’s friends and acquaintances commented on his prickliness and persecution complex. His time in the Mably household saw him caught pilfering wine from the cellar, in addition to which he says he was a failure as a tutor and fell in love with Mme de Mably. Yet he left voluntarily a year later and revisited the family in 1742. He says of M. de Mably that he behaved honourably and sensibly in the matter of the wine, that “he was a very courteous man; beneath a severity of manner in keeping with his employment he concealed a really gentle disposition and a rare kind-heartedness. He was just and equitable and—strange though this may seem in a police officer—he was also most humane” (Rousseau, Confessions, 255). Rousseau struck up a friendly acquaintance with the two abbés in Lyons, and their contacts continued over many years, in Condillac’s case until about a year before Rousseau’s death.

Through their recommendation of Paris lodgings to him we learn that at some point Condillac and his brother had lodged in the rue des Cordiers near the Sorbonne in what Rousseau called “a wretched room, in a wretched house, in a wretched street” (ibid., 266), student life no less! More interesting is his comment in Émile that “at a fairly advanced age” Condillac passed within his family and among his friends as of limited intelligence (esprit borné). Considering the great success of the abbé Mably, who gained European fame for his writings on history and government, and the worldly success of Jean and François Bonnot, intellectual and conversational standards must have been high in their company. It will not be surprising that Étienne, the much younger brother whose education had been delayed, preferred to keep his own counsel. Rousseau added, “Suddenly he showed himself as a philosopher and I do not doubt that posterity will mark out an honourable and distinguished place for him among the best reasoners and the most profound metaphysicians of his century” (Rousseau, Émile, 102).

Referring to the year 1745, Rousseau said in his Confessions:
I had also become intimate with the abbé de Condillac, who, like myself, cut no figure in the literary world, but who was born to be what he has become to-day. I was the first, perhaps, to see his stature, and to estimate him at his true worth. He seemed also to have taken a liking to me; and whilst I was confined to my room in the Rue Jean-Saint-Denis near the Opera, writing my Hesiod act, he sometimes came to take a solitary Dutch treat of a dinner with me. He was then engaged on his Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines which was his first work. When it was finished, the problem was to find a bookseller who would undertake it. Paris booksellers are hard and overbearing with authors who are just beginning; and metaphysics, not then in fashion, did not offer a very attractive subject. I spoke to Diderot about Condillac and his work; and introduced them to one another. They were born to agree, and they did so. Diderot induced Durand the bookseller to take the Abbé’s manuscript, and that great meta-physician received from his first book—and that almost as a favour—a hundred crowns [300 livres], which perhaps he would not have earned but for me. As we all lived in widely different quarters the three of us met once a week at the Hôtel du Panier-Fleuri. These little weekly dinners must greatly have pleased Diderot; for though he almost always failed to keep his appointments, even with women, he never missed one of them. (324)
Their friendship must have become less close for a while, since a decade later Rousseau says, “Lacking a single friend who would be entirely mine, I required friends whose energies would overcome my inertia. It was for this reason that I cultivated and strengthened my relationship with Diderot and the Abbé de Condillac” (ibid., 387).

In the 1740s Condillac saw much of his brother Gabriel, the abbé de Mably, himself the author of a very successful work, Parallèle des romains et des français par rapport au gouvernement, published in 1740. The abbé de Mably worked as secretary for the minister, Cardinal de Tencin, from 1742 to around 1747. The Cardinal’s sister, Mme de Tencin, a former nun and mistress of the Regent Orléans, held a renowned salon where the two brothers met such distinguished men of letters as the baron de Montesquieu, the abbés Prévost and de St Pierre, the playwright Marivaux and the historian Duclos, who was still close to Condillac twenty years later.5 D’Alembert, the mathematician and philosophe, a Member of the Académie from 1754, was her unacknowledged, illegitimate son.

Until the publication of Condillac’s first book in 1746, his brother will doubtless have seemed his mentor. However, the abbé de Mably separated himself increasingly from the philosophes and moved out to Marly, while Condillac with his further philosophical publications was in close contact with Diderot and d’Alembert.

In 1748 Condillac had published anonymously the dissertation Les monades, with which he won a prize awarded by the Academy of Berlin. Maupertuis, the French President of the Academy of Berlin, may have been influential in securing Condillac’s election to the Academy in 1749. Condillac wrote to him on Christmas Day 1749 to express his pleasure and gratitude at being elected to that body. Their correspondence corrects the mistaken later date of Condillac’s election given by Puchesse.6

In the letter Condillac said that it was a friend, M. d’Alembert, who had given him the news. In two more letters in 1750 to Maupertuis, Condillac refers to d’Alembert, saying in a postscript to that of 12 August from Segrez, “We shall just make one parcel of our letters, M. d’Alembert and I: we are at the home of Monsieur the Marquis d’Argenson where one meets the best society” (Condillac, Oeuvres de Condillac, 2:535). D’Alembert was known to all as the wittiest of guests, so those later writers who have wished to show Condillac as dry, retiring and boring have to explain away their pleasure in each other’s company. Marmontel, speaking of Mme Geoffrin’s salon wrote, “Of that gathering, the gayest, most animated man, the most amusing in his gaiety, was d’Alembert. . . he made one forget in him the philosopher and scholar, to see only the lovable individual” (Marmontel, Mémoires, 1:300). When a false rumour of Condillac’s death circulated in 1764 d’Alembert wrote to Voltaire that had it been true, “for my part I should have been distraught” (Voltaire, Correspondance, 57:4).

An important correspondent of Condillac’s in the late 1740s was the Genevan mathematician and philosopher Gabriel Cramer. Cramer was ten years older than Condillac and had an international reputation: he was a member of the Royal Society of London and of the Academy of Berlin. Condillac welcomed his comments on his philosophical ideas and hoped to visit him in Geneva in the autumn of 1749, but events precluded this.

Their correspondence mentions an especially close friend of Condillac’s, Mlle Ferrand, a mathematician who commanded respect.7 It has been suggested that she may have been the model for Mlle de la Chaux, Diderot’s “femme savante,” shown by Laurence Bongie to be a fictitious character, though her salon is one that Puchesse had Condillac and Mably attending.8 Condillac gave Mlle Ferrand the credit for exposing logical problems in his early work, and said that, though she had no pretensions to authorship, hers was the major contribution to his Traité des sensations, published in 1754, after her death.9 This work has been the most highly regarded of Condillac’s philosophical writings. It received favourable scholarly attention in the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux, while the readership of the Gazette littéraire was informed of it by the Chevalier Grimm whose generally hostile and patronising tone may reflect cooling relations between his close friend Diderot and Condillac. Reviewing this work Grimm attacked Condillac’s celebrated device of gradually giving life to a statue, saying, “This idea, in itself poetic, has not been embellished in this Treatise by the decoration of poetry, nor by the wealth of a brilliant imagination. Our author has treated it with all the wisdom of a philosopher, and all the subtlety of a metaphysician” (Raynal et al. Correspondance Littéraire, 2:438). Buffon too had a statue in his Histoire naturelle which Grimm preferred, “The first movement of M. de Buffon’s statue is to stretch out its hand to seize the sunshine. What a notion! what poetry!” (ibid., 442).10

None the less Grimm was clearly moved by Condillac’s dedication of the work. He wrote, “If we believe M. l’abbé de Condillac, Mlle Ferrand had a very large hand in the Traité des sensations, and I do not know if this admission does more honour to her or to the person who makes it. What is certain is that the introduction is not the least interesting part of the Traité. Our Philosopher, in speaking of Mlle Ferrand, delivers the eulogy from his own heart, and one likes to read an author who has the fortune to know the price of friendship” (ibid., 438).

The dedication of the 1754 book was to the comtesse de Vassé who lived in the same house as Mlle Ferrand, her close friend, and held a salon alone after Mlle Ferrand’s death. The two women sheltered the Young Pretender, who was supposed to have been expelled from France as a term of the 1748 peace treaty between Britain and France. We are told that he listened in concealment to the conversations at their salon.11 Mlle Ferrand left Condillac 6,000 livres in her will in 1752 to buy books. Mme de Vassé was to die in 1768 in Condillac’s Paris home.

The salon of the wealthy bourgeoise Mme Geoffrin was for the 1750s what Mme de Tencin’s had been a decade earlier. Puchesse relied on Lemonnier’s painting entitled Une soirée chez Mme Geoffrin en 1755 to assert that Condillac attended her salon in the distinguished company shown. Unfortunately, this picture is worthless as an historical record and was only composed for the Empress Josephine half a century later. It may simply be taken as indicating those who were regarded as the most distinguished Frenchmen of the mid-century.12

Philosopher with an International Reputation

By the mid-1750s Condillac was a philosopher with an international reputation. He was an admirer of Locke, whose works he had only read in translation, as he himself stated.13 He demanded a scienti fic approach based on observation.

In 1749 his Traité des systèmes appeared. This, we learn from Condillac, in a letter to Cramer, particularly impressed Diderot.14 In 1755 his Traité des animaux was published, seen primarily as an attack on Buffon. His dissertation on freedom of December 1754 is often not separately mentioned, as it was described as an extract from his Traité des sensations. Jacques Proust deals at length with the controversy on human free will as against determinism which involved many men of letters at the time and ended with the publication of Voltaire’s Candide in 1759. He concludes, “Condillac like Locke and Diderot absolutely rejects the traditional theory of freedom. . . But while Diderot, in reaction, radically affirms determinism, Condillac keeps the notion and the name of freedom, without however making the useful distinction Locke made between freedom and free-will.” Proust regards Condillac’s position as “lame, philosophically contradictory, and in addition lacking in clarity” (Proust, Diderot et l’Encyclopédie, 321).

This was all dangerous territory. Diderot was imprisoned for some time in Vincennes by order of a lettre de cachet after the publication of his Lettre sur les aveugles in 1749. So one may wonder whether Condillac was thinking in part of the censorship. Yet here one might quote what Condillac wrote of himself in 1747 to Cramer, “I follow experience, when it leaves me, I no longer have a guide and I stop. That is all I can do as a philosopher. As a theologian, faith comes to my aid when experience ceases to enlighten me” (Condillac, Lettres inédites, 82).

The best known publication of these years in France was the Encyclopédie which was principally Diderot’s undertaking, though d’Alembert and a host of other scholars were involved. The first volume appeared in 1751. It has been reckoned on grounds of style and content that many entries could be by Condillac, but all that is certain is that in the entry Divination Diderot gives a free résumé of Condillac’s Traité des systèmes, and refers to him by name.15

Bongie comments that Condillac’s and Diderot’s friendship lapsed soon after the mid-century. However, they were closely studying each other’s work during the 1750s, and Diderot commended Condillac’s later Cours d’études to the Empress Catherine of Russia in 1775, calling it an excellent work of an excellent instructor (Diderot, Oeuvres complètes, 15:814–15).

Bongie comments that Diderot himself said of his Lettre sur les sourds et muets, addressed to the abbé Batteux, that it could just as well have been addressed to the abbé de Condillac or to M. du Marsais. He regards Diderot as having let Condillac down by not defending him against the charges of plagiarism levelled at him by Grimm, Buffon and Fréron. He points out that Condillac’s letter of 12 August 1750 to Maupertuis shows that he was already working on his statue. Condillac’s own words to Maupertuis in the same letter indicate how his way of going about his writing could have delayed publication. He wrote:
I have several works that I set about in turn: the one I am concerned with at present deals with the origin and generation of feeling. It is a statue which I bring to life step by step. I have found some problems in it, but I think I have overcome them. I am going to leave it to one side for a few months in my usual way. (Condillac, Oeuvres philosophiques, 2:535)

Condillac and the Censorship

The intellectual excitement of that decade alarmed the orthodox and conservative. The case of the abbé Prades alerted the censorship, not all hostile to the encyclopedists and philosophes. The thesis of the abbé Prades had been accepted by the Sorbonne in December 1751, but in early 1752 the Parlement of Paris, or supreme law court, hastened to attack it as undermining the miracles of the Gospels. The thesis was condemned to be burned, and the abbé had to leave France. Since the abbé’s earlier theses had won golden opinions and he had been seen as a promising theologian, the Parlement’s reaction might seem strange. The abbé’s known collaboration in the Encyclopédie is plausibly thought to have brought the censorship troubles upon him.16 Morellet commented that after the Prades incident he continued to see Diderot, but in secret.

Voltaire wrote to Helvétius in 1766, when falsely denying that he was the author of a book attributed to a long-dead abbé, “It is doubtless better to be ignored and in peace than to be known and persecuted” (Helvétius, Correspondance générale, 3:264–65). Rousseau was about to be arrested when he fled France in 1762 after the publication of Émile, and Voltaire spent many years abroad, fearful to return to France, though his reputation and reader-ship grew in his absence.

Condillac himself had some trouble with the censorship: the abbé de Mably wrote to a friend in May 1744 that the censor was holding up Condillac’s first book, Essai sur l’origine des connoissances humaines, for a long time. But it was not only the government censorship that had the power to have books banned, confiscated or burned and their authors pursued. In 1759, following the uproar over Helvétius’s book De l’esprit, seen as atheistic, the Parlement of Paris undertook a general revision of all the “dangerous” books that had appeared in the previous ten years. The Procurator General, Joly de Fleury, intended to denounce the Encyclopédie, De l’esprit, Diderot’s philosophical works Lettre sur les sourds et muets and Lettre sur les aveugles, some works by Voltaire, Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine et la fondation de l’inégalité, and Condillac’s Traité des sensations. On further reflection he omitted Diderot’s and Condillac’s works, and the Parlement’s decree was declared inoperative for encroaching on the Chancellor’s authority. The Chancellor was none other than the father of Malesherbes, who was in charge of the printing houses and whom he had appointed.

The legislation in force in eighteenth-century France regarding the production and distribution of books was draconian. As an example, the declaration of April 1757 punished with death all authors, editors, printers or bookcarriers of works tending to attack religion, to excite opposition and undermine the king’s authority. It condemned to the galleys for life or for a period of time anyone who had not obeyed all the formalities. All authors were supposed to submit their completed manuscripts to a royal censor and to obtain letters of privilege for them, or, in the case of cheap works or short lea flets, from the lieutenant of police. The privileges were registered, and printing was not permitted until all the written formalities had been completed. There were more than a hundred censors, all in Paris, who were supposed to have specialist knowledge. Diderot and Condillac themselves worked as censors.17 After the censor had given his approbation he could be in trouble as much as the author if the work caused a stir.

Practice modified the law. Already towards the end of Louis XIV’s reign, tacit permissions were introduced. They were given by the censor who signed the approval and signed the manuscript or a printed copy. The list was held at the Syndical Chamber of the Parisian booksellers. But as they were not sealed with the Great Seal, and as they were not printed at the end of the work, the public did not know who had given the approval. This was the only way for foreign printers to bring themselves within the law. As Belin said, in general the censors were not very hard on these foreign editions which it was difficult to modify and often cruel to prohibit. Often the author’s nationality and his religion were taken into account, and a book was authorised which would not have been approved if its author had been French, because it was the work of a non-Catholic republican. And then certain over-bold passages were ignored in consideration of the difficulty of asking for corrections.

The practice of French authors to pretend that their works had been printed abroad or were even by pretended foreign authors can be understood in the light of this. Malesherbes explained the “simple tolerances”:
Often the need to allow a book was felt and yet one did not want to admit that one was permitting it; so one did not wish to give any express permission: for example that was what happened when a foreign edition had been made of some books which displeased the clergy and hence some cardinal minister, and this edition had spread in France despite obstacles placed in its way.
In that case and in many others one took the course of saying to a bookseller that he could undertake his edition, but secretly; that the police would pretend to be unaware of it and would not have it seized; and since one could not foresee just how far the anger of the clergy and the law would go, one warned him always to be on the ready to make his edition disappear as soon as he was warned, and he was promised advanced warning before his premises were searched. (Malesherbes, Mémoire, 254)
It is not known how Condillac navigated these treacherous waters, but he obtained warm reviews from the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux for all his philosophical works. About his 1749 Traité des systèmes the reviewer wrote, “This essay bears all the characteristics of works which deserve to pass to posterity, great clarity in style, much force and exactness in reasoning, and an exact and rigorous analysis” (Journal de Trévoux, 44:469). Though the reviewer did not share Condillac’s aversion to systems, he praised him for his examples, which he said did more than prove: “they enlighten, instruct and develop very tricky questions which needed to pass through the crucible of the metaphysical and geometrical spirit of M. l’abbé de Condillac.” Described as “An avowed partisan of Locke, he has attacked the thought of Descartes and Malebranche with more method, clarity and success than the English philosopher; but like the English philosopher he is happier destroying than building.” By 1755 the Journal notes that Condillac’s Traité des sensations is seen by some critics as exuding materialism, “a hateful suspicion” which the reviewer does not share and which should not be advanced without the strongest proof (ibid., 60:165). In Condillac’s defence he says, “Besides the author holds forth so learnedly on the Creation and on revelation that in all these respects his orthodoxy seems beyond attack.” However, in the same year at the end of a very long review of Condillac’s Traité des animaux the reviewer concludes, “One hopes that he will set out in full what one finds here in the two chapters, the one on ‘The existence and attributes of God’ and the other on ‘Principles of Morality’; and that he will also work on a truth which is only stated at the end of the seventh chapter of the second part, namely that true Philosophy cannot be contrary to Faith” (ibid., 726).

Director of Studies to the Prince of Parma

Don Philippe, the Duke of Parma, was the husband of Louis XV’s eldest daughter, Louise Élisabeth. He was also son of the Bourbon King of Spain by his second wife, Elisabeth Farnese. The appointment of a tutor to their son was therefore of interest to both courts. Enlightenment had secured a hold in the French court where, in Mme de Pompadour’s time as official royal mistress, Quesnay and Marmontel were among those who benefited from her patronage. Official Spanish and Italian circles were less receptive. Madame Élisabeth was well aware that the Jesuits would be put out at Condillac’s appointment as he would displace one of their number. She wrote to her husband that she had consulted many people on Condillac’s fitness for the post with regard to his orthodoxy and noted that there was murmuring about his rather metaphysical book (she is almost certainly referring to the Traité des sensations), but she adds firmly, “Our son must be a good catholic and not a doctor of the Church: it would be pointless for him to study all the controversies” (Bédarida, Parme et la France, 412). Since the Queen and the powerful minister the duc de Choiseul are also said to have wanted Condillac, he took up this prestigious position.

Condillac was at the same time seen by the doyen of the philosophes, Voltaire, as one of them. In a letter of 1756, Voltaire wrote to him saying that at last he had had time to read Condillac with the attention he merited. Voltaire knew the Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines, the Traité des sensations and the Traité des animaux. He suggested that Condillac might consider writing another work bringing together the ideas in these books. He goes on to say that the country is better than Paris for bringing thoughts together and diffidently suggests that Condillac might like to come to his home. Voltaire was ready to be Condillac’s “elderly disciple” and offered his niece, Mme Denis, as a younger one, adding that Condillac would find plenty of people ready to take his dictation. The letter is important evidence that Condillac’s problems with his eyesight were chronic. As Voltaire wrote, “I know that physically speaking you have eyesight as weak as the eyes of your mind are penetrating” (Correspondance, 30:142). In 1758, when the news that Condillac was to be tutor to the Prince of Parma had reached him, Voltaire wrote to Mme de Dompierre asking her if she knew whether the Prince was to be taught in Paris or whether Condillac was to go to Parma. In the latter case he hoped she would have the courage to persuade him to travel via Geneva and Turin, in which case Voltaire planned aloud to meet him at Lausanne, take him to his home, “Les Délices,” and then meander to the Duchy (ibid., 33:78–79).

In a letter to d’Alembert of 1760 Voltaire is in no doubt of the acceptability of the education that the Prince will receive, “It seems to me that the Parmesan Prince is well encircled. He will have a Condillac and a Leire [Deleyre, later a regicide]. If with that he becomes a bigot, grace must be strong” (ibid., 44:159). Nothing had caused Voltaire to change his mind by December 1764 when false rumours of Condillac’s death were current. Then, writing to Count d’Argental, representative of the court of Parma at Versailles, and his wife, Voltaire said, “We lose in him a good philosopher, a good enemy of superstition” (ibid., 66:198).

The Duchy, in which Condillac arrived in April 1758 to instruct his seven-year-old pupil, already had a considerable French presence. Its chief minister Dutillot, marquis de Felino, had begun his career attached to the Spanish court, but he was a major figure of the French Enlightenment and brought the latest books to the Duchy. Bédarida states that Dutillot knew Quesnay’s Tableau économique from 1758 and his Maximes générales from 1760.18 The ducal library had works by Voltaire, subscribed to the Encyclopédie and the Gazette littéraire de l’Europe and bought an Essai sur le luxe, which Bonnet, the Duke’s Parisian banker and man of affairs, said was essential reading. Seventeenth-century classics were well represented in the library, which also acquired new works such as Rousseau’s, his Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, his Lettres de la montagne, and we are told by Mme de Chenonceaux that Condillac had his young pupil studying the Contrat social.19 Father Paciaudi, himself a noted bibliophile, was busy adding to the library classical texts, French history and legal collections besides building up a renowned collection of English works. These are said in part to have come to Parma because of Condillac’s reputation in England.

Dutillot was anxious to improve Parma’s economy, its agriculture and industries by introducing more up-to-date French practice. He was also ready to learn from England, and received Duhamel’s treatise on Jethro Tull’s method of cultivation in 1751. In 1756 he wanted a subscription to Du Pont de Nemours’s Journal de l’agriculture, du commerce et des finances. He head-hunted the famous printer Giambattista Bodoni to set up a press that would be the envy of other states. Though Bodoni and Condillac were not at Parma at the same time, it was his press that was to print the Cours d’études, the works based on Condillac’s lessons to the Prince. The books of that press are now collectors’ items.

Condillac was to receive every consideration at Parma. He had an annual income of 12,000 French livres. He seems to have had carte blanche with regard to books for his pupil, and he rapidly set about getting the very expensive (2,400 livres), and exceedingly rare, Ad usum Delphini, the course of studies written for the Grand Dauphin. From 1761 he had Deleyre, the young friend of Rousseau, to help him by making résumés of books too long for his pupil. Deleyre should have helped with the latter’s historical instruction but does not appear to have been up to the task, so Condillac enlisted the help of his own brother, the abbé de Mably. In 1761 he received an early version of Mably’s Observations sur l’histoire de France, and the volume Étude d’histoire in the Cours d’études was by Mably’s hand though it is thought Condillac toned down some republican enthusiasms. Mably was handsomely thanked and rewarded by the Prince in December 1765.20

Claude Bonnet had instructions from Dutillot that Condillac was to be among a favoured few whose parcels could go by the official courier, saving expense and four days’ delay. In 1765 Condillac was specially mentioned with Keralio and the bailli de Rohan as a person to whom the newly appointed French ambassador, baron de La Houze, should pay attention.21

While at Parma Condillac seems to have found plenty of congenial company. In later years he was still in touch with his colleague the under-governor, baron Keralio, jokingly known as “the Ogre.” Condillac had his own nickname, “the Great Grumbler,” which he happily applied to himself. The picture some have given of an austere and unsympathetic teacher is belied by Condillac’s letter to Dutillot of 31 January 1761. Self-mockingly he begins, “Monsieur, I should really like to grumble.” His plaint is of postal delays between the Minister’s residence at Colorno and the capital, Parma. He goes on to say that the dismantleable “plan of defence” that Louis XV’s engineers had made so that the little Prince could study the art of war had arrived. He continues:
All is executed with great clarity and great precision. Nothing is more instructive; and that makes me want to learn warfare. We are agreed that the Prince will give me lessons when he has profited from those of M. de Keralio. If he makes a good pupil out of me he will not be ignorant. (Bédarida, “Lettres inédites,” 243–44)22
He got on well with the Jesuit mathematicians Fathers Jacquier and Le Sueur and with the librarian Father Paciaudi. Letters between Deleyre, Rousseau and their and Condillac’s mutual friend Mme de Chenonceaux show him walking in the park at Colorno with Deleyre and his wife. The visiting physician, Tronchin, took him to task after he had eaten twelve small birds, ortolans, at one sitting, and noticed that the lesson had some effect as he only ate six at the next meal!23 He became a member of an Arcadian assembly with the name Auronte, and the poet Frugoni noted his fondness for wine in a poem he wrote to celebrate the philosopher’s recovery from smallpox.24 Condillac’s letter to his good friend and patron Louis Jules Mancini Mazarin, duc de Nivernais, when the latter had been looking for accommodation for Condillac on his return to Paris, said, “I prefer a few more bottles of wine in my cellar and less splendour in my furnishing and lodgings.”25 This letter is a reminder that, though Condillac had not yet learnt that he was to have a life pension in addition to the income from his abbey, he was never to know the wealth of an abbé Véri with his countless servants and six-horse coach. Condillac said he would just take on two lackeys on his return to France.

It would be wrong to think that Condillac was deprived of intellectual stimulation in Parma. The ducal family was intelligent. Before her marriage to the Habsburg Archduke Joseph, they were searching for a German translation of Racine’s “Télémaque” so that Don Ferdinand’s sister, the Infanta Isabelle-Marie, could learn the language. Don Ferdinand was such an apt pupil that already in 1763 the end of Condillac’s task was seen as approaching. Don Philippe and his son were keen on the theatre, and they and many courtiers read a great deal. The duc de Nivernais teasingly pitied Condillac for only being able to hear concerts three or four times a week.26

Throughout his time in Parma Condillac and Nivernais kept up a regular correspondence. The Duke was ambassador to the court of Frederick of Prussia in 1756 and a plenipotentiary for France in the negotiations with England which led to the Peace of Paris of 1763. He was also highly regarded as a man of letters, and he was a Member of the French Academy from 1743. Their correspondence reads as letters between friends for all the careful respect for rank. Condillac nevertheless had in the Duke a powerful acquaintance who could use his influence both for Condillac and, at his request, for his family.

Family ties and obligations were important to Condillac throughout his life. In 1761 a very awkward problem had to be resolved when the duc de Choiseul gave the succession to the post of Provost of the Maréchaussée, held by the recently deceased M. de Mably, to his son-in-law and not to one of his sons. The recipient was later to be officially separated from his wife and may have misrepresented the family’s wishes. Apparently the abbé de Mably should have handled the matter. Condillac was left to sort it all out from a distance. Nivernais gave sensible advice and all was put right, so an important source of income was not lost to Condillac’s nephews. It can be seen from Condillac’s letter that he had already had other correspondence about this.27 Again the help of well-placed persons was invoked to gain entry for his niece, Mlle de Marsan, to the exclusive school of Saint-Cyr. Dutillot, d’Argental and Nivernais all worked to this end, and the young girl was admitted in April 1762 accompanied by the Parmesan Minister Plenipotentiary.28

When a promised French benefice was unforthcoming after Condillac had held his post for four years, many important individuals busily pressed his claims on Louis XV and on the bishop of Orléans whose dossier it was. The bishop had to deal with so many claimants that his polite fending off of the representations on Condillac’s behalf does not necessarily indicate hostility to the philosopher. Despite the urgings of the Dukes of Nivernais and Choiseul-Praslin, of Dutillot, d’Argental and even Don Philippe, it probably took Condillac’s near-miraculous recovery from smallpox to obtain for him in 1765 the titular abbacy of Mureau in the diocese of Toul.29

Smallpox was a scourge of even affluent society in the eighteenth century. There was great interest in the risks of inoculation as against its benefits, and several of Condillac’s letters show his readiness to obtain information about it for his correspondents who included La Condamine and the Italian nobleman and famous jurist Beccaria.30 In November 1764 Condillac expected soon to be free from his post, when instead he was fighting for his life. The Court was preparing for the isolation of Don Ferdinand who was to be inoculated. There is no question of Condillac’s having caught smallpox from his pupil’s inoculation, since such was the fear of the disease that strict isolation of the Prince with the minimum of attendants plus his doctor had been arranged.31

Condillac was likewise closely confined in his illness, and, when his life was despaired of, instructions were given for the rapid sealing of his wardrobes and trunks in the event of his death. So close was that supposed to be that the church had already been draped for his burial. The bells of the convent precincts within which his house lay had been kept silent when he was critically ill, a considerate action for which the Duke thanked the abbess. It seems that he would have left many grieving friends and a pious reputation among the common people, since they believed, according to Deleyre, that he had gone to Heaven and returned. Certainly concern for his recovery was not confined to Parma. Deleyre gives the touching story of Condillac spending what he thought were his last hours dictating a letter to the Prince, his pupil, and after it was done asking to be left alone. Deleyre added that his recovery was complete. But Deleyre was writing in the following February, and his main point was that Condillac’s very weak eyesight had received no further damage.32 Dutillot, writing to d’Argental at the end of December, spoke of his being in a very weak state.33

According to Puchesse, after his recovery Condillac stayed on at Parma in order to attend the marriage of another sister of his pupil, Princess Marie-Louise, to the heir to the Spanish King.34 This marriage, that of Isabelle-Marie to the future Emperor, and the later one of Don Ferdinand to another daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa show the important role of the Parmesan family in French diplomacy. The Family Compact of 1743 had already strengthened ties between the two major Bourbon houses.

However, Puchesse was mistaken. The wedding was to take place in Spain, and Condillac was not even part of Don Philippe’s train accompanying the princess. Condillac still held the position of a gentleman of the Chamber given him by Don Philippe, but he was at leisure to visit Venice with Father Paciaudi in the spring of 1765.35 They were received by the best company. Condillac was clearly delighted by the casini, small apartments that the nobility had near the cathedral of San Marco. In the eighteenth century, women too wanted them as salons for receiving guests, for concerts and for gaming. It seems that their reputation was not always above suspicion.

Writing on his return to Parma to Sagramoso, a Veronese diplomat who had been their guide, Condillac warmly thanks him, hopes that they are beginning a long friendship and asks him to convey his thanks to the Erizzo family.36 In June, in another letter to Sagramoso, Condillac hopes he may have a further visit to Venice and writes delightfully, “While waiting, I should like to know just how long Madame Cordemila will be at her country house. It is not that I dare flatter myself that I shall be able to go there, but I may at least occupy myself with the thought, and who knows if it will not come true? A metaphysician can do a lot with ideas” (ibid., 82). Condillac was on the point of leaving for the baths of Lucca and reports from there in mid-July.

However, the death of the Duke, Don Philippe, from smallpox in July 1765 forced Condillac’s return to Parma before he had seen anything of Tuscany. In a letter of 18 August to Sagramoso Condillac gives an interesting account of how his pupil reacted to becoming sovereign of the duchy:
On my arrival I found the young prince like a lion. His situation goads him: he remembers things he has learnt, he explains them to himself, he watches over himself, he wants to do well, he wishes to inform himself; in a word, he is affected by emulation, the only thing he had lacked, since he has intelligence and facility. (Piva, “Condillac a Venezia,” 83)
Condillac also informs Sagramoso that his time as tutor has ended. In the autumn he was at Genoa and then Milan, where he met the Marchese Beccaria whose Dei Delitti e delle pene gained much attention in France. Beccaria was himself honoured to meet Condillac as he wrote to Morellet.37 A letter of Father Jacquier shows Condillac in his company at Rome in March. In June Condillac was at Naples, in July at Florence, then at Lucca again and back at Parma in September. He returned to Paris in early March 1767.

The Academician

The Mémoires secrets chose to see Condillac as returning a disappointed man, no decoration, no bishopric, etc., to obscurity.38 That was far from the truth. In October his impending election to the Académie française was being talked about, though his brother was thought to be a rival for the place. On 22 October d’Alembert wrote to inform Voltaire that Condillac was to take the chair made vacant by the death of the abbé Olivet. Voltaire applauded the choice.39 The inaugural ceremony on 22 December was attended by a crowd of fashionable ladies, though one observer considered that only the witty fables of the duc de Nivernais would have saved them from boredom.40 Voltaire read Condillac’s speech and approved it in a letter to Charles Bordes.41 It is interesting that Voltaire describes the Académie as a company dedicated uniquely to eloquence and poetry, so he has to defend the intrusion of philosophy.

Condillac was paid an unusual favour by being summoned to an audience with the King to present his Académie speech. He was afterwards presented to the Dauphin and the royal children. Lafaye in the nineteenth-century Encyclopédie des gens du monde said that the reine-mère, though he must have meant Queen Marie Leszcynska, told him she wished he would undertake the education of the sons of the Dauphin, who later ruled as Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. “He declined such a dangerous honour, fearing failure. . . and because he did not want to stir up powerful enmities against him” (Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 91). Later in his life Condillac crossed out the whole passage dealing with his personal relations with Louis XV from his Académie speech.42

As Condillac had tasted freedom in his Italian travels and as he had good company in friends such as Nivernais and Duclos, a quieter life was doubtless inviting. It never seemed likely that the man whose letters show a delight in company would flee it on his return to France. Fortunately the team of scholars who produced Corpus Condillac have seen the Registers of the Académie française which contradict Puchesse’s assertion that he did not often attend its sessions.43 In fact he was present at 316 sessions, and his attendance only drops markedly in 1774, by which time he was living in Flux. Even so it is only in the last two years of his life that he attended just once a year.44

Philosophes were strongly represented in the Académie when Condillac joined it, though the King expected to have a veto over appointments to its ranks, and this became an issue when Suard was first elected. The philosophes were accepted in society, whereas the Jesuits were being expelled from country after country. At the reception given for the Danish monarch on 20 November 1768 Condillac was in the company of d’Alembert, l’abbé Barthélemy, Bernard, Diderot, Grimm, Helvétius, d’Holbach, Marmontel and Morellet among others.45 Voltaire could be confident that d’Alembert would pass on to Condillac suggested material for his acceptance speech to the Académie.

Condillac seems to have had an uninterrupted friendship with d’Alembert, whereas the absence of any mention of him in the correspondence between Mme d’Epinay and the abbé Galiani covering the years after Condillac’s return from Italy until he moved from Paris to the Loire valley in 1773 indicates that he was distanced from the society of Diderot and Grimm.

A passage from the count d’Angivilliers’ memoirs, Épisodes de ma vie, quoted in a footnote to Helvétius’s correspondence, says that Mme de Vassé, whose character he could not praise too much, had bound him in close friendship with the brothers Mably and Condillac, her close friends who had fallen out with each other. There is no detail of the quarrel nor of its seriousness. Happily, d’Angivilliers says that he and she reunited the brothers. Mme de Vassé died from cancer in Condillac’s Paris home on 2 June 1768 in the presence of d’Angivilliers and Condillac.46 D’Angivilliers adds that she was equally a friend of the “fanatic and madman, Helvétius.” He was writ ing after the Revolution when the philosophes, especially those whose books had offended, were held responsible for it. It seems quite likely that Condillac saw something of Helvétius too. What is certain is that in 1776 Condillac was staying with the widowed Mme Helvétius at Auteuil when he wrote to the Marquis Rangoni.47

The general view held in philosophical circles was that, though Condillac had done an excellent job in educating his Prince, the latter was a dull and ungrateful pupil. In this context it is particularly interesting to look at letters that Condillac wrote to Don Ferdinand from Paris in 1767 and 1768. In one of May 1767 Condillac tells how he was received at Court and questioned about his pupil. He says that he related the positive things about his pupil but kept quiet about the negative ones. He challenges his former pupil to apply himself so that this picture of him may become true. He continues:
it would be a mortal disappointment for me if the public did not estimate you to the extent that I love you. Try, Monseigneur, to write some letters to me in which there will be something to show how you are thinking, that you are reflecting and that you are occupying yourself usefully. Your style must show that you find pleasure in your diversions, that you find pleasure in your occupations, that you apply yourself to everything, and that you do nothing with indifference. (Condillac, Oeuvres philosophiques, 2:547)
An August letter shows that the now sovereign Duke had written to Condillac, who, after giving him much instruction on his Latin, goes on to tell him that he has shown the letter to the duc de Nivernais, the comtesse de Rochefort, the historian Duclos and assembled company where he was dining. It met with approval in that distinguished company, but Condillac still thought exhortations to continue improving were necessary. He gave advice on letter-writing. Here the contemporary practice of handing round letters and even writing them for publication should be held in mind: “letters and conversations should only be an exchange [commerce] of enlightenment, of friendship, of entertainment, there should be no constraint, for the absence of freedom is the ruin of trade [commerce]” (ibid., 548). The metaphor seems revealing for the later author of Le Commerce et le Gouvernement.

When Condillac writes in October of the same year, he thanks the Duke for the dinner service he has been given and says he has sent more history notebooks and will continue to do so in order that Don Ferdinand may have enough to read in the winter. He again praises him for his letter which he has shown to the same named individuals. The next letter is a year later, and his praise is this time for the Duke’s feeling when Dutillot’s life was in danger. He also praises his bearing during a visit to Mantua. He writes:
you conducted yourself like an angel, and I have been delighted at it. However I have kept on delaying complimenting you on it because I found myself in very sad circumstances, but, Monseigneur, you must always scold your tutor when he does not write to you; because if you do not make me reproaches I shall be in the right to reproach you, I shall say that you do not care about having my news, since you do not ask me for it, so you see that my silence puts you in the wrong. You must realize that sovereigns are often obliged to make the first moves, and that no one goes up to them unless they cover half the way, or even more. . .
What, Monseigneur, are your pursuits and your entertainments? For I am interested in both. As for me, I am waiting with impatience for the news of your marriage, then I shall have the pleasure of paying court to you, and it will be a real holiday for me. I hope it will be for next Spring, I shall see the start of the happiness you promise yourself; you will be happy, Monseigneur, I hope and I wish for it with all my heart. (Ibid., 2:549)
The relationship between them sounds affectionate at this point, and the Duke is still ready to make an effort for his former tutor. However, later events such as Don Ferdinand’s sanction of the interference with the printing of the Cours d’études show that the Duke turned against Condillac. The usual explanation is that under the influence of his Habsburg wife, Don Ferdinand became a bigoted Catholic: it is not documented by further correspondence between them.

During the 1770s Condillac’s presence has been noted at several salons, those of Mlle de Lespinasse and Mme du Bocage and also “chez Collé” twice a week. Nivernais had arranged for him to have the use of two small boxes at the Comédie française. None of this fits the picture of a man who avoided society and was awkward in it that some nineteenth-century accounts, and some twentieth-century accounts relying on them, would have one see.48

Julie de Lespinasse was a remarkable woman. Like d’Alembert, she was the illegitimate child of an aristocrat. Her mother had her educated, but she was left with little money on her mother’s death, and Mme du Deffand’s patronage rescued her from work as a governess.49 She helped with her salon from 1754 to 1764, until a quarrel with her patroness led to her setting up her own. Marmontel in his memoirs sang her praises in encouraging conversation, adding, “And take good note that the heads which she stirred at her will were neither feeble nor frivolous; Condillac and Turgot were among them; d’Alembert was like a simple docile child in her company” (Marmontel, Mémoires, 1:415). Others who attended her salon were Condorcet, Suard, Morellet, Galiani, Mably, Shelburne, d’Argenson, Diderot, Thomas.50 This does not mean that all were attending at the same time; Galiani, for instance, had had to leave France in June 1769 on the orders of the duc de Choiseul.

Condillac, the Academician, writer and man in society, was also commendatory abbot of Mureau in the diocese of Toul. Business connected with the abbey, the reward for his service as tutor to Louis XV’s grandson, took some of his time in these years. It is thought improbable that he ever visited Mureau. However, he had to employ lawyers to represent his and the community’s property interests in tithes.51 His income from the abbey was 8,000 livres a year, the same as his pension from Parma, and together with other investment income will have enabled him to keep up his accommodation at Paris and pursue his writing without financial worries.

Retirement to Flux and Final Publications

A major development in Condillac’s later life was the purchase in April 1773 of the property of Flux near Beaugency which bordered the river Loire. It was Condillac’s money in large part which enabled this house with chapel and land to be acquired by Mme de Sainte-Foy, his niece. The property is thought to have been bought with serious cultivation in mind. It was his chief home until his death, though for a number of years he also kept a Paris apartment, and he continued to visit Paris even when he no longer had any place there. Family tradition, as given by his great-great-nephew, Count Baguenault de Puchesse, the grandson of Mme de Sainte-Foy, has it that life in the country stimulated his interest in economic debate.

Condillac had trouble in publishing his Cours d’études which was to establish him as an enlightened educator and make his pupil famous. Initially all went well. Bodoni began work on it shortly after his arrival in Parma in 1768, which indicates Dutillot’s personal interest in the task. Condillac busied himself with correcting manuscripts and began receiving volumes from the Bodoni press with a view to an additional French edition.

Dutillot was brusquely dismissed in mid-1771; but his Spanish successor, Llano, let the printing continue, and the great enterprise was finished by the end of 1772. However, the Church could operate its separate censorship. Count Lalatta, bishop of Parma, opposed publication. The work was given to Father Andrea Mazza to examine. He found in it the mark of a free-thinker, bold comments on the Church’s deeds and great scorn towards the Spanish and their rulers. No printed volumes could leave Bodoni’s workshops.52

If de Loynes d’Autroche was correct, Condillac was faced with a huge task as some of his manuscripts of volumes in the Cours d’études had been lost in transit from Parma to France, and he had to begin them afresh since his request for printed versions was refused. By that time he is believed to have had just four of the printed volumes.53 Condillac’s industriousness was remarkable as he managed none the less to have a French edition prepared, which came out in 1775. The coincidence in time with Turgot’s ministry is surely significant. The decision to allow publication infuriated the authorities in Parma, and a proclamation in the Duke’s name denied the false and calumnious pretence that the works had issued from the Duchy’s press and ordered any copies found to be surrendered. However, in 1782, after Condillac’s death, the Parma edition eventually appeared, though with the false date of the French Deux Ponts edition.54

Le Commerce et le Gouvernement also had problems with the censorship. Since the edict of 1764 that allowed the export of grain from France, a debate had raged on that policy and on the wisdom or otherwise of keeping police regulation of grain sales and movements. This is discussed in detail in the next chapter (pp. 45–50). Another matter which involved people of importance was the revocation of the Compagnie des Indes’ monopoly of trade with India and the Indies. Condillac has much to say about both these controversial matters, though he does not enter into personalities. While Turgot’s views will have carried influence, he was not all-powerful in matters of censorship,55 and even the philosophes had been split over free trade in grain. Diderot defended his friend the abbé Galiani’s Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds, which Turgot and the abbé Morellet, whom he encouraged to write against it, saw as pernicious. So it is hardly surprising that there were those in official circles who would not welcome the intervention of such a distinguished scholar in this debate. Grimm’s review in the Correspondance littéraire noted that the book gained attention for having been held up at the Syndical Chamber.56 This is a useful reminder that then as now knowledge that a book was considered controversial could considerably aid its sales. Turgot may have helped to have it released to the censor. Senneville gave it a tacit permission which is on record, as customary. His conclusion was, “This work can only be useful. The author has never crossed the borders of the discussion and truth can only gain from such works.” He gave some indication why Condillac’s book may have met with opposition when he speculated that theologians and the dévots were likely to protest at the chapter on usury. But he cheered himself with: “I know that people with an axe to grind do not find me zealous enough, but I am what I am” (Belin, Le commerce des livres, 32).57

Other evidence confirms that its publication was delayed for at least seven months. Before the end of July 1775, Diderot wrote in his Plan d’une université for Catherine the Great of Russia that “M. l’abbé de Condillac has just published the elements of commerce considered in relation to government. It is a simple, clear and exact work” (Diderot, Oeuvres complètes, 11:815). Later, in December 1775, Diderot wrote to Catherine that she had not received Le Commerce et le Gouvernement because it had not yet appeared (ibid., 1124). It was actually published in February 1776, but Diderot had known of its general content, the subject of the next chapter, at least seven months previously.

Despite difficulties with the censorship and advancing years, Condillac was not ready to rest on his considerable laurels as a scholar. He was only too happy to provide a new text on logic for the Poles. His brother, the abbé de Mably, had written a constitution for the Polish state, and French influence was significant in Poland. Count Potocki approached Condillac in September 1777, after an international competition in 1775 to provide books for the Palatinate schools had failed to produce a work of sufficient quality. On completion of the manuscript in June 1778—true to his promise it was ready before the deadline of December 1779—Condillac wrote to Potocki saying that he had sent it to Keralio in Paris from whom it could be collected or who would forward it if requested. He said that, while not wanting to make them wait for the work, he had not rushed it. He was eager to show that he had given it great thought and tailored it to their needs. The Education Commission seems to have been delighted as he was given two gold medals as well as the 100 gold florins promised in the competition.58

Condillac’s friendship with mathematicians has been noted, and his last, posthumously published work was the Langue des calculs. The Mémoires secrets also mention in September 1780 that when he died he was writing a dictionary which they called a vast task which had daunted all the other philosophes.59 This is the Dictionnaire des synonymes which his niece found among his papers at Flux. Puchesse saw it as ready for publication, but it probably missed being included in the twenty-three-volume 1798 Oeuvres as it was not among the corrected manuscripts intended for a full edition of all his works that passed to the abbé de Mably on Condillac’s death. Condillac had obtained a privilege in his own name for the publication of his complete works in 1778.60

During Condillac’s time in Parma, news and advice was passing from him to Rousseau through their mutual friends such as Mme de Chenonceaux and Deleyre. Only a fraction of Condillac’s correspondence survives,61 so it is impossible to know how far they subsequently kept in touch. However, in 1776 Rousseau was desperate to bring his Dialogues, which he considered his masterpiece, to the attention of the world. He saw himself beset by schemers and initially had the notion that he would circumvent them by leaving the manuscript on the high altar of Notre Dame and that this would bring it to the King’s attention. Thwarted by finding access to the altar barred, he soon persuaded himself that his idea had been absurd and suddenly thought of his old friend Condillac whom he had not seen for some time and who was opportunely visiting Paris. He left the manuscript with the abbé, expecting on his return to be greeted with the excitement that recognition of a masterpiece warranted. He regarded himself as betrayed when Condillac merely received him courteously and offered to undertake the production of an edition of Rousseau’s collected works. Rousseau saw this helpful offer as a sign that Condillac had been influenced by his enemies and rejected it. Even so he recounted that he saw his old friend a few more times, and it was to Condillac that he entrusted the manuscript for safe-keeping with instructions that it was not to be opened until the next century.62 This undertaking may indicate some courage on Condillac’s part, to judge from the extreme reluctance of the abbé de Reyrac to accept custody of it from Condillac on his deathbed.63

Puchesse describes Condillac in his last years as “Always serious, thoughtful, preoccupied” (Puchesse, Condillac, 166–67),64 but this sits uneasily with the statements which he quotes from Condillac’s friend Claude de Loynes d’Autroche who delivered the customary eulogy to the Royal Agricultural Society of Orléans in 1781. D’Autroche had been made a member of the Society on the same day as Condillac, 5 February 1776. He wrote of his friend:
To escape the distressing sight of ever-growing corruption in the Capital, near the end of his days the abbé de Condillac chose a country retreat in our district: it is here that in the midst of the nature that he loved, he whiled away days that were as peaceful and as pure as his heart; it is in this refuge, beautified by his taste, that he loved to entertain and that he received real friends with such true warmth, and with such affecting satisfaction. . . (Puchesse, Condillac, 166)
D’Autroche was thirty years younger than Condillac and a great traveller; he was interested in the classics and later translated Horace’s Odes. He owned extensive lands and a fine château dominating the Loire valley. Other friends were local clergy and magistrates who included Le Trosne, the economist.65

Later disputes between Mme de Sainte-Foy and her family over the Flux estate have brought speculation that Condillac’s last years may have been unhappy, and his shortness of temper in these years is commented upon.66 What seems certain from their own words is that he retained the affection of his two surviving elder brothers, Mably, who was to be his literary executor, and Saint-Marcellin.67

Condillac’s death on 3 August 1780 was sudden and occurred shortly after his return from a visit to Paris. Accounts of it are incompatible. The family tradition given by Puchesse is that Condillac ascribed his last illness to a bad chocolate drink he had at Condorcet’s house. As he says that Condillac disliked Condorcet this may just have been a grumbling reaction when the abbé felt unwell on his journey home.68 A medical account has it that he fell victim to a fever that was going through the neighbourhood of Flux.69

Accounts of his funeral tally well. It was movingly described by Lablée, a local lawyer who said he was present: “It was at harvest-time. His corpse escorted by a man of affairs had been carried across the fields to the small parish of the burgh of Lailly. Bare-legged peasants wearing chasubles sang the mass. The corpse was buried without the slightest mark, in a small cemetery open on all sides, and I doubt one will be able to find any trace of it” (Rousseau, Correspondance générale, 20:368–69). Several local clergy witnessed the burial certificate. Mme de Sainte-Foy’s absence is not noteworthy, as it was not customary at the time for women to attend funerals.

Condillac’s posthumous reputation has rested chiefly on his philosophical works. Puchesse, who traced his posthumous reputation, says that his Traité des systémes was on university syllabuses in the early years of this century.70 Since the Second World War, there appears to have been a revived interest in his philosophy in Italy as well as in France. On a recent visit to Grenoble we learnt that his works are on the syllabus of the university of his native town. The New Cambridge Modern History devotes equal space to his contributions to education and to philosophy. The significance of Commerce and Government has received less attention. Its reception by the physiocrats when it appeared, and its growing reputation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are discussed in the next chapter.

2

The Economics of the Abbé de Condillac

Condillac ’s Decision to Write “Commerce and Government”

In March 1776, when Condillac published Commerce and Government, he was sixty-one years old, the same age as François Quesnay when he first published on economics. When he returned from Parma in 1767 he devoted the next eight years to the seventeen-volume Cours d’études, his summary of everything a prince needed to know to govern well. This took him for the first time towards economics because there are reflections on how economies should be governed. The following statement is of especial interest because it differs so startlingly from the Colbertian dirigisme which had dominated French economic policy during most of the previous century:
Governing an economy requires a comprehensive genius who knows everything, who weighs everything, and who directs all the resources of government in perfect harmony. It would be difficult, or rather impossible to find such a genius. The best intentioned and most skilful statesmen have made mistakes through ignorance or through over hasty action, for it is difficult to see all and bring all together without sometimes falling into error. . . statesmen never do more harm than when they wish to interfere in everything. It is wisest to confine oneself to preventing abuses and otherwise to pursue a policy of laissez-faire. (Condillac, Cours d’études, 20:488)
A year later, in 1776, Adam Smith, who knew Condillac’s philosophy, produced a strikingly similar statement in The Wealth of Nations:
The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. (456)
Condillac’s advice to a future sovereign therefore led him towards the noninterventionist laissez-faire approach to economic policy which Adam Smith went on to establish so commandingly.

After the publication of the Cours d’études, Condillac followed his contributions to philosophy and a royal education with an account of economics and of economic policy, which he presented, like much of his philosophy, in a single elegant volume.

The first part of Commerce and Government is entitled “Elementary Propositions on Commerce, determined according to the assumptions or principles of Economic Science,” and it provides a step-by-step statement of economic principles to establish the political economy which will most advance the wealth of nations. One of Condillac’s notable philosophical works, his Traité des sensations, had opened with the celebrated initial assumption, referred to in the previous chapter, that human beings are statues. Condillac then relaxed this assumption in successive chapters to arrive at a clear account of complex human sensations. His economics follows a similar methodology. He opens Chapter 1 with a corn model (with corn the only commodity that is produced and consumed), and he gradually relaxes the assumptions to provide a general account of a real economy.

He believed that political economy could be presented simply and comprehensibly by creating a clear language for the representation of economic analysis (which up to then had been lacking) and by using this to move forward, chapter by chapter, to provide a comprehensive account of complex economies. Commerce and Government opens with a striking claim in Condillac’s first paragraph:
Each science requires a special language, because each science has ideas which are unique to it. It seems that we should begin by forming this language; but we begin by speaking and writing and the language remains to be created. That is the position of Economic Science, the subject of this very work. It is, among other matters, the need which I propose to meet. (CG 93)71
In the edition published posthumously in 1798 in the twenty-three-volume collection of his Oeuvres, Condillac adds the footnote:
Since the first edition of this work I have shown in my Logic that the art of dealing well with a science comes down to the art of creating its language well. Also, when I said that the language of Economic Science needed to be created, the public, for whom this science was still often no more than an indecipherable code, had no difficulty in believing this: because it thought, justly, that a language that is not understood is a badly constructed language. (CG 93)
These are statements with which philosophers will have more sympathy than will economists, who still produce “indecipherable codes.”

Condillac’s approach is very much that of a philosopher of the first rank who is seeking to establish a sound basis for economic analysis, and he completes his First Part account of economic principles in 55,000 words. The considerably shorter 35,000-word Second Part, entitled “Commerce and government considered in relation to each other following some assumptions,” has the same title as he gives to his book, with the addition of the words “following some assumptions.” Condillac uses the analysis he develops in the First Part to elucidate the practical questions he is addressing. The expositional method he uses is generally a comparison between abstract countries in which some pursue disastrous policies while others adopt correct policies and perform far more successfully. But the pretence that it is hypothetical countries he is comparing is discarded in Chapter 15, subtitled “Obstacles to the circulation of grain when the government wishes to restore to trade, the freedom it took from it,” which is concerned with the actual impact of the attempted reform of food markets by the great economist-administrator Anne Robert Jacques Turgot who became Controller-General of Finances in 1774 and still held that position when the book was published. In a Third Part, which Condillac foreshadowed in 1776 but never completed, he proposed to consider what he had established in the First and Second Parts “according to the facts in order to rest as much on experience as on reasoning” (CG 93). Richard Cantillon is said to have followed his largely theoretical Essai sur la nature du commerce en générale (1755) with an empirical second volume which has not survived,72 and it has been suggested that Karl Marx’s plan for the third volume of Capital (which he did not live to complete) included an empirical account of the trade cycle in nineteenth-century Britain.73 Condillac might have found it equally challenging to provide an account of “the facts” to conclude Commerce and Government, but this is actually complete as it stands. The theoretical First Part and its development in the Second Part to illuminate practical questions and especially Turgot’s proposed reforms produce a wholly coherent book.

On 9 October 1776, seven months after its publication, Condillac wrote to the marquis de Rangoni about the circumstances which had led him to write and publish Commerce and Government:
I only began to occupy myself with political economy when I wished to produce my work on commerce and government. I worked to inform myself, I had absolutely no preconceptions and I saw nothing but disorder and confusion in the writings being produced in France. You see by this, Monsieur, that I am not sufficiently well versed in this genre to flatter myself that I can be as useful to you as I would wish. I have shown abuses, I have shown the order that must be substituted, and that part was easy: the difficulty is to show the way to set about this problem. I have not known how to involve myself in this question, perhaps I shall deal with it in the third part [of the book] on which I shall not begin to work for the time being. Perhaps also, it may only be possible to indicate the means in a very imprecise fashion, as they must vary with circumstances.
I have long been convinced that a science that is well treated comes down to a well constructed language and I have applied myself to the creation of the language of economic science. Unfortunately I was obliged to work in haste to take advantage of a favourable opportunity, for I foresaw that if there were changes in the ministry, I would not be able to get to press. That is why I have not always put all the precision I should have liked into this work. I have just made some essential corrections to it. . . In any case these changes bear on points of detail which change no essentials and which are only needed to prevent awkward difficulties. (Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 154–55)
The previous chapter describes how the publication of the Cours d’études was much delayed by censors in both Parma and Paris, and Condillac evidently expected that Turgot’s reforming ministry would have sufficient influence to minimise interruptions to the publication of Commerce and Government. It was shown in the previous chapter that its publication was none the less delayed, but perhaps by no more than seven months. As Condillac had envisaged, the lively national interest in political economy during Turgot’s ministry offered him the best chance of publishing Commerce and Government uncensored.

Since 1761 Turgot had been a reforming Intendant in Limoges, in effect head of local government there. In 1769 he had published one of the great classical economic texts, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, and his numerous publications commanded high respect. He corresponded regularly with Condorcet and Du Pont de Nemours, the father of the founders of the United States chemical empire. He had always been close to the philosophes and the encylopédistes as well as to the leading physiocrat économistes, and he was elected President of the Académie des Belles Lettres in 1778. He was well known to Benjamin Franklin, Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith. His personal cabinet included Du Pont, and room was also found for Quesnay de Saint-Germain, a grandson of the founder of physiocracy.74

The appointment of this distinguished philosopher-economist to administer the finances of France with a personal cabinet which included leading économistes aroused great contemporary interest in economic analysis and policy. It was widely understood that a further attempt would be made to apply the economic analysis of the dominant physiocratic school to the problems of the French economy. The physiocrats believed that the economy’s taxable surplus originated in agriculture, so this was where taxes must come from, and that increasing the prosperity of France depended above all on raising agricultural profitability through free trade in food. It was evident that a further attempt would be made to liberalise food markets: reforms had been introduced in 1763–64, but these had been reversed in 1770 when they led to large price increases. The renewed attempt to implement policies based on these doctrines aroused much debate, and those like Condillac who were outside the administration naturally wished to participate in the accompanying excitement and interest in political economy.

Peter Groenewegen has suggested in The New Palgrave: A dictionary of economics that Condillac wrote Commerce and Government “to assist his friend Turgot in the difficulties he faced in 1775 as finance minister over the grain riots induced by his restoration of free trade in food” (Groenewegen, “Condillac,” 1:565). The above letter to Rangoni includes the more general intention to add a book which clarified the foundations of political economy to his extensive published contributions. The level of interest in economics in 1775–76 created the opportunity to combine this with a highly relevant contribution to contemporary debate. No personal correspondence between Turgot and Condillac has been found, but they moved in similarly distinguished circles; it was shown in the previous chapter that they both belonged to Julie de Lespinasse’s salon (and doubtless to others), and there may well have been personal friendship in addition. The economic principles which were to emerge from Condillac’s study of political economy were actually close to Turgot’s. It will emerge that Condillac derived his understanding of the nature of the efficient food markets on which the success of Turgot’s reforms depended from his new theory of value and utility, the core of the theoretical First Part of Commerce and Government.

Condillac’s Innovative Analysis of Value and Utility

The most original contribution of Commerce and Government is Condillac’s theory of value and utility. Here Condillac the philosopher produced a new theoretical approach which only began to be appreciated nearly a century after his death.

Terence Hutchison concluded in his magisterial Before Adam Smith that “Condillac’s work represented the crowning achievement in the long and distinguished line of Italian and French theorists of utility and subjective value,” and that “it is Condillac, with his emphasis on ignorance, uncertainty and erroneous expectations, who has stronger claims than anyone else to be regarded as the founding father of subjectivist analysis in economic theory” (331). It will emerge below (p. 71) that in the 1870s, Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger and Léon Walras, the originators of the marginal revolution, each recognised the importance of Condillac’s contribution. Condillac’s account of the relationship between the utility derivable from commodities, the demand for them, and the impact this had on the motivation to produce was nearly one hundred years ahead of its time.

Condillac the subjective philosopher sought to explain the motivation of producers and consumers, and he did this by suggesting that producers work to obtain utility. Farmers and manufacturers produce to generate “value” for themselves which depends on the personal utilities they derive. In his first chapter Condillac explains that “The value of things is. . . founded on their utility” (CG 99), and he goes on to say: “it is natural that a more strongly felt need gives things a greater value, and that a less pressing need gives them less value. The value of things therefore grows with scarcity and decreases with abundance.” The marginal utility of a single commodity can indeed fall to zero: “Value can even diminish in abundance to vanishing point. For instance, a surplus good will be without value every time that one can do nothing with it, since then it would be completely useless” (CG 100).

Farmers will only increase their output of grain if they can exchange their surplus over their own needs, which offers them no value because it has no marginal utility, for something else that they desire, and the same is true of the producers of all other commodities. Wherever production is surplus to a farmer’s own needs, an absence of adequate opportunities to market an excess will remove any incentive to produce beyond the level which satisfies the farmer’s personal desires. The absence of adequate markets will therefore have highly adverse effects on their incentive to produce and hence on the supply side of the economy. Cultivators’ food that is surplus to their own requirements will only have value for them if they can exchange it for something else which will actually provide utility:
The surplus [of farmers]. . . is wealth, so long as they can find an outlet for it; because they procure for themselves something that has value for them, and they hand over something which has value for others.
If they were unable to make exchanges, their surplus would stay with them, and it would have no value for them. (CG 121)
Farmers’ incentives to produce beyond their own needs will depend on what they can consume with the money they receive from the sale of their surplus produce and the utility they derive from the goods they are entitled to buy, which will include manufactures. Cultivators of the land will obtain utility from manufactures as well as food, so their motivation to produce food will be influenced by the availability and cost of manufactures. There is indeed a mutual interchange between farmers who produce products that manufacturers require and manufacturers who produce products which farmers will find useful. Merchants are needed to arrange the exchange of surplus food for the products of artisans:
Now merchants are the channels of communication through which the surplus runs. From places where it has no value it passes into places where it gains value, and wherever it settles it becomes wealth. . . .
A spring which disappears into rocks and sand is not wealth for me; but it becomes such, if I build an aqueduct to draw it to my meadows. This spring represents the surplus products for which we are indebted to the settlers [colons], and the aqueduct represents the merchants. (CG 121)
As a result of this process whereby merchants arrange the marketing of the agricultural surplus, cultivators are induced to raise their level of production:
If one compares the state of deprivation our tribe is in, when, without artisans, without merchants, it is confined to goods of prime need, with the state of plenty in which it finds itself, when, through the hard work of artisans and merchants, it enjoys goods of secondary need, that is, of a host of things that habit turns into needs for it; one will understand that the work of artisans and merchants is as much a source of wealth for it, as the very work of the farmers. . . .
It is therefore proved that in the final analysis industry is also a source of wealth. . . It has been much obscured by some writers. (CG 125)
This statement was provocative to the économistes who held that agriculture was the sole source of wealth. Condillac argues in contrast in a much quoted passage that farmers, manufacturers and merchants combine to create wealth:
All the groups, each busy with its own tasks, come together in competition to increase the mass of wealth, or the abundance of goods which have value. . . .
It is the farmer who provides all the primary material. But such primary material, as would be useless and without value in his hands, becomes useful and obtains value when the artisan has found the way to make it serve the needs of society.
With each skill that begins, with each advance it makes, the farmer thus acquires new wealth, because he finds value in a product which previously had none.
This product, given value by the artisan, gives a fresh spur to commerce for which it is a new stock in trade; and it becomes a new source of wealth for the farmer because, as each product acquires value, he makes new consumption for himself.
Thus it is that all, farmers, merchants, artisans, come together to increase the mass of wealth. (CG 124–25)
Condillac is arguing that the free exchange of commodities within an economy, each exchange benefiting both seller and buyer, leads to continual advances in the range of products available to the population and to increases in wealth. His account of a competitive economy generalises into a detailed multi-sectoral presentation:
The farmer, busy in the fields, would not have the time free to make himself a coat, to build a house, to forge weapons, and he would not have the aptitude because these jobs require knowledge and a skill he does not possess.
Several groups will therefore form. Besides that of the farmers, there will be tailors, architects, armourers. . . .
When I distinguish four classes it is because we must choose a number. The tribe may and even must have many more. They will multiply in proportion as the arts come into being, and make progress. (CG 124)
all the citizens are given a wage with regard to each other. If the artisan and the merchant are paid by the farmer to whom they sell, the farmer is in his turn paid by the artisan and the merchant to whom he sells, and each of them gets paid for his work. (CG 127)
This mutual financial interdependence of farmers, merchants and artisans reads admirably in the late twentieth century. Condillac’s analysis shows how each class, generating utility for itself, interacts with others to create a highly effective economy.

In addition to arguing that the free domestic exchange of goods will always raise economic welfare, he extends his argument internationally and suggests that countries will always gain from unrestricted trade. He indicated that in 1776 no country had free trade in food and that France would gain by being the first to free both exports and imports:
France, we assume, is alone in giving export full, complete, permanent freedom without restriction, limitation or interruption. All her ports are always open and no one ever demands any duty on entry or exit there.
I say that, on this assumption, the trade in grain must be more profitable for France than for any other nation. (CG 230)
Whether she sells or whether she buys grain, France will, on our assumption, thus have a great advantage over the nations which forbid export and import. . . Because by forbidding export, they reduce the number of purchasers, and consequently they sell at a lower price; and by forbidding import they buy at a higher price, because they reduce the number of those selling to them. (CG 231)
He argued that the same would be true for each European nation:
We may conclude that if the states of Europe persist in denying complete freedom to trade, they will never be as rich or as populous as they might be; that if one of them gave complete and permanent liberty, while the others only allowed a temporary and restrained freedom, it would be, other things being equal, the richest of all; and that finally, if all ceased to place obstacles in the way of commerce, they would all be as rich as they could be; and then their respective wealth would depend. . . on the fertility of the soil and the hard work of its inhabitants. (CG 231)
Thus the removal of all barriers to trade would maximise the wealth of each country. Condillac’s economic reasoning led him to comprehensive support for domestic and international competition and the belief that this would make countries “as rich as they could be.” That was the most that economic policy could contribute; the rest would depend on “the fertility of the soil and the hard work of its inhabitants.”

Working from the analysis of human motivation which was subsequently adopted by most twentieth-century economists, Condillac provided the intellectual foundations for the establishment of the conditions for the maximisation of wealth, both nationally and internationally. With free markets, the free exchange of commodities would contribute to the utility and add to the wealth of all. It was this that led the French Nobel Prizewinner in Economics, Maurice Allais, to comment that Condillac had developed “a general theory of the generation of surpluses, of general economic equilibrium, and of maximal efficiency” (Allais, “General theory,” 174).

“Commerce and Government” and Turgot’s Reform Programme

The policy analysis of the Second Part of Commerce and Government follows the theoretical presentation of the First Part with an account of how the existence of adequate markets plays a central role in providing sufficient incentives for the supply side of the economy. Condillac’s 1776 account of the practical difficulties of Turgot’s reform programme is dominated by the absence of sufficient well-informed merchants to allow markets to work effectively.

In France from the 1750s onwards an influential circle of economic writers had been arguing the case for freeing agricultural markets. Local famines were frequent, and much of the population lived on the borderline of subsistence. Above all, Paris, the centre of political power, where discontent could most easily undermine governments, needed to be fed.75 Governments accepted an obligation to feed Paris, which often involved expensive purchases of grain by vast state-funded organisations and its sale at controlled prices which the people could afford.

The consequent network of government purchasing and price controls was buttressed by a system of supervision of grain markets: Condillac describes its condition at the time Turgot became Controller-General in August 1774, when it was:
forbidden to all persons to undertake trade in grain without having obtained permission for it from officials appointed for that purpose.
forbidden to all others, farmers or landowners to interfere directly or indirectly in carrying out this trade.
Any association between grain merchants was forbidden unless it had been authorized.
forbidden to pay a deposit on corn or to buy corn unripe, standing, before the harvest.
forbidden to sell corn other than in the markets.
forbidden to make hoards of grain.
forbidden to let it move from one province into another without having obtained permission. (CG 292–93)
The disadvantages were compounded by corruption, for:
You could not carry on the corn trade at all without having obtained. . . permission. But it was not enough to ask for it in order to get it; you also needed to have protection; and protection was hardly ever granted except to those who would pay for it, or who would give up a share in their profit. (CG 295)
From the 1750s onwards many economic writers had begun to compare the dirigisme of French grain markets with the comparative freedom of England’s, where competition reinforced by tariffprotection to establish a minimum price for farmers allowed people to be fed without famine and without any need for an apparatus of government control. When Quesnay first published “Fermiers” and “Grains” in the Encyclopédie in 1756, Vincent Gournay and Claude-Jacques Herbert, in his Essai sur la police générale des grains (1753), had already argued for the benefits from deregulated food markets. Quesnay went on to invent the Tableau économique (according to Marx “an extremely brilliant conception, incontestably the most brilliant for which political economy had up to then been responsible”: Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, 1:344) which formed the core of a complex economic model that demonstrated how the finances of France could be enhanced through agricultural reforms in which the freeing of food markets was of central importance.76 These combined influences led to a first attempt at liberalisation in 1763. The special attraction of the liberalisation of grain to those who governed France was the claim that freeing agricultural markets would sharply raise rents and therefore government revenues, which would place the finances of the Kingdom on a sound basis.

Clément-Charles-François de Laverdy, the Controller-General who attempted to liberalise food markets in 1763–64, called upon Turgot and Du Pont, who were to be central to the 1774 reforms about which Condillac writes in Commerce and Government, to draft the relevant decree.77 They both believed that Laverdy’s reforms did not go far enough. Laverdy retained the obligation to feed Paris, and he retained the bureaucratic apparatus to intervene to protect consumers whenever he judged this necessary. That meant that farmers and merchants who had correctly foreseen shortages could find that the exceptional profits which might have resulted from their superior foresight would be wiped out because the state could come in and undercut them by provisioning markets at a loss. Turgot and Du Pont insisted that markets must become entirely free if they were to work as they should. Laverdy also only offered limited and localised freedom to export. The liberalisers believed that France would only become entirely free from famine if a regular export surplus provided a cushion for home consumption in years of poor harvests. The higher prices exports offered would also raise agricultural profits and rents and therefore royal revenues.

Laverdy’s reforms produced disappointing results; food prices rose sharply immediately afterwards, and there were years of famine. The reforms had been welcomed in the agricultural regions which had benefited from higher food prices, but consumer-dominated Paris, which was politically far more important, had been hostile throughout. Laverdy was dismissed in 1768, and from 1770 to 1774 his reforms were reversed: while the liberalisers blamed their failure on their incompleteness.

In 1770 Ferdinando Galiani published a scathing assault on the reformers in Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds which had a great impact, especially because of its wit. Voltaire told Diderot that he had found it a mixture of Plato and Molière: “no one has ever reasoned better nor more amusingly” (Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 593). Galiani especially emphasised the arrogance of the liberalisers who believed that they had practical solutions to all problems, and he drew particular attention to the starvation of those whom free markets temporarily overlooked.78 One of his most quoted remarks denounces the liberalisers’ argument that free markets would rapidly move food from where it was abundant to where it was scarce: “beware that it takes time to send word from a deficit town to a surplus town that grain is lacking and still more time for this grain to arrive. ‘The theory goes well but the problem goes badly,’ for after a week of waiting ‘this insect called man’ will die of hunger” (Galiani, Dialogues sur le commerce, 221–23).

Faced by the practical failure of Laverdy’s reforms and powerful published assaults on the liberal analysis, the new Controller-General, Joseph-Marie Terray, entirely restored the previous system of regulation and even sought to widen its scope: he asked for detailed statistics of grain production and consumption from every region of France to provide the foundations for a national food policy.79 But the vast expense of his provisioning policies and their relative ineffectiveness led to another change of policy in 1774. The liberalisers succeeded in persuading the new King, Louis XVI, that Laverdy’s reforms had failed because of their incompleteness and that Turgot, one of the principal advisers in 1764, should be given the opportunity to carry the reform programme forward to an extent where it could become effective. Soon after he became Controller-General, Turgot appointed Du Pont, another of Laverdy’s principal advisers, Inspector-General of Commerce.

Turgot’s appointment as Controller-General appeared a new dawn to those who favoured reform. D’Alembert wrote, “If good does not come about, one must conclude that good cannot be done” (Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 4:20). But Galiani foresaw a very different outcome. He wrote to Mme d’Epinay from Naples on 17 September 1774 immediately he heard of the appointment: “At last M. Turgot is Controller-General. He will stay in place too short a time to carry out his systems. . . He will wish to do good, will meet thorny problems. . . His credit will fall, he will be hated, people will say that he is not up to the task, enthusiasm for him will cool, he will resign or be dismissed, and once and for all one will realise the error of having given a position such as his to a very virtuous and philosophical man in a monarchy such as yours. Free export of corn will be what will break his neck. Remember that” (Galiani, Correspondance, 4:183–84).

Turgot was appointed on 24 August 1774, and just three weeks later on 13 September he persuaded the King to issue an edict which allowed anyone to trade in food throughout France however and whenever he wished, and to forbid interference with commercial activity under all circumstances by all officials. Turgot even ordered that Terray’s statistics, which were to form the foundation for a national food policy, should no longer be collected.80 Since newly liberalised markets would provide the food the French people needed without even occasional interventions, the government had no need for information about harvests and the quantity of food in granaries.

Turgot accompanied the 13 September decree with a 3,000-word preamble which provided a comprehensive account of the economic reasoning behind his liberal approach to food markets. This was indeed the same as that of the physiocrats and Condillac.

According to this introduction, each province from time to time grew less or more food than it needed because of the vagaries of harvests, and suffered from alternations of distress and glut (non-valeur) when it could not sell its harvest for an adequate price. There were two ways of dealing with the difficulty: “by means of commerce left to itself, or through the intervention of government.” The preamble continued, “Reflection and experience prove alike that in order to furnish the needs of the people, the approach of free commerce is the most certain, the fastest acting, the least costly and the least subject to inconvenience” (Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 4:203).

Turgot’s preamble went on to claim scope for the merchants of France to respond to market forces which much exceeded what Condillac judged to be their actual condition in 1776, when he wrote that the people:
regarded the grain merchants as grasping men who took advantage of their needs. Once that opinion was rooted, a person could not engage in this trade if he cared for his reputation: it had to be left to those vile creatures who counted money for everything and honour for nothing. (CG 300)
In contrast Turgot asserts that:
Merchants, through the huge amount of the capital that they have at their command, and the extent of their connections with other merchants, by the promptitude and exactness of the advice they receive, by the economy that they understand how to place in their operations, by their practical experience in all matters of commerce, have the means and resources lacking to the most far-sighted, clear thinking and most energetic administrators. (Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 4:203)
Turgot’s merchants are not recognisably drawn from the same citizens as Condillac’s, and Turgot’s assumption that this wealthy, sophisticated, well-informed and competitive merchant class already existed was to prove a fatal error in Condillac’s account of the failure of his policies. But Condillac entirely agreed on the importance of a well-informed merchant class if grain markets were to function effectively:
Driven by. . . self-interest, merchants, great and small, multiplied by reason of our needs, will cause the corn to circulate, will put it everywhere at a level, everywhere at the true price [vrai-prix]. (CG 196–97)
In dealing with the circulation of cereals we have seen that it can only be carried out by a host of merchants spread everywhere. These merchants are so many canals through which the grain circulates. Now these canals had been broken and it was time to to mend them.
Indeed, to succeed in any type of trade it is not enough to have the freedom to carry it on; one must. . . have obtained contacts, and these contacts can only be the fruits of experience, which is often slow. One must also have capital, stores, carters, agents, correspondents; in a word one must have taken many precautions and many measures. (CG 298)
Condillac therefore entirely shared Turgot’s analysis that a large, well-informed merchant class was necessary, but he doubted its effectiveness until time and experience had created the infrastructure that successful markets require.

In the preamble to the September 1774 decree, Turgot went on to explain how freely functioning markets could not be relied upon to remedy food shortages if the state’s humanitarian response as under previous Controllers-General was to supply food to the needy at a price below the one that markets would establish:
when the government takes upon itself the task of providing for the people’s subsistence by carrying on the grain trade, it will be participating alone in this trade, because, since it is able to sell at a loss, no merchant can without foolhardiness expose himself to its competition. (Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 4:204)
Turgot believed that governments could only hold grain prices down briefly and intermittently:
Whatever means the Government employs, whatever sums it lavishes, experience has shown on all occasions that it can never prevent corn from being expensive when harvests are bad.
If, by forceful means it succeeds in delaying this necessary effect, this can only be in a particular place, for a very short period; and in believing it can come to the relief of the people, it will only ensure their wretchedness and aggravate their condition. (Ibid., 206)
The artificially low prices are “alms to the rich” at least as much as to the poor, because the well-off consume large amounts of grain themselves and through their households, while the greedy will buy as much as they can at the low prices and store it. Then the authorities will seek to punish such behaviour through terrifying searches of the houses of citizens.

An organisation which seeks to use the resources of government to provision cannot succeed, because:
Its attention is divided between too many objects, and it cannot be as active as merchants who are occupied with their trade alone.
Its operations, nearly always precipitous, will be conducted in a wasteful manner.
The agents it employs, having no interest in economy, buy more dearly, transport at much greater expense, store the grain with less care; much grain is lost and goes mouldy.
These agents may through lack of skill or even fraud, excessively inflate the cost of their operations.
Even when they are totally innocent they cannot avoid being suspected and the suspicion always rebounds on the Administration which employs them. (Ibid., 204)
So for Turgot, as for Condillac, there is no alternative to an attempt at a market solution, but both acknowledge that the price of grain has to be high enough to create the necessary incentive to supply. Turgot insists that competition will prevent the emergence of any monopoly and hold merchants’ profits down, “from which it arises that in years of dearth the price of grain incorporates little more than the inevitable increase which comes from the costs and risks of transporting or guarding the grain in times of need and hunger” (ibid., 204).

Condillac fully acknowledges that the vrai-prix which would follow the establishment of free markets might well be higher than the one which had prevailed previously: “it must be seen that that high price is not dearness; it is the true price fixed by competition, a true price which has its high, its low and its middle limit” (CG 230), while in his introduction to the September 1774 decree Turgot only accepts that prices will be high after bad harvests.

Partly because Turgot wrongly assumed the influence of a competitive merchant class which did not as yet exist, he underestimated the possibility that the freeing of markets would lead to substantial price increases. The price of corn began to rise immediately after the September 1774 decree took effect, and it became 50 per cent higher in 1775 than in 1774.81 By being able to sell corn in provinces other than their own, farmers were able to receive higher prices, and those who bought bread had to pay more. In May 1775 a series of provincial bread riots reached Paris: as a mob was smashing bakers’ shops, the comte de Maurepas, Turgot’s principal colleague in government, went to the opera and left the mob to rampage. The Paris Parlement met and passed a resolution which asked the King to “take the measures which his good sense and love for his subjects will inspire, to lower the prices of wheat and bread to a level appropriate to the needs of the people.” Turgot, regarding it vital to prevent the publication of this subversive decree which asked the King to revoke the laws of market economics, dashed to Versailles in the middle of the night, had the King woken, had a musketeer sent to summon each member of the Royal Council and obtained the King’s agreement to prevent the circulation of the Parlement’s decree. Several ministers were replaced and order was restored. Two members of the mob were hanged, many were imprisoned and a curé who had preached against the food riots received a pension and promotion (to a bénéfice).82

The attitude of the physiocrats to bread riots is illustrated by the marquis de Mirabeau’s statement in a memoir he wrote in 1772, prior to Turgot’s reforms, that “Paris will be fed when Paris will pay” (Weulersse, La Physiocratie, 158); but as Galiani wrote to Madame d’Epinay on 27 May 1775, “I hope that this event will have taught M. Turgot. . . to know men, and the world, which is not that of the works of the économistes. He will have seen that revolts occasioned by dearness are not impossible as he believed” (Galiani, Correspondance, 4:250).

After the crisis, Turgot imposed price controls on bakers, despite the universal belief in the efficacy of markets which he had expressed in his 1774 decree. Joseph Albert, the Lieutenant-General of Police, threatened to hang the first baker who stopped making bread out of dissatisfaction with the inadequate maximum price he was allowed to charge.83 Turgot’s need to feed Paris left him with the fundamental dilemma that the measures necessary to do so undermined his agricultural reforms. He had remarked eight years before he became Controller-General that “the cobblestones of the cities do not produce any grain” (Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 681). The fundamental difficulty that the policy of establishing a free market for food would initially raise food prices remained unsolved. Bachaumont speaks of a mob being ready to smash a bust of Quesnay “on hearing that he was the cause of the current dearness of grain through the false theories and the baneful opinions he had inspired in the government” (Hecht, “La vie de François Quesnay,” 276).

Turgot retained royal support throughout the crisis of 1775, but in February–March 1776 he proposed six reforming edicts which aroused still greater opposition. These included the replacement of the corvée, which obliged peasants to spend a number of days a year on local public works, with the financing of these by local taxation to be paid by landowners. Other decrees proposed to free internal French food markets and to abolish local monopoly privileges. A large number of government posts associated with the administration of the markets Turgot was proposing to free would be abolished, and indirect taxes such as those on salt would be replaced with a territorial tax which landowners and even the Church would have to pay, with a consequent loss of privileges for tax collectors.84 Turgot knew that great opposition would be aroused by the speed of his reform programme, but he remarked when he became a minister at the age of forty-seven: “In my family we die at fifty” (Schelle, Turgot, 211): he was actually fifty-fourwhen he died in 1781.

Maurepas declined to support the six decrees, the Paris Parlement again voiced its opposition, and referred to “The cry for an ill considered freedom” and “a novel system introduced by books and articles, as inexact in their facts as their principles.” But Turgot still enjoyed the support of the King, and his six decrees were endorsed by the Council. Paris was illuminated that night; but Turgot’s triumph was brief.

He was isolated in the Council. He attempted to appease his opponents by closing down the physiocratic journals, but he failed to persuade the King to replace Maurepas or in fact to make any ministerial changes which would strengthen his position. There was indeed powerful and widespread opposition to his reforms which did not even enjoy the support of the unprivileged because the price of bread had risen. Many of those in receipt of government incomes saw that the reforms would destroy their jobs and their wealth. The farmers who were beginning to benefit were mostly some distance from Paris. The King opened conversations with another Provincial Intendant, Clugny, who was appointed to succeed Turgot as Controller-General of Finances in May 1776.85 Clugny proved a tinkerer who rearranged public debt without seeking to pursue policies which would produce sufficient revenues to place government finances on a sound footing. He was succeeded by others, including most notably Necker, who equally failed to achieve the fundamental reforms which were needed.

Turgot actually wrote to Louis XVI immediately before the King replaced him, “Never forget that it was weakness that placed the head of Charles I on the block” (Schelle, Turgot, 238). The King had written to Turgot previously: “It is only you and I who love the people” (ibid., 247). But he failed to sustain Turgot in office, and permitted Clugny to reverse the six decrees. His Queen, Marie Antoinette (who followed Louis XVI to the guillotine during the Revolution), wrote to her mother, Maria-Theresa, the Empress of Austria, that she was not sorry Turgot’s ministry had fallen. The Empress responded that they had tried to do too much too quickly.86 That is always the problem radical reformers face. Gustave Schelle, one of Turgot’s principal biographers, has commented that if Turgot had moved more slowly, opposition to his reforms would have had more time to build up, and his position would have been undermined before much could be achieved.87 The optimum pace of reform when radical change is necessary is never clear. After his reforms encountered difficulties Turgot fell victim to the short-term policy option of all monarchs (and Prime Ministers) that the ousting of a Controller-General (or a Chancellor of the Exchequer) is “one of the few acts by which the King could please the vast majority of his subjects without taking into consideration any of their specific grievances” (Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 249).

Condillac published Commerce and Government two months before Turgot’s fall, but the fate of the reform programme was already clear. Many of the later chapters of Commerce and Government are a thinly veiled indictment of the vast range of anti-competitive institutions and policies which proliferated in France and which undermined the effectiveness of the economy and the King’s finances. He was especially concerned by the dirigisme in the market for grain which was so prominent in Turgot’s programme. Writing contemporaneously with the reforms which he utterly supported, and perceiving the initial opposition they aroused, Condillac provides insights into the failure of Turgot’s policies. His description of the French grain market and his account of the conditions in which Turgot’s policies were pursued underlines the initial difficulties he faced.

Condillac comments on the adverse reaction to the price increases that followed the freeing of food markets. People remarked: “‘Look at what freedom produces.’ That is how the common people reasoned, and they were almost the entire nation. They thought that the dearness was a result of freedom.” They did not appreciate that prices would only fall when there were “enough merchants” to establish cereals “at their true price”. But they said, “we need bread every day” (CG 298–99). They believed that:
the one task of government was to procure them cheap bread. . . So every time that it became dearer the people asked the government to have the price lowered.
There were only two ways to satisfy them. The government had to buy grain itself to sell again at a loss, or it had to force merchants to deliver their corn at the price it had fixed.
Of these two ways the first tended to ruin the state; the second was unjust and odious; and both accustomed the people to think that it was for the government to obtain cheap bread for them. (CG 299)
In Condillac’s judgment the people saw the problem of obtaining cheap bread as a conflict of “The rights of humanity opposed to the rights of property” (to which Condillac replied, “What gibberish!”); and everyone said “the most absurd things to oppose the operations of the new minister. . . It seemed that everyone was condemned to reason badly on this matter.” Turgot’s opponents, many of whom had favoured the policy of freeing food markets until the uncomfortable consequences of higher prices emerged, now included, according to Condillac, “poets, geometricians, philosophers, metaphysicians, in a word almost all literary men, and especially those whose trenchant tone hardly allows one to take their doubts for doubts, and who do not permit one to think differently from them” (CG 300).

The philosophes had welcomed the physiocrat policy of freeing food markets when this appeared to be a contribution to greater freedom in general, but much of their support was withdrawn as soon as it became clear that greater market freedom meant higher prices. When the freeing of food markets as a consequence of physiocrat advocacy had produced localised famine in 1770, Voltaire wrote that: “I have a desire to carry my protests to the Éphémérides des Citoyens” (Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 504), while Diderot’s response to the argument that higher food prices would eventually raise the supply of food was: “I eat badly when I only have potential bread” (Diderot, Apologie, 115).

Opposition to Turgot also came from the vast bureaucracies which government had created to administer regulated markets and to exploit monopolistic privileges in international trade. Condillac writes:
In the capital they need administrators, directors, clerks, employees: they need other administrators, other directors, other clerks, other employees wherever they form establishments. They also need, in addition to the counters and the warehouses, buildings as a monument to the vanity of the directors they employ. Forced to such outlays, how much will they not lose in embezzlement, in negligence, in incompetence? They pay for all the errors of those they employ to serve them; and all the more arise, as the administrators who succeed each other at the whim of faction, and who each see differently, never allow a sensible, sustained plan to be made. They form badly contrived enterprises: they carry them out as though randomly; and in an administration that seems to tie itself up in knots, they employ self-interested men to complicate it further. The direction of these companies is thus necessarily vicious. (CG 314)
Those with vested interests in the perpetuation of these bureaucracies added their voices to the opposition to Turgot’s reforms. According to Condillac, “the new minister showed courage,” but “Such are the chief obstacles in the way of the reestablishment of freedom. Time will remove them if the government perseveres” (CG 300–301). It became evident two months after the publication of Commerce and Government that Turgot would not be allowed to persevere. After just twenty months, the opposition Condillac describes led to his fall and the reversal of his reforms. As Condillac remarked, “when disorder has reached a certain point, a revolution, however good it may be, is never accomplished without causing violent shocks” (CG 298).

The physiocrats fell with Turgot. Du Pont was ordered to leave Paris, and the editors of the physiocratic journals which Turgot had closed in a vain attempt to appease his opponents were exiled. But what had occurred became central to economic debate. The économistes had had an opportunity to give practical effect to their theories and they had failed. The reasons for Turgot’s fall, which Condillac illuminates in Commerce and Government, have aroused continuing interest, including a major work by Edgar Faure, a President of the National Assembly and member of several twentieth-century French governments.

There is much in Condillac’s account of the difficulties that Turgot’s reforms encountered as a consequence of their immediate adverse impact on vested interests and food prices which foreshadows the obstacles that similar reforms have encountered in post-communist Eastern Europe.88 In the eighteenth century and in the twentieth, prices rose sharply when markets were first freed, and the extent of the price increases was accentuated because the large numbers of merchants and traders required to exploit freer markets were absent. Some of the movement and trading of food and consumer goods fell into the hands of the semi-criminal because the numerous middlemen and the small traders which efficient distribution requires had not yet emerged. In the eighteenth century and in the twentieth, new policies were obstructed by inefficient bureaucracies with vested interests in the prevention of reform which undermined their privileges.

Like the leading physiocrats, Condillac entirely supported Turgot’s reform programme, and his account of the contemporary reasons for its failure should have made sense to them. His theory of value with which his book opened has earned high praise in the twentieth century. But how did his contemporaries, and above all the physiocrats, react to the book on its first publication in 1776?

The Contemporary Reaction to “Commerce and Government”

The publication of a book on economics by this well-connected and distinguished philosopher and man of letters was bound to arouse great interest. He had known François Quesnay well,89 and common ground has been found in their approaches to the philosophy of science, on which both published in the 1750s,90 but Quesnay had died in 1774, two years before the publication of Commerce and Government. The professional reaction would come from the physiocrat followers of Quesnay. Economic thought advances and a new contribution by a distinguished writer would inevitably re fine and develop what had already been published. Condillac was in complete agreement with the two principal physiocrat policy proposals: the freeing of food markets and the use of the agricultural surplus as the only sustainable source of tax revenues. He opens his analysis of the sources of taxation by stating that only landowners have the resources to pay taxes:
There are in general only two classes of citizen: that of the landowners to whom all the land and all the products belong; and that of the paid workers [salariés] who, having neither land nor produce of their own, subsist on the wages that are due for their work.
The first class can easily contribute; since, with all the products belonging to it, if it does not have all the money, it has more than the equivalent and besides it passes entirely through its hands. (CG 220)
When he says that everyone is either a landowner or a paid worker, Condillac is saying that everyone either owns land so that he is financially independent, or else depends for his livelihood on the production of a good or service. In this sense the paid workers sell their labour (which may be extremely skilled) or the products of their labour in the market place for their livelihood. Because the incomes of paid workers ultimately have to be paid by landowners, any shortfall in such incomes must eventually fall on the landowners who will bear the burden of any tax:
So there you have, in a state such as France, several millions of citizens who are forced to cut back on their consumption. Now I ask whether the land will return the same income, when people sell a smaller amount of their produce to several million citizens. So whether the wage-earners are totally reimbursed, or whether they are only partially reimbursed, it is clear that, in the one case as in the other, the tax that one places on them falls equally on the owners.
Indeed, the landowners must certainly pay for the wage-earning class, since it is the landowners who pay the wages. In a word, no matter how one approaches it, they must pay everything. (CG 221–22)
While Condillac totally supported the principal policy proposals of the physiocrats, his new theory of value and utility on which his analysis was ultimately based had led to the conclusion that “farmers, merchants, artisans come together to increase the mass of wealth,” and even more provocatively that this had been “much obscured by some writers.”

Because his analysis endorsed Quesnay’s principal policy proposals, the physiocrats could have regarded this contribution by a distinguished philosopher and member of l’Académie française as a constructive contribution to the analysis of their school. They had accepted the economics of Turgot, who had been heterodox enough to suggest that industry as well as agriculture generates an economic surplus: in the form of profits, which only appear tangentially in Quesnay’s writings.91 Turgot was welcomed as at least a “fellow traveller,” and physiocrats were delighted to have the opportunity to serve with him in government. They none the less censored his writings via extensive editorial amendments by Du Pont before these could be allowed to appear in Les Éphémérides du citoyen.92 A school of knowledge which is still alive can accommodate debate. This will generally enrich its analysis through the Hegelian process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Would Condillac’s book be similarly welcomed as a basis for debate on the development of physiocracy? The physiocrats would have found it technically challenging to absorb his analysis of human motivation into their system’s already rich analysis, but a successful synthesis of the economics of Quesnay and Condillac would have produced a stronger theory.

Contemporaries of the physiocrats have remarked on their dogmatism. For instance, in 1769 David Hume wrote to Morellet, who would soon be commissioned by the Administration to write a book to rebut Galiani, “crush them, and pound them, and reduce them to dust and ashes,” for they are “the most chimerical and arrogant [set of men] that now exists” (Hume, Letters, 2:205). Would the leading physiocrats succumb to such arrogance and dogmatism in their reaction to Condillac?

When Commerce and Government first appeared it was received with interest. According to the abbé Nicholas Baudeau, Du Pont’s successor as editor of Les Ephémérides, the book was published with “the highest praise” (Baudeau, “Observations,” 432), while according to Guillaume-François Le Trosne, another prominent physiocrat, it had impressed “many people” (Le Trosne, De l’intérêt social, 886). In April 1776 Morellet sent a copy across the Channel to the future British Prime Minister, the Earl of Shelburne, and remarked in his accompanying letter, “I am however sending you an admirable book by one of our men of letters, the abbé de Condillac. You no doubt have his treatise on education, but this is an elementary economic work where the ideas are in general true and the principles wise. In every part of it you will find freedom of commerce sustained” (Morellet, Lettres, 1:339).

Some of the most distinguished physiocrats were members of the Société royale d’agriculture d’Orléans, and Condillac was invited to read chapters from his book to this society in February and March 1776. In the minutes of the 306th meeting on 14 March 1776 it was noted that the society had seen with satisfaction that “the practical conclusions aimed to guide every administration that intends the public good being found in perfect conformity with those of economic science, fewer problems than advantages are to be expected from the publication of this work” (Lebeau, Condillac, 41). On 21 March the society continued to read and discuss Condillac’s book, but on 25 April 1776 the first part of a critical review article by Baudeau appeared in Les Nouvelles Éphémérides, and this was discussed in place of further chapters of Condillac’s book. Then on 27 February 1777 Le Trosne came to the 331st session of the society to read chapters of his new book, De l’intérêt social, which included an extensive critique of Commerce and Government. The flavour of Baudeau’s and Le Trosne’s responses to Commerce and Government can be judged from Baudeau’s statement that:
True économistes can easily be distinguished by one simple characteristic in a manner that the whole world can understand. They recognise one master, Dr Quesnay, one doctrine (that of Philosophie rurale and l’Analyse économique), classic texts (la Physiocratie), and a single formula (le Tableau économique), and they use technical terms in the same way as the ancient scholars of China. (Baudeau, “Observations,” 433)
Le Trosne complained that Condillac had departed from doctrines which had been “published, proved and demonstrated in several works in the last fifteen years” (Le Trosne, De l’intérêt social, 886). After further readings from Le Trosne’s critique, the society concluded that he had succeeded in “dissipating the clouds in which the subtle metaphysician, M. l’abbé de Condillac, appeared to wish to obscure this science that is so important to the well-being and stability of political societies. The Society has thanked M. Le Trosne” (Lebeau, Condillac, 43).

In addition to their dogmatic hostility, Baudeau and Le Trosne had criticisms of substance, which were sufficient to persuade the Royal Agricultural Society of Orléans to condemn the book.

Both Baudeau and Le Trosne drew attention to Condillac’s statement that there were, in general, “only two classes of citizens: that of the landowners. . . and that of the paid workers” (CG 220). They could not accept Condillac’s radical concept of a multi-sectoral and mutually interdependent economy.

Their detailed criticisms concerned Condillac’s sketchy (to the physiocrats’ confused) account of the creation of the agricultural surplus which was central to physiocracy. The landowners provided the sole source of taxable revenues. But could the entrepreneur-farmers who invested their own capital in farms which they leased and whose success or failure determined whether France would grow or decline be regarded as belonging to the same class, paid workers (les salariés), as farm labourers? Condillac generally describes those who farm as “colons” or “fermiers.” In the early chapters where he describes a very primitive society (peuplade) these plausibly own their own land, but as soon as the argument is developed and landowners congregate in cities where they receive rent, can those who actually organise agriculture be sensibly described as belonging to the same class as farm labourers? It would be entirely natural to speak of both farm labourers and farm managers as employees if farming was conducted on a métayer basis where all farm capital is owned by landowners, while those who actually farm on their behalf are allowed to keep a fraction of the harvest, corresponding via competition to the subsistence wage.

But Quesnay insisted in his first publications that to achieve the level of agricultural surplus which France required and England was actually achieving, it was necessary that agriculture should evolve to a condition where the management of farms was in the hands of capitalist tenant farmers. These would take farms on long leases, own all movable capital such as horses, ploughs and farm animals, finance all the costs which precede harvests and own the harvests net of their obligation to pay an agreed rent to landowners. Quesnay called this manner of farming “la grande culture” as opposed to the métayer system which he labelled “la petite culture.”93 Condillac’s two-class society comfortably accommodates la petite culture in which les salariés are easily recognisable, but he nowhere brings the considerable technical advantages of la grande culture fully into his argument. Condillac’s father was a prominent provincial lawyer, while Condillac himself lived as a philosopher who advised princes. Quesnay grew up the son of a farmer, who understood the significance of capital-intensive farming with horses rather than labour-intensive farming with ox-drawn ploughs: Condillac never discusses the details of efficient farming which were so central to the principal physiocratic texts. Baudeau and Le Trosne complained that by calling both entrepreneur-farmers and day-labourers salariés, Condillac had obscured the economic significance of the entrepreneur-farmers on whom the well-being of France predominantly depended in mainstream physiocracy.

Condillac actually distinguishes the entrepreneur-farmers from labourers in his chapters “The origin of towns” and “Of the right of ownership” (CG 135–40), where he sets out several ways in which agriculture can be organised. Landowners may receive their rents through farm managers who will also sometimes themselves farm; or directly from large farmers who themselves lease the land from the landowners, provide initial and annual advances and hire day-labourers, which is Quesnay’s la grande culture; or farming may be organised through métayer systems of output sharing. He does not bring these distinctions into the remainder of the book, and he makes no reference to Quesnay’s insight that only some systems of land tenure are compatible with la grande culture where horse-drawn ploughs produce a rate of surplus three times as great as the ox-drawn ploughs of la petite culture. Condillac’s passages on alternative systems of land tenure are slightly extended in the passages he added to the 1798 edition in response to the criticisms of Baudeau and Le Trosne, but again there is no impact on the remainder of the book.94 Condillac therefore still neglected to bring the physiocrat supply-side arguments about agricultural efficiency and what actually determines the extent of the agricultural surplus directly into his argument.

But his detailed analysis of agriculture is entirely in line with his general approach to economic efficiency. The incomes of farm managers, farmers and day-labourers are all determined by competitive market forces, and the land is capable of delivering a growing supply of agricultural produce as new demands for this are created through the development of new industrial products. Quesnay’s world, where horse-drawn ploughs yield a surplus on annual advances of 100 per cent and ox-drawn ploughs a surplus of 36 per cent, is essentially one of fixed coefficients. Condillac has no fixed coefficients. Instead, provided that the markets for farm managers, farmers, day-labourers and food are competitive, agriculture will be conducted in the best possible manner to maximise productive efficiency. The supply side will organise itself through market forces which must be allowed to operate entirely freely, and it will then operate as effectively as possible. With this general approach, he does not need to follow Quesnay, Baudeau and Le Trosne in having more categories of employees in agriculture than in other sectors. It is enough to say that throughout an efficient economy there are landowners and the salariés, who are all those who are market-dependent, be they managers, farmers or labourers.

Le Trosne was highly critical of Condillac’s multi-sectoral view of the economy, but he accepted that his argument had led him to policy conclusions which were as sound (they were indeed the same) as those of the physiocrats:
I admit only one source of wealth, and M. l’abbé de Condillac admits as many as there are kinds of work. . .
However when he moves on to the practical, the fairness of his intellect redeems his argument. He establishes perfectly the single tax, freedom of industry, freedom of commerce both internal and external, the effects of monopoly and the dangers from prohibitions. The theoretical lines of thought he has developed do not influence his results. (Le Trosne, De l’intérêt social, 933)
Le Trosne writes equally warmly that “I shall bring to this discussion, which has the sole object of instructing the public, the high respect the author merits, and I dare flatter myself that there will be no weakening in the friendship he has been ready to show me” (ibid., 886).

Baudeau complains that Condillac made no use of Quesnay’s Tableau économique:
you would destroy to nothing the Tableau économique, this masterpiece of the Master, this valuable summary of economic doctrine. You certainly had no intention to do this wrong to knowledge, nor to the memory of Dr Quesnay of whom you were a disciple and friend before me. (“Observations,” 443)
The unwillingness of Baudeau and Le Trosne to accept Condillac’s book as a contribution to economic debate which deserved to be added to the literature meriting discussion by the dominant physiocratic school sufficed to limit its contemporary impact.95 The physiocrats could have absorbed into their system the most fundamental element of Condillac’s contribution: utility and its impact on human motivation. Condillac was not the first to see a powerful connection between value and utility. Galiani had found one in Della Moneta in 1751, and Condillac’s attention was drawn to this work while he was tutor to the Prince of Parma.96 Turgot also set out an analysis of the influence of utility on value in 1769 in an un finished paper, “Valeurs et monnaies,” which was published posthumously by Du Pont, but the extent of its manuscript circulation during his lifetime is unknown.

Condillac’s readily available published account of the connection between value and utility is more coherent and comprehensive than Galiani’s and Turgot’s,97 and it was therefore from him that the physiocrats had an out standing opportunity to absorb the influence of utility upon value and human motivation into their analysis, almost a century before this became the universal approach of economists throughout the world.

“Commerce and Government” in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations three months after Commerce and Government, and it established an overwhelming case for competitive market economics and the removal of trade barriers. The policy conclusions of Commerce and Government are similar, and Maurice Allais and Friedrich von Hayek, French and German Nobel Prizewinners in economics, have bracketed it with The Wealth of Nations. Hayek has remarked that “the great strides” in economics “always came from outside—and for the most part in opposition to—the schools” which, like the physiocrats, are “more likely to hinder than to advance progress.” He refers in contrast to the lasting gain to science in 1776, “the year in which the works of Adam Smith and Condillac were published” (Hayek, “Richard Cantillon,” 267). Allais has described Commerce and Government as “definitely superior to Smith in theoretical analysis and logical systemization of ideas” (Allais, “General theory,” 37).

But in 1776 and subsequently, the impact of The Wealth of Nations was immeasurably greater. A key to the contemporary success of Smith’s book and Condillac’s failure to arouse widespread attention may be found in Spencer Pack’s interpretation of the relevance of Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres to the success of The Wealth of Nations. Smith advises that when an author is writing for those already receptive to what he has to say, a deductive method of presentation with a logical derivation of conclusions from axioms which readers are already prepared to acccept is appropriate. It is by far the easiest to follow and it is the most elegant. But when an author is writing for the unconverted, he should argue inductively, moving step by step from known facts to the conclusions he wishes to establish. Tariffs, restrictions on trade and detailed government interventions proliferated in both Britain and France in 1776, so both Condillac and Smith were addressing the unconverted, but Smith adopted the method of presentation he had prescribed for such a situation:
keep as far from the main point to be proved as possible, bringing on the audience by slow and imperceptible degrees to the thing to be proved, and by gaining their consent to some things whose tendency they cant discover, we force them at last either to deny what they had before agreed to, or to grant the Validity of the Conclusion. . . if they are prejudiced against the Opinion to be advanced; we are not to shock them by rudely affirming what we are satisfied is disagreeable, but are to conceal our design and beginning at a distance, bring them slowly on to the main point and having gained the more remote ones we get the nearer ones of consequence. (Smith, Wealth of Nations, 146–47)
Pack reminds us with this passage in mind that Smith only reached his critique of mercantilist policies after more than 500 pages replete with convincing empirical detail.

Condillac in contrast used the deductive methodology of a distinguished philosopher and moved faultlessly and elegantly from proposition to proposition,98 but he failed to carry the vast majority of his French readers. His initial chapters lacked Smith’s empiricism, and his French readers were un-prepared to accept that a deductive argument, which moved from premises they did not recognise as relevant, could arrive at conclusions which sensibly related to their country. Because of the consequent lack of recognition by his own countrymen, unlike much important French economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Commerce and Government was not immediately translated into English. This limited the scope for international recognition in the warmer environments for deductive argument and free market conclusions that was offered by the economics profession in Britain and later the United States.

There were occasional citations of Condillac in the nineteenth-century French literature. In 1803 Jean-Baptiste Say found Condillac insufficiently empirical in his “Discours préliminaire” to his Traité d’économie politique:
almost all the French writers of some reputation who have concerned themselves with matter relating to Political Economy from 1760 to around 1780 without positively marching under the banner of the physiocrats have nonetheless allowed themselves to be dominated by their opinions. . . One can even count Condillac among their number although he sought to devise his own system. There are some good ideas to be discovered among the ingenious chatter of his book; but he passed by the most fruitful truths without noticing them. Just like the physiocrats, he almost always bases a principle on a gratuitous assumption: now an assumption may serve as an example but not as a fundamental truth. Political Economy only rose to the level of the sciences when, like the other sciences, it made a study solely of what is. (xviii– xix)
A. F. Théry repeated Say’s judgement that Commerce and Government is insufficiently empirical to make a significant contribution to economics in his introductory article on the life and works of Condillac for the second edition of the complete Oeuvres de Condillac published in Paris in 1821–22. It was Théry’s judgement and doubtless that of his contemporaries that Condillac was an important philosopher but an in significant economist.

The 1844 edition of Say’s Cours complet d’économie politique was published with a “Bibliographie raisonnée de l’économie politique” by A. Blanqui, who claimed that he had omitted no book essential to the study of economics, but he failed to include Commerce and Government among the 600 titles he listed.

A passage from Commerce and Government none the less attracted condemnation from two economists, Say and Marx, who do not ordinarily cohabit. Both strongly criticised Condillac’s statement that:
it is false that in exchanges one gives equal value for equal value. On the contrary, each of the contracting parties always gives a lesser value for a greater value. . . Indeed, if one always exchanged equal value for equal value, there would be no gain to be made for either of the contracting parties. Now, both of them make a gain, or ought to make one. Why? The fact is that with things only having value in relation to our needs, what is greater for one person is less for another, and vice versa. (CG 120)
In the Cours complet d’économie politique Say declared that “This doctrine. . . does not explain in any way the variety of phenomena which commercial production presents. . . I confront the same errors in social discourse, and even in books” (part 2, ch. 13).

Marx’s reaction is to be found in the first volume of Capital: “We see in this passage, how Condillac. . . confuses use-value with exchange-value. . . Still, Condillac’s argument is frequently used by modern economists, more especially when the point is to show, that in the exchange of commodities in its developed form, commerce, is productive of surplus-value (part 2, ch. 5).

Condillac’s argument which both Marx and Say condemned was that the value of commodities depends on their utilities, and that when a good is sold, the total utility the seller sacrifices is less than the total utility the buyer gains, and vice versa. He drafted a further five paragraphs to explain this analysis further after the publication of the 1776 edition, and these are included in the posthumous 1798 edition (and on pp. 121–22 of the present text). Marx cites Condillac from Daire’s 1847 edition, which includes none of the post-humous material (see p. 79 below), while it is not clear whether Say used the 1798 edition, which included the additional material. Marx and Say may have condemned Condillac without reading all he had to say on this question.

The concepts of consumers’ and producers’ surplus were developed well after his death, but the statement which both Marx and Say objected to is compatible with that later development of economic theory, and Condillac comes close to it in the posthumous paragraphs. In the twentieth century it came to be understood that the buyer of a commodity for final consumption gains a consumer’s surplus, while the producer gains a producer’s surplus. Theorems have been formulated to establish that the sum of these will be maximised when the relevant commodities and factors of production are sold entirely freely in competitive markets. Condillac’s economics is in line with these twentieth-century developments.

How close he came to understanding that there were actually rigorous proofs for his propositions is naturally unclear, but in chapter after chapter he reiterates the benefits an economy derives from the free exchange of goods in competitive markets.

Condillac began to receive serious attention after the marginal revolution of the 1870s when Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger discovered that there was much where Condillac had been before them. In 1871 in his Theory of Political Economy, Jevons credited him with “the earliest distinct statement of the true connection between value and utility” (xxviii). Also in 1871 in his Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre, Menger referred to his fundamental view that utility is the measure of a good’s use value which has “frequently reappeared since that time in the writings of English and French economists” (Menger, 297). He has eight references to Condillac, more than to any other French economist apart from Say, and more than to any British economist other than Adam Smith.99 Walras was less warm. In his pathbreaking Eléments d’économie pure of 1874 he writes:
The science of economics offers three major solutions to the problem of the origin of value. The first, that of Adam Smith, Ricardo and Mc-Culloch, is the English solution, which traces the origin of value to labour. This solution is too narrow, because it fails to attribute value to things which, in fact, do have value. The second solution, that of Condillac and J. B. Say, is the French solution, which traces the origin of value to utility. This solution is too broad, because it attributes value to things which, in fact, have no value. Finally, the third solution, that of Burlamaqui and my father, A. A. Walras, traces the origin of value to scarcity [rarité]. This is the correct solution. (201)
Walras at least places Condillac among the originators of one of the leading approaches to the theory of value.

After the 1870s, with the significance of Condillac’s contribution to the theory of value and utility firmly established, several French economists recognised the importance of Commerce and Government. In particular, Condillac’s condemnation by the physiocrats was reassessed, and several preferred his analysis to theirs. That was the early twentieth-century judgement of Charles Gide and Charles Rist, the authors of Histoire des doctrines économiques depuis les Physiocrates jusqu’à nos jours, which appeared in seven French and two English editions between 1909 and 1948. They wrote, 140 years after Condillac’s death, “it is above all in Condillac’s book that we must seek the closing of the gaps and the correction of the errors of the Physiocrats” (3rd ed., 55).

Writing in 1912, Émile Morand examined the psychological theories of value of Galiani, Turgot and Condillac, and described Condillac as “the most eminent man of his century on this question” (La Théorie psychologique, 6). He especially praises Condillac’s account of the role of commerce in the creation of value:
the aqueduct which, for Condillac, symbolises commerce, becomes as the creator of wealth, the creator of value. (Ibid., 308)
Condillac developing his general theory logically arrives at results which are far more admissible and far more in conformity to economic reality since he recognises that commerce has an immense role in the creation of value. (Ibid., 311)
He sided with Condillac against the physiocrats who insisted that exchanges of goods cannot increase the “value” of production and extolled precisely the passage which Say and Marx condemned. He argued indeed that this controversial passage is at the heart of the originality of Condillac’s contribution, and he has extensive passages which show that those who receive goods in an exchange derive more utility from them than those who part with them, and that these potential gains in utility go on to spur real economic activities which raise the value of production.

When he argues that the utility gained from exchanges leads to a consequential increase in productive activity, he quotes the passage where Condillac argues that with each advance made by artisans, farmers acquire “value in a product which previously had none,” which gives “a fresh spur to commerce” so that “farmers, merchants, artisans, come together to increase the mass of wealth” (CG 125). Morand writes:
Therefore it is difficult to provide in less space a better and more complete perception of the role commerce plays in production; here again by the exactitude and depth of his insights Condillac far surpasses those of whom he has often been regarded as a disciple. Value being founded on our needs, the appearance of a new need, to which corresponds a good appropriate to satisfy it, creates a new value. (La Théorie psychologique, 312)
He identi fies “To give less for more” as a phrase which “returns in Condillac’s work as a refrain. . . it alone would be enough to distinguish him from the physiocrats” (ibid., 302).

Perhaps the greatest French compliment to the advance of Condillac over the physiocrats is to be found in Georges Weulersse’s La Physiocratie sous les ministères de Turgot et de Necker (1774–81), posthumously published in 1950, forty years after his great history of physiocracy.

His account of “Physiocracy under the ministry of Turgot” concludes with the chapter “Attack and defence of the system,” which culminates in an account of how Condillac surpassed his predecessors. He opens by remarking that “it was left to a quali fied philosopher, a more subtle analyst, to advance the elucidation of the problem,” of the role agriculture plays in relation to industry and commerce (La Physiocratie sous les Ministères, 229). He welcomes Condillac’s statements that industry and commerce add to the mass of wealth. Like Morand, he endorses the statement that each party to an exchange always gives up a lesser for a greater value (neither refers to its condemnation by Say and Marx):
this is the precious distinction between the psychological value in use to the individual and the social market value in exchange which the physiocrats were inclined to consider too exclusively. (Ibid., 230)
Weulersse emphasises that a very different natural social order emerges as soon as it is accepted that industrial and commercial as well as agricultural activity add to the value of output.

He remarks that, “according to our philosopher, a society consists of a kind of universal salariat, a conception altogether strange to the [physiocratic] school.” He quotes Condillac’s statement that “all the citizens are given a wage with regard to each other. If the artisan and the merchant are paid by the farmer to whom they sell, the farmer is in his turn paid by the artisan and the merchant to whom he sells, and each of them gets paid for his work” (CG 127). Weulersse remarks that here there is not merely mutual dependency between the different classes; there is actually equal dependency, which has important social implications (La Physiocratie sous les Ministères, 230).

He agrees with Baudeau and Le Trosne that Condillac analyses the role of capital in production with “far less precision” than the physiocrats (ibid., 231). But Weulersse emphasises passages in Commerce and Government, such as “all citizens are, each by reason of his work, co-proprietors in the wealth of the society,” to suggest remarkably that Condillac even comes close to a labour theory of value (ibid., 232).

The respect of Jevons, Menger, Walras, Gide and Rist, Morand, Weulersse, Hutchison, Allais and Hayek for the economics of Commerce and Government in the 200 years since its publication underlines that French political economy failed to take advantage of an important opportunity in 1776 and 1777.

In the development of British classical economics, Malthus and Ricardo enriched the economics of Smith. They strongly criticised several of his conclusions, but accepted his analysis as the starting point for their own. British political economy strengthened and developed as Malthus’s theory of population and Ricardo’s theory of value and distribution were integrated with the economics of The Wealth of Nations to culminate in the last great work of British classical economics, the Principles of Political Economy (1848) of John Stuart Mill. Classical French political economy would have become equally great if the économistes had been prepared to absorb the best of Condillac’s economics instead of dogmatically condemning it.

Those concerned with the administration of economic policy in France would also have benefited from a familiarity with Condillac comparable to the familiarity with Smith of almost all who governed Britain in the nineteenth century. The continuing Colbertian dominance in official French economics might have been less pronounced if French political economists and administrators had been more aware of Condillac.

English language readers who come upon Commerce and Government for the first time will find, with Allais, that the case for competitive market economics has rarely been presented more powerfully, and that there is continuing relevance in Condillac’s account of the difficulties that those who seek to liberalise economies still encounter.

3

The Editions of Commerce and Government

The initial edition of Commerce and Government was published in Paris in 1776 by Jombert & Cellot in both a single-volume (vi + 586 pp.) and a two-volume (273 + 180 pp.) edition. On the title page, the place of publication of both editions is described as “Amsterdam and one also finds it at Paris.” This is a typical convention of the period, and, as explained in Chapter 1, in many of the books actually published in Paris a principal and generally fictitious foreign place of publication is also stated on the title page so that the censors only needed to permit the sale within France of a book originally published outside the country. The 1767 edition of Quesnay’s Physiocratie even claims publication in Peking, and as with Commerce and Government, Du Pont adds the words “and one also finds it at Paris.”

The single-volume edition of Commerce and Government was published first: five errata are listed on page vi, and the latter three are corrected in what must therefore be the subsequent two-volume printing. The initial single-volume edition concludes with the statement “End of the Second Part. The third part of this work has not been written, the author will work on it if the first two parts create a demand.” By the time the two-volume edition was printed, Condillac had removed that statement and simply has “The End” at the foot of the final page.

In 1795 the 1776 text was republished in Paris by Letellier & Maradan as a single volume (380 pp.), virtually without amendment. A further erratum from 1776 is corrected, but still not all five, and there are a few one- or two-word changes. The failure to correct all the announced errata from the 1776 edition suggests that this is not a superior text: it is one produced by a Paris bookseller because there was sufficient demand to justify a new printing. A photographic reprint of the 1795 edition with an eleven-page introduction by G. Romeyer-Dherbey was published by Slatkine (Paris and Geneva) in 1980.

In 1798 a twenty-three-volume edition of the Oeuvres de Condillac “Reviewed and corrected by the Author, printed from his autograph manuscripts” was published in Paris by Houel, with Commerce and Government (559 pp.) as its fourth volume.

Condillac had made his elder brother, the abbé de Mably, his literary executor, but Mably died in 1785, five years after Condillac. It is stated in the introduction to the first volume of the 1798 Oeuvres that a wooden case containing Mably’s and Condillac’s papers was opened in June 1796 (prairial an IV) by order of the Minister of the Interior and the Director-General of Public Instruction so that a complete edition of Condillac’s works could be prepared. The letter from Citizen Bénézech, the Minister of the Interior, to Citizen Commendeur, the bailiffwho was present when the case was opened, reads in part:
as these works are among the number of those which are most useful for education, I desire that the edition of these works which is going to be made should be the most complete possible. I know that you have had in your custody and under seal for more than ten years, a wooden box containing several volumes of the works of Condillac, where this author has written a large number of marginal corrections and added several notebooks written in his own hand. I invite you, Citizen, to pass this box to the general administration of Public Instruction. . . so that these volumes which are deposited in it can be used to perfect the complete edition which will be made of works which are equally useful to the public. (Condillac, Oeuvres de Condillac, 1:x–xi)
Citizen Ginguené, the Director-General of Public Instruction, then wrote to Citizen Arnoux, one of the two subsequent editors (the other was Mousnier) of the 1798 Oeuvres, that the seals should be removed in his presence by a magistrate. When this was done, it was found that the contents of the wooden case included:
Item, a bound volume entitled, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, considérés relativement l’un à l’autre; the first three pages are glued and crossed through, as though they should be deleted; on the fifteenth page a note of seven lines is stuck on; in addition another of three sheets is inserted after the twenty-first page; at the fifty-fourth page, a note of 33 lines, at the fifty-fifth another of 35 lines; at the seventy-first a folio of writing paper written to half way down the fourth page: at the ninetieth a note of eight lines; at the 195 th and 196 th, two notes underlined, forming the end of the eighteenth chapter. There are in addition, in the volume, several marginal notes and several corrections in the body of the text.
Item, ten stitched paper booklets, printed, in duodecimal, comprising part of a work on Commerce, in which is glued a note of twenty-four lines. (Ibid., vii– viii)
The long insertions and the page references (evidently to a copy of the one-volume 1776 edition) correspond exactly to the extra material subsequently included in the 1798 edition, extending its total length by about 3 per cent.

The crossing through of the first three pages indicates that Condillac may have intended to replace these with a new opening to the book, but none has been found. The only change in the first three pages which has survived is an important new footnote (CG 93 below). As for the “ten stitched paper booklets, printed, in duodecimal, comprising part of a work on Commerce,” there is the fascinating possibility that these could form an incomplete draft of chapters for the Third Part of Commerce and Government, which Condillac had expressed a readiness to prepare for publication in 1776. He wrote quickly and published extensively, and it would be interesting to know what Mably’s executors and Condillac’s editors made of these ten printed booklets. There are no incomplete publications in the twenty-three-volume Oeuvres de Condillac, so it is understandable that the editors may not have wished to include a large fragment which twentieth-century editors would have un-hesitatingly included in an author’s complete works. It would be fascinating to have the opportunity to read them now, if the editors had not decided to discard these unpublished pages by Condillac. They conveyed most of the material from Mably’s wooden box to the Bibliothèque Nationale after they had completed their edition of the Oeuvres de Condillac in 1798, two years after the box was opened. Sgard (Corpus Condillac, 160–63) provides an account of what is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale from Commerce and Government, and he says that what is there “appears to be incomplete”: he makes no reference to the ten printed stitched booklets.

In 1821–22 A. F. Théry produced a sixteen-volume edition of Condillac’s Oeuvres where Commerce and Government is again volume 4 (414 pp.), and he republished the text of the 1798 edition with Condillac’s additional material.

The next significant edition of Commerce and Government was published by Eugène Daire in 1847. He produced a series of compilations with the general title Collections des principaux économistes, which included the celebrated volume containing the principal publications of the physiocrats. The volume Mélanges d’économie politique followed in 1847 with important books and essays by Hume, Forbonnais, Condorcet, Franklin and Condillac’s Commerce and Government (243–448). Daire reverted to the 1776 text and therefore included none of the additional material from Condillac’s papers which were included in the collected Oeuvres de Condillac of 1798 and 1821–22.

Like the principal academic journals in the twentieth century, Daire’s collections were in every significant library, so most subsequent citations to Commerce and Government have been to this 1847 edition. That was the case with Marx in Capital in 1867, with Menger in Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre in 1871, with Morand in La Théorie psychologique de la valeur jusqu’en 1776 in 1912 and with Weulersse in La Physiocratie sous les ministères de Turgot et de Necker published posthumously in 1950.

The final significant edition of Commerce and Government is by Georges Le Roy in his three-volume Oeuvres philosophiques de Condillac which the Presses Universitaires de France published from 1947 to 1951. Le Roy included it in volume 2 published in 1948 (241–367), and his is now the definitive French language edition.

Le Roy uses the 1798 edition as his principal text, but he publishes almost every variation from the 1776 edition. He identi fies the places where passages of the 1798 text did not appear in 1776, and he gives most words and all the passages published in 1776 but not 1798. Le Roy thus invites his readers to take the 1798 text as their starting point, but to be at the same time aware of what was there in 1776.

We follow Le Roy in offering both texts to our readers, but we have preferred to take the 1776 text as our starting point. This is because it is the sole text Condillac actually published. According to Sgard (Corpus Condillac, 163), most of the additional material in Mably’s wooden box which is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale is in Condillac’s hand, but not all of it. Two amendments in the 1798 Oeuvres may reflect that they were inserted after the Revolution.

In 1776, thirteen years before the Revolution, Condillac says that “The right to coin money can only belong to the sovereign.” In the 1798 edition, nine years after the Revolution and eighteen years after Condillac’s death, the reader is told that the sovereign is “the king in a monarchy, and in a republic the nation or the body which represents it” (CG 272 below). In 1776 in Condillac’s lifetime, the cry of the people who rise in revolt because they believe the export of grain is denying them bread is described as “seditious [séditieux].” In 1798 what was seditious in the monarchy is no longer seditious, and the word is deleted (CG 301 below), a change Le Roy has overlooked. The 1795 edition still has séditieux, so those who produced it were not tempted to the “political correctness” which may have crept into the 1798 edition. These are slight changes, but it is likely that they were inspired by the editors of the 1798 edition, and if they permitted themselves these amendments, they may have made others.

The second reason for preferring the 1776 text as the foundation for the present edition is that, while the principal additions of 1798 are clearly by Condillac and correspond almost exactly in length to what was found in Mably’s wooden case, he did not have the opportunity to approve them in print. The original 1776 book has the verve and momentum of an author who is writing an important book, full of discoveries and clarifications, to win over the enlightened public. Some of the passages he added in 1798 are those of a distinguished philosopher responding to technical criticism. The first chapter has a long additional passage (CG 103–5 below) which includes an account of the need to solve a system of knowns and unknowns. The tempo is slowed. There are other new passages which clarify the argument without slowing the exposition.

We believe that readers will prefer to read the book as Condillac initially wrote it, but to be aware of the additional material from the final years of his life. We have therefore made the 1776 text the starting point of this first English language edition. We offer a complete translation of the 1776 text, and add in parentheses or at the end of chapters a translation of the new passages added in 1798 and an account of what was deleted then.

ANNEX:

A Note on French Currency, Monetary Values, and Weights and Measures100

French Currency and Monetary Values

Condillac most often refers to livres: francs were synonymous with livres in his time. There were 20 sols or sous to the livre, and each sou was made up of 12 deniers.

Condillac also refers to écus, coins stamped with a shield covered with fleur-de-lys. Their denomination was generally of 3 livres (the écu blanc or louis d’argent introduced in 1641), or 6 livres (an écu d’armes introduced in 1727). Condillac refers to occasions when the face value of the écu blanc (the number of livres and sous it represented) was varied from month to month.

Condillac’s account of the development of coinage refers to coins made from gold, silver and copper. When the franc was introduced in 1360 it was a gold coin worth 20 sols. The first silver francs were coined in the reign of Henri III (1574–89), while silver sous were introduced in the reign of Philippe Auguste (1180–1223).

Several provinces had their own coinage with different values. The principal versions were the livre tournois of the Tours region and the livre parisis of the Paris region. Both of these were made up of 20 silver sous, but there were 12 copper denier to the sou tournois and 15 identically valued denier to the heavier sou parisis, so the sou parisis and the livre parisis were worth more. Their separate use was terminated by edict in 1667.

From the mid-seventeenth century, legal contracts were based on the livre tournois, with its 20 sous to the livre and 12 denier to the sou, as a money of account, while silver coins were legally accepted by weight rather than by face value, which was frequently altered. The article “Livre” in Pal-grave’s Dictionary of Political Economy remarks on “the complete distinction between money of account and the money in actual circulation” (Lodge, “Livre,” 617) in the France of the Ancien Régime.

The monarchy determined the weight of silver required to settle a debt in livres tournois through decrees which determined the number of livres to a silver marc of 244. 75 grammes (8 troy ounces). A piece of silver of precisely that weight had been lodged in Paris in ancient times, and exact copies were subsequently lodged in the other mints. Thus in 1715, the year after Condillac’s birth, it was decreed that the silver marc would be worth 40 livres in place of 27, devaluing the livre from 3. 375 to a troy ounce of silver to 5 livres to the ounce. In 1718 an edict for which John Law was responsible devalued the livre further from 5 to 7. 5 to an ounce of silver and in 1720 to 10 livres to the ounce in February and to 15 in July. After the fall of Law the value of the livre in fine silver was gradually raised until it reached 6. 39 livres to the ounce (51 livres 2 sous and 3 deniers to the marc) in 1726, and it remained at that value until the Revolution (Labrousse et al., Histoire économique, chs. 3 and 4). Thus between 1715 and 1726 the livre was devalued from 5 to an ounce of silver to 6. 39 (with a fall to 15 to the ounce during Law’s monetary experiments). The damage to commerce and to economic activity in general from disruptions to the value of the currency such as these are the subject of Chapter 9 in the Second Part of Commerce and Government (272–76 below).

From 1726 until the Revolution silver remained stable at 6. 39 livres to the ounce. Debts for which there were legal contracts made out in livres tournois could be met by weighing silver coins of any denomination, estimating the fine silver they contained and discharging a debt of 1000 livres with about 156 ounces of fine silver. Smaller day-to-day transactions would in contrast be settled with currently minted coin with face values which remained stable after 1726.

There was a parallel gold currency, and the standard on which this was based was the gold marc, also of 8 troy ounces. The principal gold coin was the louis d’or, named after the sovereign and introduced in 1641 under Louis XIII. The state determined how many louis would be coined from 8 ounces of gold of 11 / 12 fineness (22 carats when fine gold has 24), and the number of livre tournois each louis would represent. Thus in 1715 it was decreed that 8 ounces of gold would be minted into 30 louis, each to make payments of 15. 5 livres. An ounce of gold which was minted into 3.75 louis therefore sufficed to make payments of 58.13 livres. In the currency reforms of 1726 which survived until 1785, 3.75 louis were coined from an ounce of gold, and each louis had a face value of 24 livres, so an ounce of gold coins made payments of 90 livres against 58.13 in 1715. Hence between 1715 and 1726, there was devaluation of the livre tournois in relation to both gold and silver, after which its value was maintained in relation to both metals. In 1785 gold was slightly revalued, with the result that an ounce of gold coins made payments of 96 livres in place of 90, and at the same time commanded equivalently more silver because the silver value of the livre remained unaltered.

In the years before 1785, silver had a higher value in relation to gold inside France than in the world at large with the result that the currency which circulated in France was predominantly silver, while despite all prohibitions there was a tendency for gold to be exported. It has been suggested that the 1785 revaluation of gold reversed this tendency, and in the following years, about two-thirds of the currency minted in France was gold, while only one-third was silver. Gold circulated predominantly in the North and East and silver in the regions closer to Spain from which it mainly entered France (Dermigny, “La France”).

A comparison of French with British monetary values is complex as conditions were very different in the two countries, but a few inferences can be drawn. Writing of the France of 1787, Arthur Young estimated that 1,800,000 livres tournois had a similar purchasing power to 78,750 pounds sterling (Young, Travels, 1:52). On that basis, the purchasing power commanded by 23 livres in France will have been close to that of a pound sterling in Britain. Since the gold louis commanded a value of 24 livres in 1785, its purchasing power on the basis suggested by Young will have been near to that of the 21-shilling gold guinea, and it has been shown that the gold content of these French and English coins was quite close after adjustment for the lower proportion of gold and higher proportion of base alloy in the French louis than in the British guinea (Law, “Louis d’or”). As the 24-livre Frenchlouis was equivalent to four 6-livre écus (Sir James Steuart [An Inquiry, Book 3, ch. 7] refers to these as “great crowns”), the late eighteenth century écu corresponded, within a few pence, to the 5-shilling British crown.

An alternative modern comparison produces a similar order of magnitude of the comparative purchasing power of the French and British currencies. Mathias and O’Brien (“Taxation”) publish data on the average price of corn in England and France in the 1780s when one pound sterling purchased the same quantity of corn in England as 20 to 22 livres in France.

French Weights and Measures

The muid, to which Condillac refers, was an ancient measure of volume. The number of boisseaux to a muid depended on what was being measured. The muid of salt, for example, contained 192 boisseaux whereas the muid of oats contained 288 boisseaux. The muid of Paris was made up of 12 setiers, a measure frequently referred to by Condillac to describe quantities of grain, each of 12 boisseaux.

There were 2,304 litrons to the muid of Paris, and a litron was an ancient measure of capacity which amounted to 36 cubic inches (the modern litre has 61 cubic inches). The setier varied regionally; the setier of Paris, also known as the grain setier, was equivalent to 12 boisseaux. Muids of 12 setiers and 144 boisseaux were equivalent to 1,373 litres in modern decimal measures. The English bushel, a larger quantity than the French boisseau, also varied regionally in the eighteenth century, though less than the boisseau. Arthur Young remarked that, “in France the in finite perplexity of the measures exceeds all comprehension” (Travels, 1:315).

The arpent, a land measure, was also subject to regional variation and could be anywhere between 20 and 50 ares, where the are is now measured as 100 square metres. For comparison, the English acre is 4047 square metres (4840 square yards), so there were approximately 40 ares to the acre.

COMMERCE AND GOVERNMENT

COMMERCE and GOVERNMENT

Considered in their mutual relationship

an elementary work

by the AbbédeCONDILLAC of the Académie Française & Member of the Royal Society of Agriculture of Orléans

Vis concili expers mole ruit sua: Vim temperatam Di quoque provehunt In majus. . .

[Brute strength, if wisdom guide it not by its own weight to earth is pressed, but thought restrained, the gods exalt its weakness into power]

Horace, Odes, iii. 4

(trans. by Robert Wilmott)

THE AIM OF THIS WORK

Each science requires a special language, because each science has ideas which are unique to it. It seems that we should begin by forming this language; but we begin by speaking and writing and the language remains to be created. That is the position of Economic Science, the subject of this very work. It is, among other matters, the need which I propose to meet.*

This work is in three parts. In the first part, on commerce, I produce basic ideas which I determine according to assumptions, and I develop the principles of economic science. In the second part, I make other assumptions to judge the influence which commerce and government must have on each other. In the third part, I consider them both according to the facts in order to rest as much on experience as on reasoning.

I shall often make very ordinary remarks. But if I had to record them to speak on other matters with more precision, I should not be ashamed to say them. Geniuses who only make new statements, if there are such geniuses, should not write to instruct. The main point is to make oneself clear, and I only wish to produce a useful work.

FIRST PART

Elementary Propositions on Commerce, Determined According to the Assumptions or Principles of Economic Science

1

The Basis of the Value of Things

Let us assume a small tribe which has just been established, which has brought in its first harvest, and which, since it is isolated, can only subsist on the product of the land it cultivates.

Let us also assume that after setting aside the necessary seed corn, they have a hundred muids left; and that with this quantity, they can wait for a second crop without fear of scarcity.

Carrying on with our assumption, for this amount to remove all fear of scarcity, it must be enough not only for their needs, but also to relieve their fears. Now, that can only be found in a certain degree of abundance. Indeed, when people judge in line with their apprehensions, what would suffice at a pinch is not enough; and they only believe they have enough in what is to a certain extent abundant.

The quantity which remains for our tribe, once the seed corn has been deducted, therefore makes, for this year, what we call abundance. Consequently if they have some muids more, they are in surplus and they would be in dearth if they had some less.

If a people could judge, exactly, the relationship between the quantity of corn it has, with the amount needed for its consumption, this known relationship would cause it always to know, with the same precision, whether it was in abundance, surplus, or dearth.

But it cannot judge this relationship precisely: because it has no way of informing itself exactly, either of the amount of corn it has, or of what it will consume. It is all the less able to do so, as it could not store the corn without waste, and the exact amount of this waste is by its nature unpredictable. If it estimates it then it is only roughly, and on the experience of several years.

However, in whatever way it judges the relationship, it is always true to say that the tribe believes that it is in abundance, when it thinks it has a sufficient amount of grain to set aside all fear of running out of it; that it believes it is in surplus, when it thinks it has more than enough to meet all its fears; and that it believes itself in dearth, when it thinks it only has a quantity which is inadequate to set aside its fears.

It is therefore in the opinion that is held of the quantities, rather than in the quantities themselves, that abundance, surplus or dearth are found: but they only rest on opinion because the amounts are assumed.

If, instead of a hundred muids, our tribe, after deducting seed corn, had two hundred, it would have a hundred which would be of no use for its consumption between one crop and another; and if it took no care over storing this surplus grain, the corn would ferment and go bad, and what was left of it would be useless for the following years.

Several consecutive years of a large harvest would do nothing but embarrass our tribe with a useless surplus, and it would soon happen that they sowed less land.

But harvests which are inadequate for the needs of the tribe will create awareness of the need to store the corn when there is a surplus. A way to do this will be sought, and when it is found, the corn that is useless in years of surplus will become useful in years of dearth. The hundred muids which the tribe has not consumed, and which it has known how to store, will make up the shortfall in several years when all that is left for its consumption, after seed corn has been deducted, is sixty or eighty muids.

Properly speaking there will no longer be a corn surplus, once it is known how to preserve it, because what is not consumed in one year can be consumed in another.

If our tribe was surrounded by other tribes, cultivators like itself, it would not have the same need to keep corn in granaries; because, by giving the surplus that it had in some other commodity, it could obtain for itself surplus corn from another tribe. But we have assumed it to be completely isolated.

We have two kinds of needs. One set follows from our makeup: we are created to need food, or to be unable to live without nourishment.

The other kind follows from our customs. Something which we could do without, because our constitution does not make it a need for us, becomes necessary by custom, and sometimes as necessary as if we had been constituted to need it.

I call natural the needs which follow from our constitution, and artificial those which we owe to habit formed by the use of things.

A wandering horde lives on the fruits which the land produces naturally: on the fish it catches, on the animals it kills hunting; and when the area it covers no longer provides its subsistence, it moves elsewhere. In this form of life we only see natural needs.

Our tribe can no longer wander. It has created for itself the need to live in its chosen place. It has made itself a need of the abundance which it finds in the fields it cultivates, and the bounty of the fruits it owes to its labour. It is not satisfied with hunting the animals which can provide its food and clothing, it raises them, and tries to increase their number to meet its consumption.

There you have a type of life in which we notice artificial needs, that is to say, needs which arise from the habit we have formed of satisfying natural needs by chosen methods.

You can see that these first artificial needs separate themselves as little as may be from natural ones. But you can also foresee that the tribe will form others which will move ever further from natural needs. That is what will happen when our tribe, having made progress in the arts, wants to satisfy its natural needs through more multifarious and re fined ways. There will even come a time when the artificial needs, by dint of moving away from nature, will end up changing it completely and corrupting it.

The first needs which our tribe creates for itself are of the essence of the social order, and this would cease if these needs themselves ended. So one is thus justified in considering them as natural. Because if they are not so for the wandering savage, they become so for man in society, for whom they are absolutely necessary. That is why I shall from now on call natural not only the needs which follow from our makeup, but also those which are a consequence of the constitution of civil societies; and I shall understand by artificial those which are not essential to the social order, and without which, in consequence, civil societies could continue to exist.

We say that a thing is useful when it supplies some of our needs; and that it is useless when it meets none of them, or when we can do nothing with it. Its utility is therefore founded on the need we have for it.

Following this utility, we esteem it more or less, that is to say we judge whether it is more or less adapted to the uses to which we want to put it. Now this estimation is what we call value. To say that a thing has value is to say that it is, or that we think it is, good for some purpose.

The value of things is thus founded on their utility, or, which comes to the same, on the need we have of them, or, which again comes back to the same, on the use we can make of them.

As our tribe creates new needs for itself, it will learn to use for its tasks things of which it made nothing previously. It will therefore give in one time period value to things to which it gave none in another.

In abundance, need is felt less because people do not fear being without. For the opposite reason, people feel need more in scarcity and in dearth.

Now, because the value of things is based on need, it is natural that a more strongly felt need gives things a greater value, and that a less pressing need gives them less value. The value of things therefore grows with scarcity and decreases with abundance.

Value can even diminish in abundance to vanishing point. For instance, a surplus good will be without value every time one can do nothing with it, since then it would be completely useless.

Such would be a surplus in corn, if one considered it with reference to the year in which it does not contribute to the quantity needed for consumption. But if one considers it with reference to the following years, when the harvest may not be adequate, the surplus will have a value, because one judges that it could be part of the quantity required for the need one will have of it.

This need is distant. For that reason it does not give a good the same value as a present need. The latter makes one feel that the good is absolutely necessary now, and the other simply makes one judge that it could become so. One flatters oneself that it will not become necessary; and with that prejudice, as one is led not to foresee the need, one is also led to give less value to the good.

Greater or lesser value, the utility being the same, would be based simply on the degree of scarcity or of abundance, if this degree could always be known precisely; and then one would have the true value of each good.

But this degree can never be known. It is therefore chiefly on the estimation that we have of it that greater or lesser value is based.

If one assumes that a tenth of the corn needed for the tribe’s consumption is lacking, nine-tenths would only have the value of ten if one estimated the scarcity accurately, and if one saw for certain that it really was only of a tenth.

That is just what one does not do. Just as people are complacent in abundance, so they are fearful in scarcity. In place of the tenth which is the shortfall, they judge that there are two-tenths, three-tenths or more deficient. They believe themselves to be at the point where corn will be completely unavailable; and the shortfall of a tenth will produce the same terror as if it were of a third or a half.

Once opinion has exaggerated the dearth, it is natural that those who have corn think to keep it for themselves; in fear of running out, they will set aside more of it than they need. It will therefore happen that the dearth will be really total, or near enough, for some of the tribe. In this state of affairs it is clear that the value of corn will grow in proportion to the exaggerated opinion of the dearth.

If the value of things is based on their utility, their greater or lesser value is thus based, the utility staying the same, on their scarcity or their abundance, or rather on the opinion we have of their scarcity and their abundance.

I say “the utility staying the same” because one has enough appreciation that, in supposing them equally rare or equally abundant, one judges them of more or less value, depending on whether one judges them more or less useful.

There are things which are so common that although they are very necessary, they seem to have no value. Such is water, it is found everywhere, people say, “It costs nothing to get it for oneself, and the value which it can gain through transport is not its value but only the value of the carriage costs.”

It would be amazing if one paid carriage costs to get oneself something valueless.

A good does not have a value because it has a price, as people suppose, but it has a price because it has a value.

I say therefore that, even on the banks of a river, water has value, but the smallest possible, because there it is in finitely surplus to our needs. In an arid place by contrast it has a huge value, which one assesses according to how far away it is and the difficulty of getting hold of it. In such a case a thirsty traveller would give a hundred louis for a glass of water, and that glass of water would be worth a hundred louis. For value is not so much in the object as in how we esteem it, and this estimation is relative to our needs: it grows and diminishes, just as our need itself grows and diminishes.

As one judges that things have no value when one has assumed they cost nothing, one judges that they cost nothing when they cost no money. We have much difficulty in seeing the light. Let us try to put some precision in our ideas.

Even if one gives no money to obtain a thing it has a cost if it costs work.

Now what is work?

It is an action, or series of actions, with the aim to gain from them. One can act without working: that is the case with idle men who act without making anything. To work is therefore to act to obtain a thing one needs. A day labourer whom I employ in my garden works to gain the wage I have promised him; and one must state that his work begins with the first blow of the spade: because if it did not begin with the first, one could not say where it began.

Following these preliminary reflections, I say that when I am far from the river, water costs me the action of going to get it; action which is work, since it is accomplished to get me something I need; and when I am at the river edge, water costs me the action of leaning over to get it; I agree that the action is very little work: it is even less than the first blow of the spade. But then again does not the water have only the smallest possible value at that time?

The water therefore has the value of the effort I make to get it. If I do not go to get it myself, I will pay for the work of the man who brings it to me; it is then valued at the wage I will give; and consequently the carriage costs give it a value. I give it this value myself, since I judge that it is worth these carriage costs.

You would be astounded if I said that air has a value; and yet I must say so, if I reason consistently. But what does it cost me? It costs me every effort I make to breathe it, to change it, to renew it. I open my window, I go out. Now each of these actions is work, very light work in truth, since the air, even more abundant than water, can only have a minute value.

I can say the same of light, of those rays which the sun spreads so profusely on the surface of the land: for it certainly costs us an effort or money to turn it to all our uses.

Those whom I contest consider it a great error to base value on utility, and they say that a thing cannot have value unless it has a certain degree of scarcity. A certain degree of scarcity! Now that I do not understand. I can conceive that a thing is scarce, when we judge that we do not have as much of it as we need for our use; that it is abundant, when we judge that we have all we need of it, and that it is in surplus, when we judge that we possess it beyond our needs. Finally I can conceive that a thing of which one makes nothing, and of which nothing can be made, has no value, and that on the other hand a thing has value when it has utility; and that if it did not have a value by its utility alone, it would not have a greater value in scarcity, and a lesser in abundance.

But one is led to regard value as an absolute quality, which is inherent in things independently of the judgements we bring to bear, and this confused notion is the source of bad reasoning. We must therefore remember that, although things only have a value because they have qualities which make them fitted to our use, they would have no value for us if we did not judge that they do indeed have these qualities. Their value therefore lies principally in the judgement we have of their utility; and they only have more or less value because we judge them more or less useful, or that, with the same utility, we judge them scarcer or more abundant. I have only rested so firmly on this point because it will provide the basis of this whole work.
[In the 1798 edition, the final sentence of Chapter 1 is omitted, and the following passage is added:
Value being based on the opinion we hold of the utility of things, and the utility of things itself resting on the need we have of them, we must distinguish a natural value which only assumes natural needs, and an artificial value which only assumes artificial needs. Corn, for example, has a natural value among our tribe, because we assume that all the citizens have naturally the same need of it. But diamonds, if their use should be introduced among them, would only have an artificial value, since such a need, useless at least to society, could only be that of some individuals.
Natural value is directly the same for all, because it is the value of things absolutely essential to the support of society. On the other hand, artificial value, which is very great for some people, would not be in itself worthless for the others; but, because wealthy people will only get goods of an artificial value in so far as they give in exchange goods of natural value, it is a consequence that artificial value becomes, at least indirectly, a real value for everybody. So it is that things which are useless to the vast number of people end up being of general utility when they are considered the equivalent of something essential to all.
Value, of whatever kind, natural or artificial, thus exists principally in the opinions we hold of the utility of things; and one should not say with the économiste writers, that it consists in the exchange relationship of one thing and another: that would be to suppose, with them, that the exchange preceded the value; this would reverse the order of ideas. Indeed, I should not make any exchange with you, if I did not judge that the article you were handing over had a value; and you would make no exchange with me, if you did not judge likewise that what I was selling you has a value. The économiste writers have, if I may use a saying, thus put the cart before the horse.
This misconception seems a very small matter since it comes down to taking the second idea for the first. But it took no more to spread confusion. So the right value for an exchange relationship is a vague notion that people could not determine; and one may reckon that in dealing with economic science along these lines one will not be understood at all wherever value counts for something, that is, almost everywhere.
The object of a science is properly a problem which, like every problem to resolve, has as givens [données] knowns and unknowns. In Economic Science, the knowns are the means which we understand to be appropriate for obtaining abundance in certain forms, the unknowns are the means we still need to discover to obtain abundance in every way; and it is clear that, if the problem can be resolved, it is for the knowns to make the unknowns known to us.
This very complex problem comprises a large number of others each of which will give us new difficulties if we do not analyse them methodically; and we shall find ourselves, as has happened to all governments, falling into gross errors with each solution we think it right to proffer.
But the order that analysis prescribes is, firstly, to concern ourselves with the knowns, because, if we do not begin by determining them, it will be impossible to determine the value of the unknowns. Secondly, it requires us to look, among the knowns, for that which must be the principal one; because, if the principal known is not determined, one will not determine the others. Therefore let us look for it.
Among the means of obtaining abundance, I see first the cultivation of the land. But, if agriculture seems to begin before trade, it is certain that it cannot improve itself except in so far as trade establishes itself and spreads. Perfected agriculture, that is to say, agriculture which is bound to procure the greatest abundance, thus assumes trade. Trade assumes exchanges, or, as is basically the same thing, purchases and sales: the purchases and sales assume that things have a price and the price assumes that they have a value.
So there are the knowns; however confused they still are, I can at least see clearly in what order they initially present themselves; and that order, which I had to start by revealing, shows me the value of things as the first idea which needs to be determined and developed. From that point, the further forward I go, the more clearly I see my goal; because, from one chapter to the next, I shall always clear some unknowns, and one problem solved will bring forward the solution of a new problem. I may have carried out this plan badly: but it is none the less true that you will only deal properly with Economic Science in so far as you use my language, or correct it following my method, which is the only one.
This chapter will act as a basis for this work, which is why I have drawn it out perhaps to excess. However, I must allow myself another observation: it is essential.
In the current prejudice that definitions are the sole principles which can spread enlightenment, people think that they understand a word when they have seen what is called the definition; and, because they suppose that I myself am also making definitions, they will think they understand, for example, the word value, as soon as they have read what I say about it, at the very moment that I begin to analyse it. They will therefore rush to make objections which they would not have made if they had waited until the analysis was completed. That is what happened to those writers who thought they were refuting me, and who did not understand me at all.
If, in making definitions, one has the advantage of saying everything one wishes to say in just one proposition, it is that one is not saying everything necessary, and often one would be better to remain silent. Analysis does not pride itself on such brevity; as its aim is to develop an idea which must be grasped from different viewpoints, it can only succeed in so far as it has the word scrutinised in all the senses which show up all the concomitant ideas. We shall require several more chapters before we have finished analysing the word value, or at least before we have removed from it all the vague ideas that are attached to it, and which often make the language of Economic Science unintelligible.]

2

The Basis of the Price of Things

I have a surplus of corn and I am without wine: you, on the other hand, have a surplus of wine and are without corn. The surplus corn, which is useless to me, is thus needed by you; and I myself should need the wine which is surplus and useless for you. In this position we think of making an exchange: I offer you corn for wine, and you offer me wine for corn.

If my surplus is what is needed for your consumption, and yours is what is needed for mine, by exchanging one for the other, we both make an advantageous exchange, because we both give up something that is useless to us for something which we need. In this case, I reckon that my corn has the same value for you as your wine has for me, and you reckon that your wine has the same value for me as my corn has for you.

But if my surplus meets your consumption, and your surplus is inadequate for mine, then I will not give all my surplus for yours: because what I would yield to you would be worth more to you than what you would yield to me would be worth to me.

I would not give you all my surplus corn therefore; I would want to hold some of it back, so as to obtain for myself elsewhere the quantity of wine which you cannot yield to me, and which I need.

You, on your side, have to be sure to get all the corn necessary for your consumption with your wine surplus. You will therefore refuse to leave me all that surplus, if the corn I can yield to you is not sufficient.

In this haggling, you will offer me as little wine as you can for a lot of corn; and as for me, I will offer you as little corn as I can for a lot of wine.

However, necessity will force us to strike a bargain; because you need corn, and I need wine.

So, as you neither want nor are able to give me all the wine I need, I shall resolve to consume less of it; and you, on your side, will take the road of cutting back on the consumption of corn you had counted on making. That way our paths will come closer. I shall offer you a little more corn, you will offer me a little more wine; and, after several reciprocal offers, we shall settle. We shall agree for example to exchange a cask of wine for a septier of corn.

When we make each other reciprocal offers, we are dealing: when we agree, the deal is made. So we reckon that to you a septier of corn is worth what a cask of wine is worth to me.

This reckoning that we make of the corn vis-à-vis the wine, and of the wine vis-à-vis the corn, is what we call price. Thus your cask of wine is for me the price of my septier of corn, and my septier of corn is for you the price of your cask of wine.

So we know what the value of the corn and the wine is between you and me, because we have calculated the values which follow from the need we have of each; a need which is known to us. We know too that both have a value for other people, because we know that other people need them. But, because this need can be greater or less than we think, we cannot judge exactly the value which other people give them, until they themselves have informed us. Now that is what they will teach us by the exchanges they make with us or between themselves. When everyone in general is agreed to give so much wine for so much corn, then the corn vis-à-vis the wine and the wine vis-à-vis the corn will each have a value, which will be generally known by all. Now, this relative value, widely known in exchanges, is the basis of the price of things. Price is therefore only the estimated value of a good vis-à-vis the estimated value of another; estimated, I say, in general by all those who exchange the goods.

In exchange, goods do not have an absolute price; they only have a price in relation to the estimation we make of them when we conclude a deal, and they are the reciprocal prices of each other.

In the first place, the price of things is relative to the estimation we make of them; or rather it is only the estimation we make of one vis-à-vis another. And that is not surprising, since, in their origin, price and estimation are perfect synonyms, and the idea which the first originally signified is identical with the idea which the second expresses today.

In the second place, they make each other’s prices reciprocally. My corn is the price of your wine, and your wine is the price of my corn; because the deal concluded between us is an agreement by which we estimate that my corn has the same value for you as your wine has for me.

We must not confuse these words price and value and use them indiscriminately for each other.

As soon as we need a good, it has a value; it has a value by virtue of that need alone, and before there is any question of making an exchange.

On the other hand, it is only in our exchanges that it has a price, because we only estimate it in comparison with another good, in so far as we need to exchange it; and its price, as I have said, is the estimation we make of its value, when, in exchange, we compare it with the value of another good.

Price therefore assumes value; that is why one is so strongly driven to confuse these two words. It is true that there are occasions when one can use them indifferently for each other. However, they express two ideas which it is important not to confuse, if we do not want to obscure the remaining development of the argument.

3

Of Price Variations

We have just seen that price is based on value. Now as value varies, so price must therefore vary. There are many causes of this variation.

First of all it is clear that abundance and scarcity make price vary, like value, and they make it vary by reason of the greater or lesser need.

Secondly, it is also possible for the price of things to vary, even in the case where the tribe has the same abundance and the same needs.

Let us suppose that after the harvest I have all the surplus grain in my barns, and that, on the other hand, the surplus wine is divided among the cellars of twelve people, all of whom need my grain.

With this assumption, these twelve people come to me to exchange wine for corn; and because last year I gave a septier for a cask, they each offer me a cask for a septier. But in the previous year I was only dealing with one person, and I was forced to give more corn: now that I can deal with a dozen people, and I do not need all the wine they wish to off-load, I announce that I will only give corn to those who will give me a larger quantity of wine. By that action I make them vie with each other to make me more favourable offers. As a result, my grain will be at a higher price for them, and their wine will be less costly for me.

If one made the assumption that the surplus corn was distributed among the barns of a dozen people, and that, on the other hand, all the surplus wine was shut up in the cellars of one person, then the price would no longer be the same as with the first assumption: because the price of corn would fall, and that of wine would rise.

When several people need to exchange a foodstuff, this competition lowers its price; and the absence of competition raises the price of the food-stuff they wish to dispose of. Now as competition is greater, or less, or non-existent, now on the one hand, now on the other, so it comes that prices rise and fall in turn.

From this variation, it follows that there is no absolute price. Indeed, every time we talk of high and low price, it is that we are comparing two things whose exchange is in question: for example, wine will be at a high price in comparison with corn, if we give little of it for a large quantity of corn, and corn will be at a low price. In the opposite case, the price of corn will be high, and that of wine will be low.

4

Of Markets or Places Where Those Who Need to Make Exchanges Congregate

Those who have exchanges to make seek each other out, and they scour the tribe: it is the first idea that occurs to each of them. But they will not be slow to perceive the inconvenience of this practice. Firstly, they will often not meet each other; because the person to whose house they have come will have gone to another’s, or even to that of the man who has come to look for him. They would lose a lot of time in these errands.

Secondly, they could still meet and resolve nothing. After much haggling, they would separate and begin their errands again, each hoping to make a more profitable exchange with another person. By following this practice, it would therefore be very difficult for them to agree on the respective price of foodstuffs.

Sooner or later experience will teach them these disadvantages. Then they will look for a convenient place to meet near enough to the centre of the tribe, each on his side, on appointed days, and to which they will bring the produce they intend to exchange. This gathering and the place where it happens are called a market [marché], because dealings [marchés] are proposed and concluded there.

So in the market one sets out all the foodstuffs intended for exchange; each person can see them, and can compare the amount of one with that of another. Following that, they make each other offers.

If there is a lot of corn and little wine, people will offer a smaller quantity of wine for a larger one of corn; and if there is little corn and a lot of wine, they will offer a smaller amount of corn for a larger amount of wine.

By thus comparing foodstuffs, following the quantity of them to be found in the market, people see near enough in what ratio to make the exchanges, and then they are not far from striking a deal. So as soon as some are agreed on the ratio to follow in their exchanges, others take that ratio as a rule, and the respective prices of the foodstuffs are determined for that day. It will be said, for example, that the price of a cask of wine is a septier of corn, and that the price of a septier of corn is a cask of wine.

I only consider quantity because I want to simplify. You can easily enough understand that quality must make a difference in the price of produce. It just needs to be noticed that as quality is less easily assessed than quantity, the deals are more difficult to make; and that in such a case, opinion will doubtless carry much weight. But a deal will eventually be struck, and whatever the quality of the goods, they will have a fixed price for that day.

If the price of corn has been high compared with that of wine, more of it will be brought to the following market, because people will count on a more favourable exchange, and conversely, they will bring less wine.

In this market, the proportion between corn and wine will therefore not be the same as in the previous one. There will be much corn and little wine; and just as the large quantity will lower the price of the one, the small quantity will raise the price of the other.

So prices will vary from market to market.

Doubtless it would be an advantage for the tribe if produce always had a determined and fixed price: because exchanges could be made without discussion, promptly and without loss. But that is not possible, because there cannot always be the same proportion between the foodstuffs, whether one considers them in the warehouses where the owners store them or in the markets to which they are carried.

If the variations are slight, they will hardly be felt. In that case they will have no disadvantages, or they would produce such small ones that it would be pointless to prevent them. It might even be impossible to anticipate them, and dangerous to try. Besides, we shall see that government deals a blow to agriculture and to commerce each time it tries to fix the price of foodstuffs.

If the variations are large and sudden, great drawbacks arise: because the excessively high price of a foodstuff will place those who need it under the compulsion to make disadvantageous exchanges, or to suffer for not having been able to obtain it.

These large and sudden variations will still arise when a crop has completely failed. One will be able to guard against that by making provision for years of scarcity during years of surplus, and that is what will be done. Experience will enlighten the tribe on this matter.

These variations will also occur in markets when too much of one foodstuff is taken there and too little of another: but this disadvantage will not often recur, if everyone is free to bring what he wishes to the market, and in the quantity he chooses. That is still a matter on which experience will throw light. By observing prices in a sequence of markets, and the causes of their variation, people will learn the type and quantity of foodstuffs they should take there to be able to exchange them profitably, or with the least possible disadvantage. The different foodstuffs exposed at the market will then keep the same proportions between themselves, or near enough, and consequently prices will vary little.

They will vary all the less since, when the settlers have learnt by experience what is consumed of each thing, they will grow it in that proportion; and they will only bring to the market as much or near enough as they expect to be able to exchange. They will act in this respect according to the observations they have made.

One sees therefore that in general prices will regulate themselves according to the respective quantities of the goods on offer for exchange.

You can see too that prices can only regulate themselves in markets, because it is only there that the assembled citizens can, by comparing the interest they have in making exchanges, judge the worth of things in relation to their needs. They can only do it there, because it is only in markets that all the goods to be exchanged are in evidence: it is only in markets that one can judge the relative abundance or scarcity of one against another; the relationship which determines their respective prices.

That is how prices constantly adjust, in the case where everyone has, as I said, freedom to bring to the market what he pleases, and in the quantity he chooses. We shall deal elsewhere with the disadvantages which will arise from a lack of freedom.

5

What Is Meant by Trade

We calltrade the exchange that is made when a person gives us one good for another which he receives; and we call merchandise [marchandises] the goods on offer for exchange, because one only exchanges them by creating a market, or by agreeing, after some haggling, to give so much of one for so much of the other.

Now we have observed that two goods that are exchanged create each other’s price. They are therefore each at the same time price and merchandise; or rather they take one or other of these names, following the relationships in which we consider them.

When the good is considered as price, the man who gives it is called buyer: when it is considered as merchandise, the man who delivers it is called seller; and since in different lights it can be regarded as price and as merchandise, it follows that those who make exchanges can be considered with respect to one another both as seller and as buyer. When I give you a septier of corn for a cask of wine, it is I who buy the wine, it is you who sell it, and my septier is the price of your cask. When you give me a cask of wine for a septier of corn, it is you who buy the corn, it is I who sell it, and your cask is the price of my septier. In all that, there is nothing but exchanges, and however one expresses them, the ideas are always the same. But the expressions vary, because we are obliged to consider the same things in different respects.

Commerce presumes two things: surplus production on the one hand, and on the other consumption to be made.

Surplus production, because I can only exchange a surplus.

Consumption to be made, because I can only exchange it with someone who needs to consume it.

Up till now our tribe is composed only of settlers, that is of men who cultivate the soil. Now these settlers can be considered as producers and as consumers: as producers, because it is their wants which made the land bring forth all sorts of foodstuffs; as consumers, because it is they who consume the different products.

According to the assumptions we have made, exchanges up to now have been made directly between the settlers; commerce has thus been conducted immediately between producers and consumers.

But it is not always possible for the settlers who come to market to sell their merchandise at a favourable price. They will therefore on occasion be compelled to take it back again. That is an inconvenience which they would avoid if they could dispose of it somewhere, and give it to someone who could seize the opportunity to exchange it profitably in their absence. With this prospect, they would willingly give up a part.

Those who have their dwellings in the neighbourhood of the market will thus have an interest in drawing merchandise into their hands. Consequently, they will build storehouses where it can be kept, and they will offer to sell it on behalf of others, in exchange for an agreed commission.

These commission agents, which is what one calls those who undertake a thing on behalf of others, are between the producers and consumers; it is through them that exchanges are made, but it is not for them. They just find a profit in the deal, and it is their due: because the settlers find an advantage in exchanging their produce, without being forced to deal directly with each other.

I assume that the person who entrusts a septier of corn promises to give a bushel of corn if the commission agent obtains for him a cask of wine in exchange; and that the agent, well-placed to seize the right moment, gets a cask plus ten pints for this septier. He will have gained both from the seller of corn and from the buyer.

On the one hand, the tribe feels the need of these agents, and on the other, there is an advantage in being one. You can judge therefore that they will set up business, and perhaps in excessive numbers. But, because the more of them there are, the less profit they will make, their numbers will gradually adjust to the tribe’s needs.

An agent is only the recipient of a good which is not his. But because he makes profits, one day he will be able to buy himself the merchandise that was previously entrusted to him. Then he will buy the goods; he will have them at his risk and hazard, and he will sell them again for his own account. There we have what one calls a merchant.

Before there were agents and merchants, one could scarcely sell except at a market, and only on the day that the market was held. Since we have agents and merchants, one can sell every day and everywhere, and as exchanges have become easier, they are more frequent.

The settlers thus have a greater number of outlets to move their surplus among themselves; and the tribe experiences every day how advantageous it is to have agents and merchants.

In truth the agents and merchants will make profits at the expense of the tribe: but, by their intervention, the tribe itself will make profits it could not have made without them. For any surplus, which is useless and without value when it cannot be exchanged, becomes useful when it can be exchanged and acquires a value.

This surplus, as I have remarked, is the only negotiable good; since one only sells what one can do without. It is true that I could certainly sell a good that I need; but since I would only do it to obtain another that I needed even more, it is clear that I regard it as useless for me, compared with the one I acquire. It is again true that I could even sell the corn needed for my consumption; but I should only sell it because, being sure to be able to replace it, I find an advantage in selling on the one hand to buy back on the other. In a word, whatever assumption one makes, in going back from seller to seller, one must always reach an original one who only sells and only can sell his surplus. That is why I say that the surplus is the sole thing that exists in trade.*

When the settlers deal directly among themselves they exchange their own surplus. But when the merchants themselves trade is it likewise their surplus that they exchange? And can one say that the merchandise they have in their warehouses is also surplus for them? Doubtless not: merchants are exchanging the farmers’ surplus. They are like channels of communication between producers and consumers by which trade circulates; and through their intervention, the settlers most widely separated from each other communicate between themselves. Such is the utility of the trade carried on by the merchants.

There are different types of commerce, and it is important not to confuse them.

Either we exchange produce such as nature has given us, and I call that exchange trade in produce.

Or we exchange these products when we have made them take forms which adapt them for various uses, and I call that exchange trade in manufactures, or of hand-made goods.

The settler engages in trade in produce when he sells the surplus of his crop; and the artisans or manufacturers engage in trade in manufactures when they sell the articles they have made.

But when trade is conducted through the intervention of merchants I call that commission trade because the merchants set themselves up as agents between the producers on one side and the consumers on the other. Considered as merchants they are neither farmers nor manufacturers; they merely resell what they have bought.

One distinguishes the retail merchant and the wholesaler, whom it is easy not to confuse; the name alone shows the difference well enough. It is not so easy to mark what distinguishes the trading merchant from the transacting merchant. Both of them are engaged in commission trade; but common usage seems to confuse them.

I shall call a merchant [marchand] a trader [tra fiquant] when, through a sequence of exchanges made in several countries, he seems to trade in everything. For example, a French merchant is a trader when he carries merchandise to England; then in England, where he leaves it, he takes another good which he carries elsewhere; and after several exchanges he comes back to France, to which he brings foreign merchandise. One understands that he can, without travelling, carry on this trade through factors or commission merchants.

The trader [trafiquant] is called an international dealer [négociant] when, having made of commerce a speculative matter, he watches all its branches, brings together its circumstances, and calculates their advantages and drawbacks in the purchases and sales to be made, and, through his connections, he seems to dispose of the tradable effects of many nations.

All these types are included under the name of merchants [commerçants]. Besides, since they only differ in degree, you may understand that it will often be impossible to distinguish the merchant [marchand] from the international trader [trafiquant] and the trader from the dealer [négociant]. That is why one can often use indiscriminately for each other the words commerce, trading, dealing. One must just remember that merchants, of whatever type they are, only carry out commission trade, a trade that I shall sometimes call dealing.

6

How Trade Increases the Mass of Wealth

We have seen that trade, which consists in the exchange of one article for another, is carried on chiefly by merchants, traders and dealers. Let us now try to understand the utility which society draws from all these men who have set up as agents between producers and consumers; and to that end, let us look at the source of wealth and the course it follows.

Wealth consists in an abundance of things which have a value, or, which comes to the same, in an abundance of things that are useful because we need them, or finally, which is again the same, in an abundance of things which are used for our food, for our clothing, for our housing, for our comforts, for our pleasures, for our enjoyment, in a word for our use.

Now, it is the earth alone which produces all these things. It is therefore the sole source of all wealth.

Naturally prolific, it produces by itself and without any work on our part. Savages, for instance, live off the fecundity of lands which they do not cultivate. But they need for their consumption a vast extent of land. Each savage can consume the product of a hundred arpents. Then again it is hard to imagine that he will always find plenty in that space.

It is that the earth, left to its own natural fecundity, produces everything indiscriminately. It is especially fecund in things which are useless to us and of which we can make no use.

If we make ourselves masters of her fecundity, and obstruct certain products to encourage other products, the land will become fertile. Because if we call land which produces plentifully and all at hazard fecund, we call land which produces plenty and to our wishes fertile.

It is only by observation and work that we will succeed in curtailing certain products and enabling other products to grow. We must discover how the land produces, if we want to multiply exclusively things for our use and eradicate all the rest.

The collection of observations to this end makes the theory of a science called agriculture, or cultivation of the fields; and the work of the settler who daily follows these observations constitutes the practice of this science. I shall call this practice cultivation.

The settler thus multiplies things which are for our use, which have a value, and the abundance of which makes what we call wealth. It is he who digs the ground, who opens the spring, who makes it spurt forth; it is to him that we owe abundance.

What then do we owe to merchants? If, as everyone supposes, one always exchanges a product of a uniform value against another product of the same value, one multiplies the exchanges in vain; it is clear that afterwards, as before, there will always be the same accumulation of values or of wealth.

But it is false that in exchanges one gives equal value for equal value. On the contrary, each of the contracting parties always gives a lesser value for a greater value. People would recognise that fact if they thought precisely, and you can already understand it from what I have said.

A woman whom I know, having bought a piece of land, counted out the money to pay for it, and said: “However, I am very happy to have a plot of land for that.” There was very true reasoning in that artlessness. One can see that she attached little value to the money which she kept in her strongbox, and that, in consequence, she was giving a lesser value for a greater one. From another standpoint, the man who was selling the land was in the same position and he was saying: “I have sold it well.” In fact he had sold it for thirty or thirty-five deniers. Thus he too reckoned on having given less for more. There is the position of all those who make exchanges.

Indeed, if one always exchanged equal value for equal value, there would be no gain to be made for either of the contracting parties. Now, both of them make a gain, or ought to make one. Why? The fact is that with things only having value in relation to our needs, what is greater for one person is less for another, and vice versa. [Passage added here in 1798 is printed at the end of the chapter.]

The error into which people fall on this subject comes [above all: 1798] from the way one talks of things which are traded, as though they had an absolute value; and that as a result people reckon that it is a matter of justice, that those who make exchanges give each other equal value for equal value. Far from noting that two contracting parties give each other less for more, people think, without much reflection, that that cannot be; and it seems that for one person always to give less, the other would have to be stupid enough always to give more, which one cannot suppose.

It is not the things necessary for our consumption that we are considered to put on sale: it is our surplus, as I have noted several times. We want to give up something which is useless to us to get ourselves something which we need: we want to give less for more.

The surplus of the settlers: there you have what supplies all the basis for commerce. The surplus is wealth, so long as they can find an outlet for it; because they procure for themselves something that has value for them, and they hand over something which has value for others.

If they were unable to make exchanges, their surplus would stay with them, and it would have no value for them. Indeed, surplus grain, which I store in my barns without being able to exchange it, no more represents wealth to me than the grain which I have not yet pulled from the ground. So I will sow less next year, and I shall be none the poorer for having a smaller crop.

Now merchants are the channels of communication through which the surplus runs. From places where it has no value it passes into places where it gains value, and wherever it settles it becomes wealth.

The merchant therefore in a way makes something out of nothing. He does not till, but he brings about tillage. He induces the settler to draw an ever greater surplus from the land and he always makes new wealth from it. Through the meeting of the settler and the trader abundance spreads all the further, as consumption grows in proportion to the products, and reciprocally products increase with consumption.

A spring which disappears into rocks and sand is not wealth for me; but it becomes such, if I build an aqueduct to draw it to my meadows. This spring represents the surplus products for which we are indebted to the settlers, and the aqueduct represents the merchants.
[Additional passage from 1798 edition referred to on page 120
The advantage is reciprocal, and there you have no doubt what made them say that they gave each other equal value for equal value. But they have lacked consistency: since, precisely from the fact that the advantage is reciprocal, they should have concluded that each gives less for more.

People have said, you are confusing the value of things with the motive that leads to their exchange. Probably, and with reason, indeed value is the sole motive which can persuade me to act. What other could I have?

Value depends, they add, on the particular estimation each person makes of goods and consequently it will for ever vary. So it varies: is there anything which has an invariable value? I say therefore that in individual exchanges value is the particular estimation each person makes of goods; and I add that it is the general estimation that society itself makes of them, if we consider it in the markets where all end up agreeing on a measure to settle the respective value of goods, that is, the value they are given when they are considered against other goods.

But we must not confuse, as people are always doing, this measure of value with value itself. Properly speaking it is only the price which has been regulated in the markets by the rivalry of the sellers and buyers. For example, there will be general agreement that a barrel of wine is worth a muid of corn, which means that the one is the price of the other. So, if I want a muid of corn I must give a barrel of wine, and you will conclude, with reason, that it is not my particular judgement that fixes the price of corn; but it is none the less true that it fixes its value, and it alone fixes it. Because, once more, in such an exchange it is for me alone to judge the value the corn has for me; it only has one following my own estimation; and, although the market price sets the law for me, it is clear that I only give a barrel for a muid because I judge that the muid is worth more to me than the barrel. I should never end if I wanted to reply to all the objections of certain writers who, because one does not follow them, seem to want, from pique, not to understand what one is saying to them.]

7

How Needs, in Multiplying, Give Birth to the Arts, and How the Arts Increase the Mass of Wealth

Just as I have distinguished natural needs and artificial needs, I shall also distinguish two kinds of necessary things; the first of primary need, which I shall refer back to natural needs; and the others of secondary need, which I shall refer back to artificial needs.

Such fruits as the land produces through fecundity alone are of prime necessity for a savage, because he needs them as a consequence of his makeup; and our wines, our brandies would be of secondary need for him, if, in trading with us, he acquired a taste for these drinks.

For our tribe, settled in the fields which it cultivates, corn is a thing of prime need, because it is necessary to it, as a result of the formation of a society which would not subsist without this aid. We must however place, among things of secondary need, all those which it could do without, while not ceasing to be a settled, agrarian society.

Observe the tribe while it is limited to things of prime need. This is the state where, without being poor, it has the least wealth. I say, without being poor, because there is only poverty where essential needs are not met, and it is not being poor to lack a type of wealth of which one has not acquired a need, and which one does not even know.

Therefore it is not in a state of poverty, it is rather in a state of lacking. Please allow me this word: that of privation would not convey my thought. For we deprive ourselves of those things which we have, or which we might have, and with which we are familiar; whereas we do not have those which we lack, often we do not even know of their existence.

In this state it is enough for our tribe not to be exposed to a lack of food, to shelter itself from the force of the elements, and to have the means of de-fence against its enemies. Its food, its clothing, its dwellings, its weapons are all rough and lack artistry. It only uses the commonest objects for its various tasks, and so it is sure not to lack them.

While lacking a host of things we appreciate, it is plentifully supplied with all those which it needs.

Nothing is expensive in the tribe. Just as in all the goods it uses there is nothing too choice, so there is also nothing too rare.

Currency would be useless to it, and it has none. Each person exchanges his surplus, and no one perceives a need to use metals, or anything else to that end.

Let us move to a time when it begins to enjoy goods of secondary need, and when these goods are none the less still of a kind to be able to be common to all. Then the tribe introduces higher quality into its food, its clothing, its dwellings, its weapons; it has more needs, more wealth. However, there are no poor people among it; since I still only include in the goods of secondary need common goods which all can partake of more or less, and of which no one is entirely deprived.

In this position it is impossible for each person to provide by himself for all his needs. The farmer, busy in the fields, would not have the time free to make himself a coat, to build a house, to forge weapons, and he would not have the aptitude because these jobs require knowledge and a skill he does not possess.

Several groups will therefore form. Besides that of the farmers there will be tailors, architects, armourers. The three latter groups could not subsist on their own. It is the first group that will provide for their subsistence, and it will in addition provide the raw material for the arts.

When I distinguish four classes it is because we must choose a number. The tribe may and even must have many more. They will multiply in proportion as the arts come into being, and make progress.

All the groups, each busy with its own tasks, come together in competition to increase the mass of wealth, or the abundance of goods which have value. Because, if we have seen that primary wealth consists uniquely in the products of the land, we have also seen that these products only have value, and their abundance is only wealth, in so far as they are useful, or as they meet some of our needs.

It is the farmer who provides all the primary material. But such primary material, as would be useless and without value in his hands, becomes useful and obtains value when the artisan has found the way to make it serve the needs of society.

With each skill that begins, with each advance it makes, the farmer thus acquires new wealth, because he finds value in a product which previously had none.

This product, given value by the artisan, gives a fresh spur to commerce for which it is a new stock in trade; and it becomes a new source of wealth for the farmer because, as each product acquires value, he makes new consumption for himself.

Thus it is that all, farmers, merchants, artisans, come together to increase the mass of wealth.

If one compares the state of deprivation our tribe is in, when, without artisans, without merchants, it is confined to goods of prime need, with the state of plenty in which it finds itself, when, through the hard work of artisans and merchants, it enjoys goods of secondary need, that is, of a host of things that habit turns into needs for it; one will understand that the work of artisans and merchants is as much a source of wealth for it as the very work of the farmers.

Indeed, if on the one hand we have seen that the land is the source of products, and hence of wealth; we see on the other hand that industry gives value to a number of products, which otherwise would have none. It is therefore proved that in the final analysis industry is also a source of wealth. We shall expand on this matter some day soon. It has been much obscured by some writers.

8

Of Wages

A merchant has made some advances. They consist in the price he gave for the things he wants to sell again, in carriage costs, in the costs of the warehouse, and in the day-to-day expenses of keeping the merchandise.

Now, not only does he have to be reimbursed for all these advances, but he also has to find a gain in carrying on his trade.

This gain is rightly what we call a wage [salaire]. One conceives that it must be made and portioned out turn by turn on all the goods he has for sale; and that it must be enough for his subsistence, that is to say to obtain for him the use of things of primary and secondary need.

But to what extent should the merchants enjoy these things? That is a matter which will regulate itself unaided, given that competition will force the merchants to live more or less economically; and since this competition will apply to all equally, we will know, in accordance with the general custom, the pleasures to which each of them can lay claim. They will calculate for themselves what wage they need for the pleasures which custom allows them, to obtain these for their families, to raise their children; and because they would have very little foresight if they were content with gaining the means to live from one day to the next, they will also calculate what they need to cope with accidents and, if possible, to improve their condition. They will try to bring all these gains into their wage. Those who would like to buy will try to beat down these gains; and they will beat them down all the more easily as an ever-increasing number of merchants will be eager to sell. The wage will be regulated on the one hand by the sellers’ rivalry, and by the buyers’ competition on the other.

The artisan’s wage will be self-regulated in the same way. Suppose that there are only six tailors in the tribe and they cannot meet the demand for clothes, they will themselves fix their wage, or the price of their labour, and that price will be high.

That is a disadvantage, and they will fall into another when the lure of gain has multiplied the tailors beyond the tribe’s needs. Then they will all find themselves reduced to lesser gains, those who have no custom will offer to work for the lowest price, and will force those who have custom to work also for a smaller wage. There will even be those who do not have enough to live on, and who will be forced to find another trade. The number of tailors will thus gradually come into line with the demand for them; and that is the moment when their wage will be regulated as it should be.

But there are trades which call for more intelligence, and trades which call for more skill; it takes more time to become skilful at them; one must bring more effort and more care to them. Therefore those who distinguish themselves at them will be authorised to demand better wages, and one will be forced to give these to them; because, as they will be few in number, they will have fewer competitors. People will get used to seeing them with a greater abundance of things of primary and secondary need; and in consequence custom will give them rights to this abundance. As they have greater and rarer talents, it is fair that they also make greater gains.

So it is that, when wages are regulated, they in their turn regulate consumption, to which everyone has a claim according to his status; and then one knows what are the primary and secondary needs which belong to each class. All the citizens do not share the same pleasures equally, but all have subsistence from their work; and though there are some richer people among them, no one is poor. There you have what happens in civil society, where order establishes itself freely, according to the particular and combined interests of all the citizens. Note that I say freely.

If I have only spoken, in this chapter, of the wage due to the artisan and the merchant, it is that by showing how prices regulate themselves in the market place, I have given a sufficient explanation of how the farmer’s wage is regulated. It will do to note here that all the citizens [apart from those of the landowners who do nothing: 1798] are given a wage with regard to each other. If the artisan and the merchant are paid by the farmer to whom they sell, the farmer is in his turn paid by the artisan and the merchant to whom he sells, and each of them gets paid for his work.

9

Of Wealth from Land and Movable Wealth

We separate the land’s production into food and prime materials. The foodstuffs are the produce which meets our subsistence and that of the animals we raise. Raw materials are the products which can take different forms, and hence be adapted to various uses.

Products considered as food or as raw materials are called landed wealth, because they are the product of the land’s soil.

Raw materials, fashioned, manufactured, worked up, are called movable wealth; because the shapes they are given turn them into movable goods which serve our needs.

If there were no landed wealth, there would be no movable wealth; or, which comes to the same thing, if there were no raw materials, there would be no worked-up materials.

So landed wealth constitutes wealth of the first order, or wealth without which there would be no other wealth.

Movable wealth is only of the second order, as it presupposes landed wealth. But it is none the less wealth. The forms which convey utility to raw materials give them a value.

To speak with precision, the settler produces nothing; he simply prepares the earth to produce.

The artisan in contrast produces value, since there is value in the forms he gives the prime material. Indeed, production is giving new shapes to matter; since the earth does not make anything different when it produces.

But since the land left to itself would often leave us without the most essential products, we can regard all that he gathers in the fields he has cultivated as being the settler’s product.

I shall therefore say that the settler produces landed wealth, and the artisan produces movable wealth. If the first did not work, we should lack products; and if the second did not work, we should lack movable goods.

We have seen that value, based on need, grows in scarcity and diminishes in abundance.

Works of art therefore have greater value when they are of a kind that can only be made by a small number of artisans, since then they are rarer; and they have less value when they are of a kind that can be made by many artisans, as then they are more common.

Their value is the actual value of the prime material plus the value of their form.

The form’s value can only be the value of the work which produces it. It is the wage owed to the craftsman.

If we paid this wage in products, we would give the craftsman as many as he had the right to consume, during the whole period of his work.

When the work is complete, the value of its form is thus equal to the value of the products which the craftsman is deemed to have consumed.

These products no longer exist. But if one considers they have been replaced by others, one can judge that the quantity of landed wealth is the same, in normal years.

Landed wealth only replaces itself to the extent that it destroys itself. Produced to be consumed, it only replaces itself by reason of consumption; and the quantity consumed is set by need, a need which has limits.

Movable wealth does more than replace itself, it accumulates. Since it is intended to obtain for us all the pleasures which we have made a matter of habit, it multiplies like our artificial needs, and they can multiply without limit. In addition movable wealth is in general of a lasting material which often keeps almost without waste.

Value builds up through the artisan’s work, but he has consumed equivalent values in products; and so it follows that movable wealth only multiplies with the aid of landed wealth.

The settler produces more than he consumes. It is with his surplus that he gives subsistence to those who do not till the land. But, as we have said, he does not pile up value on value; he only replaces products, at the rate that they are destroyed; and, through his work [landed: 1798] wealth and the products are always in proportion to the amount of them consumed. The artisan, in contrast, adds to the mass of wealth values equivalent to the value of the products he has consumed, and by his work movable wealth accumulates.

[Additional pages inserted at the beginning of Chapter 9 in 1798

When the land is covered with products of every kind, there is no other matter than that which existed before: there are only new forms, and it is in these forms that the whole wealth of nature consists. Natural riches are therefore only different transformations.

In these transformations we find the products that nature has prepared for our subsistence, and the products she has prepared to be the raw material for the arts.

Now the arts make this raw material take different forms which are more or less useful. They thus make it suitable for new uses; they give it a new value.

Consequently, just as there is natural wealth, so there is artificial wealth: and both are equally true wealth, since the transformations of art produce values as do the transformations of nature.

It would often be easier to make a new language than to give precision to an existing language. Either the terms were originally badly chosen, or people forget both the original sense of the words and the analogy which has caused them to pass from one sense to another. If the main idea fits, which is not always the case, people add additional meanings or remove meanings, and we end up by not understanding each other any more. As we are drawn to use the same words, every time we think we see some resemblance between ideas, we imperceptibly multiply their meanings; and, because it would be difficult or even absurd to keep on analysing to explain what we want to say, it seems quicker to follow usage blindly, that is to say, to speak badly following each other’s example; and we seem to limit the art of speech to the mechanical art of pronouncing words.

We think to remedy this abuse by definitions, as though it were possible to make known all the meanings of a word by a definition. So everyone defines in his own way: we dispute, we divide, we subdivide, we distinguish; and the more we write the more we confuse all notions.

I am making these observations on encountering landed wealth and movable wealth, terms which do not seem to me to have been well chosen, and ones from which people make ideas which lack clarity.

To refer to etymology, the term landed [foncières] comes from the way one has perceived wealth as pertaining to the land [fonds] which has produced it, or as being the land itself; and the name movable [mobilières] comes from our having seen wealth as mobile or transportable.

We wanted to make two classes of wealth: therefore we had to distinguish them; and yet we have chosen names which confuse them with each other.

Indeed, if a field is landed wealth, what will the corn it produces be? Will it be landed wealth before the harvest, because it adheres to the ground and is not yet transportable? And will it become movable wealth after the harvest, because it has been carried to a barn, and from there it can be carried to the market?

But a house, in which class should we place it? It is not landed wealth, because it is not a product of the ground on which it is raised; and it is only in fairyland that it can be movable wealth. There is something to trouble the legal experts.

People have seemed to see the defect of these categories, and looked for others. But because we have become used to the word movable, we have said that all wealth is movable or fixed, that is to say, portable effects or fixed effects. So a house has become a fixture.

Yet, because we cannot include in the class of immovables all that one would like to include, people have made up for that by a definition, and they have said, An immovable good is land, or what stands for it.

Or what stands for it! There’s a definition for you, and that is how people make them. But how do we decide, for instance, if notes drawn on tax farmers represent land or not? Also we have seen more than one lawsuit where the judges did not know if an effect was a movable or an immovable.

Without bothering about etymology, I shall put all the products of nature in the class of immovables, or landed wealth, and I shall put all the products of the arts in that of movables, or mobile wealth. That is to say, in using the customary terms I shall hold to the distinction I have made of wealth into natural wealth and artificial wealth. So, just as a field is landed wealth, so shall the corn be, even when it has been carried into barns: a house on the other hand will be movable wealth, and we shall place in the same category all public paper, although these effects, being for the most part products of an art which tends to destruction, are normally the wealth of a people that is ruining itself. I anticipate that this distinction will not do for the legal experts, whose language will always be chaos; but it will do for my purposes. Need I warn that by products one must understand natural products every time the word is used on its own.]

10

Through What Types of Labour Wealth Is Produced, Distributed and Preserved

We have just seen two kinds of work. One kind brings produce into being, the other gives raw materials the forms which make them fitted to various uses, and, for this reason, to have a value.

If the farmer works with intelligence and persistence, he multiplies his products and improves their types.

If the artisan works with the same intelligence and the same assiduity, he multiplies his works, and he gives more value to the forms which he gives to the raw materials.

The farmer and the artisan thus enrich themselves in proportion as they work more, and to better effect.

The farmer thrives because he produces more than he can consume.

The artisan grows rich, in giving shape to prime materials, because he produces value equivalent to all the consumption he can make.

People will doubtless say that the farmer and the artisan have expenses to pay, and I agree that the expenses could reduce them to a wretched state. But to simplify, I assume them to be free from every tax. I shall deal elsewhere with subsidies due to the state.

All tasks are not equally easy.

In the easiest, people have more competitors, and are reduced to lower wages. So they consume less, or even only consume the absolutely essential. If this essential were never lacking, they would be rich in relation to their estate in life. But how is one to ensure oneself subsistence, if one does not earn more than subsistence? If in the days when one is working, one uses up all one’s wage, how is one to subsist in the days when one is not working?

In more difficult work people have fewer competitors, and they obtain higher wages. Therefore they can consume more. They will be better fed, better dressed, better housed. Then if they want to save or cut back on their consumption they will have the extra, and will be rich in the real sense of the word.

When writing one is constantly pulled up short, and precisely by the words that are in everyone’s mouth; because it is often those words whose sense is the least fixed. Thus I say that people are not rich in absolute terms; but they are in relation to their estate; and in their estate they are rich with regard to the neighbourhood and the times they live in. If Crassus came back today with his ideas of wealth, he would find very few rich men among us.

Men, who only earned the absolutely essential from day to day, would live harshly, and would not be rich, even in relation to their estate. They would always be in a strained and precarious situation.

To be rich in relation to one’s estate, one does not just have to be able to make savings on one’s consumption, one must also not have to make greater savings than one’s equals. It must be the case that by working as much and as well as them, one can obtain the same pleasures for oneself.

At the birth of each art, a new type of work brings a new type of wealth, and our wealth multiplies and varies as our needs do.

Liberal arts follow on from the mechanical arts. The latter are more essential, and yet the former are more highly esteemed. That is, if ever a thing is thought to be useful, it has great value whenever it is rare. Now good artists are in finitely scarcer than good artisans. With higher wages they can therefore consume more and acquire more wealth.

So it is that farmers, artisans and artists come to divide the riches they produce.

The merchants make the riches circulate. If the riches could not leave the places where they were in surplus, they would necessarily lose their price; but, merely through the offer the merchants make to take them to places where they are deficient, they maintain the same value for them everywhere. The merchants produce nothing; they transport from producer to consumer; and they find in the wage given for their work a larger portion if they have fewer rivals, and a smaller one if they have more rivals.

But if they are to be produced in plenty and to circulate freely, riches require a power which protects the farmer, the artisan, the artist and the merchant.

This power is called sovereign. It protects, because it maintains order internally and externally. It maintains it internally through the laws it passes and enforces; it maintains it externally through the fear or the respect it inspires in the foes who threaten the state.

A grandee protects a simple individual because he advances him, because he wants to bring him some benefit, without considering that he hurts other individuals, or even worrying about harming them. The sovereign power must not protect in this fashion. It is important to note and not forget that its protection is confined to the maintenance of order, and that it would disturb such order if it had partialities.

This power has work to do. It has tasks as legislative power, as executive power, as armed power for the defence of the state; and I should add as priestly power; for, although in all nations the priesthood is not joined to the imperium, they must come together in maintaining order, as if they were one and the same power.

The work of the sovereign power is owed a recompense [salaire]. With this claim it participates in sharing the wealth it does not produce; and its share is large, because it is due to the services it renders, and these services demand rare talents. It is under its protection that all the arts flourish, and that wealth is preserved and multiplied.

When one considers the labours which produce wealth, those which make it circulate, and those which keep the order appropriate to preserve and multiply it, one can see that all are needed, and it would be difficult to say which is the most useful. Are they not all equally so, as each has need of the other? Indeed, on which could one cut back?

I agree that in times of disorder great wealth becomes the recompense of work that is often more harmful than useful. But in my assumptions we are not at that point. I assume that all is in order, because that must be one’s starting point. Disorder will come only too soon.

Now, when everything is in order, all work is useful. It is true that these labours divide up wealth unequally but that is fair since they require talents that are scarcer or more common. So no one has cause to complain and everyone stays in his place. To keep the citizens in perfect equality you would have to forbid any division, ignore talent, put all their property in common, and condemn them for the most part to live in idleness.

11

The Origin of Towns

We have marked out three classes of citizens in our tribe: farmers, artisans and merchants.

I assume that until now the first class has had the ownership of all the land. It will not keep it, at least not entirely; and there will come a time when the farmers will cultivate most of the land for a small number of citizens who will have appropriated it.

If we consider that, from generation to generation, a father’s lands are divided among his children, we will reckon that they are often divided to the point where the different portions are no longer adequate for the subsistence of those who have inherited them. The owners of these portions will be obliged to sell them, and they will plan to earn their living in some other way.

Thousands of other faster-working forces will bring about this revolution. Sometimes a lazy or wasteful farmer will be forced to sell his fields to a more careful or less wasteful farmer, who will go on making acquisitions.

On other occasions, a rich owner who has no children will leave all his possessions to another owner who is as rich or richer than him.

Finally merchants who have become wealthy by business and saving will, in all probability, gradually buy up a part of the land; and one can say the same for those artisans who have made large gains and considerable savings. But it is pointless to go into further detail on this subject.

The great owners will manage their estates themselves, or have them managed.

In the first case they will take some of the work upon themselves; they will at least keep an eye on the cultivators, and they will find in the gains they make the price or wage for their work.

In the second case they must give up this wage to the manager, and they will give up part of their income. That is what they will do whenever they have more land than they can cultivate themselves.
[1798 addition: This manager will account to the owner for income as for expenditure. But, because this method of exploitation has great drawbacks for absent or distant owners, they will sooner or later give it up, and entrust their lands to cultivators, who are in a position to make the advances and see to the expenses of cultivation, and will guarantee the proprietors a definite income.]

This manager is a farmer who takes a plot on a lease. He is owed a wage which is regulated like any other. He needs his subsistence, his family’s, something for a rainy day, and a gain he can put aside to improve his condition. He will fix his own wage according to custom. He will hardly ever come to demand more than that; and he will be satisfied whenever his condition is no worse than other farmers’. That sort of person is more fairminded than people think: and they would be even more so if they were less harassed, and besides competition forces integrity upon them.

Experience teaches this farmer the quantity and quality of the products on which he may reasonably count in normal years, and he estimates these according to the markets’ current prices. He takes from this product all the advances he is obliged to make annually, the taxes due to the state, his wage; and, for the surplus, he promises to give the owner a certain number of ounces of silver.*

As this custom becomes established, the landowners who have farmed out their lands gradually move further from them, to gather near the markets, where they are better placed to satisfy their needs. This assemblage attracts artisans and merchants of every kind to settle in this place, and a town forms. The rest of the countryside is sown with farms: at intervals there are villages, peopled by farmers whose lands are adjacent; by the day-labourers who work for them for a wage, and by the artisans whom the ploughman needs daily: farriers, wheelwrights, etc. If our tribe is prolific, and occupies an extensive and fertile country, it can form towns, or at least boroughs, wherever it holds markets. There will then be a transformation in the way of living.

When the tribe lived on its fields, each one lived on his own products, or on those which his neighbours gave him in exchange; and it was unusual for anyone to think of going far to find another type of product.

It is not the same when the owners, gathered in towns, inform each other of the products of the different cantons where they have lived. Then it is natural for them all to want to enjoy all these products. It follows that they establish new needs for themselves, and they consume more than they did before.

The agreeable nature of this way of living will increase affluence in the towns. Consumption will grow proportionately; and it will happen that the farmers, more confident of selling their crops, will take greater pains with agriculture. There will therefore be less fallow land, and products will multiply.
[1798 addition: However we must note that the towns will not help to make agriculture flourish except in so far as they exist, at certain intervals, throughout the land which our tribe occupies. We shall see elsewhere that large towns cause the ruin of remote provinces.]

When the product of the lands has increased, the landowners will increase their incomes at the renewal of the leases. As they become richer, they will seek to obtain new commodities. Their consumption, at the same time greater and more varied, will stimulate industry on a larger scale; and, it follows that agriculture, the arts and commerce will flourish all the more, as the new needs created will offer fresh gains to the ploughman, the artisan and the merchant.

During this transformation, production and consumption will balance themselves continuously; and, depending on the proportion between them, they will cause the price of everything to rise and fall in turn. If consumption is greater, everything will become more expensive; if on the other hand production is greater, all will be cheaper. But these fluctuations will have few drawbacks; because the complete freedom trade enjoys will soon bring production and consumption into line, and will give each thing the price that it ought to have. You may already be persuaded by what I have said on competition; and I shall give fresh proof when I deal with the true price of things.

12

Of the Right of Ownership

When, after the formation of our tribe, the land had been divided, each settler could say: “This field is mine, and mine alone.” Such is the origin of the right of property.

At the time of the harvest each settler could again say: “If this field was mine in its fallow state, because it came to me in the division of land, today when it is cultivated it is mine on more than one ground, since its cultivation is my work. It is mine with all its product, because its product is at the same time the product of my labour.”

Ownership of the land is thus based at one and the same time on the division which has been made, and on the work which makes it fertile.

When later on some settlers acquired more land than they could farm themselves, they had no less good a reason to regard all these lands as their own. Their ownership of them was guaranteed by the releasing of them by those to whom they had belonged. Received custom, or laws passed to that end, further guaranteed the lands to them. Now these customs and these laws are the most recent basis of the right of property. It is even usual to go back no further.

But if they continued to have the ownership of all the lands, they could no longer have complete ownership of all the product; since this product was in part the result of the work of the men they employed to cultivate the fields. Their farm hands and day-labourers thus became co-owners of this product.

In this co-ownership, the settler has the lion’s share, because he provides the stock of land, because he makes the advances, and because he works himself. He does not have to plough; it is enough that he supervises the labourers. His vigilance is his main work.

The wage which is contracted with his farm hands and hired labour, and which is regulated by custom, represents the share they have in the produce as co-owners. This wage is the sum total of their ownership, and, when it has been paid, all the product of the fields belongs to the settler.

Once he has retired to a city, the settler no longer supervises the cultivation of his lands himself. So he gives up, from his product, a part of his ownership to the farmer who manages them [who cultivates them: 1798], and that part is the farmer’s wage. The latter gathers the harvest; he gives up the agreed portion to the settler [who properly speaking is now only the owner: 1798], and he acquires a right of ownership to all the rest.

In this order, we see one man who provides the ground, that is the settler [owner: 1798], an entrepreneur who assumes the task of overseeing the cultivation, that is the farmer, and farm workers or hired men who carry out the work.

We shall find the same situation in large undertakings of every kind. Does one want to set up a manufacturing enterprise? A rich man or a company provides the capital, an entrepreneur directs the business, and the workmen toil under his orders.

By that one sees how in each profession the citizens divide into separate classes; and how each of them finds, in his wage, the part which he has, as co-owner, of the enterprise’s return.

But one does not have to work in an enterprise to become a co-owner of the product. It is enough to be working for the entrepreneur. The shoemaker, for example, becomes a co-owner of the land’s product when he works for a settler, and he becomes the co-owner of the returns of a manufacturing business when he works for a manufacturer. So it is that all the citizens are by reason of their work co-owners of society’s riches; and that is right since each of them contributes to producing them by reason of his work.

All this ownership is sacred. One could not without injustice deprive the manufacturer of his business or the worker of his wage. Therefore one should not be able to force the settler to sell his grain below its worth, just as one should not be able to force those who need the grain to pay more than it is worth. These truths are so simple that perhaps one does not notice them and you may be astonished that I have commented on them. You will, however, need to remember them.

We have seen how the settler [become simply a landowner: 1798] retains ownership of the lands he no longer cultivates himself. But we ask if he is limited to having a life interest, or if he is authorised to have the right to dispose of his lands even after his death.

My reply is that when I clear a field, the product of the investment I make can only be mine. I have the sole right to enjoy it: why then, at the time of my death, can I not hand over the enjoyment of it? And how should I hand that over, if I do not have the disposition of the ground?

I have drained the marshes, I have raised the dykes which protect my lands from flooding, I have directed water to the meadows which it makes fertile; I have sown the plantations whose product belongs to me, and which however I shall not enjoy; in a word, I have given these worthless lands a value which is mine as long as it lasts, and over which, for that reason, I hold rights against the time when I shall be no more. Take back these lands in the waste state in which I found them, and leave them to me cultivated and productive. You cannot separate the two things. Therefore agree that I have the right to alienate them equally.

If the man who clears a field acquires the right to dispose of it after his death, he conveys the field with that right to the person to whom he bequeaths it; and from one generation to the next, each owner enjoys the same right. What man would concern himself with the ways of giving a plot of land a value which it would not have in his lifetime, if he were not free to bequeath it in favour of those whom he wishes to enjoy it? Do you say that a love of doing good would make him? But why take from the citizen a motive which will be more efficacious: the interest he takes in his children or in people he loves?

We have dealt with value, price, riches; the arts have multiplied; trade has spread out. Now the need is felt to mark more exactly the value of every good, and money is discovered. That will be the subject of the following chapters.

13

Of Metals Considered as Merchandise

Gold, silver and copper are the first metals men knew. They were often found on the earth’s surface without having been sought. Rain, floods, a thousand chances brought them to light; several rivers bear them along.

Besides, these metals are easily recognised in their pure, unadulterated state or when their purity is at least little altered. That always happens with gold, often with silver, and often enough with copper, though less frequently. Nature offers them endowed with all their properties.

It is not the same with iron. Although it is to be found almost everywhere, people have all the more difficulty in recognising it, as it normally appears in the guise of earth which is bereft of all metallic properties, and to which one needs to have learnt to restore them. So of all metals it is iron which seems to have been the last known.

Nowadays iron is in use for all mechanical arts. They all owe their progress to the use of this metal, and many even their birth. For centuries it was unknown even to organised nations, which used copper in its place. As for the tools of barbarians, they were and still are made of wood, stone, bone, and sometimes of gold or silver.

I assume that our tribe is familiar with gold, silver, copper and iron, that it has learnt the skill to work on them, and that it uses them in various ways.

Making this assumption, these metals are a commodity which has value for the tribe in relation to its needs; value which rises or falls, depending on whether they are scarcer or more plentiful, or rather following the view the tribe has of their scarcity or their abundance.

When they are still in their raw state, or as nature offers them, they have one value. They have another when they have been refined or purified from all extraneous matter. Finally, they have an ultimate value, when work has made out of them tools, weapons, vessels, utensils of all sorts; and this ultimate value grows in proportion as these articles are better conceived, better worked up, and offered for sale by a smaller number of workmen.

Metals considered as raw material have thus one value; and they have another when they are considered as worked up material. In the first case, one values the metal alone; in the second, one values the metal and the work.

Metals are essential merchandise. So there must be men in the tribe whose work it is to seek for them and refine them; and others will be needed to work on them, since one needs the articles of which they are the raw material.

In the early days our tribe had little refinement, and dressed in roughly sewn skins: it had seats made of wood, stone or turf; and its vessels were made of shells, stones or pieces of hollowed wood, or of earth, first cropped and then dried in the sun, or cooked in a fire.

Each settler could make, for his own need, all these utensils whose raw material was to hand, and the making of which was neither lengthy nor troublesome.

If some people, harder working, made a larger quantity than they needed, these surplus utensils, when carried to the market, had as little value for those to whom they were offered for sale as for those who would offer to sell them. Since I assume that each settler obtained all the utensils he needed for himself, it is clear that those put up for sale were a surplus for which the tribe had no use. But if there were some settlers who did not have the time to make enough for their needs, then these utensils would become merchandise, whose value would be in proportion to their quantity compared with the amount needed by the settlers who wanted to buy them.

These utensils, roughly made, would thus count for little in trade; and they will only become a real object of trade when, worked with more skill, they are more suitable and more durable. Then they will have all the greater value, as the number of settlers who lack either the time or the skill to make them will be larger.

The entrepreneurs who undertake this work are what we have called artisans. They will grow in number according to the needs of the tribe, and competition will regulate the price of their works; the greater the number of artisans, the more they will be forced to undercut each other when they deliver the goods, and each will give them at the lowest price possible.

All the utensils I have just mentioned are made by all and sundry, from a material I assume to be plentiful; which is worth little in itself, and the work involved alone determines almost all the price.

The case is not the same for works of metal. Metals are scarce. It takes time and effort to find them. Then they have to be refined. Lastly they have to be worked up.

No sooner are they known than they become an object of trade, and people expect to be able to use them for various purposes. Not only are they merchandise when they leave the artisan’s hands; they are so already, when they have just been drawn from the mine.

If we did not know the uses to which metals are adapted, they would be quite useless, and one would not seek them out. They would be left among the stones and earth, where they would stay without value.

But as soon as their utility is known, they are sought after; and people seek them out all the more because, being somewhat rare, they become an object of curiosity. So they acquire a new value, and this value is proportional to the number of the curious.

Considered as rare and as objects of curiosity, they soon come to be used for ornament, and this new use gives them another new price.

From all that has been said, we must conclude that metals are only merchandise because we make varied use of them, hunt them out through curiosity, and use them for ornament. Now it is because they are a commodity that they have become money. Let us see the transformation they have made in commerce.

14

Of Metals Considered as Coinage

When in earlier chapters I posited measures, it was only to speak more precisely about the relative value of the goods being exchanged. It appears that at the origin of society the tribes had none; nowadays several tribes still do not have any. It is the case that whenever people are not concerned to look closely, they are happy to estimate the quantity of goods at a glance.

Let us move to the time when, in the absence of merchants, the settlers were exchanging their surplus foodstuffs among themselves; and let us look at two settlers, one who has a surplus of corn and lacks a certain quantity of wine, the other who has a surplus of wine, and lacks a certain quantity of corn. To simplify, I assume that they are each furnished with everything else they need.

With this assumption, it is clear that the man who has corn to deliver would not look closely at the size, or the number, of his sacks. Since this corn would have no value for him if it was left on his hands, he considers it well paid for when, by an exchange, he gets for himself all the wine he needs.

The man who has a surplus of wine reasons in the same way. So they exchange without measuring; indeed, it is enough for them to judge on sight, the one the amount of wine he needs, the other the amount of corn.

It is not the same when the settlers make their exchanges through the medium of merchants. Since the latter want to make a profit at one and the same time from the person from whom they buy and the person to whom they sell, they are concerned to judge the quantity of goods more precisely. So they will think of ways to ascertain what they have gained each time they buy and resell.

Now, when instead of judging goods in a rough and ready fashion they have got used to measuring them, one will assume that their value is treated like their quantity, for which there is a fixed measure. We will be all the more likely to assume it, as values will seem to vary like measures. So people will come to make misconceptions. They will speak of value and price without thinking what they are saying: they will forget that the notions they make of them can only be relative; and they will assume that they are absolute.

It is the merchants who will above all have occasioned this misunderstanding: as they were concerned to estimate goods more accurately, they seemed to give them an absolute value. “This measure is worth so much,” they said, and people no longer saw an idea of relativity in this language.

Besides, they were not in the same position as the settlers who, in the days when they traded directly, attached no value to the surplus, except in so far as they could provide themselves with the goods they needed by giving it up.

The surplus with which the merchants trade had belonged to the settlers who gave it up to them. But for the merchants it is not a surplus; it is a useful good they expect to profit from. And so they appreciate it to the full; and the more they claim to appreciate it, the more they seem to give it an absolute value. Metals, used as money, will especially create this illusion.

Iron disintegrates: exposure to the air, however little humidity there is in it, gradually decomposes it. Copper destroys itself too. Only gold and silver keep without corruption.

Each of these metals has a value, which stems from its scarcity, its adaptability and its lasting qualities. Gold is more valuable than silver, silver than copper, and copper than iron.

It has probably always been impossible to calculate exactly the relative and proportional value of these metals; all the more so because this proportion must vary each time some of them become scarcer or more plentiful. They were estimated roughly, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the quantity of them appearing in trade. A metal had more value when there was little of it on sale, and when people wished to buy a lot. It had less value in the opposite case. We shall deal with their respective value elsewhere.

As soon as it was appreciated that metals have a value, it was found useful to give a piece of metal in exchange for what one was buying; and as this custom took hold, metals became the common measure of all values. Then a merchant was no longer forced to cart wine or some other foodstuff to the settler who had corn to sell. He gave him a piece of metal, and this settler bought everything he needed with the same metal.

Iron was the least suitable for this use. As it corrodes day by day, the person who received it in exchange would make a loss each day. Besides, one is only accustomed to make use of metals as a common measure, because they make commerce easier. Now iron would facilitate it less than the other metals since, as it is the least valuable, we would have to cart it about in greater quantities.

Copper, which keeps better and which is more valuable, would deserve its preference. Every nation uses it; however, since its value is still very limited, it is only useful when one buys low-price goods retail.

So it was gold and silver which were bound especially to be chosen for use as a common measure. They are indestructible; they have great value. The value is found in due proportion in each part; and so one can find, in each part, depending on whether it is larger or smaller, a measure of any sort of value.

So it is not following a convention that gold and silver have been introduced into commerce as a convenient means for exchanges; it is not by whim that they have been given a value. They have, like all other merchandise, a value based on our needs; and because this value, larger or smaller according to the amount of metal, does not perish, they have, for that reason alone, become the measure of all others, and the most convenient.

We have seen that trade increases the amount of wealth, because by facilitating and multiplying exchanges it gives value to those goods which had none. We see here that trade must increase this quantity of wealth still further when it has, in gold and silver considered as merchandise, a common measure of all values, since exchanges are then made easy and multiply ever more.

But this measure had to be fixed and determined. However, it is probable that, in the early days, people judged volume by sight, and weight by hand. This uncertain regime doubtless caused damage and complaints. The need to avoid them was felt: people set about it, and scales were invented to weigh metals. So an ounce of silver, for instance, was the price of a septier of corn or of a cask of wine.

This innovation succeeded in confusing all ideas on the value of things. When people believed they were seeing price in a measure which, like an ounce of gold or silver, was always the same, they did not doubt that they had an absolute value, and no longer entertained other than confused ideas on this subject.

All the same there was a great advantage in being able to determine the weight of each piece of gold and silver; because if previously what we call price was a vague estimate without precision, you can understand that people must have found in these metals, weighed and cut up, the more exact price of all other merchandise, or a surer measure of their value.

It is as merchandise that gold and silver circulated, when the buyer and the seller were reduced to weighing the quantity they needed to hand over as the price of other merchandise. This practice, which was general, still carries on in China and elsewhere.

However, it was inconvenient always to have to carry scales, and that was not the only drawback: one also had to make sure of the degree of purity of the metals, a degree which affects the value.

Public authority came to the help of trade; it had the gold and silver circulating assayed: it determined what one calls the standard, that is the degree of purity. It then made separate portions which it weighed; and it stamped on each a mark which attested the standard and the weight.

Here we have money. One knows its value at a glance. It prevents fraud, it injects confidence into trade and consequently makes trade still easier.

Gold and silver coin would not have been suitable for the small purchases one makes daily: one would have had to cut it up into tiny pieces which could scarcely have been handled. That is why copper coin was introduced. Copper coin even seems to have been the first in use; it sufficed on its own, when the tribes only had things of small value to exchange.

In becoming coin, metals have not ceased to be merchandise; they have an extra imprint and a new denomination; but they are still what they were, and they would not have a value as coinage if they did not continue to have value as merchandise. This observation is not as pointless as it might seem, because people would say, in the common reasoning on money, that it is not merchandise, and yet they do not have much to say about what it is.

Gold and silver coinage reveals that there are things of high price in trade. It is therefore a proof of wealth. But it is not so by virtue of its quantity: because commerce can make do with less as with more. If it were eight times more plentiful, it would have eight times less value, and one would have to carry a mark to market instead of an ounce. If it were eight times scarcer, it would have eight times more value, and one would only have to carry an ounce instead of a mark. It is therefore a proof of wealth by the mere fact that it is used. It is that in having a great value on its own, it proves that there are articles in trade which also have great value. But if it became as common as copper, it would lose its value; and then, in exchanges, it could serve as a measure of value for the nations which seem to us the poorest. When we deal with the circulation of silver we shall see how one judges its abundance and its scarcity.

Used as coin, gold and silver had a new use and new utility. These metals thus acquired fresh value. An abundance of gold and silver is thus an abundance of articles which have value, and consequently it is wealth.

But whatever value one places on gold and silver, the first and main wealth is not at all in the plentifulness of these metals. This wealth is only in the abundance of products which are consumed. However, because with gold and silver one can lack for nothing, one soon comes to regard these metals as the sole wealth, or at least as the principal wealth: that is an error. But it would also be an error to say that an abundance of gold and silver is not true wealth. We must confine ourselves to distinguishing two types of wealth.

I shall note in finishing this chapter that those who consider coin as representative signs of the value of things express themselves too inexactly; because they seem to regard them as arbitrarily chosen signs, which only have value by convention. If they had noticed that metals were merchandise before they became money, and that they have continued to be merchandise, they would have recognised that they are only suited to be the common measure of all values because they have value in themselves, and independently of all convention.

15

That Silver, Used as a Measure of Value, Has Brought Misunderstanding About the Value of Things

We have noticed that when trade comes about through the exchange of goods in surplus, everyone gives something which had no value for him, because he has no use for it, for something which does have a value for him, because he can use it, and that, consequently, everyone gives less for more. Now that is how it would have been natural to work out value in every case, if one had always traded through barter and without minted coin.

But once money had been accepted as the common measure of value, it was just as natural to reckon that one was giving equal value for equal value in exchanges, all the goods one exchanged were each considered equal in value to an identical quantity of money.

It was seen that through the medium of money one could determine, with some precision, a respective value between two quantities of a different nature, for example between a quantity of corn and a measure of wine. From then on, in these respective values, only the quantity of money which was the measure of them was noticed: every other consideration was removed; and because this quantity was the same, it was reckoned that in exchanges one gave equal value for equal value.

However, when I give you a quantity of corn, valued at ten ounces of silver, to get from you a quantity of wine at the same price, it is not certain that this exchange is equally advantageous for you and for me, although these two quantities seem to be the equivalent of each other.

In fact, if the corn which I have given you is absolutely essential to me, and if the wine you have given me is surplus to your needs, the advantage will be on your side and the disadvantage on mine.

Therefore, it is not enough to compare quantity in money with quantity in money, to work out who gains, you or I. There is another consideration which must come into the calculation; that is to know whether we are both exchanging a surplus for a necessary good. In such a case, the advantage is the same for both parties, and we each give less for more; in every other case it cannot be equal, and one of us gives more for less.

We have noticed that, in exchanges, goods are reciprocally the price of each other. We shall note here that if money is the measure of the value of the goods one buys, the value of the goods one buys is reciprocally the measure of the value of money. For example, to suppose that with six ounces of silver one can buy a muid of corn, is that not to suppose that a muid of corn is the measure of the value of six ounces of silver?

So when money has been taken as the common measure of all value, it is solely, as we have seen, because of all tradable goods it is the most suitable for this purpose; and that does not infer that it cannot itself have, as a measure, the value of the goods against which it is exchanged. On the contrary, it is clear that the value of what one buys is always the measure of the value of the money one gives.

But once people have taken money as a common measure, they soon come to see it as an absolute measure: that is to say, as a measure that is a measure by itself, independently of any connection, or as a good which, by its nature, measures all others, and is not measured by any of them. This misapprehension could not fail to spread much confusion. It has also made us see an equal value in the goods we exchange, and we have made a principle of commerce out of this equal value.

However, if what I am offering you was equal for you in value, or, which comes to the same, in utility, to what you are offering me; and if what you are offering me was equal for me to what I am offering you, we should each of us stay with what we have; and we should not make any exchange. When we make an exchange, then you and I judge that we each receive more than we give, or that we give less for more.

Let us remember the time when Europeans began trading in America, where, for things to which we attach little value, they received other goods to which we attach the greatest value.

Following our line of argument, you will agree that they gave less for more when they gave a knife, a sword, or a mirror for an ingot of silver or gold. But we cannot deny that the American also gave less for more when he gave, for example, an ingot of gold for a knife: because he was giving something to which people attached little value in his country because it was useless, in exchange for something to which they attached value, because it was useful.

So people said that the Americans did not know the price of gold and silver. They spoke as though these metals must have an absolute value. People did not think that they only possess value in relation to man’s uses, and that in consequence they have no value for a tribe that has no use for them.

Inequality of value following the customs and opinions of peoples: that is what has created trade and what supports it; because it is what produces the situation that in exchanges each person has the advantage of giving less for more.

However, because we are not inclined to believe that money can be over-plentiful, however much of it one has, we will find it difficult to understand that, when we give money for something we buy, we have the advantage of giving less for more, especially if the good is what we call expensive. So let us see how money can be considered as a necessary good, or as a surplus good.

All your property is in land, and you have produce of all kinds, more than you can consume. It is clear that, in giving up the produce which is surplus to your consumption, you are giving up something which is useless to you; and however little utility you find in what you receive in exchange, you will have given less for more.

I only have rents, and all my income is in money. Now I cannot live off this money, as you can with your produce. On its own it is thus useless to me, and it would always be so if I could not exchange it with you or with someone else. When I hand it over, I therefore abandon something which is useless to me for something I need, and I give less for more. But we find ourselves in very different situations; because in the product of your lands, it is only the produce surplus to your consumption that is useless to you; while in the product of my rents, if I do not manage to exchange it, all is useless to me, since there is nothing for my consumption.

So money, which is useless on its own, because with money alone one could not subsist, only becomes useful because, having been chosen as a common measure of all value, it is accepted as the price of the goods one buys.

Now, the amount of money which I need to supply me with everything necessary for my subsistence is for me the equivalent of the foodstuffs you are obliged to set aside for your subsistence. If I give up that money for things that are useless for my consumption, I should make an unfavourable exchange; I should be giving an essential good for a useless good, I should be giving more for less.

But the money I have left, when I have set aside all that I need for my subsistence, is a surplus for me; just as the produce which you do not need to consume is a surplus for you.

Now, the more confident I am of being able to subsist in accordance with the needs I have created for myself, the less this money surplus is of value for me. So I shall not scrutinise it too closely; and even when I give some of it for frivolities I should like to enjoy, I shall believe I am giving less for more.

It will be the same for you when, after you have made ample provision of products of every kind, nothing can be lacking for your subsistence. Then what you have left is a surplus which you will give happily for a frivolity which seems worthless.

It will follow from this that the value of essential goods will always be estimated more accurately than the value of superfluous goods; and that these values will never be in proportion to each other. The price of essential goods will be very low compared with the price of superfluous goods, because everyone is concerned to estimate them as exactly as possible. In contrast, the price of superfluous goods will be very high compared with the price of necessary goods, because the very people who buy them are not concerned to estimate them with precision. But in the end, at whatever price one buys them, or however dear they appear, the person who purchases them with surplus money is always considered to give less for more.

16

Of the Circulation of Money

Each year, at appointed times, farmers bring the entire price of their leases into the towns: each market day, they sell some produce, and so they carry back to their village, in small amounts, the sums they have paid the landowners.

In the course of the year, the merchant receives in individual sales the price of the goods he bought wholesale; and the artisan, who bought his raw materials wholesale, sells them retail, when he has worked on them. So it is that day by day sales reimburse in small sums the large sums which have been used for payments or purchases in gross; and, when this reimbursement has been made, people pay out or buy again with large sums to have themselves reimbursed by new retail sales.

Money is thus constantly moving around, to be collected later as into reservoirs, from which it spreads through a mass of small channels which bring it back into the first reservoirs; whence it spreads out again, and to which it returns again. This continual movement, which collects it to distribute it, and distributes it to gather it up again, is what we call circulation.

Do I need to point out that this circulation assumes that, at each movement the money makes, there is an exchange; and that when it moves without causing an exchange, there is no circulation? For example, the money which comes from taxes has gone through many hands before it reaches the Sovereign’s treasury. But that is not circulation, that is only transport, and often very costly transport. It is important that, through circulating, money changes itself in some way into all the goods which are needed to support life and strength in the body politic. Thus money from taxation only begins to circulate when the sovereign exchanges it for products or works.

All the money in commerce circulates from the reservoirs to the channels, and from the channels to the reservoirs. If any obstacle holds up this circulation, commerce languishes.

I say all the money in commerce, and I do not say all that is in the state. There is always a certain amount which does not circulate at all, for example what one puts aside to have a standby in case of misfortune or to improve one’s position someday: such also are the savings of misers, who cut back on their needs.

That money does not circulate at all at present. But it is not very important whether there is more or less in circulation; the main point is that it should circulate freely.

We have seen that money is only a measure of value because it possesses value itself; that if it is scarce, it has greater value; and that it has a smaller value if it is plentiful.

If there is twice the amount of money in commerce, we will give for a good two ounces of this metal instead of one; and if there is half the quantity of money, we will only give half an ounce instead of a whole ounce. In the first case, an owner who would put out his land to farm for fifty ounces, would let it for a hundred; and in the second he would let it for twenty-five. But with a hundred ounces he will only do what he did with fifty; just as with fifty he will only do what he did with twenty-five. So he would be deceiving himself if he thought himself richer in one of these cases than in the other. His income is always the same, whether the coin is smaller or greater. Whether one counts it at a hundred ounces, or fifty, or twenty-five, nothing is changed; since with these various ways of counting, one can only ever make the same consumption.

So one sees that it is fairly unimportant whether there is plenty of money, and that it would even be a good thing if there were less. Indeed commerce would be carried on more conveniently. Would it not be dreadfully awkward if silver were as common as iron.

All products come from cultivated land. So one can consider farmers as the first reservoirs of all the money that circulates.

They spread some on the lands for the expenses of cultivation, another part, at different times, is carried bit by bit to the towns, where the farmers buy worked materials which they cannot find in their villages. Finally, a last portion is carried to the towns, in large sums, for the payment of the leases.

The landowners therefore form other reservoirs, from which money spreads among the artisans who work for them; among the merchants from whom they buy, and among the farmers who come to the town to sell their foodstuffs.

The merchant, who plans to make bulk purchases, becomes in his turn a reservoir as he sells his goods; and it is the same with the artisan, who needs to build up a stock in order to be able to supply himself with raw materials.

I agree that the merchant and the artisan can buy on credit, to pay later at different dates. But whether they pay when they buy, or only pay later, they must necessarily keep back a proportion of what they sell each day, if they do not want to fail to meet their undertakings. They therefore have to accumulate.

It would be beneficial for the use of credit to become established, since then a merchant and an artisan, without money, could keep an inventory, the one of merchandise, the other of raw materials; and, consequently, a larger number of actively occupied men would join together in advancing trade. For that to happen good faith must bring confidence. This is especially what happens in republics which have, shall we say, habits of simplicity and frugality.

The merchant and the artisan can do nothing without money, or at least without credit. The same does not hold true of the farmers. If they need the one or the other for the goods they buy in the town, they do not have the same need in providing for the expenses of cultivation; because they can pay all the country-dwellers who work for them with the grain they harvest, with the drinks they make, with the animals they raise. Custom sets the wages they owe, and the foodstuffs they hand over are valued at the market’s prices.

So one spends no money in the country, or one spends little; and as one can only earn on the one side what someone spends on the other, it must be the case that those who work for the farmers earn little money, or earn none at all. Money thus circulates less in the countryside than elsewhere.

The consequence is, in the last analysis, that the towns form large reservoirs which money enters and from which it issues by a self-sustaining movement, or one which constantly renews itself.

Let us suppose that half our tribe lives in the town, where we have seen that the landowners consume more than they did in their villages, and where, in consequence, they will consume more than half the product of the land.

To settle our ideas, let us value the produce of all the land at two thousand ounces of silver. On this assumption, since the inhabitants of the town consume more than half of all products, they will need more than a thousand ounces of silver to buy everything necessary for their subsistence. I make the assumption that they need twelve hundred, and I say that if this sum is enough for them, it will be enough to support commerce throughout the tribe. That is, it will pass to the farmers to return to the landowners; and as this cycle will only finish to begin again, it will always be with the same quantity of money that exchanges are made in the town and in the country. From that fact one could speculate that the amount of money that commerce needs depends mainly on the amount of consumption in the towns; or that this amount of money is almost equal to the value of the products that the towns consume.

It is at least certain that it could not be equal in value to the product of all the lands. Indeed, although we have evaluated this product at two thousand ounces of silver, it would not be enough to give our tribe these two thousand ounces to give it a value in silver equal to the product of all its lands. Silver would lose all the more of its value as it became more available: the two thousand ounces would only be worth twelve hundred. So it is in vain that one would put a larger amount of silver into trade. Whatever this quantity was, it could only ever have a value roughly equal to the value of the products consumed in the towns.

Indeed, as the wealth of the countryside is in products, the wealth of the towns is in silver. Now, if in the towns, where we assume that at the end of each year consumption had been paid for with twelve hundred ounces, we suddenly spread out another eight hundred, it is clear that the silver will lose its value in proportion to its increased plentifulness. So people will pay twenty ounces, or near enough, for what they used to pay twelve; and consequently the two thousand will only have the value of twelve hundred, or near enough. I say near enough since these proportions do not fix themselves by exact, geometric calculations.

The amount of silver needed for trade must also vary according to circumstances.

Let us assume that the payment of leases and that of everything on credit takes place once a year; and that to liquidate them, the debtors need a thousand ounces of silver; there would have to be, in relation to these payments, a thousand ounces of silver in circulation.

But if these payments were made half-yearly, half this amount would be enough, because five hundred ounces, paid twice, equal a thousand paid once. One can see that if these payments were made in four equal terms, two hundred and fifty ounces would suffice.

To make the calculation easier I am omitting the small, daily disbursements which are made in ready money. But people will no doubt say that I am establishing nothing precise about the quantity of money in circulation.* I would reply that my sole purpose is to show that internal trade can be conducted, and it is, following the customs of countries, with less money in circulation as with more; and it is not otiose to comment on it, in these days when people imagine that a state is only rich in proportion as it has more money.

Often little money is needed in trade, and credit takes its place. Established in different countries, the traders or dealers send each other goods which command a higher price in the places to which they are carried, and in continuing to sell the goods they stock, each for his own account, they all sell for each other’s accounts the goods they have received. By this means they can make an extensive trade without requiring silver to circulate between them. Because in valuing the merchandise entrusted to them, according to the current price, they will only have to pay for whatever some have supplied beyond that; yet again one can meet obligations towards them by sending them other merchandise. So it is that the largest enterprises are often those where silver circulates in the least quantity.

But money is needed for daily expenses: it is needed to pay the wages of artisans who live by work from day to day. It is needed for the small merchants who only buy and sell retail and who need their capital to come back to them continuously.

It is in small channels that circulation takes place more perceptibly and more rapidly. But the faster it is, the more the same pieces of coin pass and pass again frequently through the same hands; and as, in such a case, one coin takes the place of many, it is clear that this smaller trade can carry on with a quantity of coin which gets less as the circulation speeds up. So, in small channels one needs little money because it circulates rapidly; and in large ones even less is needed, as often it hardly circulates at all.

We may conclude that it is impossible to say anything with confidence about the precise amount of money circulating which is, or which should be, in commerce. I might have put it far too high when I supposed it roughly equal to the value of the products which are consumed annually in the towns. Since at the beginning of January each citizen certainly does not have all the money he will need in the course of the year; but because, as he is spending it, he is earning it, one can appreciate that, at the year’s end, the same coins have come back many times into the towns, just as they left them a good many times.

The circulation of money would be very slow if one always had to change it at great expense in the distant places where one might need it. Therefore it would matter to be able to make it pass in some way over very great distances. This is what one achieves by means of exchange which we are going to deal with.

17

Of Exchange

Why have the operations of exchange which are simple in themselves become matters so difficult to understand in every language? Was it impossible then for bankers to explain themselves more clearly? I have not studied their language at all: but in my intention to cast some light on this branch of commerce, I only need to study the exchange market: it will explain itself, if I make precise enough notions of it.

I want to send a hundred thousand francs to Bordeaux. If I were obliged to send them by road, it would cost me expenses, and I should have to run some risks. But in Paris there are some Bordeaux people who themselves need to bring money from Bordeaux; and there are businessmen to whom this city owes money, because they have sent it merchandise.

I search for and find a man from Bordeaux who has fifty thousand francs in Bordeaux which he would like to have at Paris. There is no more involved than to exchange the fifty thousand francs which are in Paris against the fifty thousand francs which are at Bordeaux. Now there we both have the same advantage, because both of us avoid all expenses and all risks. And so I count out for him fifty thousand francs in Paris, and he gives me a letter, drawn on the person who has his funds at Bordeaux, by which he says to pay the bearer fifty thousand francs to my order. So there you have half my sum which I have arranged to send to Bordeaux. The other half will go there in the same fashion, because I find businessmen who are owed that amount in Bordeaux, and who will give me similar letters for fifty thousand francs that I disburse to them.

By means of these letters, we thus exchange sums which are remote from each other. That is why we have called them bills [lit. letters] of exchange.

In all the towns of the kingdom there are people who are in the same position as I, and in all of them there is also the facility of bills of exchange, because the business, which they carry out among themselves, is always putting them in a state of debt with regard to each other. One must just note that this facility is more often found in mercantile towns or in those of easy access.

But if every time one needed a bill of exchange one had to go from door to door to find the businessman who could give it, this would certainly be a great nuisance. So here we have something which has summoned up the energy of some individuals, and gradually produced a class of men whom one calls exchange brokers, because with the bills they give, one exchanges two sums that are at a distance from each other.

I imagine one from among many ways in which this class of men could have formed. I postulate a rich individual who has lands in different provinces, and who, not knowing how to gather his revenue, gives his agent the task of seeing to it. The latter seeks in Paris for merchants who bring various goods from these provinces, and who, in consequence, need to make money go there. He gives them bills of exchange drawn on these provinces: the merchants pay him in person in Paris; and once he has established a connection with them, his master’s revenues arrive each year with the same ease.

The master, who has no idea how this is done, admires the genius of his agent. He never ceases praising him to his acquaintances. So all the rich men apply to this man, and he amazes them all equally.

Here he is an exchange broker: with a connection that is constantly extending, he is in a position to find money everywhere, and people come to him from all parts. So he no longer needs to serve a master. He takes a house in which he sets up his exchange office, and from the table on which he counts out the money, which one calls banque, he takes the name banker [banquier]. If he were alone, he would be able to raise his wage to the skies, but, happily for the public, his fortune, which is a proof of what he earns, gives him rivals, and bankers multiply.

The profit that a banker made in his business was originally called agio, a term which has become odious, and which today marks an excessive, usurious profit made in a bank.

A profit is doubtless due to bankers. Sometimes they are forced to transport money on the roads; they run up expenses in maintaining their connections; in a word, they give their time and their attention.

We imagine their wage will adjust, like all others, through competition. But one finds in exchange a multitude of circumstances of which the public is ignorant; and a banker, who has acquired the art of winning trust, can abuse it all the more because he carries out banking in some sense exclusively. Let us observe exchange between the different towns of a kingdom: we shall afterwards look at it from nation to nation.

In commerce, the person who accepts goods on the understanding that he will pay for them in an agreed period, recognises in writing that he will pay such a sum; and this recognizance, in the hands of the person to whom he has made it, is called credit [créance: lit. belief], because it is a title on which one must believe one will be paid. Thus credit is opposed to debt [dette], as creditor [créancier] is to debtor [débiteur].

I assume that the merchants of Paris have a hundred thousand francs of credits on Bordeaux, and that the merchants of Bordeaux have credits on Paris for the same amount: all these credits would disappear by a simple reversal of the sides; that is to say, when at Bordeaux the merchants who owe in Paris pay those whom Paris owes; and in Paris the merchants who owe in Bordeaux pay those whom Bordeaux owes.

If Paris owes a hundred thousand francs at Nantes, Nantes a hundred thousand francs at Bordeaux, Bordeaux a hundred thousand francs at Lyons, and Lyons a hundred thousand francs at Paris; it will be enough to wipe out all these debts if Paris sends to Nantes a hundred thousand francs of bills of exchange on Lyons; because with these bills Nantes will pay Bordeaux, and Bordeaux will pay Lyons. In such a case the merchants can effect the exchange among themselves, without the intervention of any banker, and the operation is simplicity itself.

But I, who am not involved in business and who am not at all conversant with what goes on in commercial centres, I am obliged to apply to a banker when I want to send money to a province. Now this banker might only have to pay the cost of travelling from his home to the residences of some Paris merchants, and yet it would be open to him to take advantage of my ignorance, and to demand far too great a payment from me. This abuse could happen if there were only one banker in Paris. But there are many, many honest ones, and competition forces them all to be honest.

Every bill of exchange assumes a debt on the part of the person on whom it is drawn. Bordeaux, for instance, can only give one on Paris, because Paris owes at Bordeaux. Now it is these reciprocal debts or credits between towns which regulate all the operations of exchange.

The debts between two towns can be equal on either side: Lyons can owe a hundred thousand francs in Paris, and Paris can owe the same sum at Lyons.

The debts can also be unequal: Lyons can owe three hundred thousand francs in Paris, and Paris can owe four hundred thousand at Lyons.

In the case of equality of debts on the one hand and on the other, if we only look at that consideration, it is certain that two merchants, one in Paris needing a hundred thousand francs in Lyons, and the other, who is at Lyons, needing a hundred thousand francs at Paris, must make that exchange, equal sum for equal sum. For both of them find like benefit in giving a hundred thousand francs for a hundred thousand francs; and since this exchange does not put the one to more expense than the other, neither of the two has the right to demand more than the hundred thousand francs.

When the exchange is made from one town to another, equal sum for equal sum, one says that it is at par.

Take note that I say sum and not value: because the two words are not synonymous. When in Paris I give you a hundred thousand francs to receive a hundred thousand francs at Lyons, the sums are equal; and yet, so far as I am concerned, I give a lesser value for a greater one if it is more advantageous for me to have a hundred thousand francs at Lyons than at Paris. It is the same for you: you give me a lesser value for a greater one if you find an advantage in having this money in Paris rather than at Lyons. We must recapitulate what we have said about exchanges.

In the case where the debts between two towns are unequal: when Paris, for example, owes four hundred thousand livres at Lyons, and Lyons only owes three hundred thousand in Paris, one will be able to settle three hundred thousand with bills of exchange, but there will remain a hundred thousand francs [sic] which will have to be transported from Paris to Lyons.

In settling the three hundred thousand francs of respective debt with bills of exchange, the merchants can make the exchange at par between themselves, that is to say, equal sum for equal sum.

A hundred thousand francs remain to be paid. The merchants of Paris apply to a banker who, having no funds at Lyons, is obliged to have the sum transported there, and to whom, consequently, one will owe the costs of transport in addition to a payment. Now I assume that one has agreed to give him 4 per cent for the whole transaction; one will thus pay out to him one hundred and four thousand francs in Paris and he will give bills on Lyons for a hundred thousand.

In this example, the exchange rises above par, because the merchants give in Paris a larger sum than the one that they can receive at Lyons.

The merchants of Lyons have credits on Paris. They are therefore not in the position of sending money there: rather they need it to come back to them.

If in this situation someone offers to give them ninety-eight thousand francs for a hundred thousand francs of bills of exchange on Paris, they will accept the offer; because it will only cost them two thousand livres to have their money at Lyons, instead of the four thousand their correspondents would have paid the banker.

When one gives a smaller sum to receive a greater one, it is said that the exchange is below par.

From these explanations we can see that exchange, like trade, is no more on one side than a purchase, and on the other than a sale; that in this transaction money is the sole good that is being bought and is on sale, and that the bankers are only money merchants. It is essential that we only see in things what is there, if we wish to speak with clarity and precision.

As soon as money exchange is a purchase, we can consider, as the price of the exchange, the sum that I give in Paris for a sum that must be given to me at Lyons. So it is called the rate [lit.: price] of exchange.

The exchange would regulate itself, as I have just explained, if one always knew exactly the state of the reciprocal debts between two towns: but that is not possible, especially when the exchange is made between two towns which, like Paris and Lyons, carry on a substantial trade with each other.

If, for example, one knows that Paris is in debt, one does not know by how much, either because the amount may vary from one day to the next; or because the dealers, who gather at the place of exchange, cannot be informed at once of the variations; or finally, because some have an interest in exaggerating the debt, whereas others have an interest in reducing it.

The one set of people exaggerate it because, as they want to sell bills of exchange on Lyons, they would like to take the rate of exchange to 4 per cent above par; the other group talks it down, as they want to buy bills of exchange on Lyons, and do not want to pay more than 2 per cent above par.

So here we have haggling: but in the end the parties will come together, and the rate of exchange will be fixed, for that day and subsequent ones until the first assembly, at 3 per cent.

There are thus three ways to consider the rate of exchange. It is at par, it is above par, it is below par.

When it is at par one gives like sum for like sum, and you will perhaps be astonished to hear that one identical sum is the price of an equal sum; that a hundred francs is the price of a hundred francs. You will say, there is no price at all, since one is adding nothing to one side or the other.

But one must remember that the price of a thing is relative to the need of the person who receives it in exchange: it is according to this need that he estimates it; and in proportion as his need is greater or smaller, he will give a higher or a lower price. That being so, the hundred francs you receive in Paris are for you the price of the hundred francs you enable me to draw at Lyons; because you yourself reckon that this money has a greater value for you in Paris, where you can use it, than at Lyons, where you do not need it. If the sums are equal, the values are not; and as we have remarked, one must not confuse sum and value.

For the same reason, when the exchange is below par and I give you, for example, ninety-six livres in Paris to receive a hundred at Lyons, these ninety-six livres are for you in Paris the price of a hundred at Lyons. They form the price, I say, just as much as the one hundred and four when the exchange is above par.

So you can conceive how in exchange you and I each give a lesser value for a greater one, whatever relationship the sums otherwise have to each other. Let me repeat again that value is uniquely based on the utility which things have with regard to those who exchange them.

But if, to make our money pass from Paris to Lyons or from Lyons to Paris, we had to deal with a man for whom it was a matter of indifference whether he had his money in the one or the other of these towns, it is clear that then these values would be, with regard to this man, like sums of money: a hundred and four livres would have for him a greater value than a hundred, and a hundred a greater value than ninety-six. There you have precisely the situation in which the bankers are placed, and that is why they gain doubly in practising exchange dealings. They gain from you, who wish to send money from Paris to Lyons, and they gain from me, who wishes to bring it from Lyons to Paris.

Whether the exchange rises above par or drops below it, there can always be profit for the banker, to whom it is a matter of indifference whether his money is in one town rather than another. As he does not find himself in the same circumstances as the merchants, he has no other interest than to acquire a greater sum of money for a lesser one, and this greater sum always has a greater value for him.

But, you will say, if in exchange deals a dealer always gave a smaller value for a greater value, he would always gain, and yet he would end up ruining himself if he always gave a larger sum of money for a smaller one.

That is true: but that objection is a sophistry which causes me to say that a dealer always gives in exchange a larger sum of money for a smaller one, and that this larger sum always represents a smaller value.

I say then that he gives a sum of money, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, and that this sum, whatever it is, is always a smaller value for him, because he himself judges that what he is given in exchange has more utility for him. That is a truth which everyone may have experienced.

For the rest, since, in its course, exchange necessarily experiences alternate rises and falls, it is clear that merchants, turn by turn, will give sometimes a larger sum of money for a smaller, sometimes a smaller one for a larger: and it might be that after a certain time the result was the same for both parties, or near enough, as if they had always made the exchanges at par.

We have noticed that one cannot know exactly the state of reciprocal debts between several towns. One can only see that they owe more than they are owed when the exchange is above par; and that when it is below, they are owed more than they owe. Yet this rule is not absolutely without exception: because many circumstances can cause the rate of exchange to vary independently of the state of the debts.

If, when at Lyons the exchange is below par, and one only pays ninety-eight livres to receive a hundred in Paris, several people ask at the same time for five to six hundred thousand francs of bills of exchange on Paris, this demand would raise the price of exchange, so that to buy a hundred francs which are in Paris, you would have to pay a hundred instead of ninety-eight in Lyons, or even a hundred and two, a hundred and three. What is happening is something we have already noticed in markets, where prices rise and fall following the proportion in which the goods for sale relates to the demand for them. If, in the place of exchange, one offers more bills of exchange than are wanted, they will be at a lower price; and they will be at a higher one if one asks for more of them than are on offer.

The bankers’ rivalry can sometimes alone make the rate of exchange vary.

I postulate that in a town a rich banker, who has won trust, wishes to be the sole banker; he has a certain way to elbow aside every rival. He only needs suddenly to lower the rate of exchange and sell his bills of exchange at a loss. He will lose, if necessary, fifteen to twenty thousand francs, but he will have put off those who wanted to carry on this business with him; and when he is the only one, he will know for certain how to recover what he lost and more. If in that town there were several accredited bankers, they would be able to get together at their common expense to carry out what I had one person doing. It is certain that in general dealers think of reducing, as far as possible, the number of their rivals. Now bankers have all the more room to do this, as they have persuaded people that banking is a very arcane matter, because indeed their jargon is very difficult to understand. In the very commercial centres, the greatest praise one can think of giving a merchant is to say, “He understands the exchange market.” One can see that ignorance delivers the merchants into the bankers’ discretion.

Many factors, such as those I have just pointed out, can cause the price of exchange to vary, but as they are all chance, it is pointless to linger on them. It is enough to remember that, outside the case where they operate, the exchange, according to whether it is above or below par, causes one to judge whether a town owes or whether it is owed money.

Exchange rates rise and fall in turn in all the towns which have some mutual commerce. Now these successive rises and falls in which it manifests itself in turn from town to town is what I call the course of exchange, and here we now have all the mystery of this type of business.

A banker watches the course of exchange himself and through his correspondents. He knows not only that it is rising in such and such a town and falling in another; he also knows by how much it is rising above par and by how much it is falling below par.

Given the actual state of exchange, he can foresee, from what his experience teaches him about the ebb and flow of trade, that where the exchange is high, it will not take long to fall; while where it is low, it will soon rise.

I even add that he will often be able to judge it with certainty: because if he is well informed by his correspondents, he will know which are the towns which must make large dispatches of merchandise within a few months. He will thus work out that in such a place, where the exchange is high now because it is indebted, the exchange will be low in some months’ time, because it will have acquired credits. That if Lyons, for example, is owing in Paris, the exchange will be high there, and you will have to pay a hundred and three livres to have a bill for a hundred on Paris. But within six months it will be low if Lyons acquires credits on Paris.

Now, once a banker knows in advance the rises and falls of exchange in the chief trading towns, it will be easy for him to make his arrangements from far away to turn these to his advantage. He will seize the opportunity and, making his money or his credit move swiftly from place to place, he will gain in each in a short time, 2, 3 or 4 per cent, or more. Let me give one example.

I postulate two bankers who have credit, the one established in Paris, the other at Lyons.

The Lyons banker, who sees that the exchange is at 3 per cent above par because Lyons owes Paris more than five hundred thousand francs, knows that a great dispatch of goods is being prepared for that capital, and that, in three months, Paris itself will owe more than five hundred thousand francs at Lyons.

In this situation, this banker will take every opportunity to draw on his correspondent in Paris; and to have the advantage, he will be satisfied, if need be, to gain on each bill of exchange 2½ per cent.

Three months later, when Paris owes at Lyons, and the exchange there has risen to 3 per cent above par, his correspondent will carry out the same manoeuvre. So it is that, in a few months, they will each have made a gain of 2½ or 3 per cent by drawing bills on each other.

Note that to have drawn these bills of exchange they did not run down their assets; because, when the Paris banker paid a hundred thousand francs, the Lyons banker received them; and in his turn the Paris banker received them when the Lyons banker paid them. Beyond the gain on exchange, they therefore also have the product of these hundred thousand francs which they continue to put to use.

The fact is that a bill of exchange is bought with ready money and is paid on account. You give a hundred thousand francs today to have access to a hundred thousand in a month. The Lyons banker thus has the enjoyment for a month of the product of the hundred thousand francs you have counted out to him; and the Paris banker has the enjoyment at the same time of the product of the hundred thousand which he will only pay you in a month’s time.

Such are the great speculations we admire because we are drawn to admiration when we understand nothing of what is occurring. We all resemble that master I mentioned who was amazed at his agent’s intelligence.

The principles which we have given for exchange between the different towns of a kingdom are the same for exchange from nation to nation. But one uses a different language, because the monies have neither the same values, nor the same denominations. A banker will say to you: “The rate of exchange in Paris for London is sixty sous for twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-two pence sterling,” and in this language you cannot judge at all if the exchange is at par, above or below, because you do not know what a penny sterling is worth.

Yet again he will say to you that the rate of exchange in Paris for Amsterdam is three livres for fifty-four guilders of Holland, or for sixty. In a word, he will always speak to you in a language you do not understand. You would understand him if he said to you: “The sum which you want to send to London contains so many ounces of silver. Today the exchange is at par. Here is a bill with which you will receive the same quantity of ounces at London in English coin, and they will count out to you so many pounds sterling.” That is how he himself evaluates the different countries’ monies. Because he well knows that from Paris to London or to Amsterdam, as from Paris to Lyons, the exchange is at par when one gives a hundred ounces for a hundred ounces, that it is above par when one gives more, and that it is below when one gives less.

I do not know why bankers affect an obscure language. But it is certain that this language prevents us seeing clearly into their operations; and that it cuts down the number of their rivals, because it leads one to believe that banking is a very difficult science. In my powerlessness to know all the means they deploy to make huge profits, I shall only speak of those which I perceive in the nature of the business.

Let us say that in Paris I am asked to transfer a thousand ounces of silver to Amsterdam, when the exchange is 6 per cent above par; and then let us suppose it is at 4 per cent above par in Paris for London, and at 2 per cent below par in London for Amsterdam. In such a situation one can see that there is a much greater profit in drawing first of all on London, in order to draw next from London on Amsterdam, rather than to draw directly from Paris on Amsterdam.

A banker’s skill therefore sometimes consists in taking a roundabout rather than a direct route.

A person brings to my establishment a thousand ounces of silver that Paris owes in London, and only 4 per cent is paid for the transfer. But because I have credit in England, instead of sending this sum there, I send bills of exchange. So I gain, at one and the same time, both the 4 per cent the person has initially paid me and the interest that a thousand ounces of silver brings in France. As long as my credit can make this debt last, I shall repeat the same operation, and I shall be able to make it worth two, three, four thousand ounces of silver profit or more to me.

Interest in Holland is lower than in France, and the dealers of that republic have often much more silver than they can use in trade. If I am accredited among them, people will seek me out to have bills of exchange on Amsterdam. I will draw as many as I am requested: the money I have received will stay in my hands more or less long term: I shall pay interest in Holland at 2½ or 3 per cent, and I shall draw it in France at 5 to 6 per cent. In that way, I shall continually draw profit from sums that are not mine. The richer I become, the more I shall be trusted and the more I shall find profit in my business. I shall carry on banking almost on my own.

There you have a slight idea of the profits that one can make in exchange dealing. You can see that if the art of drawing profit from the land had made as much progress as that of putting money to use, our cultivators would not be as poor as they are.

18

Of Lending at Interest

A farmer, who takes land on a lease, exchanges his work for a part of the product, and gives the other part to the landowner, and that is in the order of things.

Now would the borrower be in the same position as the farmer? Or does money have a yield of which the borrower owes the lender a part?

A septier of corn can produce twenty, thirty or more according to the goodness of the soil and the hard work of the cultivator.

Indubitably money does not reproduce itself in the same manner. But it is not with corn that we should compare it: it is with land, which does not reproduce itself any more than money.

Now in commerce, money yields a return according to the effort of the person who borrows it, just as the land yields one according to the hard work of the farmer.

Indeed, an entrepreneur can only maintain his trade in so far as the money, with which he makes advances, comes back continuously to him with a return in which he finds his subsistence and that of the workers he employs, that is to say, a wage for them and a wage for him.

If he were alone, he would make the most of the demand people had for the articles he sells, and he would bring this return to the highest point.

But as soon as many entrepreneurs carry on the same trade, forced to undercut each other, they make do with a smaller wage and those whom they employ are reduced to smaller gains. Thus competition regulates the return they can reasonably draw from the advances they have made; advances which are for them what the expenses of cultivation are for the farmers.

If commerce could only be carried on by entrepreneurs who were rich enough to provide the capital for it, a small number would carry it on exclusively. Less under pressure from competition to sell at a discount, they would put their wage at a rate that would be all the higher because they would be less pushed to sell their goods, and because it would be easy for them to get together to wait for the moment when they could take advantage of the citizens’ needs. Then their wage could be taken to 100 per cent or more.

But if in contrast commerce is carried on by entrepreneurs to whom people have given advances from their stock, they will be under pressure to sell in order to be able to pay out as their obligation falls due. It will therefore not be in their power to await, from one day to the next, the moment when people will have the greatest need of their goods, and competition will force them all the more to make do with a smaller wage because, being more numerous and for the most part under pressure to make money, it will be harder for them to take concerted action. One cannot doubt that it is desirable for commerce to be carried on by such entrepreneurs.

Now I assume that, having subtracted all the expenses of commerce, there is a general net residue, to form the wage of each entrepreneur, of 15 to 20 per cent.

How will a man manage who has no property, and yet who could with hard work carry on some branch of commerce? He has only two openings. Someone must lend him a stock of merchandise, or someone must lend him the money to buy it, and it is clear that these two possibilities come down to the same thing.

He approaches a rich businessman who says to him: “I am going to advance you what I should have given you for one hundred ounces of silver if you had been able to pay me in ready money, and in a year you will give me one hundred and ten ounces for it.”

He accepts this offer, in which he sees a profit of 5 to 10 per cent for himself out of the 15 to 20 per cent that one may customarily earn when one owns one’s own capital.

No one will condemn this transaction, which is freely made and is at one and the same time advantageous to both contracting parties, and which, by multiplying the number of merchants, increases competition, an absolute necessity if trade is to benefit the state.

No one will deny the rich businessman the right to demand interest for advances which he runs the risk of losing. He counts, as a matter of fact, on the honesty and the hard work of those to whom he has made them; but he can be deceived: he is sometimes: it is necessary for those who pay him to compensate him for the losses he makes with the others. Would it be fair to condemn him to make advances on which he would often lose, without his ever being able to compensate himself? He would certainly never make the advances.

Besides, you cannot deny that a merchant who advances a stock of merchandise has a right to reserve to himself a share in the profits which this stock must produce; he who before advancing the stock had the sole right to the profits.

Now we have just noted that to advance an entrepreneur a stock of merchandise, or to advance him the money he needs to buy that stock is the same thing. If one is in the right to demand interest in the first case, one then has the same right in the other case.

It is a fact that the interest-bearing loan sustains commerce. It has besides been shown that it increases the number of merchants; that in increasing them, it increases competition; that in increasing competition, it makes commerce more profitable to the state. The loan at interest is therefore equitable, and must be allowed.

I know that the casuists condemn it when it is made in money; but I also know that they do not condemn it when it is made in goods. They allow a businessman to lend at 10 per cent, say, merchandise to the value of a thousand ounces of silver; but they do not allow him to lend, at the same interest rate, the thousand ounces in kind.

When I say that the casuists allow the loan of goods at 10 per cent I do not wish to accuse them of using this language, “to lend at 10 per cent”: they would be contradicting themselves too palpably. I mean to say that they allow a businessman to sell for 10 per cent more the goods that he advances for a year. One can see that the contradiction is less palpable.

Our legislators, if that were possible, reason even worse than the casuists. They condemn the loan at interest, and they allow it. They condemn it without knowing why, and they allow it because they are forced to. Their laws, the outcome of ignorance and prejudice, are useless if they are not observed; and if they are observed they damage trade.

The error into which the casuists and the legislators fall comes uniquely from the confused notions they have formed. In effect, they do not blame the exchange market, and they blame the loan at interest. But why should money have a price in one that it does not have in the other? The loan and the borrowing, are they anything other than an exchange? If, in the exchange market, one exchanges sums of money where the loan or the sum borrowed are separated in place, cannot one exchange sums of money which are separated

in time? And because these distances are not of the same kind, must one conclude that the exchange in the one case is not an exchange in the other? So one does not see that to lend at interest is to sell; that to borrow at interest is to buy; that the money one lends is the goods which are sold; that the money one must give back is the price which is paid; and that the interest is the profit to the seller. Certainly, if one had only seen in the loan at interest, goods, sale and profit, one would not have condemned it; but one has only seen the words loan, interest, money; and without reflecting too much on what they mean, one has judged that they should not go together.

Interest at 10 per cent is only an assumption that I make, because I needed to make one. It can be higher, as it can be lower: it is a matter on which the legislator must not reach any decision if he does not want to harm liberty. Custom, which regulates this interest, will cause it to vary, according to circumstances, and the variations must be allowed. Observe how it must of necessity rise and fall in turn.

It will be high, however plentiful money may be, if there are many people wanting to borrow, and if there are few who want to lend.

If those who have money, or who own most of it, need it themselves to support enterprises in which they are engaged, they will only be able to lend by abandoning their enterprises, and it follows that they will only lend when they are assured of a profit equal to, or larger than, the one that they would have made. One will therefore have to give them a lot of interest.

But, even at a time when money is scarce, the rate of interest will be low if money is mainly in the hands of a large number of economical landowners who seek to place it.

Interest rises and falls in turn, in the proportion that the money that people wish to borrow is to the money on offer for loan. Now this proportion can vary all the time.

In a time when rich landowners make very great outlays of every kind, one will borrow more; firstly because the landowners will themselves often be forced to contract loans; and secondly, because to provide for all the consumption they make, a larger number of entrepreneurs will be established, or of men who for the most part need to borrow. That is one of the reasons why interest is higher in France than in Holland.

On the other hand, in a period when more economical landowners spend less, there will be fewer borrowers: for instead of their having to contract loans themselves, they will have money to lend; and since they will consume less, they will reduce the number of entrepreneurs and, consequently, of borrowers. There you have one of the reasons why interest is lower in Holland than in France.

If a new kind of consumption gives rise to a new branch of commerce, entrepreneurs will not fail to multiply in proportion as they believe they can promise themselves much greater profits; and the interest on money will go up because the number of borrowers will be greater.*

If this branch of trade collapses the money will come back to those who lent it, they will seek to place it a second time, and the interest rate will go down, because the number of lenders will have grown.

If entrepreneurs carry on their business with as much careful management as hard work, they will bit by bit become owners of the sums they borrowed. So they will have to be removed from the number of borrowers and added to the number of lenders when they have gained more than the money they need to carry on their commercial activities.†

Finally, laws will increase the number of lenders when they permit interest-bearing loans. Today, in contrast, they tend to reduce the number.

But it is pointless to seek to provide an exhaustive account of all the factors which cause variation in the ratio of the demand for money to borrow to that on offer for loan: I have said enough to show that interest rates must sometimes be higher, sometimes lower.

Just as prices settle themselves in the market place, following the haggling of sellers and buyers, so the rate of interest, or the price of money, is fixed in the places of trade following the haggling of borrowers and lenders. The government recognises that it is not its function to make laws to fix the price of goods which are sold in the market; why then should it think it ought to fix the rate of interest or the price of money?

To make a wise law on this subject, it would need to grasp the ratio of the quantity of money available to lend to the demand for borrowing. But since this ratio forever varies it will not grasp it, or it will only hold it for a moment and by chance; it will therefore need to keep on making new regulations without ever being sure it is doing good: or if it persists in wanting to enforce those it has made, because it does not know how to make others, it will only disturb commerce. People will escape these regulations in secret markets; and the interest rate, which it claimed the right to fix, will rise all the more, as the lenders, having the law against them, will lend with less security.

In contrast, in commercial centres, interest will always regulate itself well, without interference, because it is there that the offers of lenders and the demands of borrowers make apparent the ratio of money to lend to money to borrow.

Not only can interest rates vary from one day to another, they also vary according to the type of trade. That is what we still have to examine.

A merchant who has borrowed to raise the stock for a shop has to earn, over and above his subsistence, the wherewithal to pay the interest he owes. If he has formed a large concern, which he directs with hard work, his outlay to maintain it will be small beer compared with the profits he can make. He will therefore be all the more in a position to pay what he owes: one will therefore run fewer risks in lending to him; one will therefore lend to him with more confidence, and, consequently, at lower interest rates.

But if, with a trade that produces little, he barely earns his subsistence, then what he needs for his subsistence is a high proportion of what he earns. There is therefore no longer the same security in lending to him. Now it is natural that the interest which lenders demand increases in proportion as their confidence falls.

In Paris, the retailers from the Halles pay five sols interest a week for an écu of three livres. This interest puts up the price of the fish they sell in the streets; but the people prefer to buy from them than to go to the Halles to stock up.

On a yearly basis this interest comes to more than 430 per cent. However exorbitant it is, the government puts up with it, because it is profitable for the retailers to be able to carry on their trade at this price, or perhaps again because it cannot stop it.

However, the price that the lender places on his money, and the profit that the retailer makes, are out of all proportion. That is why this interest is hateful; and it becomes all the more open to abuse as the loans are made secretly.

It is not the same with loans made to entrepreneurs who carry on a large-scale business. The interest demanded, proportional to the profits they make, is regulated by custom; because money in the commercial centres has a current price, just as corn has one in the markets. People deal openly, or at least do not hide themselves, and a person sells his money as one would sell any other good.

It is only in the commercial centres that one can learn what rate of interest one may draw from one’s money. Every loan which conforms to that rate of interest is honest because it is in line.

If you ask me what is usury nowadays, I say that there is none in the loans of which I have just spoken, and which adjust themselves to the price that the dealers themselves have placed on the money, and have placed freely.

But the loans made to the retailers of the Halles are usurious, because they are without rules and underhand, and the greed of the lender rides roughshod over the need of the borrower.

In general, every loan between merchants and dealers is usurious when the interest that is extracted is higher than the rate which has been publicly fixed in the commercial centres. But when loans are made to individuals who do not carry out any trade or business, by what rule can one judge the interest one may extract from one’s money? The law. It is here, I think, that the government can without inconvenience set interest. It even ought to do it, and it would be an act beneficial to the state if it made borrowing more difficult. Let it only allow loans at the lowest rate of interest to owners of lands; fathers of families would have less scope to ruin themselves, and money would flow back into trade. Let it tax usury, or let it cover with a still more stigmatising note every loan, even at 1 per cent, made to a son who borrows without his family’s consent. Let it forbid underhand loans; or, if it cannot prevent them, let it give help itself to the entrepreneurs who are in the lowest class of merchants. In a word, while leaving the freedom to borrow in commercial centres, let it check it wherever it can degenerate into abuse. Doubtless it would not be easy to carry out this design but it would be useful to concern itself with it.
[A revised conclusion to the chapter in place of the above final paragraph When one considers the loans in these two extremes, it is easy to understand where usury lies: it will not be as easy to determine where it begins, if one considers in this interval the different prices money can have. Because, in commercial centres, this price is fixed between dealers who know each other to be solvent, would that be a reason to lend at the same price to a merchant whose affairs are in disorder? If so, no one will lend to him, and he will be utterly ruined. It seems that in such a case the risks one runs allow one to demand a higher price than that of the market place. Now what is this price? It is bound to vary according to the degree of confidence that the borrower’s honesty and hard work inspire. It is therefore impossible to predetermine it, and the government must leave well alone.
If trade were perfectly free, secrecy, which is the hallmark of a dishonest action, would be the true character of usury, and the fear of being found out would be the biggest restraint on it. Nowadays, when the law forbids an interest rate that it ought to allow, secrecy means nothing, since one only hides from a law which is held in contempt. People avoid it openly, they are even forced to. Usurious loans, as defined by this law, are authorised by practice which regards them as legitimate, and they are well known in all sorts of loans: people no longer fear opprobrium, and they end up demanding interest publicly.
But is it only the price of money that can be usurious? Cannot the price of every other good be equally so? Is not a merchant a usurer when he abuses my trust or my need in order to gain from me more than he should? Doubtless he is, and he is so with impunity. Now why does the government wish that it should only be the money merchants who cannot take interest, and why nevertheless, contradicting itself, does it allow it to the bankers? It would do better to tolerate in every instance what it cannot prevent.]

19

Of the Comparative Value of the Metals from Which Coins Are Made

Copper, silver and gold which one uses in coinage have, like all merchandise, a value based on their utility; and that value increases or diminishes according to whether one reckons them to be scarcer or in greater abundance.

Let us suppose that in Europe there is a hundred times more copper than silver, and twenty times more silver than gold. With this assumption, where we only consider these metals with reference to quantity, it will take a hundred pounds of copper to make a value equivalent to a pound of silver, and twenty pounds of silver to make a value equal to a pound of gold. So one will express these relationships by saying that copper is to silver as a hundred is to one, and that silver is to gold as twenty is to one.

But if mines are found that are very plentiful in silver and especially in gold, these metals will no longer have the same relative value. Copper, for example, will be to silver as fifty is to one, and silver will be to gold as ten is to one.

In commerce there cannot always be an unchanged quantity of each of these metals. Their relative value must therefore vary from one time to another. However, it does not only vary by reason of the quantity, because if the quantity remains the same, there is another cause which can make these metals scarcer or more abundant.

Indeed, the use one makes of a metal may be more or less common. If one used copper in most of the utensils for which one uses earth, the metal would become scarcer; and instead of being to silver in the ratio of fifty to one, it could be in the ratio of thirty to one. On the other hand, if in our kitchens we came to use iron instead of copper pots, it would become more plentiful and would be to silver as eighty is to one.

It is then not only by the quantity that we judge the abundance or the rarity of a good: it is by the quantity considered in relation to the uses to which we put it. Now, it is clear that this relative quantity diminishes, in step with our using the good for a greater number of tasks; and that it increases as we use it for a smaller number.

We shall reason likewise about gold and silver. That when these metals are in the ratio of twenty to one, and the practice comes in of lavishing silver on movable goods and on clothes, silver will become scarcer, and could be in the ratio of ten to one with gold. But should one then come to prefer gold and silver on movable goods and on clothes, gold in its turn will become scarcer, and will be in the ratio of one to fifteen with silver.

Metals are thus rarer or more plentiful, depending on whether we use them for more or fewer purposes. In consequence we can only judge their relative value in so far as we can compare the uses we make of the one with those we make of the other.

But how are we to judge these uses and compare them? By the amount of each of these metals that people ask for in the market. Because one only buys goods in so far as one wants to use them. The relative value of these metals is therefore appraised in the markets. In truth it is not done so geometrically: it cannot be done with exact precision. But in the end the markets alone make the rule, and the government is obliged to follow it.

If this value must vary from time to time, such variations are never abrupt, since habits always change slowly. So in the long term, gold and silver keep the same value in relation to each other.

Between neighbouring peoples, trade tends to make the same goods equally plentiful in each one as in the others; and in consequence it gives them all the same value; it succeeds in this especially when they are, like gold and silver, transportable with ease and without hindrance. The position is that then they circulate among many nations as they would in a single nation; and they sell in all the markets as if they were selling in a single common market.

Let us assume that the states of Europe are all in the habit of forbidding the export and import of gold and silver, and that this prohibition has had its effect.

Let us assume again that there is the same quantity of gold in England as in France, but more silver in one of the kingdoms than in the other. Finally, let us assume that in Holland there is much more gold than anywhere else, and much less silver.

With these assumptions, where the quantity of gold relative to silver is different from one state to another, the relative value of these metals cannot be the same in the markets of the three nations. Gold, for example, will have one price in France, one in Holland, another in England.

But if one allows these metals to circulate freely among the peoples of Europe, then one will not value them according to the ratio they bear to each other in France, in Holland, or in England; but one will value them according to the relationship they bear to each other in all the nations taken together. Although unequally divided, they will be considered to be in the same quantity everywhere, because whatever surplus there is in gold, for instance, in a state today, can leave it and pass tomorrow into another. There you have the reason why in all the markets of Europe one judges the ratio of gold and silver as one would judge it in a single common market.

You can see how the relative value of gold and silver is estimated in the same way in several states, when these metals can pass freely from the one to the other. But when distant nations cannot have continuous trade between each other, and so to speak daily trade, then this value is reckoned differently in each, because it is fixed in markets which have not enough contact with each other, and from which, for that reason, one could not form a single common market. In Japan, for example, gold is to silver as one is to eight, while in Europe it is as one to fourteen and a half, or one to fifteen.

I have said that markets set the law for government. To understand this, let us assume that in all the markets of Europe, gold is to silver as one is to fourteen, and that none the less the government in France values these metals in the ratio of one to fifteen, and let us see what must ensue.

In France you will need fifteen ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold; while abroad, you will pay for an ounce of gold with fourteen ounces of silver: on fifteen ounces of silver you will therefore gain an ounce each time that you carry silver abroad to change it against gold, and consequently silver will gradually slip out of the kingdom. When later the government wants to bring it back, it will again lose a fifteenth; since, for one ounce of gold, one would only give fourteen ounces of silver. Now it would avoid all these losses if it conformed to the price of the common market.

20

Of the True Price of Things

We have just seen how the price of gold and of silver settles itself at the same point in all the markets of several nations when these metals can pass continuously without obstacle from one to another. By reasoning according to the same principles, it will be easy for us to judge the true price of each thing.

I assume that, in a large country like France, the provinces are forbidden all trade with each other, and yet that there are some where the harvest is never adequate, others where, in ordinary years, it only furnishes what is needed for consumption, and others where there is almost always a surplus. This is what must happen.

Let us first consider a province where the harvests are never adequate. If we assume that internal trade enjoys complete freedom there, all its markets will communicate with each other; and, in consequence, foodstuffs will be sold in each separately, as though they all came to be sold in a common market. Because from one nearby place to another, it can be known in each what they sell for in all, it will not be possible to sell foodstuffs in one at a much higher price than in the others. In a similar way gold has the same price, near enough, in all the markets of Europe.

In this province the harvests are never adequate, that is what we have assumed; and, since we assume also that it has forbidden itself all external trade, it follows that the other provinces cannot make up what it lacks.

That being so, corn will be at an even higher price as there will be less of it, while more will be required; and because it is an imperative that the inhabitants reduce themselves to the number that the province can feed, it will infallibly lose population.

In a province where there is almost always surplus, supposing perfectly free internal commerce, corn will sell in all the markets at near enough the same price, because, as in the first province, it will sell as if it were being sold in a single common market.

We have assumed that this province too is forbidden all external trade. Therefore it cannot export. Its corn therefore will be at all the lower a price, because it has more, and it needs less.

This surplus being at the expense of the cultivator who cannot sell a larger quantity of corn, and who nevertheless sells it at a lower price, he will cease to plough and sow a part of his fields.

He will even be compelled to do that, because with the feeble profit he makes on the corn he sells, he will be all the less able to enter into the great expenses of cultivation, as the day-labourer who, through the low price of bread, earns in one day his subsistence for two, will not want to work every day or will demand higher wages.

It is therefore bound to happen that crops in this province will diminish to place them in proportion with the population; just as in the other the population has fallen to place it in proportion with the crops.

Finally, let us consider a province where the crops in normal years produce exactly what is needed for consumption; and let us assume for it, as with the two others, completely free internal trade and no external trade.

Since in normal years this province only harvests exactly what it needs, there will be dearth in some years and surplus in others. The price of corn will therefore vary from year to year; but in normal years it will be lower than in the province where we have assumed that the harvest is never sufficient, and it will be higher than in the province where we have assumed that the harvest is almost always in surplus.

In this province, the land under the plough and the population will be able to keep themselves at the same levels, or near enough. The province will simply be exposed to great variations in prices, as we assume that no one will bring it cereals when it lacks them, and that it will not export them when it has too much.

In these three provinces we have three different price levels: in the first, a high price; in the third, a low price; and in the second, a moderate price.

Therefore it is not possible that any of these prices can be at the same time the true price of corn for all the provinces, that is to say, the price that they should all give for it.

Each province values corn according to the relationship it perceives, or believes it sees, between the quantity and the demand. If it judges that the quantity is insufficient, the price is high; if it judges that it is sufficient, the price is low.

I call proportional the prices which establish themselves on such relationships. By this we see that whatever the prices are, they are always proportional, since they are always founded on the view which people have of the quantity relative to the need. But the price which is current in one of our provinces, although proportional within it, would be disproportional in the others, and could not suit them.

The price of cereals is only so different in the three provinces because we have forbidden all trade between them. The price will thus no longer differ if we allow them the freedom to export reciprocally to each other.

Indeed, if they trade freely, the same will happen in the markets which are held in all three as happened in the markets which were held in each individually. They will communicate with each other, and the corn will sell in all at the same price as if it was being sold in a single common market. Then this price, the same for all three, and at the same time proportional for each, will be that which it is equally right for all three to give to the corn; and, consequently, it will be the true price for all three.

This price is the one which will be most beneficial to the province whose soil, by its nature, has a surplus product; because it will sell the grain it does not consume, and it will no longer be in the position of abandoning some of its cultivated land to bring its crops into balance with its consumption.

This price is just as beneficial to the province whose soil is naturally not very fertile; because it will buy the grain it lacks, and will no longer be in the situation of losing people to bring its population into balance with its harvests.

Finally, this price will be no less advantageous to the province whose soil only supplies, in normal years, just what is needed for its consumption. It will no longer be open to seeing its grain rise or fall excessively, suddenly and as if by shocks; because in surplus it will be able to sell at the price of the common market, and in dearth it will be able to buy at the same price. In a word, this price of corn, this true price, will make the surplus of one province flow constantly into another, and will spread abundance in all.

I say, that it will spread abundance in all. It is the case that a poor harvest will not be able to cause dearth even in the least fertile province, because this province receives the cereals which are surplus elsewhere since, through the freedom that trade enjoys, they will always be ready to enter it.

When I say that it buys at the same price as the others, it is that I consider the purchases in the common market, where the price is the same for all three; and I exclude the transport costs which it will have to pay on top. I do not say, like some writers, that transport costs are not part of the price of corn; because one would certainly not pay these costs if one did not judge that the corn was worth the incurring of them. But I set them aside, because to judge the true price, which must be the same for all the provinces, one must only consider the purchases and sales in the common market. I may add that this market is always held in the province where the corn is in surplus, or in the one which is placed to act as a depot for all. It is to that market that people come from all over to buy.

My line of argument on these three provinces could be extended to a larger number, to all those of France for example: and then one would see that free trade between them would establish a price, at one and the same time, the same for all and proportional in each, which in consequence would be the true price for France or the most beneficial for all her provinces.

One has no idea what is the true price of corn in Europe and one cannot know it. There is a price, in each nation, which is the true price for it; but it is so only for it. Each has its own price, and of all these prices none could be at one and the same time proportional in all the others; and consequently, none could be the true price for all equally.

If, in a time when the English and the French do not trade together at all, harvests are in surplus in England but are inadequate in France, two prices will prevail, both based on quantity in relation to need; and both different, since the quantity relative to the need is not the same in France and in England. Neither of these prices will therefore be at one and the same time proportional for both nations; neither will be equally beneficial for both; neither will be the true price for both.

But if the English and the French should trade with each other in complete and utter freedom, the corn that is surplus in England would pour into France; and because then the quantities in relation to need would be the same in each monarchy, a price would evolve which would be the same for both countries, and this would be the true price for both, as it would be equally beneficial to them.

One can see from that how important it is for all the nations of Europe to lift the obstacles which for the most part they place on export and import.

It is not possible for harvests to be equally bad in every country in the same year: no more is it possible that they should all be equally good in every country in the same year. Now uninhibited trade, which would make the surplus circulate, would produce the same effect as if the harvests were good everywhere, that is to say as if they were sufficient for consumption everywhere. Corn, with transport costs deducted, would have the same price in the whole of Europe: this price would be permanent and the most advantageous for all nations.

But when they forbid import and export, or when they place on them both duties which have the effect of a prohibition; when in allowing export they forbid import, or in allowing import they forbid export; finally, when in the guise of behaving differently in different circumstances, they forbid what they have allowed, they allow what they have forbidden, turn by turn, suddenly, without principles, without rules, because they have none, and can have none: then it is impossible for corn to have a price which is the same and the true price throughout Europe; it is impossible for it to bear any relation to the permanent price. And so one sees it rise to an excessive price in one nation, while it falls to a paltry price in another.

It is not that the true price can be exactly the same year in, year out; doubtless it must vary, but it would always maintain itself between two limits, which are little apart from each other: that is what must be explained.

We have remarked that crops could not be equally good or equally bad in the whole of Europe. But one can appreciate that there will sometimes be years when they are generally more plentiful, and that sometimes too there will be other years when they will generally be less so. The true price of corn will therefore sometimes rise and sometimes fall.

It will fall in the greatest general abundance in proportion as the amount of corn is greater than consumption; and in a lesser general abundance it will rise to the extent that the amount of grain approaches what is consumed.

I say that it will rise in a lesser general abundance and I do not say in a dearth, because it would be really extraordinary for there to be bad years throughout the whole of Europe. There can only be better years than others; and it is those better years that will cause the price of corn to fall.

In ordinary years, if all its provinces traded freely with each other, Europe should harvest as much grain as she consumes, because land under the plough should adjust to consumption. The price of corn should thus be permanently based on a like quantity relative to demand, and in consequence it would always be the same.

Now let us assume that corn was at twenty-four livres the septier: in great and widespread abundance it could fall to twenty-two, to twenty, or, if you like, to eighteen. But certainly general abundance will never be great enough to let it fall to a rockbottom price.

Likewise, in a lesser general abundance the price may rise to twenty-six, twenty-eight or thirty. But the scarcity will never be great enough all round to raise it to an excessive price. I even find it hard to believe that it could vary from eighteen to thirty since these limits seem to me very far apart.

In contrast, when the nations of Europe forbid each other trade by clear prohibitions or equivalent duties, one can imagine that the price of corn can vary, turn and turn about, now with one, now with another, to the point where it will be impossible to set a limit to the highest and the lowest price. The same people will see corn fall suddenly to ten livres or rise to fifty. Let us stop there on the fatal consequences of these variations.

When corn is at ten livres, the farmer sells more than when it is at fifty, because people consume more. But it is only at ten livres because there is far more of it than he can sell and this surplus is valueless for him. Yet he finds no compensation in the corn he does sell, since he sells it at a rockbottom price. So he has worked the land and he has drawn no profit. It may even be that he will not recoup the expenses of cultivation.

It is therefore not in his interests to sow as much land as he would have done.

Even if he wanted to, he could not. He is not in a position to make the outlay.

“He is not in a position,” I say, “to make the outlay”: firstly, because he has not gained enough on the sale of his corn; secondly, because the day-labourers who, as we have already noted, gain in one day enough to live on for two, work half as much. They will thus be scarcer and, being scarcer, they will cost more. Thus the expenses rise for the farmer as his profit falls.

So he has sown less, and consequently the crop will be smaller; and it will be reduced to very little if the year is a bad one.

The surplus of the previous harvest will make it up, you will say. My response is that if the cultivator had been able to sell it abroad, he would have drawn a greater profit from the sale of his cereals, because he would have sold them at a better price and in larger quantity. He would have been in a position to sow more land. He would have found it in his interest, and the harvest would have been more plentiful.

He could not store his surplus corn without expense and loss; and it is without expense and without loss that he would have kept the money he would have received from it. He would therefore be richer with that money than he is with the surplus corn left on his hands. The surest and least costly way to keep the corn is to keep it in money; since to keep the money is to keep the corn, as with money one can always buy it. Why force the farmer to build barns, to leave the plough to inspect his grain, and to pay farm hands to turn it over? If he is not rich enough to make these expenditures, his corn will germinate, it will be eaten by insects, and the surplus on which he had counted will no longer be found.

We also note that dearth always comes after abundance, and that when cereals have been at a rock-bottom price, they suddenly move to an excessive price. Now that price, burdensome to the people, does not recompense the cultivator for whom a bad crop leaves all the less corn to sell, as he only sowed a part of his land.

We have noted that when corn is at a rockbottom price, the day-labourers price themselves too high; we shall note here that when it is at an excessive price, they price themselves too low.

In the first case, as it takes little to earn the wherewithal to buy bread, several labourers spend days without working. On the other hand, in the second case, they all vie with each other for work, they want it every day, and they offer themselves on the cheap. Further, many offer themselves in vain. The cultivators, feeling the losses they have incurred, are not rich enough to employ all those who come forward.

In these times of variation, wages are thus necessarily too high or too low; and that is true for all: because the craftsman, like the day-labourer, sells his labour on the cheap when bread is dear; and when bread is cheap, he offers his work to the highest bidder.

During this disorder everyone’s fortunes are disturbed to a greater or lesser extent. Most people cut back on their needs. Rich men at least cut back on their extras. Many workers lack work, manufactures collapse, and one sees misery spread in the countryside and in the towns, which trade could have made to flourish.

If trade enjoyed complete and entire freedom, always and everywhere, the true price of grain would necessarily establish itself, and it would be permanent: then disorder would cease. Wages, which would proportion themselves to the permanent price of corn, would set all types of work at their true price. The cultivator would better judge the outlays he has to make, and he would be all the less afraid to involve himself in them, as he would be guaranteed to recover his expenses and his profit from his crops. I can say as much of the entrepreneurs in every kind of business. They will all employ a greater number of workers, because they will all have the means and all will be assured of the profit due to their work. So no more idle hands. People will be at work equally in the towns and the countryside: they will not be reduced to cutting back on essentials: they will on the contrary be able to acquire new pleasures for themselves, and commerce will be as flourishing as it can be.

You will perhaps ask by what one can recognise the true price. You will recognise it in that its fluctuation will be between two closely set points, and it is in this sense that I call it permanent. If it only varied, for instance, between twenty and twenty-four, it would be low at twenty, high at twenty-four, and middling at twenty-two. Every other price would be a false price, which would take the name of dearness when it rose above twenty-four; and which would take that of cheapness when it fell below twenty. This false price would be bound to cause disorders, because in cheapness the producer would be damaged, and the consumer would be damaged in dearness. Now the true price must be equally beneficial to everyone.

21

Of Monopoly

To be the sole seller is to create a monopoly. This word which has become odious should not always be. A great painter may sell his works alone, because he alone can create them.

He takes his wage to the highest point: it has no other regulation than the wealth of the admirers who are interested in his paintings.

Do you dream of being painted by him, because he makes perfect likenesses, and always in fine style? He will ask a hundred louis for a portrait, or even more, if at this price people request more than he can paint. His interest is to earn plenty, while making few portraits; to make few, so as to make them better, and that way to secure his reputation all the more.

This price may appear exorbitant. However, it is not: it is the true price. It is ruled by an agreement made freely between the painter and the sitter, and no one is hurt. Are you not rich enough to pay a hundred louis for your portrait? Do not have it made, you can do without it. Are you rich enough? It is for you to see whether you prefer to keep your hundred louis or to exchange them for your portrait.

This price, because it is the true price, is based on the quantity in relation to the need. Here the need is the dream you have of being painted; and the quantity is one, since we assume just one painter who catches likenesses to your taste. Therefore the greater your fancy, the more the painter will be entitled to demand a very large wage from you. Should your portrait cost you a thousand louis it would not be dear, that is to say, above the true price.

One must not reason about the pleasures one obtains through fancy, whim, fashion in the same way as about those which are of absolute necessity. If you were the only corn merchant, and you made me pay a hundred francs the septier, you would not be able to say that you had sold it to me in accordance with an agreement freely entered into between us; it would be clear that I have been forced by need, and that you have cruelly abused your position. There is a monopoly which becomes detestable, since it is unjust.

In trade in essential goods, the price, when it is the true one, is permanent; and it is by that, as we have already noted, that it is recognised.

In trade in inessentials, the price is not at all permanent: it cannot be, it varies like fashions. Today one article is in vogue, tomorrow another. Soon, in place of one competitor there are several. So, compelled to limit himself to lower wages, he sells at a lower price what he previously sold at a high price. We have seen snuff-boxes of papier mâché at two or three louis which nowadays are at twenty-four sols. Despite this variation they have always been at their true price. It is a fact that the price of fancy goods cannot settle, and that it can be very high in comparison with that of necessities.

Since in the trade in necessities the true price is a permanent price, it is clear that it cannot live with monopoly, which would make it rise sharply stroke upon stroke. But if the person who is the sole seller causes prices to rise, multiplying the sellers will be enough to make them fall.

Now sellers will multiply of their own accord when no obstacles are placed in the way. As every type of trade offers a profit, it is not to be feared that this will not happen. If one leaves it free to happen, it will happen, and the number of merchants will grow, so long as carrying on the trade concurrently, they find enough profit to subsist. If they were to multiply too much, as must sometimes happen, a portion will abandon a trade which is not profitable to them, and exactly the right number of merchants will remain. Once more one must not interfere: if there are monopolists, freedom will purge society of them.

Every seller wants to gain, and to gain as much as he can. There is not one who would not like to push aside all his rivals and sell alone if he could.

Every purchaser would like to buy at the lowest price, and he would wish that the sellers, vying with each other, would offer him goods at a discount.

However, each seller in one capacity is a buyer in another. If it matters to him to be without rivals, it matters to him that the sellers, from whom he buys, have plenty of them; and it is no less important to the latter that he is not alone.

From these contrary interests, it follows that the interest of all is not to sell at the highest price and buy at the lowest, but to sell and buy at the true price. This true price is thus the only one which reconciles the interests of all the members of society. Now it will only be able to establish itself when, in every branch of trade, there is the greatest possible number of merchants.

As we have noticed, it is only great artists, unique of their kind, who can make a monopoly without injustice. By virtue of their talents they have the privilege of selling alone.

But when it is a matter of trade in essentials, where, happily, rare talents are not needed, I understand by monopolists a small number of merchants who buy and sell exclusively; and I say that there is monopoly, and in consequence injustice and disorder, whenever this number is not as large as it might be.

Nowadays all the commerce in Europe is therefore carried on by monopolists. I do not wish to speak of the customs, tolls and exclusive privileges which impede internal trade from province to province: we shall deal with these abuses elsewhere. I am only referring to the obstacles placed in the way of commerce between nation and nation.

When in France we prohibit the import of English goods, we reduce the number of merchants who would have sold to us; and in consequence our native merchants become monopolists, who sell at a higher price than they would have done if they had been selling alongside English merchants.

When we forbid export to England, we reduce for the English the number of merchants who would have sold to them; and in consequence those who sell to them become monopolists, who make them pay for goods at a higher price than they would have done if they had sold alongside our merchants.

Let us apply this reasoning everywhere that the government forbids exporting and importing, and we shall recognise that the nations seem to have forgotten their true interests, in order to concern themselves merely with the ways of gaining the greatest profits for monopolist merchants.

Indeed, when we ban import we reduce the number of those who sell to us and buy everything at the highest price; when we ban export, we reduce the number of those who buy from us and we sell everything at the lowest price. That is to say that we are never at the true price. We are above it when we buy expensively, and below it when we sell cheaply. Certainly it is not the way to carry on a profitable trade. However, it was in the hope of buying cheaply and selling dearly that these prohibitions were conceived. The nations sought mutually to hurt each other, and they each hurt themselves. It is only competition between the greatest possible number of buyers and sellers which can place goods at their true price, that is to say, at that price which, being equally advantageous for every nation, cuts out excessive price and cheapness at one and the same time.

22

Of the Circulation of Grain

When one is without the means to wait for a second crop, say one only has corn for nine months, one is threatened with running out of it if none arrives; and it becomes all the more expensive, as one has less hope of seeing any corn arrive.

This rise in price which causes the price to go above the true price becomes dearness. So one cries out at dearth, not because one is completely without corn, but because one is threatened with a lack of it, and those who cannot pay the price it stands at are already without.

This dearth, which would be real if there was indeed not enough corn, is only a dearth in people’s minds, when corn, which is not lacking in the barns, is only missing from the markets. This is what happens when there is a monopoly. The monopolists hold back from putting it on sale so as to find a greater profit in a greater increase in price. Their greed alarms the people: the belief in dearth grows, and corn reaches an excessive price.

When the dearth is real, we can only look to foreigners for help: they must bring us all we need.

If it is only in opinion, it is enough for them to show us some corn. At the mere rumour that corn is coming, the merchants, who would like to profit from the moment when it is still at a high price, will hurry to put it on sale, and, consequently, they will soon cause the price to fall.

Even in surplus, there would be a high price and the appearance of dearth if those who have corn persist in keeping it in their barns, or only putting for sale an amount which would not meet daily consumption; and, in the greatest scarcity, there would be a low price, and the appearance of surplus, if they were forced to put all their corn on sale at the same time, or merely a quantity a little more than enough for a day’s consumption.

In the first case, the people would suffer as in a real dearth; and in the second, the cultivators and merchants would be harmed.

It would be just as damaging to put on sale, all at the same time, a quantity of corn that ought to serve for several months’ subsistence, or to put on sale on each occasion only an amount that is insufficient for subsistence from one market to the next.

Therefore corn should come out of the barns gradually. It is enough that one delivers the amount that is wanted, and that the sale is made in proportion to need.

But the farmers would like it to be scarce in the markets in order to sell the corn dear, and the people would like it to be over-plentiful, to buy it cheaply. However, in both cases there would be harm to one side or the other, and even to both at the same time.

It is true that when the farmer sells dear he makes a greater profit on what he sells: but he sells a smaller quantity, because he forces the people to live off chestnuts, potatoes, roots, etc. Thus he gets them used to consuming less corn; and by reducing consumption, he reduces sales for following years and, in consequence, his receipts. What if the people revolt and ransack the barns? The farmer who wants to sell dear is thus the victim of his own greed.

The people are no less misguided when they want to buy cheaply. It is true that they find there a fleeting advantage. But we have seen that cheapness is always followed by dearness, where the people lack bread and cannot even work to earn it.

The harm which the farmer and the people do to each other turn and turn about, by too high and too low a price, rebounds on them.

So it matters that corn is put on sale in neither too great a quantity, nor too small; since it is important that it should be neither too expensive, nor too cheap.

But, because it is being consumed constantly, it is important that there should always be on sale as much of it as people need to consume, and it is then that it will be at its true price.

Corn does not grow the same everywhere. Not an ear is produced in the towns, where there is the greatest consumption. They do not even know how it is grown elsewhere; and there you have the explanation why people commonly reason so badly about the corn trade.

Be that as it may, for corn always to be on sale and in adequate quantity everywhere, it is essential that, from the places where it is in surplus, it never stops pouring into the places where it is lacking, which can only happen through a movement which is prompt and never disturbed: I say prompt and never disturbed, since every day consumers have the same need of it. This movement is what I call the circulation of grain.

The flow occurs from near at hand to near at hand, or at a distance.

At close quarters, when people bring the corn to the markets, and it moves in succession from one to another.

These markets, which are so many outlets, cannot proliferate too much. There must be some on all sides, and they must be in the most convenient places for the sellers as for the buyers. They should be where they choose, without dues and without hindrance.

The flow takes place at a distance when in a province people send convoys of grain to another, or when it is carried abroad.

To have these outlets, roads, canals, navigable rivers and a merchant navy are needed, an absence of tolls, no customs, no kind of feudal rights.

There we have the route traced for circulation; let us see how it must be made.

The need to attend to cultivation does not always permit a farmer to sell his cereals even in the closest markets. Indeed, will he leave his fields on a day that is just right for ploughing, for sowing, for harvesting, with the risk that there will not be another day as suitable? Now if he cannot always take his corn to the nearby market in person, he is even less in a position to take it to distant markets.

So it is essential that merchants are established to buy from the farmer in order to sell on to the consumer.

These merchants are men whom experience has moulded. They will only succeed in their trade in so far as they busy themselves with it exclusively, and to the extent that they have acquired a body of knowledge which is only built up over time.

They must know about the quality of the cereals in order not to be deceived in their choice; they must have learned to transport them at the best possible cost; they must know how to calculate the wastage, the costs of transport, and all the risks to be incurred; they must be able to work out the source from which corn can come to the places to which they intend to carry it, and they must predict the time of arrival. Because it is only the merchants who show up first who are assured of being able to sell profitably.

They will also need to have prepared other outlets and to know where they should carry the grain, in the event that they have speculated wrongly, so that they are not forced to sell it on at a loss.

Because one cannot see to everything oneself, and will be all the less able to as one undertakes more extensive and far-flung trade, it will be necessary to have intelligent and attentive correspondents, whose competence is known: otherwise false advice would drag one into ruinous enterprises. It is no less necessary to make sure of the accuracy and good faith of all those to whom one entrusts the protection or the sale of one’s corn. And one must have men used to transporting it, on whom one can count equally; it is through the co-operation of a host of agents always moving about that the circulation of corn takes place. People in the towns are far from conceiving of it.

It is relevant to distinguish two kinds of corn merchant. The one type are wholesale merchants who, undertaking this trade in a big way, undertake to supply distant provinces whether inside or outside the kingdom. The others are small merchants who, in retailing in a restricted area, seem to limit themselves to stocking a canton. It is by the latter in particular that trade is carried on from place to place. They are called corn chandlers [blatiers].

The merchants require large warehouses in more than one place, many servants to watch over their cereals, correspondents or associates everywhere, and carriers of some kind on all the ways. It is clear that while they can make great profits, they also run great risks. The more extensive their trade, the more speculative the investments they have to make, and the more uncertain is the success of the enterprise.

As they have made great outlays, they wish to make large profits. So they are not in a hurry to sell. They seek out the moment. But because corn is a foodstuff which one cannot keep for a long time without great expense, and in keeping it there is ever-growing wastage, and always more risks to run; if the opportunity for a huge profit is delayed too long, they are forced to be satisfied with a smaller profit. So their hand is forced, and they serve the public in spite of themselves. It will not take them much experience to learn that it is in their interest to sell every time that they find in the sale all their expenses and a profit.

The corn chandlers buy from the farmers to sell on. They hardly need a warehouse. If they have one, the protection of it is not costly; and they have little wastage to fear because they empty it almost as soon as they have filled it. One servant is enough for them. They only need a donkey or a mule to transport their grain; and they have no need of agents, as they carry on their trade in a small canton where they live.

They have less outlay than the great merchants, fewer expenses, fewer risks, and they are satisfied with a smaller profit; they are always in a hurry to take their profit, because they are not rich enough to risk waiting for a larger one. Their interest is to sell promptly, so as to buy again in order to sell again. In order to subsist they need repeated purchases and sales to make their first outlays pass continually through their hands with a profit.

The circulation of corn is thus handled by a great number of merchants and by a larger number of corn chandlers.

If we need corn, all these merchants have no less a need to sell it. We shall not lack for it therefore, if the greatest liberty gives rise to the greatest competition.

Let us assume that a rich merchant buys, or makes a down payment, on all the corn of a province, intending to put a high price on it, he will probably cause an increase in price, but a temporary one. Because corn will flow in from all the nearby provinces; and the merchant, disappointed in his attempt, will be forced by a great number of competitors to lower the price of his corn. So he will not be tempted to repeat this operation. In this monopoly there would only be risks and losses. A clever merchant will not try it.

Instead of planning to cause dearness in a region that has a plentiful supply of grain, where in consequence the price will not be able to be kept up, a merchant has a surer and easier way to carry out profitable trade in his corn: that is to send it wherever a high price is the natural consequence of dearth. Let him cast his eyes over all Europe, and always be ready to send shipments: if he is well informed of the state of the crops, or only of the view held of them in each nation, he will be able to anticipate in which places prices will rise, and to take measures to send shipments there in time.

So it is that a host of merchants watch over the needs of all the peoples, when trade is completely free. Let us therefore rely on the interest they have in not letting us lack for corn; leave them alone, and we shall not want for it. Since there is always somewhere a natural rise in price which offers them a certain profit, why should they busy themselves with ways of causing artificial price rises, which will not guarantee them the same profit? The more self-interested we consider them to be, the more we should believe that they will be enlightened about their own interests.

Driven by this self-interest, merchants, great and small, multiplied by reason of our needs, will cause the corn to circulate, will put it everywhere at a level, everywhere at the true price; and each one will be drawn by the general movement, which he will not be able either to slow down, or to precipitate.

You will say that monopoly would then be impossible. Certainly it would be, in the situation where the corn trade enjoyed full, entire and permanent freedom. Now it is with this assumption that I have just examined the circulation of corn. We shall see elsewhere how monopoly becomes only too easy.*

23

Corn Considered as a Measure of Value

Of all goods metals are the best suited to serve as a common measure of value; we have seen why. But because, from one century to another, they are scarcer or more plentiful, and, in consequence, have more or less value, they cannot be taken as a fit measure to determine the relationship a good has held in one age with the value of the same merchandise in a different age. For instance, I assume that in the twelfth century when silver was scarce, an ounce was the price of an ell of cloth; nowadays, when silver is much more plentiful, to pay for that same cloth one would need two or three ounces, or perhaps four.

The value of silver is thus itself too variable to serve as a measure of all values in every time. We have also noted that in a century when at one time it is scarcer, one is as rich with an income of fifty ounces as one would be with an income of a hundred ounces in a century when at one time it is more plentiful.

Not only is silver not a precise measure for all ages, it is not even an exact measure for all places. That is, it does not have the same value everywhere.

As we are drawn by habit to judge prices according to the amount of silver that things cost us, we rush to assume that when we pay two ounces of silver for something in a large market town, it is a price double that for which we pay one ounce in a province, where commerce has few outlets. But, in such a case, the difference between the prices cannot be exactly like the difference between more or less silver. This metal is then a false measure. It has greater value in a province without trade where it is scarcer; it has lower value in a market town where it is more plentiful. How then could it measure the relationship between the prices which are current in the one with those which are current in the other?

The circulation of money slows down from country area to country area, because of their distance from the main towns; and, if we assume the distance to be the same, it again slows down because of obstacles which make the transport of goods more expensive. Once money circulates less, it is scarcer; once it is scarcer, it is worth more; once it is worth more, one gives less of it for the things one buys; and, consequently, these things seem cheaper than they are.

So to judge incomes by the amount of money one receives each year, one seems richer in a town than one is, and one is richer in a country area than one appears to be. The position is that since metals have been taken as the common measure of values, one is drawn to see wealth only where one sees a lot of gold and silver; and this misconception began in the towns, where silver constitutes all the wealth. But our way of seeing does not change the nature of things. Indeed, what does the greater or smaller quantity of silver matter, when the smaller amount is worth the greater? If I can make the same consumption in a rural area with a hundred ounces of silver as you make in a town with three or four hundred, am I not as rich as you?

A good would always have a stable value if, always equally essential, it was in all ages and in every place in the same quantity in relation to need. Then it would be a measure with which one could assess the value of silver in every century and in every place. Corn is this good.

It would be superfluous to prove that corn is always equally necessary: it is enough to prove that there is always a similar quantity of it in relation to demand. That is easy because this question, like all those one makes on political economy, resolves itself.

In a time when the population is larger, more corn is eaten, and it is reproduced in a larger amount.

In a time when the population is smaller, one eats less corn, and it is reproduced in a smaller quantity. That has been proved.

Thus in normal years, production is always in proportion with consumption; and, in consequence, the quantity in relation to the demand is always the same, in normal years. Now it is according to the quantity in relation to the demand that corn is valued. So it always has the same value, a fixed and permanent value.

It would not be the same for a foodstuff for which one could substitute others; and which, consequently, would be a lesser necessity. For example, wine cannot have a fixed and invariable value.

However, we must note that corn itself cannot have a fixed and invariable value unless we assume that trade in this article is carried on with complete and lasting freedom. If it is hampered by duties, prohibitions, monopolies, it cannot place itself at its true price; and if it cannot be at its true price, it will have a constantly shifting value. When, at intervals, the people are forced to chew grass, it is not possible to determine the amount of corn in relation to need, and consequently, it is no longer possible to fix its value. I leave you to judge if Europe has a measure to reckon values in every age and in every place.

In the normal practice of leasing lands for money, there is damage for the farmer if corn falls to a low price; and if it rises to a high price, there is damage for the landowners. This custom is all the more harmful, in that the farmers, all being obliged to pay in the same quarters, and in consequence to put everything on sale at the same time, cause the price of corn to fall every year in the same months to their great loss and to the benefit of monopolists. It would thus be beneficial for the landowners, for the farmers, and for the state, if the price of leases were paid in foodstuffs. There would be benefit not only when the grain trade is shackled, there would also be benefit when it is unrestricted, because it would be made freer; because farmers would no longer be forced to sell at one time rather than another.

24

How Production Regulates Itself According to Consumption

Now that I have explained all that relates to the true price of goods, I intend to look at the reason for the progress of agriculture and the arts, the use of land, the employment of men, luxury, public revenues, and the respective wealth of nations. There you have the purpose of the chapters by which I end this first part.

The need that citizens have of each other places them all in mutual dependency.

As masters of lands the proprietors are masters of all the riches the lands bear. In this respect, it seems that they are independent, and that the other citizens depend on them. Indeed, all are in their pay: it is on the wages that they pay that the farmers, the artisans, and the merchants subsist; and there you have the reason why the économiste writers judge them independent.

But if the lands were not cultivated, the artisans would be without raw materials, the traders would be without merchandise, the landowners would lack all kinds of products, and the land would not be adequate for the subsistence of its inhabitants. There would no longer properly be artisans, merchants or owners.

Farmers as the prime movers of production seem then in their turn to hold all the citizens in their dependency. It is their work which enables the citizens to subsist.

However, if raw materials were not worked up, agriculture and all the arts would be without all the most necessary instruments. There would be no arts in consequence; and society would be destroyed, or reduced to a wretched state. Therefore all the citizens still depend on the artisans.

Our tribe had no need of merchants when the settlers, sole owners of the land, lived on the lands they cultivated. Then each person could get himself the things he needed by exchanges with his neighbours. Sometimes someone bought a foodstuff which he did not have with the surplus from another; sometimes with the same surplus he paid the artisan for the raw material he had worked up. These exchanges were made without money and no one as yet thought of estimating the value of things exactly.

But as the landowners establish themselves in the towns it becomes all the more difficult for them to obtain all the goods they require, now that they consume much more. So shops need to be set up where they can supply themselves.

These shops are no less essential to the artisans, who need raw materials from one day to the next, and who cannot go each time to buy them in the countryside, which is often distant. Finally, they are essential to the farmers, to whom it is important, each time that they come to town, to sell their produce rapidly, and at the same time to buy all the tools they need. There you have the era when all the citizens fall into dependence on the merchants, and where goods begin to have a value estimated by a common measure.

Such is in general the nature of men: the person on whom one depends wants to draw advantage from his position; and all would be despots if they could. But when, in different respects, dependence is mutual, all are forced to give way to each other, and no one can abuse the need one has of him. So interests come together: they merge: and although all men seem dependent, they are all in fact independent. There you have order: it is born from the respective and combined interests of all the citizens.

Among these respective and combined interests is one which seems the moving power of all the others: it is that of the landowners. As the greatest consumption is made in the towns, and they have the largest share of it, their taste will be the yardstick of farmers, of artisans and of merchants. People will grow, by choice, the foodstuffs with which the landowners like to nourish themselves, people will work at the objects in which they are interested, and people will set out for sale the merchandise they seek.

It is natural for this to happen. Since the proprietors, as owners of lands, are masters of all the products, they alone can pay the wage that gives subsistence to the farmer, the artisan and the merchant. All the money, which must circulate and which in consequence must be the price of all tradable effects, originally belonged to them. They receive it from their farmers and they spend it as they please.

This money must return to the farmers, either immediately when they themselves sell to the landowners, or through an intermediary when they sell to the artisan or the merchant, to whom the landowner will have given some of this money as a wage.

Now this circulation will be rapid if the farmers, the artisans and the merchants study the tastes of the landowners and adapt to them. They will do it, because it is their interest.

Let us assume that, from generation to generation, the landowners have accustomed themselves to the same consumption; we shall assume from it that, in so far as there has been no variation in their tastes, people have grown the same products, worked at the same crafts and carried out the same kind of trade.

There we have the state through which our tribe must have passed. As it is accustomed to a simple life, for a long time it will be satisfied with the first products it has had occasion to know, and there will have been no others in commerce.

As later the tribe becomes more refined, it will vary in its tastes, preferring in one period what it has rejected, and rejecting in another what it has preferred.

But then the goods which it most seeks after would not be in proportion to the need it has formed for them, if the farmers, the artisans and the merchants did not vie with each other in busying themselves to supply the increase of this type of consumption.

Now they have an interest in seeing to it; because initially, as these goods were not plentiful enough, they were at a higher price; they can thus count on a higher wage.

They will not even be satisfied with observing the variations which bring them new profits. Once they have noticed they are possible, they will put all their effort into creating them, and there will be a revolution in commerce, in the arts and in agriculture. Previously consumption adjusted to the products; now production will adjust to consumption.

A more extensive commerce will embrace a greater number of objects. It will awaken the efforts of artisans and cultivators, and all will take on a new life. But that is only true with the assumption that commerce will be perfectly free. If it were not, it would soon degenerate into a state of convulsion which, in causing the price of goods to rise and fall without rules, would create a thousand disastrous enterprises for a few which would succeed, and would spread disorder in fortunes.

Our tribe has not yet reached this point. Its commerce, which I assume is confined within its lands, must naturally produce abundance. It opens up all the sources of commerce, it spreads them, and the previously sterile fields are cultivated and become fertile. It is certain that, so long as its commerce is supported by the produce of its soil alone, the mass of consumption, whether in foodstuffs, or in raw materials, can only encourage the farmers to draw from this soil all the wealth it encloses.

There you have the effects of free, internal commerce. A people is then really rich, because its wealth belongs to it, and only to it. It is in its possessions alone that it finds all the sources of its wealth, and it is its work alone that directs them.

Consumption, multiplied simultaneously by new tastes and revived tastes, must therefore multiply products, so long as there remain lands to cultivate, or lands which can be made more productive. Up to that point wealth will keep on growing and will only have a limit in the final advances of agriculture. Happy is the free people which, rich from its own soil, will not be drawn into commercial dealings with others!

25

Of the Use of Land

One can only multiply products in proportion to the amount of land, its extent and the care one takes over its cultivation.

If we assume that all the lands are developed and that they each produce as much as they are able to produce, the products will be at the ultimate point of abundance and it will no longer be possible to increase them.

Then, if we want to have a greater quantity of one kind of foodstuff, we shall necessarily have to accept that we shall have less of another kind. For instance, to have more forage we should have to put down to meadowland fields which used to be sown; and so one would have a smaller crop of corn.

The same products are not equally fitted to the subsistence of animals of every kind. Consequently, if the lands are used to nourish a large number of horses they will not be able to feed the same number of men.

According to the use of the lands, the population will thus be larger or smaller.

But men consume more or less in proportion as they have more or fewer needs. The population must thus diminish in proportion as needs multiply all the more; or, if the population does not diminish, people must have found the means of increasing products in proportion to consumption.

In a word, a country never has just the number of inhabitants that it can feed. There will be fewer, all other things being equal, if each of them consumes more; there will be even fewer if a part of the land is given over to produce on which they do not feed themselves.

Let us observe our tribe now. Let us assume that in the country where it lives it has ten million arpents equally fitted for cultivation; and so that they cannot extend their possessions, let us place them on an island, in the bosom of the ocean; or, to take away from them even the resources which the sea could provide, let us transport these lands to the middle of a vast desert, sandy and arid in every direction.

At first, as we have noted, the tribe has few needs. Dressed in bark or in coarsely sewn skins, without comforts, not even aware of what it lacks, it sleeps on straw; it does not know the use of wine; it only has berries, vegetables, the milk and flesh of its herds for food. Yet it is not exposed to suffering from hunger nor from the abuses of the atmosphere, and that is enough for it.

In the early years, as it is small in number in relation to the country it lives in, it is easy for it to proportion its production to its consumption. Because, through the foodstuffs which are exchanged at the market, it will judge the type and amount of what is consumed and will use its lands accordingly.

Once it has grasped this proportion, the tribe will live in abundance, because it will have everything to meet its needs; and as long as this abundance can be reconciled with a greater number of inhabitants, the population will grow. It is a matter of fact that men multiply every time that fathers are assured of subsistence for their children.

I assume that in the country which our tribe inhabits each working man can live on the produce of an arpent and cannot subsist on less. Now the tribe has ten million arpents fit for cultivation. The population will therefore be able to grow to ten million inhabitants; and having reached that number it will no longer grow.

It has only increased to this point because men have carried on living in their original coarse fashion, and have not created new needs for themselves.

But when, by the means we have indicated, some landowners have increased their possessions, and, gathered in a town, seek more commodities, in food, clothing, lodging; then they will consume more, and the product of an arpent will no longer be enough for the subsistence of each of them.

If they make a greater consumption of meat, more herds will have to be fed; and in consequence corn fields will have to be turned to pastureland.

If they drink wine, some of the fields which used to be sown will have to be used as vineyards; and some of the fields will have to be used for plantations, if they burn more wood.

So it is that consumption, which multiplies like needs, changes land use; and one can see that products necessary for man’s subsistence diminish in proportion as other needs increase.

The more that new forms of consumption multiply, the more movement there will be in trade, which will every day embrace new goods. This will produce the need to maintain a large number of horses to transport the merchandise from the country to the towns, and from province to province: a fresh reason for multiplying pastureland at the expense of cornland. What will happen if the owners who live in the towns want to have horses for their convenience, and pride themselves on having a large number? What will happen if they convert once cultivated fields into gardens or parks? One can imagine that in this state of affairs a single man could consume for his subsistence the product of ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty arpents, or more. So then the population will have to fall.

But it is natural for the merchants and artisans who have become rich to imitate the proprietors, and raise their consumption too. Each of them, according to his faculties, would wish to enjoy the commodities which custom brings in.

The men who change their way of living least markedly are those who, subsisting from day to day, earn too little to improve their condition. Such are the small traders, the small artisans and the ploughmen. However, each of them will endeavour to enjoy, in his station, the same commodities that others enjoy; and they will succeed bit by bit, because they will obtain higher wages by degrees. So in emulation all will consume more. The ploughmen, for instance, will take as models the large farmers, who consume more because they see the landowners, their masters, consuming more, and they have the ability to do so.

So, step by step, following each other’s example, all will consume more and more. It is true that in general each person will order his expenses by what he sees men of his own estate doing: but in all conditions, expenditure is bound to be greater. The humblest ploughman will thus no longer be able to subsist on one arpent alone, he will swallow up two, three or four.

If we only consider the needs of the ploughman, the population might then be reduced to a half, a third, a quarter; and it could be reduced to a twentieth part, if we only consider the landowners who consume the product of twenty arpents. So, out of twenty ploughmen, new consumption will cut back fifteen; and, out of twenty landowners, it will cut back nineteen. There is no need to try to make the calculation more precise. I just want to make you understand how the population, which we have assumed to be ten million, might be no more than five or six million, or even less.

Since changes in the mode of existence are not sudden, the population will decrease so imperceptibly that our tribe will not notice. It will believe in the later stages that its country is as populous as it has ever been; and it will be amazed if one asserts the opposite. It will not conceive that population can decrease in a century, or that each citizen enjoys greater plenty and more comforts; and that it is none the less for that reason that the population is decreasing.

This revolution happens between generations and imperceptibly. Since with each generation consumption increases as do needs, there can no longer be so many families, and they will not be able to be so large.

Indeed, each man wants to be able to keep his family in that comfort which custom has made a requirement for all those of his estate. If a ploughman estimates that for that upkeep he needs the product of two or three arpents, he will only think of marrying when he can command that product. So he will be forced to wait. If the moment does not come, he will give up the plan to marry, and will have no children. If that moment comes late, he will only marry when he is advanced in age, and he will no longer be able to have a large family. There will doubtless be some people who will marry without thinking of the future. But the wretched state into which they will fall will be a lesson for the others; and their children will die for lack of subsistence, or will leave no posterity. One can make the same calculation with regard to merchants, artisans and proprietors.

We may conclude that the use of land is different, when needs, being multiplied, increase consumption and that then population necessarily shrinks.

It is true that if we had put our tribe in a totally different position, it would find resources in the lands with which it was surrounded. It could put out colonies; and, in that case, it is possible that the population would not decrease; it could even grow further. But if these lands were occupied by other peoples, it would need to arm; and war would kill the inhabitants whom the land could not feed.

I agree too that, when herds consume the produce of a large number of arpents, the lands reserved for human subsistence become more fertile, because manure is more plentifully spread there. But you will also agree with me that this fertility will not be enough to compensate. Even if, as is not possible, these lands taken on their own were to produce as much as all lands put together, how could they be enough for the same population, at a time when men are always consuming more at will?

People often say that one can judge the prosperity of a state from its population. But that is not quite right. Because one would certainly not call the time when I depicted our tribe, when I carried its population to ten million souls, one of prosperity. However, the increase of men can never be so great as when they are content to live, like that tribe, on the product of an arpent each.

So it is not the largest population taken by itself which makes one judge a state prosperous: it is the largest population which, examined with regard to the needs of every class of citizen, is reconciled with the abundance they all have the right to claim. Two kingdoms could be unequally populated although the government was equally good or bad in each.

China, for instance, embraces a huge population. That is because the sole food of the masses is rice, which produces three abundant harvests each year in several provinces: because the land does not rest at all, and often yields a hundred for one. This multitude, which has few needs, is almost naked, or is dressed in cotton, that is to say, in a crop that is so plentiful that an arpent can provide enough to dress three or four hundred people. This great population proves nothing therefore in favour of the government: it simply proves that the lands are very fertile, and that they are cultivated by hard-working men who have few needs.

Lands will have value wherever agriculture enjoys complete freedom; and then the population, in proportion with consumption, will be as large as it can be. There lies the prosperity of the state.

One might ask whether it is better for a kingdom to have a million inhabitants who subsist, one supporting the other, on the product of ten arpents a head: or ten million who subsist each on the product of a single arpent. It is clear that that question comes down to this, Is it better for a kingdom that its inhabitants have the fewest possible needs, or that they have many?, or again, Is it better for a kingdom that its inhabitants remain in the first condition, in which we have conceived our tribe; or is it desirable that they leave it? I reply that they must leave it. But at what stage should we be able to check them? That is what we shall examine in the next chapter.

26

Of the Employment of Men in a Society Which Has Simple Tastes

In America, on the lands abandoned to their natural fertility and covered with forests, each savage needs the product of eighty or a hundred arpents for his subsistence; since the animals off which he chiefly feeds cannot increase their number much in the woods where they find little pasturage; and because, besides, the savages destroy more than they can consume.

With these huge, almost desert lands we can contrast those of our tribe, when the number of men was equal to the number of arpents. There you have the two extremes of population.

This tribe has the advantage over a horde of savages of finding abundance in the places where it is settled: but it needs many arts to leave the coarse condition in which it finds itself initially.

I shall not undertake to explain how it makes this discovery: that research is not my subject. I move to the time when it will know those arts which go back to remotest antiquity: the art of grinding wheat and making bread from it; the art of raising herds; the art of making cloth with the wool of animals, with their hair, with cotton, linen, etc., and finally, a beginning of architecture.

Then it finds in bread a more re fined food than the corn which it previously ate in its harvested state. It has, in the milk of its herds and in their flesh, an additional food which lets it subsist with greater ease. The stuffs or materials with which it clothes itself protect it better from the elements than skins coarsely sewn together, and they are all the more suitable as they have a suppleness which gives the body freedom in all its movements. Finally, buildings, which are more solid and larger, are a better shelter for things the tribe wants to keep and it finds more commodities there.

When materials are suitable and long-lasting, it is of little importance that they should be worked with more refinement: if food is plentiful and healthy, it would perhaps be dangerous for it to become more delicate: and when solid buildings are large enough to lodge a family and enclose all the things it needs, is it really essential to find in them all the commodities to which a less hardy people has become accustomed?

Between a coarse and an indulgent existence, I should like to mark out a simple life, and if possible, to fix the notion of it with some precision.

I picture to myself a coarse life in the original state our tribe was in: I picture to myself a soft life in those times when every kind of excess had corrupted behaviour. These extremes are easy to grasp. It is between the one and the other that we should find the simple life. But where does it begin and where does it end? There you have what one can only show roughly.

We pass from the coarse life to the simple life, and from the simple life to the soft life, by a succession of those things which custom makes essential to us and which for this reason I have called of secondary need. So the arts must make some progress to draw us from a coarse life; and they must halt after some progress, to prevent our falling into a soft existence. The movement from one to the other is imperceptible, and it is only ever more or less that the simple life distances itself from one of the extremes, as it is only ever more or less that it approaches the other. It is therefore not possible to speak of it with exact precision.

It is easy to picture to oneself what the simple life was, when men, before gathering together in towns, lived in the fields they cultivated. Then, whatever progress the arts had made, all concerned agriculture which was the prime art, the art prized above all.

Now, so long as agriculture was regarded as the first art, as that to which all others must refer back, far from being able to become soft, men were necessarily sober and hard-working. The government, which was simple then, required few laws, and did not involve itself in long discussions. Cases between individuals that were put to arbitration had as judges neighbours whose fairness was known. Matters of general import were dealt with in the assembly of heads of household or of the chiefs who represented them; and order, in some sense, maintained itself among a people who had few needs.

There you have the simple life: it is marked out in the work men do in an agricultural society which supports itself with few laws. This simplicity will last, so long as the citizens are only cultivators; and it will retain some vestiges in every period when agriculture is of some esteem among them.

After the founding of towns, government could no longer be as simple, and disturbances began. The landowners, being the richest, found themselves possessed of the chief authority: they seemed to have more right to it, as, being masters of the land, they had a greater interest in the general welfare.

Everyone wanted to have the same share of power, and yet all could not. Wealth gave the advantage to some; greater shrewdness or more ability gave it to others; and, in this conflict, authority was bound to shift until the head of a party became possessed of it, or the assembled nation had given a form to government. So it was then that a senate was formed to look after the interests of all; and it was given a head with the name of king,* a name which became what we call a title, when the kingship had drawn to itself the supreme power. But in the early days the kings only had a very restricted authority.

Under this new form of government there were still only a small number of laws, and this small number is a proof of the simplicity of manners. It is in corrupt times that laws multiply. People keep making more because the need for them is constantly felt, and it seems that they are always made to no purpose, as they soon fall into disuse, and people are forever forced to enact them again.

It is with reason that one judges that when a nation is not refined, in its food, or its dress, or its lodging, it is enough for it to live in plenty and comfort, if a quarter of its citizens are employed in the daily tasks of cultivation and the unrefined arts.

Another quarter, or thereabouts, are too young or too old to contribute by their work to the advantage of society. So that would leave half without a job. It is this half which withdraws to the towns. It includes the landowners who find themselves naturally entrusted with the main cares of government; the merchants who enable the greatest possible sale of all the necessities of life; and the artisans who work with greater skill on raw materials.

If the arts remain in this state, where the work of a quarter of the citizens is enough for everyone’s subsistence, most of those who have no land in their ownership will be unable to subsist, since they will be without jobs, and that will be the majority.

One cannot fail to recognise that therein lay a source of disturbances. Now if it is important on the one hand that each citizen can live off his work, it is certain on the other that one will not be able to give everyone work, except when the arts have made fresh progress. It is therefore in society’s interest that this progress should be made.

The artisans who succeed in these perfected arts make finer linen, finer cloth, vessels of a handier shape, tools which are more solid or more useful, utensils of every kind adapted to new uses, or better-suited for old uses than those which one used to employ. All these arts, so long as too much refinement is not put into them, will be consistent with simplicity.

What I call refinement can be found in the raw material and in the work. In the raw material, when people prefer those which are drawn from abroad, simply because they are rarer and without finding any other advantage from them; in the work, when people prefer a more finished article even though it is neither more solid nor more useful.

Now, as soon as there is less refinement in prime materials and work the artefacts will be less costly. Once the artefacts are less costly they will be better adjusted to the citizens’ means. Their use will therefore not be forbidden to any of them: all will enjoy them, or at least will believe they can enjoy them. It is above all exclusive pleasures which cause simplicity to disappear. Once a person starts to believe that he is of more consequence, because he enjoys things which others do not, he will only ever seek to be appreciated by these types of things: people believe they are marking themselves out by pretending to enjoy them, even when they no longer feel the enjoyment; and people cease to be simple, not only because they are not like others, but also because they want to seem to be what they are not.

Such then is the employment of men in our tribe. It has magistrates whom it has charged with the cares of government, ploughmen who till the land, artisans for the coarser arts, other artisans for the perfected arts, and merchants who place all the citizens within reach of goods for their own use.

Everyone works in competition in this society; and because each one has the choice of his occupation, and enjoys complete freedom, one person’s work does not harm another’s work. Competition, which distributes the jobs, puts each person in his place: all subsist, and the state is rich from the labours of all. There you have the point to which the arts should lead, and at which they should remain.

Indeed, if, to make further progress, they put too much refinement into customary goods; if they create in us the need for a multitude of things which are only for ostentation; if they give us another need for a mass of frivolities: it is then that the citizens, far from helping to raise and consolidate the structure of society by their work, seem on the contrary to sap its foundations. Luxury, which we shall discuss, will take artisans away from the most useful arts; it will take the ploughman from the plough; it will raise the price of the most basic necessities; and, for the small number of citizens who will live in affluence, the mass will fall into wretchedness.

A people will not leave simplicity at all when, instead of walking barefoot, it has comfortable footwear; when it prefers sturdier vessels, made with common metals, to vessels of wood, stone, earthenware; when it uses linen; when its clothes are of a shape better-fitted to the uses to which it intends them; when it has tools of every sort, but at a price related to everyone’s means: in a word, it will never leave it when it only seeks goods of common use in the arts it creates or perfects.

Let us conclude that, since all citizens should be occupied in a society, it is beneficial or even necessary for the arts to make enough progress to provide work for all. It is the goods of which custom makes the need felt which should be the rule of men’s employment, and procure for some the means of subsistence by working, without exposing others to a descent into softness.

The subject of this chapter will become clearer in the next, where we shall deal with luxury, that is to say with a type of life which is most removed from simplicity.

27

Of Luxury

As soon as one writes on luxury, some excuse it, others satirise it, and one proves nothing. The fact is that people do not try to agree.

We speak of luxury as of something of which we have a perfect notion, and yet we only have a comparative notion of it. What is luxury for one people is not for another; and for the same people what used to be luxury can cease to be so.

Luxury, in the original meaning of the word, is the same thing as excess; and when one uses it in that sense one begins to agree on it. But when we forget this first meaning, and so to speak rush to a host of associated ideas, without stopping at any one, we no longer know what we want to say. For the moment let us substitute the word excess for luxury.

The rough and ready life of our tribe, from the point of its settlement, would be an excess of refinement in the eyes of a savage, who, being accustomed to live from hunting and fishing, could not understand the purpose of the needs it had created for itself. Because the land, without being worked, provides for his subsistence, it seems to him that those who cultivate it are too fastidious about the means of subsistence.

There you have, in his judgement, an excess, which is not so in our judgement, or in that of our tribe.

But even among our tribe, each new comfort which custom will introduce can be seen as an excess of refinement by all those who do not yet feel the need for it. Is the tribe thus condemned to fall from excess to excess, according to its progress in the arts?

Men only differ in their judgement as to what all are agreed to call excess, because, as they do not all have the same needs, it is natural that what seems excess to one, does not seem so to another. There you probably have the reason why one has so much difficulty in knowing what one means when one speaks of luxury.

I distinguish two sorts of excess: those which are only so because they seem such in the eyes of a certain number; others which are so because they seem so in everyone’s eyes. I make luxury consist of the latter. So then let us see what are the things which must appear a luxury in everyone’s eyes.

However refined goods might have appeared at the beginning, they are in no way an excess when it is in their nature to become of common use. Then they are a consequence of the progress it is so important to make in the arts; and there will come a time when everyone will be agreed in considering them necessary. One can even see that they can be reconciled with simplicity.

When, on the other hand, goods of a kind that can never become plentiful are kept back for the smallest number to the exclusion of the majority, they must always be regarded as an excess: even those who have the greatest pleasure in their enjoyment could not disagree. Therefore luxury consists in the articles which appear an excess in the eyes of all, since by their nature they are reserved for the minority to the exclusion of the majority.

Linen, which was a luxury in its early days, is not so today. Gold and silver which, in movable goods and clothes, have always been a luxury, will always be so.

Silk was a luxury for the Romans, because they drew it from the Indies, and consequently it could not be a common good among them. It began to be less of a luxury for us when it started to be a product of our climate; and it will become less so, to the degree that it becomes less scarce.

Finally, potatoes would be a luxury on our tables, if our fields produced none; and if we had to make them come at great expense from North America, whence they came originally. Rich folk, whose taste is proportional to the rarity of the dish, would judge them excellent; and a plate of this root, last resource of peasants without bread, would be the talking-point of a meal.

To judge whether there is luxury in the use of some goods, it is therefore often enough to consider the distance of the places from which one draws them. Indeed, when commerce is carried on between two neighbouring nations, luxury cannot creep in to either of them; because through exchanges the same goods can become common in both.

The same is not the case when trade is carried out between two much-separated peoples. What is common among us becomes luxury in the Indies, where it is necessarily scarce; and what is common in the Indies becomes luxury among us, where it is necessarily also scarce.

So luxury can exist in the use of goods which one summons from afar: but that is not the only kind. There may be luxury in the use of goods which one draws from a neighbouring nation, and even in the use of goods which one finds in one’s own country.

It is asserted that if France paid in champagne for Brussels lace, it would give the product of more than sixteen thousand arpents of vines for the product of just one arpent of flax.* Lace, though it does not reach us from far away, is thus an article whose use cannot be common, in other words a luxury good.

But, if lace were made in France, it would be no less a luxury: it would be at an even higher price and, in consequence, of less common use.

The cost of labour thus converts into luxury goods the raw materials which our soil produces in the greatest abundance. There is plenty of this luxury in our furniture, in our carriages, in our jewellery, etc.

Although all these luxuries tend to corrupt behaviour, they are not all equally harmful. Let us consider them first of all with regard to the state; we shall consider them next with reference to individuals.

Two nations will trade with the same advantage, every time that each of them receives in products a quantity equal to what it hands over. But if one gives the product of sixteen thousand arpents for the product of a single one, it is clear that it will be hurt sensationally. The luxury of lace is thus harmful to France. It takes away a large amount of subsistence, and so it tends to reduce the population.

It could be beneficial to Europe to send the surplus of its products to the Indies. But if it only had a surplus because it was depopulating itself, it would do better to use its lands for the subsistence of its own inhabitants, and to increase its products in order to increase its population.

It was especially useful for it, in this commerce, to get rid of part of the gold and silver which America provided it in excess. But the luxury goods which it draws from the Indies cost it in exchange millions of men. How many perish on the journey! How many in unhealthy climates where it is obliged to have depots! How many in wars with the Indians! I will believe this luxury beneficial for Europe when it has been proved that she has a surplus population.

As for the luxury goods which come from our soil and our hard work, they may have some utility, but they are not without abuse.

When a rich man buys a litron of small peas from the first crop it is a luxury, everyone agrees. But one could wish that all the excesses of moneyed men were of this type: because their wealth would discharge itself straight away on the fields, like manure fit to make them fertile.

It is not to be doubted that the sums which we spend on furniture, on carriages, on jewels, are likewise poured on our fields, when we employ our own workmen for these artefacts; since these workmen return them individually to the cultivator who gives them their subsistence. But they are not poured out there immediately. They begin by making the artisan wealthy; they get him used to pleasures which are a luxury for him; and these possessions excite the envy or the emulation of all those who hope to succeed in the same trade.

Indeed, as this artisan is a peasant whose relatives are ploughmen, his improved condition will demonstrate to all in his village how industry in towns has advantages over the labours of the countryside. So people will leave the villages. Out of ten peasants who have taken up crafts, one will succeed, and nine will not earn enough to live off. So there will be ten men lost to agriculture, and nine more paupers in the town. There you have the undesirable consequences of luxury for the state, when it consists in pieces of work for which we use our own workers.

To judge the undesirable consequences of luxury with regard to individuals, I distinguish three kinds of it: luxury of splendour, luxury of useful goods, luxury of frivolities.

The first seems to me the least ruinous, since some of the things which have served for splendour can be used for it again; and besides, when they are of a sort that is not used up, they keep a great value, even after they have been used for our purposes. Of this kind are gold or silver dishes, diamonds, vessels of rare stones, statues, paintings, etc.

The luxury of commodities, more contagious because it is proportionable to the means of a much greater number of citizens, can be very expensive because it becomes greater along with increasing softening of manners, and most of the things one uses for it lose all their value.

Finally, the luxury of frivolities, subject to fashion’s whims, which renews itself continuously in fresh forms, throws people into expenses to which no limits are seen; and yet, for the most part, frivolities only have value at the point when people buy them.

What is the fortune that can prove adequate for all these kinds of luxury? So resources are needed, and sadly people find them to bring about their ruin. You will doubtless say that luxury helps a vast number of workmen to live, and that when the wealth remains in the state, it is of little importance that it passes from one family to another.

But when there is disorder in all fortunes, can it avoid being in the state? What becomes of manners when the chief citizens, whom one takes as an example, are forced to be at one and the same time greedy and spendthrift, knowing only the need for money, so that any means of making it is accepted among them, and none dishonours? Luxury gives subsistence to a host of workers, I agree. But are we to shut our eyes to the wretchedness which spreads in the countryside? Who then has the greater right to subsistence, is it the craftsman who makes luxury goods, or the ploughman?

It is a statement of fact that only the simple life can make a people rich, powerful and happy. See Greece at her zenith: she owes the power which astounds decadent nations to her residuum of simplicity. Even see the peoples of Asia before Cyrus. They had vices, they knew gorgeous display; but luxury had not yet spread its mortal poison over every part of society. If splendour was evident in the treasures amassed for future need, in great enterprises, in works as gargantuan as they were useful; if it was evident in movable goods, in clothes; at least they did not know all our comforts and they were even less familiar with all the frivolities which we are not ashamed to have made necessities for ourselves. Even the luxury of the table, such as it was, only occurred at state feasts. It consisted in plentifulness rather than in refinement. There was not twice daily a profusion of dishes, even in individuals’ houses, prepared with elegance and spread out with luxury.

I would happily excuse the luxury of the ancient peoples of Asia. I see it reconciled with a residuum of simplicity, even in the palaces of kings. If it is great, I see it supported by even greater wealth, and I understand that it may have been of some use. But we who, in our wretchedness, have only resources which ruin us, and who to obtain these resources do not fear to dishonour ourselves, we want to live in luxury, and we expect our luxury to be useful!

28

Of Taxation, the Source of Public Income

In considering how wealth is produced, distributed and preserved we have seen that commerce needs a power to protect it. I call public or state income the revenues one allows this power. It is a matter of knowing why and by whom this must be paid.

A civil society is based on a contract, clear or implied, by which all the citizens undertake, each for his own part, to contribute to the common benefit.

In general, to contribute to this benefit, it is enough to be useful; and one will be, every time one has a position and one fulfils its duties.

This way of contributing is an obligation which all the citizens, without exception, have contracted in coming together in the body of society.

Thus a useless man is not a citizen. Living at society’s expense he does nothing for it: it owes him nothing.

But it is not always enough to have a position and to fulfil its duties. In the government of every civil society there are necessary and indispensable public expenses to which in consequence the citizens must contribute.

They can only do that in two ways: one is by themselves working on public projects, the other is by providing subsistence to those who work. Now since this subsistence and this work can be valued in money, for greater simplicity we shall bring down to a money contribution these two ways of contributing. Such a contribution, if regulated by the nation itself, is called a subsidy or free gift; and if it is imposed by the government, one calls it a tax. You ask who should pay subsidies or taxes?

There are in general only two classes of citizen: that of the landowners to whom all the land and all the products belong; and that of the paid workers who, having neither land nor produce of their own, subsist on the wages that are due for their work.

The first class can easily contribute; since, with all the products belonging to it, if it does not have all the money, it has more than the equivalent* and besides it passes entirely through its hands.

The second class would not be able to do so. It cannot provide subsistence to those who work, because it has absolutely no products of its own. It cannot give them the money they need to buy their subsistence, because the only money it has is its wages; and these wages, reduced to the lowest level by competition, are no more than the exact amount it needs to subsist itself.

Let us stand in the shoes of people who have none of our prejudices, will the first idea that occurs to people such as I have conjured up be to say: “Those who have nothing must contribute to public expenditure like those who possess something”; or else, “Those who have their arms and their hard work as their sole possessions must contribute to public expenditure the money they do not possess?” Now the class of wage earners only earns the money needed for its subsistence, so putting a tax on it is wanting it to pay with money it does not have.

Taxes on industry seem reasonable and fair to us, because, without having thought of the matter, we judge them reasonable and fair whenever they are in the established order. However, this order is often only an abuse. Our behaviour proves it, even when we do not wish to agree.

Indeed, if we go to the merchants on whom a new tax has been imposed, we are not surprised if they want to sell for a higher price. We even reckon that they have good reason, and we pay the price they demand. So we are contradicting ourselves; we want the merchants to contribute to public expenditure, and when they have contributed, we want to reimburse them. Would it not be easier for us to undertake all this expenditure ourselves?

But there are merchants and artisans who are making themselves wealthy. There, no doubt, you have what sustains our prejudice. Well, let us make them contribute, they will ensure that they are reimbursed. It is therefore impossible for them to contribute.

You will probably say that, with the need they have to sell, they will not always succeed in being reimbursed in proportion to the taxes; and that consequently they will bear a part of them.

That may be: but it should be noted that the portion on which they remain taxed will be taken from their wage, and that as a result they will be reduced to consuming less than they would have done. So there you have, in a state such as France, several millions of citizens who are forced to cut back on their consumption. Now I ask whether the land will return the same income, when people sell a smaller amount of their produce to several million citizens. So whether the wage-earners are totally reimbursed, or whether they are only partially reimbursed, it is clear that, in the one case as in the other, the tax that one places on them falls equally on the owners.

Indeed, the landowners must certainly pay for the wage-earning class, since it is the landowners who pay the wages. In a word, no matter how one approaches it, they must pay everything.

Either the country which a nation inhabits supplies in plenty all that is necessary for its citizens’ requirements; or it provides only a part of that, no matter what care one takes over cultivating the land.

In the first case, the nation which is rich through its soil is self-sufficient. But the products which are its entire wealth belong totally and solely to the owners of the lands. So this class alone can bear all public expenditure.

In the second case, I make the assumption that this nation is on not very fertile coasts, whose product is only enough for the subsistence of a tenth of its citizens. Condemned by its soil to poverty, it can only be rich in so far as it takes for itself the products which grow on an alien soil. Now it will obtain them by its industry; or rather it has developed by stages only because it has obtained them gradually. It carries out trade. It is through this that the peoples, who did not trade straight away, or on their own behalf, exchange their surplus; and it finds, in the profits which it makes on the one and the other, the products it needs.

As it is rich simply through its industriousness, it only has a precarious wealth, which will be taken away from it, just as soon as the other peoples should want to carry out their exchanges themselves. It will lose population, to the extent that it loses its trade; and when it has totally lost it, it will find itself reduced to a tenth of its citizens; since we assume that in the product of its own soil it only has the where withal to make that tenth subsist.

But so long as this trade is flourishing, the nine-tenths of the wealth of this nation or of the products it consumes belong to the merchant class which has obtained them from foreign peoples by its own work and industry. If this class were to pay no subsidies, those paid by the landowners would be inadequate to meet public expenditure. So the merchant class must contribute nine-tenths when the landowners contribute one-tenth.

However, when that class pays nine-tenths, the position is that it arranges for them to be paid by the people whose agent it is; and consequently the public expenditure of a merchant state is, for the most part, paid by the owners of lands in foreign countries.

This nation does well to demand subsidies from its traders, since it has no other way to provide for public expenditure. It does all the better, as it is not its landowners who pay for the traders; it is the landowners in other nations. It is precisely on them that it makes the taxes fall back; it is with their products that it subsists, and it makes all the peoples with whom it deals pay taxes.

Such is near enough the position of Holland. So because in this Republic industry pays taxes, one should not conclude from this that industry ought to pay taxes in France.

But you will say, do there not exist in France, as in Holland, traders who cause landowners in foreign countries to pay taxes? There would therefore be the same advantage for France as for Holland to make the traders pay taxes.

My response is that in France the traders will begin by passing the taxes on to native landowners: it is these owners whom they will cause to pay the lion’s share of the tax placed on industry and in consequence they will not pay it themselves. I admit that some will cause foreign landowners to pay a part of it; but this benefit would not be a reason to place taxation on French traders.

If Holland places taxes on traders, it is not because it finds an advantage in taxing foreign nations, it is because it cannot do otherwise.

Indeed, you will agree that this Republic would have a much more flourishing trade if it could exempt those who undertake it from every tax. It cannot: it is forced to demand subsidies on the part of its traders. It is forced to by its very constitution, which is a necessary consequence of its position: in a word it is forced because its subsidies would be inadequate for public expenditure if they were only imposed on the lands. The tax on industry is therefore in its country a vice inherent in the state’s constitution and it must live with this vice. Such is the fate of a nation that has but a precarious wealth.

But France is not forced to place taxes on industry: France, I say, where the land-owning class has all the wealth, and wealth which would certainly be in surplus, if the land were better cultivated.

France is rich in products and the surplus of these products is the stock with which its merchants trade. They export this surplus which would be useless to us, they exchange it, and in bringing us back useful products they increase the sum of our wealth.

Let us tax our traders, they will sell the surplus they export at a higher price, and so buy less; and they will bring back to us in exchange a smaller quantity of foreign merchandise, whose price will rise for us.

So we shall be less rich, since the surplus which ceases to be consumed is no longer reproduced; and we shall be deprived of wealth which it would have procured for us through exchanges. Taxation on industry is always deceptive, because, on all assumptions, it always falls back on the landowners; so it is a vice which must not be suffered, except when it belongs to the very constitution, and cannot be eradicated. It necessarily diminishes consumption; and in reducing consumption it hinders reproduction. Therefore it tends to damage agriculture.

29

Of the Respective Wealth of Nations

We have distinguished landed wealth and movable wealth.

Within landed wealth I place not only all products, but also all the animals: indeed they must be considered as a product of the lands which feed them.

Within movable wealth I place everything to which labour has given a new form. There you have the categories to which all wealth is reducible, it would be impossible to imagine a third kind.

If you were to say that gold and silver are of another type, I should ask whether these metals are not formed in the ground, and if it is not true that they only really show themselves for us when we draw them from the mine and refine them.

Gold and silver are thus landed wealth, which, like corn, are the product of the land and of our work; and these metals are mobile wealth, when we have caused them to take the forms which make them suited to various uses; when we have made from them coins, vessels, etc.

We have seen that all this wealth only increases by reason of our work. We owe all the products to the cultivator’s work; and we owe to the artisan or the artist all the forms given to raw materials.

We have further seen that all these riches are only at their true value in so far as circulation makes them pass from the places where they are surplus to the places where there is a shortage of them. This circulation is the result of trade. The value of wealth is thus in part due to the work of the merchants.

Finally, we have seen how much wealth depends for its production and preservation on a power which protects the cultivator, the artisan, the artist and the merchant; that is to say, which keeps order without having preferences.

The works of this power therefore combine for the increase of wealth, as for its preservation.

Following this résumé it is easy to judge which is the nation that must be the richest.

It is the one where there is simultaneously the most work of every type.

Are all the lands as well cultivated as they can be? Are all the workshops of artisans and artists full of workers constantly occupied? Do an adequate number of merchants cause the whole surplus to circulate promptly and constantly? Finally, the vigilance of the sovereign power, this toil watching over all labour, does it maintain order and freedom without partiality? Then a nation is as rich as it can be.

Therefore I beg people not to ask if one should prefer agriculture to manufactures, or manufactures to agriculture. One must not prefer anything; one must see to all.

It is for the individual to have preferences; he has by law the right to choose the type of work that suits him. Now he would lose this right if the government protected one type of work exclusively or if it favoured it.

Will a nation, destined by its soil to be agricultural, neglect the products which nature wants to heap on it, this wealth which belongs to the nation and only to it, and which one cannot take away from it?

Will it neglect them, I say, to spend its days in workshops? In truth it will acquire real wealth but this is wealth of the second order; it is precarious and other nations will take it to themselves.

Because these people are agriculturalists, shall they scorn all works which do not have direct relevance to agriculture? Will they wish to have no artisans or artists? They will then draw all movable goods from outside and be compelled to pay a higher price for them, because they will have transport costs to pay. They could have had among them a large number of workmen who would have consumed their produce, and they will send their products at great expense to enable these workmen to subsist in foreign lands.

So whether a people gives preference to agriculture, or whether it gives it to manufactures, it is certain that, in the one case as in the other, it is never as rich as it might have been.

Shall it neglect agriculture and manufacturing to concern itself principally with commission trade [trading: 1798]? It will then bring itself down to being no more than the salesman for other peoples. It will have nothing for itself, and it will only subsist so long as the nations do not envy the profit it makes at their expense. Commission trade can only be preferred when a people that lacks from its own resources enough foodstuffs or primary materials in relation to its population has no other resources for subsistence.

So in order for an agricultural country to be as rich as it can be, it needs to concern itself at the same time with every type of work: the different occupations must be spread among the citizens, and in each profession the number of workers must be proportionate to the need for them. Now we have seen how this allotment comes about naturally when commerce enjoys full, complete and permanent freedom.

Allow me to assume for a moment that all the nations of Europe work according to these principles, which perhaps they will never understand.

With this assumption, each will acquire real, tangible wealth, and their respective wealth will reflect the fertility of the soil and the industry of its inhabitants.

They will trade among themselves with complete freedom; and they will each find their own advantage in this trade which will cause the surplus to circulate.

With all equally involved, they will feel the need they have of each other. They will not consider at all taking away from each other manufactures or trade: it will be enough for each to work and to have work to exchange. For example, what does it matter to us that a certain type of cloth is made in France or in England, if the English are obliged to exchange their cloth for other products of our manufactures? Just let us work, and we shall have nothing to envy other nations. As much as we need to work for them, so they need to work for us. If we were to wish to do without their manufactures, they would want to do without ours: we would hurt them, they us.

Every type of work, and freedom of choice given to all citizens, there you have the real source of wealth; and you can see that this spring will spread plenty to a greater or lesser degree; according to whether it is more or less free in its course.

This chapter would be finished did I not have prejudices to fight.

Does a nation attempt a new trade? All want to carry it out. Does a new manufacturing process establish itself in one nation? Each nation wants to establish it. It seems that we only think of doing what is done elsewhere, and that we do not give a moment’s thought to what we can do at home. It is that, lacking the freedom to do what we want, we think to find that freedom in a new type of trade or of manufacture which seems to assure us government protection.

If we were to start by concerning ourselves with the things for which our land and our industry intend us, we should not work in vain, since foreigners would seek out our work. Our goods will stay on our hands in contrast, if we work on the types of goods where they must succeed better than us.

But when we have succeeded as well as them, have we done all we can in our wish to make everything that others make? If our old manufactures languish, why should we establish new ones? And why should we multiply our manufactures if we have fields fallow, or if those we cultivate are not fully exploited? We have work to do, we do not do it, and we envy other nations the works they do! Still, if we only had articles similar to theirs to exchange with them, there would no longer be trade between them and us. These reflections are trivial indeed: but why should I fear to say trivial things when people are not ashamed to ignore them? Do we recognise these trivial matters when we prohibit foreign merchandise to give preference, as they say, to our manufactures, or when we subject it to exorbitant duties?

Busy as they are in hurting each other, the nations would each like to enjoy the advantages of trade exclusively. Each one, in the exchanges it makes, would wish all the profit to be for itself. They do not see that in the nature of exchanges there is necessarily profit to both sides, since on each side one gives less for more.

An individual who does not know the market price may be deceived in the purchases he makes. Nations are merchants: it is on their own soil that markets are held; the price of goods is known to them. So by what art shall we force them always to give us more for less where they are concerned, when we only ever give them less for more where we are concerned? This art is however the great object of politics: it is the philosopher’s stone that it seeks and that it certainly will not find.

But you will say, we must draw to ourselves as far as possible the gold and silver of foreign nations. Therefore we must prevent them selling us goods produced or manufactured in their lands, and force them to buy goods produced or manufactured in our country.

So you think that a million in gold and silver is greater wealth than a million in products or a million in worked-up materials! Are you still at the point of being unaware that products form first-order wealth? What will you do then, if other nations which reason as badly as you also wish to attract your gold and silver to themselves? That is what they will attempt. All the peoples will therefore be busy preventing foreign goods entering their lands; and if they succeed it is a necessary consequence that native merchandise will not leave any of them. So, as a result of each having wanted to find exclusively a great profit in trade, they will cease trading among themselves, and in rivalry they will deprive themselves of all profit.

There you have the effect of prohibitions. Nevertheless who would dare to assert that Europe will open its eyes? I desire it: but I know the force of prejudice, and I have no hope of it.

Indeed, for Europe trade is not an exchange of works in which all the nations will each find their advantage; it is a state of war in which they only think how to plunder each other. They still think as in those barbarous times when peoples only knew to enrich themselves from plundering their neighbours. In perpetual rivalry they only worked at hurting each other. There is not one of them that would not wish to destroy all the others; and not one of them considers ways to make its real strength grow.

You ask what would be the benefit or the disadvantage for a nation, France for example, if it were the first to give full and complete freedom to export and import.

I reply that if it was the first, and consequently alone in giving this freedom, it would have no advantage or disadvantage for it; since then it would export nothing and nothing would be imported on her soil. Since for export to be possible in France we must be able to import on foreign soil; and the foreigner must export for import into France to take place.

This question is thus badly presented. I ought rather to ask what would be the benefit or the disadvantage for France if she were to give export and import permanent and never-interrupted freedom, while elsewhere export or import were now allowed, now forbidden.

Cereals form one of the branches of commission trade that Holland engages in; and that Republic always allows their export and import. It appreciates that if it hindered that trade it would be all the more exposed to a shortage of cereals as its lands do not produce enough for its consumption.

In Poland, the export of cereals is always allowed, because in normal years the harvests there are always in surplus. Since it draws all manufactured goods from outside, it needs this surplus for its purchases, and it guarantees itself the surplus by its work. If it had at home all the manufactures it lacks, its crops would be less over flowing, because it would be more populous, and perhaps it would forbid export.

In England export is seldom forbidden: but freedom to import is restrained to a greater or lesser extent by the duties which rise or fall according to circumstances.

Finally, elsewhere export is allowed when cereals are cheap, and import is allowed when they are dear. However, the freedom, whether to export or to import, is never full and complete: it is always to a greater or lesser degree limited by tariffs. There you have, more or less, what happens in Europe. I say, more or less since it is enough for me to reason on assumptions. It will always be easy to apply my reasoning to the changing conduct of government among the different peoples.

France, we assume, is alone in giving export full, complete, permanent freedom without restriction, limitation or interruption. All her ports are always open and no one ever demands any duty on entry or exit there.

I say that, on this assumption, the trade in grain must be more profitable for France than for any other nation.

It is certain that the seller sells to greater advantage when a larger number of buyers make him a greater number of offers in competition with each other. So France will find advantage in the sale of her cereals if, not limiting herself to selling to domestic consumers, she sells as well to consumers in those states where import is allowed.

It is clear that if she could import equally throughout Europe she would sell with even more benefit still, since a larger number of buyers would make her a larger number of requests. If her benefit is not all that it might be, it is therefore because she cannot import everywhere equally.

You will doubtless say that cereals will become dearer in France if we sell them to all the foreigners who request them.

But we have assumed that import into France is as unrestrained as export, and we have noted that there are nations which export their grain: now these nations will import into our country when they find in the high price a profit in selling to us. On that point it must be seen that that high price is not dearness; it is the true price fixed by competition, a true price which has its high, its low and its middle limit.

So long as this price has not reached its highest point, people will not bring us grain, and we shall not need them to bring it to us. When it has reached its ceiling all the grain-exporting nations will bring us grain; and we shall buy to all the more advantage, as a larger number of sellers will make us a larger number of offers. We shall buy with all the more advantage still if grain is brought to us from every part of Europe, since the offers will multiply with the sellers. Kindly reflect on the position of France: as she is placed to be the depot of the north and of the Midi, can she fear doing without or having to buy dear? One sees on the contrary that she will be the common market of all Europe.

Whether she sells or whether she buys grain, France will, on our assumption, thus have a great advantage over the nations which forbid export and import, over those which allow only the one or the other, and finally over those which only allow both temporarily and with restrictions. Because by forbidding export, they reduce the number of purchasers, and consequently they sell at a lower price; and by forbidding import they buy at a higher price, because they reduce the number of those selling to them.

We may conclude that if the states of Europe persist in denying complete freedom to trade, they will never be as rich or as populous as they might be; that if one of them gave complete and permanent liberty, while the others only allowed a temporary and restrained freedom, it would be, other things being equal, the richest of all; and that finally, if all ceased to place obstacles in the way of commerce, they would all be as rich as they could be; and then their respective wealth would depend, as we have already noted, on the fertility of the soil and the hard work of its inhabitants.

30

A Concise Recapitulation of the First Part

The value of things, or the estimation we make of it, based on utility, is in proportion to our needs. From this it follows that the surplus, considered as surplus, has no value whatever, and that it can only acquire value in so far as one judges that it will become necessary.

Our needs are natural or artificial.

Natural needs in the isolated man follow from his makeup. In man as a citizen they follow from the constitution, without which society could not continue to exist.

These needs are small in number and only give value to things of primary need. artificial needs, in contrast, multiply with our customs, and give value to a host of products and worked materials which we have placed among the goods of secondary need.

The value of these things, in proportion to their scarcity and their abundance, varies again following the true or false notion we have of that scarcity and that abundance.

These values, estimated by comparison, are what one calls the price of goods. From this it follows that, in exchanges, the goods are reciprocally the price of each other, and that we are all at the same time, in different respects, buyers and sellers.

Prices are settled through competition between sellers and buyers. Prices can only adjust themselves at markets, and they will vary little if every one is allowed to bring to the market what he wishes in the quantity he chooses.

Now these exchanges, which are made in markets, are what one calls trade.

They suppose on the one hand surplus produce, and on the other, consumption to be made.

It is thus the surplus which is traded, whether the farmers make their own exchanges, in which case trade is made directly between producers and consumers; or whether exchanges are made through the intervention of merchants, traders or dealers; and then the merchants are like channels of communication between producers and consumers.

The surplus, which had absolutely no value in the hands of producers, acquires a value when it is placed in the hands of consumers. Trade therefore gives value to things which had none. It therefore increases the stock of wealth.

This stock also grows with the arts, which, in giving form to raw materials, give them value as they make them suitable for varied uses.

Society owes all its wealth to the work of the farmer, the artisan and the merchant. This work should merit a wage. This wage, regulated by competition, adjusts the consumption which each has the right to claim, and the citizens find themselves arranged by classes.

We have two kinds of wealth: landed wealth, which we owe to the farmer, and which is self-replacing; movable wealth, which we owe to the artisan or the artist, and which accumulates.

All these kinds of wealth are produced, distributed and preserved by virtue of the labour of the farmer, of the craftsman, of the artist, of the trader and of the sovereign power which maintains order and liberty.

Wealth abounds especially after the foundation of towns, since then greater consumption gives a new impetus to industry. The lands are better cultivated and the arts increase and perfect themselves.

All those who share this wealth acquire a right of property over it that is sacred and inviolable. We acquire this right ourselves through our work, or we acquire it because it has been ceded by those who have acquired it. In the one case as in the other, a person alone disposes of the goods he owns; no power can, without injustice, place a lower price on them than that which we place ourselves; and it is for competition alone to regulate the price of each good.

Just as the field belongs to the settler who cultivates it [landowner: 1798], and all those whom he employs in the cultivation acquire a right of co-ownership of its product: so in every enterprise there is a capital which belongs to those who have provided it, and a product which they must share with the workers whom they set to work. This co-ownership is represented by the wage which custom fixes and of which no one may be deprived.

Once wealth has increased, a more extensive commerce makes the need felt to judge the value of each good with more precision. So one looks for a common measure.

Since in exchange values measure themselves reciprocally, any kind of merchandise could be used to this end. We give the preference to metals, as being the commodity with which one can most conveniently measure all the others, and we create money.

It is thus because they had a value as merchandise that metals had one as money; and in becoming money, they do not cease to be merchandise.

The use of money, in facilitating exchanges, gives more movement to commerce, and increases the stock of wealth. But it causes what we call value to be misunderstood. When one thinks one sees the price of things in a measure, such as an ounce of silver, which is always the same, one does not doubt but that they have an absolute value; and because one judges that they have an equal value each time that they are estimated equal in value to the same amount of silver, one falsely supposes that in exchanges one always gives equal value for equal value.

Silver only facilitates commerce because one gives it constantly in exchange. It is collected up to be distributed, it is distributed to be gathered up; and never ceasing to pass and pass again from one hand to another, it circulates constantly.

So long as this circulation is made freely, it matters little whether there is more or less silver in trade. Its quantity can be smaller as it can be greater. One could not determine it with precision. One can simply surmise that, whatever the quantity is, it is at most equal in value to the value of the products which are consumed in the towns.

The circulation of silver is called exchange when, by the exchange of two sums which are at a distance, one makes them both in some manner bridge a gap to replace the one with the other.

Exchange has become a branch of commerce, in which money is the sole good which is bought and sold. The workings of exchange, which are simple, are regulated according to the reciprocal debts which exist between towns; and they assure the greatest profit to the dealers who have won confidence.

Just as silver has a price in exchange, so it has one when loaned, and that price is what one calls interest. Now as money in trade has a yield, the person who lends must have an interest in this yield, just as a landowner must have an interest in the yield of land he gives or leases to be farmed. This rate of interest, which rises and falls following circumstances, can only be regulated in commercial centres. The rate of interest is fair when it only puts silver at the price which dealers have placed on it freely and publicly; it is usurious when this price is arbitrary and clandestine.

The metals from which one makes coinage are scarcer or more plentiful, depending on whether they are used for more or fewer purposes: they tend to find a common level among the nations which have free and never-interrupted trade between themselves. That is why their relative value settles itself in all the markets of these nations, just as it would in a single market. Gold and silver each have the same price in all nations, because in all nations these metals are in the same relationship to each other.

As a free, never-interrupted trade tends to make gold and silver equally common among many nations, and for this reason gives each of these metals the same price in all: so a free and never-interrupted trade would tend to make corn equally common among many nations, and would give it the same price among them all.

This price, based on the quantity in relation to the consumption, would be the true price for all: because it would be the most beneficial for each. Then wages would always proportion themselves to the permanent price of corn: they would never fall too low, and each article would be constantly at its true price.

But when trade is not free, if corn is lacking in one nation, it stays deficient, and it rises to an excessive price which is to the detriment of the consumer: and if it is in surplus in another nation, it carries on being so, and it falls to a paltry price which is to the detriment of the producer. There is thus no longer a true price: there is only an excessive or a bargain price, that is to say harm for the buyer or for the seller.

So it is that when the number of merchants is not as great as it might be, monopoly, which raises itself on the ruins of liberty, places corn for sale in excessive or inadequate quantity, according to whether it is in its interest to lower or raise the price. However, if it matters that some corn is always on sale, because one constantly consumes it, it is no less important that it is only put on sale in the quantity one needs to consume. Now this proportion will never be grasped, except when the largest possible number of merchants make corn circulate everywhere with prompt and never-interrupted movement.

It is because this circulation has always been more or less halted that Europe cannot have in corn a measure fit to determine value in different ages and in different places. Once cereals can never be at their true price, once they can never have a permanent price, how can they be a common measure for all ages and all places?

Freedom alone can give each good its true price and cause commerce to flourish. It is then that order establishes itself naturally, that products of every kind multiply as does consumption; that all the land is brought to value; that every citizen finds his subsistence in his work, and plenty spreads. It spreads, I say, because habits are simple: but wretchedness spreads with luxury.

To sustain this plenty a power is required that will protect the arts and trade, that is to say, which will maintain order and freedom. This power has outlays to make, and it is for the landowners alone to pay the subsidies or taxes that it needs.

If this power maintains order and freedom, a nation which busies itself with everything without an exclusive preference, will be as rich as it can be. In every government see that all kinds of work are equally protected, and let the export and import of all goods, even necessities, be without restriction or interruption; then all nations will be rich, and their respective wealth will be by virtue of the fertility of the soil and the hard work of the inhabitants.

END OF THE FIRST PART

SECOND PART

Commerce and Government Considered in Relation to Each Other Following Some Assumptions

Although we are almost completely alike through the needs which follow from our physical constitution, we differ in particular through the needs which follow from our customs, and which, multiplying in proportion to the progress of the arts, develop our sensitivity and intelligence by degrees. The peoples are as brutes when they are limited to the needs which I have called natural. It appears as though nothing summons their attention: they are scarcely able to make some observations. But in step as they acquire new needs, their gaze rests on new objects. They notice what they never noticed before. One might say that objects only begin to exist for them when they have an interest in knowing that they exist.

However beneficial this progress may be, it would be dangerous for a people to pride itself on excessive sensibility, and to have a profusion of intelligence only to apply it to frivolous objects. However, there you have what happens wherever needs multiply to excess. More than ever a plaything of constantly changing circumstances, a people then changes itself continuously and applauds every change. Its customs vie with each other, destroy themselves, reproduce themselves, change: ever different in itself, the people never knows its identity. It behaves randomly according to its customs, its views, its prejudices. It has no thought of reforming itself: it does not think it needs to. As it is preoccupied with what it believes to exist, laws or abuses, order or disorder, all seem indifferent to it; and its delusion is such that it thinks it sees its prosperity in the very things that prove its decadence.

Is it by fighting the customs of such a people head on that one might flatter oneself to be enlightening it? It is too blinded and its eyes would shun the light as soon as one showed it truths that it does not wish to see.

For it to judge its errors it must be unaware that they are its own. Now one might, through assumptions, attempt to point them out to it in other peoples, where it would have some trouble in recognising itself. One might at least make it see perceptibly the advantages of which it deprives itself, if one has caused it to notice those enjoyed by a people which does not share its prejudices. That is what I intend in this second part. Besides, this method is the unique way to simplify overcomplicated questions which are raised about commerce, considered in relation to government; and one must simplify them if one wishes to treat them with precision.

1

The Distribution of Wealth, When Trade Enjoys Complete and Permanent Freedom

I assume that the country that our tribe occupies is as large as England, France, Spain, or as these three kingdoms put together. It has to have a certain extensiveness, and commerce must find a considerable stock-in-trade in the variety of products that the provinces will need to exchange.

This country is filled with hamlets, villages, boroughs, towns. It is a multitude of free cities which govern themselves near enough by the same laws; and which, remembering their origins, regard themselves as one and the same family, although they already form several peoples.

All these peoples, busy with agriculture and the arts which relate to it, or which tend to make it flourish, live a simple life, and live in peace. The magistracies are the ceiling of ambition for the citizens and none of them has yet thought of aspiring to tyranny.

These peoples know neither tolls, nor customs dues, nor arbitrary taxes, nor privileges, nor the police forces which hamper liberty. Among them, every one does what he wishes and freely enjoys the fruits of his labour.

Finally, they have no enemies, since we have placed them in a country inaccessible to any foreign nation.

There you have the assumptions following which you can form an idea for yourself of what I understand by commerce which enjoys complete freedom. It simply mattered to make that notion perfectly clear; and it hardly matters that some of the assumptions do not appear realistic.

To make trade flourish in all the provinces where I spread out cities, it is essential that the surplus pours out without hindrance, reciprocally from the one to the other, and that it supplies what is missing in the places where it spreads. It is a kind of ebb and flow where things balance out by alternating movement and tend to place themselves on a level.

Among the peoples we are observing, nature alone can place obstacles in trade’s way, and we lift them, or at least we lessen them. Navigation on the rivers is made easier, canals are dug, roads are constructed. These works which amaze us, as we, who do nothing except by dint of money, are rarely rich enough to undertake them, cost little to a sober nation which has willing arms. It sees its interest there; it feels that it is working for itself; and it carries out the greatest undertakings. It is not forced to impose taxes since all contribute voluntarily, one of his labour, another of his foodstuffs, to provide the workers’ subsistence.

The transport of merchandise is thus carried out with the minimum expenditure. Everywhere we have outlets to make surplus goods leave: everywhere these outlets are so many doors to allow essential goods to arrive; and, in consequence, exchanges between all the provinces are always made with equal facility, at least to the extent that the nature of the ground allows. If there is some difference, it only comes from the obstacles which nature has placed, and which it has not been possible to flatten out equally everywhere. But where there are more obstacles there is also more industry; and skill seems to make good the wrongs of nature. Let us see how wealth spreads naturally everywhere in a land such as the one I have just invented.

The country districts, each abounding in varied types of products, are rightly the first source of wealth.

In the boroughs, in the villages, in the hamlets, even on the farms, people work up the raw materials to make them ready for the needs of the settler who cultivates his field, or of the farmer who cultivates another’s field. There they make ploughs, yokes, carts, tumbrils, pickaxes, spades, coarse linen, heavy cloths and other works which require little skill, and are used in the neighbourhood of the places where they are made.

These manufactures, however coarse they are, give a new value to raw materials. They are thus so many channels through which the spring of wealth is distributed to spread from one side to the other at a certain distance.

I say at a certain distance, because the works which come out of these manufactures are only a stock-in-trade for the canton where they are established. Being of little value in themselves, and made expensive by the costs of transport, they would not be marketable in distant places where people make similar goods.

The wealth of the towns consists in the revenues of the landowners and the industry of the inhabitants, an industry whose income is in money. So it is money that forms the principal wealth of the towns, just as produce forms the principal wealth of the countryside.

It is in the towns that the greatest consumption is made. It is the place where the most skilled artisans in every kind of work set up valuable manufactures. There are permanent markets where people come from the countryside to buy works which are not made in the villages, or which are not made so skilfully there. There you have the channels through which wealth in money circulates in greater abundance. [more appreciably: 1798]

If a town’s industry were only paid for by the landowners who lived there, it would not increase the quantity of money which circulated in that place. However, it would make it circulate faster and that speed would make the same amount of money equal to a greater one.

But if, as we have noted, the articles which are made in the countryside are not of a type to be sold far away, it is not the same with those which come from the manufactures established in the towns. As they are at a greater price, the increase occasioned by transport costs is very little in comparison with this price. The artisans are thus not reduced to being paid only by the landowners of the towns they live in. Money reaches them from all the places where their works are sought after. It is really they who dig the channels through which wealth comes together in the towns; channels which form more branches and more extensive branches in line with industry’s progress.

Such in general is the distribution of wealth between the countryside and the towns; it is that the country districts are rich in products through the ploughman’s work and that the cities are rich in money through the incomes of the landowners and the work of the artisans.
[1798 addition: But you must not think I mean that money is wealth exclusively for the towns. Doubtless it moves continually through the countryside where it is exchanged for products: but it always returns to the towns as to reservoirs from which it flows back again into the countryside.]

But from one country area to another, and from town to town, this distribution is not and cannot be made in an equal fashion.

The ploughman sees the foodstuffs that are for sale. The more he is asked for, the more he demands from the fields he cultivates, and he applies all his effort to bring each piece of land to value. The countryside neighbouring the main towns, where people consume more, is thus the richest in produce.

In the remote countryside this wealth will be in proportion to the greater or lesser ease in transporting foodstuffs into the principal towns. Whatever trouble people have taken to make roads, to dig canals, to make rivers navigable, it has not always been possible to open up equally convenient outlets everywhere. Nature often placed obstacles in the way, which, even after being smoothed out, caused further great expenses for the transport of goods.

It is not in the ploughman’s interest to have foodstuffs beyond what can be consumed. So the provinces where export is less easy will be less rich in products. Less rich, I say, in comparison with the others; but rich enough for themselves because they will have as much as they need for their consumption.

In the provinces whose soil is the most unyielding the inhabitants will be harder working and they will have more ingenuity. They will develop the land right up to the rocks which they will cover with crops. In the seasons when they do not have enough work at home they will go in search of it in neighbouring provinces. They will return to their villages with profits which will place them in a position to form some small enterprises. They will increase the number of their animals, they will clear some scraps of land; and they will set up some common manufactures to work up their soil’s raw materials themselves. It is in that way that, in proportion to their extent, the least fertile provinces will be able to be almost as populous as the others.

Towns are not all in an equally favourable position for trade because they do not all have the same means to communicate afar. There cannot everywhere be large rivers, channels of communication and usable roads. There will therefore be towns which are more accessible, more engaged in marketing as a result, and more populous. These are the principal ones.

If a city conquered all the others, its town, now the seat of sovereign power, would be the capital, and could fill itself with people to the point where it would confine a twentieth of the citizens. We shall see elsewhere what such a capital must produce in a state. But there are not yet any among the peoples who have developed from our tribe. Up till now they have only been busy each governing itself separately, and none of them has had occasion to discover what it might do with conquests. It takes many circumstances to prepare the means of conquest for a people; and when all these circumstances come together, it does not nourish the ambition of dominating afar, except when, after making unintended conquests, it judges that it is capable of making them: this ambition is not therefore the first idea that proposes itself to a people.

All the cities are consequently free and independent, and if we consider them at a time when dissension has not armed them against each other, we shall judge that their towns communicate among themselves without hindrance.

On this assumption wealth divides itself among the towns by reason of the consumption made in them.

In the chief towns, which enclose a great population and which count many wealthy landowners among the citizens, there will be a great assembly of artisans and merchants of every kind, and money will circulate there more rapidly and in greater quantity.

In the smaller towns there will be less wealth, or less money in circulation; because being less populous they will consume less, and as they consume less they will not have as many artisans or merchants.

But although richer or poorer in money, all the towns have plenty of the things on which they have become dependent; because in all of them, the population is proportioned to the subsistence they can obtain for themselves. The less rich have only been formed because they have found subsistence in the places where they are settled. Now they find every day all the more to subsist on, as their citizens possess more industry as the days pass, and this industry is not held up by any impediment.

Let us conclude that the spread of wealth among the towns condemns none of them to lack necessities. Comparing some with others they are richer or less rich in money as they are more or less populated, but there is abundance in all.

Having seen what is the wealth of the provinces, the countryside and the towns, it remains for us to observe the division of it which must be made among the citizens. They have only one means to enrich themselves, trade.

Now we have distinguished the trade of products which is that of the settler and the farmer, the commerce in manufactures which is that of the artisan, and the commission trade [or long-distance trade: 1798] which is that of the merchant.

In all these kinds of commerce one only earns in relation to the high price one can set on the goods one sells. It will therefore be according to these prices that the division of wealth will be made among the merchants.

If, under the pretext of provisioning the towns, privileged companies had exclusive permission to carry corn there, you can conceive that they would rapidly enrich themselves on a fantastic scale. They would buy corn at the lowest price in the country districts where the harvests had been plentiful, because corn could only be handed over to them; and soon after they would sell it at the highest price, because, by keeping it back in their warehouses and putting on sale only an amount that was below consumption, they would cause a scarcity, even in places where there was abundance. This monopoly is not known in our cities.

Since everyone is free to sell to whom he wishes and when he wishes, it is the sellers and buyers who decide, alone and freely, on the price of each commodity.

This price, as we have seen, will rise or fall from one market to another. However, if we except the cases of glut or of great scarcity, prices will in general vary imperceptibly because competition will always be nearly the same.

It is rare too, when commerce is free, that the move from abundance to scarcity causes considerable variation in the price.

That would happen if in the same year all provinces experienced the same plenty at the same time, and the same dearth at another time. This cannot happen in a country of a certain extent whose parts are in a different situation. Normally when one province is in dearth another is in abundance.

Now abundance in one province causes the price of foodstuffs to fall very little there, when trade is free to export the surplus.

Likewise dearth raises the price little in another where trade is not slow to bring in the surplus.

So it is not in proportion to a localised abundance or scarcity that prices vary most perceptibly: it is rather in proportion as trade has less freedom. So we have demonstrated that, when freedom is complete and permanent, goods tend to make themselves equally common everywhere at the same price, or near enough.

Whatever this variation may be, wealth cannot be spread very unequally between those who carry out trade in products amongst peoples where this trade enjoys complete freedom, and where, in consequence, competition between sellers and buyers is the sole regulator of prices.

So it will not be in the power of some settlers or farmers to sell their food-stuffs for as much as they would like. The market price will necessarily be the price of everything: and they will be mutually forced to content themselves with the same profits.

In this state of affairs, the commerce in products will not enrich some at the expense of others, because no one will gain too much, and all will gain. All will share in the pleasures to which custom gives them claims; and if some, harder-working, live in greater comfort, the others will not fall into wretchedness; because to subsist it will be enough to work as one generally works. It is not to be feared that market prices will deprive anyone of the profits he ought to make. For that to happen all the cultivators would have to agree to sell at a loss, which cannot be.

Commerce in manufactures will spread wealth in the same manner. Competition will regulate the artisans’ wage according to the type of work. Some will earn more, some less. But all will subsist, and each, in his branch of work, will be happy to enjoy those things which in general those who make them in competition with him enjoy.

It will be the same for the commission trade, as for the two other trades, since competition will regulate the wage of the merchants.

If goods came from a distant, foreign country we should not know in our cities what they had cost in those places; and by capitalising on that ignorance, merchants would be able to make huge profits, especially as they would have few competitors. But, following our assumptions, this disadvantage is not to be feared. Since our cities only trade among themselves, the goods offered for sale are the products of their soil, or the works of their manufactures; that is to say, goods whose prices, known by everyone, are always regulated by competition.

In proving in the first part of this work that the true price is the same in the common market where all nations come freely to sell and buy, I have noted that this price is higher or lower for them depending on whether they are far away or adjacent to the common market.

Prices will therefore not be the same wherever our cities have been established. First of all, they will be higher in the towns than in the country districts. That is because, besides the wages due to the merchants, we also owe them the carriage costs and an indemnity for the risks they have run.

Secondly, prices will be higher in the chief towns since that is where people make the largest consumption. There one is better fed, better clothed, better housed, better furnished. Now the more one consumes, the more one demands; and the more one demands, the more one buys at a high price, other things being equal.

Besides, in proportion as consumption becomes greater, people will have to go to look for products in a greater extent of territory. There will thus be more risks and more transport costs to pay.

But lastly, although prices are not the same everywhere, they will be regulated everywhere by competition: everywhere they will be what they should be, and wealth will be spread with little inequality among those who compete in the same branch of trade. Everyone will have what he needs to subsist according to his condition, and no one will be able to make himself much wealthier than his rivals.

Someone who has not enough money income to live in a town will have enough in products to live in a country district: the worker who has no kind of income will find his subsistence in a wage proportioned to the price of foodstuffs; and because no one will be able to make himself surpassingly rich, so no one will be able to fall into wretchedness.

I estimate that a present-day merchant who gains 40 or 50 per cent will accumulate great wealth if, continuing to live with the sobriety to which he has become accustomed, he reinvests each year the lion’s share of his profits in trade. So it is not because he spends little that he becomes rich: it is because he earns a lot; and if he earned little he would not become wealthy whatever his savings were otherwise. But among the peoples whom we are observing the gains will be limited to procuring for the merchants the use of things necessary to their status.

There is only one class of citizen whom savings could enrich, that is the landlords. By making savings on their incomes, they would be able to increase the value of their lands, and it is to be wished that they should do so. This method of getting richer would help the day-labourers, for whom they provide work, to live more comfortably; and it would be beneficial to the state, for which it would provide products in greater quantity. But it can only be very slowly that one acquires wealth by this route, and the wealth is necessarily limited.

So everything comes together among the peoples whom we have conjured up to place limits to the fortunes of individuals; it seems that they cannot know the passion for money. Among them each person has his essentials: a large number live in ease; few are rich; no one is opulent. That is what freedom of trade must naturally bring about when it puts every good at its true price and it proportions wages to the price of subsistence.

2

The Circulation of Wealth When Trade Enjoys Complete Freedom

The arts multiply the goods of secondary need, they perfect them; and in proportion to their progress, they place in trade a greater quantity of goods, and goods of greater value.

We have seen manufactures right down to the villages; but these are manufactures which are not sold far away, and which, in consequence, only cause wealth to circulate in their localities.

So it is for the manufactures set up in the towns to produce a general circulation between all our cities. The works which come out of them, being made to be sought after everywhere, are on sale everywhere, and the trade made in them causes a sequence of exchanges on every hand which brings everything to value.

I call mercantile the provinces where there are manufactures of this kind and agrarian those where there are none. Let us look at the trade between the one and the other kind.

If an agrarian province buys cloth and linen with the surplus of its products, or with a sum of money equal to that surplus, it makes a profitable trade. Because in handing over the surplus of its products for sale, it gives up something which is useless to it; and in handing over an equivalent sum of money, it gives up money with which this surplus will be bought, and, as a result, the money will come back to it.

This trade is equally profitable to the mercantile provinces whether they are paid in products or whether they are paid in coin. Because they need these products and this money for their subsistence and for the upkeep of their manufactures. It will often happen that they subsist in part on the product of the agrarian provinces; but the latter will not suffer from that if they only ever give up their surplus.

This respective position of the provinces would secure the same plenty for all, if it could always stay unchanged.

It is not to be denied that in mercantile provinces manufactures to a greater or lesser extent harm the cultivation of products necessary for man’s subsistence. By preference, people there will grow the raw materials for which manufacturers are accustomed to pay a higher price, and the lure of gain will draw the inhabitants to become artisans rather than ploughmen. These provinces will thus be forced to carry their money into the agrarian provinces to provide themselves with those foodstuffs lacking for their subsistence; and they will carry all the more there as they become more populous. Now the manufactures, which are a magnet for industry, will make new inhabitants come every day from all over.

Subsistence in a mercantile province is thus not in proportion to its population. But it is easy for it to put this disadvantage right, since with the product of its manufactures it can buy everything it lacks.

The more need the mercantile provinces have of subsistence, the more they demand from the agrarian provinces; and in consequence, they make agriculture flourish there. For the same reason, the fewer manufactures the agrarian provinces have, the more they cause them to flourish in the mercantile provinces. So it is that as the ones lack what is surplus in the others, they all come together for their common advantage.

However, there is a disadvantage for an agrarian province, which is that it is never possible for it to buy except by reason of its surplus. Indeed, as each individual is free to dispose of his property as he pleases, by what means could the province come to regulate its expenditure in this proportion? To increase its expenditure beyond its surplus, would it not be enough, for instance, for the use of fine cloths and fine linen to become more common? It would then have to give up part of the foodstuffs needed for its consumption, or to give a sum with which people could come to buy them.

In the one case as in the other, it would not have enough foodstuffs left: that would make them rise to a higher price, and would force some of the inhabitants to go and live elsewhere.

The more it consumed in cloth and expensive fabrics the more everything would become expensive for it; because the subsistence it would be forced to give in exchange would become scarcer every day.

However, the cloths and fabrics of which it was consuming more would become still more costly, and cause a greater amount of money to pass into the mercantile provinces.

As the latter become richer they form new undertakings. They extend their trade more and more, and they summon new citizens from every part because they offer industry copious wages. That is how these provinces seem bound to enrich themselves and populate themselves at the expense of the agrarian provinces, and seem to be preparing their ruin. But they will not cause it.

You may perhaps judge that it does not matter to the state that wealth and men pass from one province to another, provided that the total of wealth and of men always finds itself the same. However, it is not right, in order to make some provinces more populous and to enrich them, to make of the others so many deserts, or only to leave a wretched people there. If agriculture decayed in the agrarian provinces, because they were no longer populous or rich enough, the mercantile provinces which had caused their ruin would destroy themselves in reaction, because they would not be able to extract anything from them, nor carry anything to them.

Everything would seem to draw towards this general ruin, if the trade in manufactures belonged exclusively to the mercantile provinces.

This is not how they possess it; it can be shared with them, and it will be. In step as the mercantile provinces make everything more expensive, industry will revive in the agrarian provinces, where people would like to go on wearing fine linen and fine cloth, and where they find that it is progressively more difficult to buy them at the price set by the mercantile provinces. It is easy for the agrarian provinces to judge how profitable it would be for them to have their own manufactures, where labour is at a lower cost.

Now if there are flourishing manufactures in the mercantile provinces, there are also others which are hardly so. The attraction of profit has multiplied them excessively and they harm each other by rivalry. There are therefore manufacturers interested in setting up elsewhere. They move into the agrarian provinces where they are called for.

At first, they only make poor-quality cloths, because they do not have the choice of workers; the most skilled having remained in the mercantile provinces where rich manufacturers give them higher wages.

But they offer their cloths at the lowest possible price, and they find a sale in a region where people in general are not rich enough to buy finer ones.

Bit by bit they train up better workers. Then they make cloths which rival in beauty those of the mercantile provinces; and they sell them for a lower price, because labour costs them little and they live very economically.

So the mercantile provinces see some of their trade escaping them. To keep it, as far as they are able, they lower the price of their cloth, of their fabrics, etc. They are forced to do so by the competition of the manufactures set up in the agrarian provinces.

In this way there will be a continuous balancing of wealth and population between all the provinces: a balancing which will be maintained by industry and competition, and which, without reaching a permanent equilibrium, will always seem to lead towards it, and will always be close to it. In a word, all provinces will be rich and populous by reason of the fertility of their soil and their industry.

If a province believed it could become wealthier by concerning itself with the ways of attracting and retaining gold and silver from all the others, that would be an error on its part as fatal as it was gross. Soon everything would become costlier for it: it would lose population: sooner or later it would be forced to spread abroad its gold and silver; and it would have no more idea how to bring them back because, as everything became more expensive, it would have lost its manufactures, and it would need a long time to set them up again.

So gold and silver must be able to enter and leave freely. That is the way that wealth balances itself between all the provinces: all will be in plenty through the exchange of their work.

It is true that, when one province is richer in metal, it seems to have an advantage over others. Since the price of the land’s products and of work are evaluated in money, they are higher in it. They will double, for instance, if it has twice as much money in circulation. With the product of one of its arpents, valued at four ounces of silver, it can buy the product of two arpents, which would only bring in two ounces each in silver in another province. In the same way the product of the work of one of its inhabitants will be the equivalent of the product of the work of two inhabitants of another province. In consequence, it will sell for twice as much money what people buy from it, and it will pay half as much money for what people sell to it.

This advantage would be huge and real for it, if it had the exclusive privilege of the trade in manufactures. It does not. If it believes it is richer because it has more money it is thus harbouring an illusion.

In reality the provinces which have been harmed will concern themselves with ways to draw money to them, and they will succeed through the cheapness of their manufactures. They will sell a lot, while the province that is rich in metal will sell little, or nothing, and nevertheless it will buy all the more, as its consumption will be far greater. So money will leave it, not to return, and it will enter the others, not to leave them, or at least only to leave when they have made the same mistake.

To develop my ideas I have had to show how it appears that provinces must get rich at each other’s expense. All the same this cannot happen when one assumes that they give trade complete and permanent freedom. Because if the circulation of wealth can be carried on with some inequality, it is not to be feared that this inequality can ever go as far as to place wretchedness in sharp contrast to opulence. All the peoples will work in emulation of each other, because they will all want to join in the same benefits. In this competition manufactures will gradually decay in the provinces that they have enriched, and where the price of labour has risen; while they will recover in the other provinces which they must make wealthier, and where the price of labour is lower. They will pass from province to province. Everywhere they will set down a part of the wealth of a nation; and trade will be like a river that divides itself in a host of channels, to water all the lands in succession.

This revolving motion will finish only to begin again. When, in one province, the high price of labour starts to make manufactures decay, the low price will raise them up again in another. They will thus be more or less rich in turn. But because none will be too rich, so none will be poor. That is, wealth will flow back continuously from one to the other; following the different gradients that trade will make them take, they will pour out in succession everywhere. This revolving motion will be without drawbacks, because it will happen naturally and without violence. It is imperceptibly that some provinces will lose a part of their commerce; it is imperceptibly that others will recover what they have lost. Freedom has thus the benefit of guaranteeing them all against poverty, and at the same time checking the advance of wealth in each, when excess of this kind could be harmful.

At the start of this chapter I was obliged to distinguish two kinds of provinces, the one mercantile and the other agrarian: but you can see that, through freedom of trade, they are all at the same time both agrarian and mercantile. That is to say that, in each, people are concerned with everything, and no one knows exclusive preferences.

3

The Simple Ways of an Isolated Nation Within Which Trade Enjoys Complete Freedom

Placed closely enough under the same heavens, the people whom we observe generally enjoy the same products, only in more or less abundance, depending on the nature of the soil and the hard work of the cultivators. A foodstuff, which is rare in one province, will be common in another, where a foodstuff which is common elsewhere will be scarce.

For trade between them, these peoples possess a stock in the products of which each of them has more than enough; and, as skills develop, they have another stock in their industry.

This double stock gives them the wherewithal to make exchanges of every kind; and through these exchanges, all enjoy the same products and the same goods.

They enjoy the same products, because, with the surplus of those which grow in their lands, they buy those which do not grow there.

They enjoy the same comforts, because they either develop the same skills or they trade with those who develop them.

Now it is the needs we have created for ourselves, and the means we use to satisfy them, which make our customs, our practices, our habits, in a word our behaviour.

Needs are the same for all the peoples we have imagined: the means of satisfying them are also the same. Therefore their ways are yet again the same.

So in order to give them a new way of life one would have to carry to them products foreign to their soil, or comforts unfamiliar to their skills.

But not only do they have the same mode of existence: I also state that their ways are simple and can only be simple. That is to say that it is impossible for them to know luxury.

We have seen that luxury consists in those pleasures which are the portion of a small number to the exclusion of the majority; that these pleasures only occur as people scorn common goods in order to seek out rare and expensive goods; and finally, that these goods are only rare and expensive because they come from a remote region, or because they have been worked up with great skill.

Now, following our assumptions, no foreign rarity can arrive among the peoples whom we are observing. It will not be any more in their power to obtain these works for themselves, works to which considerable labour will give a high price. As no one would be rich enough to pay for them, no artisan would dream of making them.

We have just proved that among such peoples there cannot be those overwhelming fortunes, which form from the despoilment of a host of families reduced to ruin. How could this disorder occur in a land where commerce, the sole means of obtaining ease for oneself, sinks and recovers in turn from one province to another, and everywhere keeps wealth at more or less the same level, or constantly tends to bring it back to it?

Now once this wealth cannot get lost in a small number of families, there will not be those exclusive pleasures which mock public misery, and which seem to efface the majority of the citizens from the ranks of humanity.

I do not mean that all will enjoy the same pleasures on an equal footing; doubtless not all, for instance, will wear cloth of equal fineness: but they will all wear cloth. Each, according to his position, will enjoy the comforts that the arts bring. Each one will be in plenty and ease, since all will have the use of the articles which their station in life allows them to make necessities; and if fortunes are not equal, it will only be because talents are not equal. Yet, once more, no one will be able to make excessive expenditure, because no one will be able to enrich himself exclusively.

I can see only one way to introduce luxury among these peoples: that would be to substitute exclusive privileges for freedom of trade. Then there would soon be a great disparity of fortunes, and articles which had previously been common would become scarce through the high price to which they would be raised. In such a case glass and earthenware, for instance, would become a luxury; and it is just so that china and mirrors are a luxury in our country.

4

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Wars

We have seen what freedom can achieve. It is time to sow dissension among our peoples, and to place constraints on trade: our assumptions will be the more plausible for that.

Divided by wars they form several nations which have opposing interests.

Now if we may assume that each of these nations trades freely within its boundaries we may no longer assume that they all trade freely with each other.

External trade, always hampered and sometimes suspended, will be all the less flourishing as it will be more expensive, whether from the losses to which it is exposed, or through the efforts made to sustain it.

These nations therefore do themselves mutual harm: firstly, because they each deprive themselves of the advantages which they would obtain for each other through exchanges.

Secondly, they harm themselves more, because they lay waste each others’ lands. Each time they take up arms, they destroy a stock of wealth which they could have put into circulation, and which cannot be there any more. There will be fields which warfare will not allow to be sown: there will be others, where it will not allow any harvesting. Consequently, products will diminish, and the population with them.

I want some of these nations to cover themselves with glory, with that glory which the peoples, in their stupidity, attach to conquest, and which historians, stupider still, love to celebrate to the point of boring the reader: what will be their advantage? They will rule far away in countries once populous and fertile, and now in part deserted and uncultivated. Because it is not by exterminating that they will assure their sway over previously free peoples. Let us assume that our cities are reduced to four enemy nations, more or less equally powerful, or which attempt to maintain themselves in a kind of equilibrium.

Are they equally powerful? They will hurt each other equally.

Do they try to keep themselves in a kind of balance? Two or three will join against a power whose dominance threatens to subject them, and they will hurt themselves again. The war will cost even the conquering nation provinces; because I regard as lost, provinces where the population and cultivation have been ruined or markedly damaged. Indeed, an empire which lost population and let lands fall fallow would not be the greater for having pushed back its boundaries.

But this balance, will one succeed in establishing it? Never: only false steps will be made, and anxiety will seem the sole moving force of the powers: they will confidently abandon themselves to the most ruinous projects, to carry them out in a more ruinous manner still.

Now, in this disorder, will the lands be as rich in products as when they were divided between a host of peaceful cities? They will be all the less so, as, with war taking away all freedom to trade, the surplus will cease to pass reciprocally from one nation to another. So it will not be consumed any more: now once it ceases to be consumed it ceases to reproduce itself.

While agriculture is damaged, many manufactures will collapse; and those which still exist will not have the same market any more. Normally they will only be able to sell to the nation in which they are established; and they will sell less to it, because that nation will itself be less rich.

No doubt you will say that these peoples will not always be at war. Indeed, there will be intervals of peace: but in those intervals you will not make good all the evils war has caused; and yet people will place new obstacles in the way of trade.

5

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Customs Dues, Tolls

The four nations which we postulated in the previous chapter are now four monarchies, whose monarchs rival each other in the ambition to be rich and powerful: but sadly they do just what is needed to be neither the one nor the other. They are in a deluded state from which they cannot escape. Because each of them believes he has nothing to fear from his neighbours, and even sees that he has sometimes made himself feared, they believe that they are all equally powerful, or near enough. The same faults that they repeat, copying each other, hold them in a balance of weakness, which they take for a balance of power: their great maxim is that one must weaken one’s enemies. There you have the essence of policy which must give them turn by turn the upper hand; furthermore they have no maxim for obtaining real strength.

One of them, to increase his income, conceived of putting taxes on all foreign merchandise that enters his states; and to that end he established customs and tolls. The others also set up customs and tolls.

Some time later he persuaded himself that the income would increase further if he placed taxes on the goods leaving his kingdom; so he placed them and the others set them following his example.

When it was no longer permissible to export or to import anything, unless one had paid in advance a certain tax, everything became more expensive in these four monarchies by virtue of the taxes imposed; and this increase in price which first of all reduced consumption, and then production, suddenly slowed down trade. There were manufacturers who, not being able to be certain of selling, no longer worked. Those who continued in their business worked less, and the ploughmen neglected every surplus which was becoming useless to them. So it is that customs duties and tolls injured agriculture, the arts and trade, and reduced to beggary a large number of citizens who had previously lived by their work.

Free trade between these four kingdoms would have caused the surplus of all to flow back from one to the other; and each sovereign would have based his power on a numerous people made wealthy by the arts and by agriculture.

That is not how our four monarchs saw things. On the contrary they doubled taxes because they thought they were doubling income, which they did not double. They tripled and quadrupled taxes; and they did not understand how, far from having more income, they had less. They did not see that they had caused consumption to fall.

Trade languished, and they thought they had found the reason. How, people said in the four monarchies, could our manufactures not fall since we are in the habit of preferring articles made abroad to those which are made at home? So one of the monarchs conceived of subjecting imports to new taxes and of suppressing some of those which he had placed on exports. But the three others, who were no less crafty, did the same, and trade did not pick up anywhere.

There was a great profit in defrauding the duties at tolls and customs, and people defrauded them. So it was forbidden in the four kingdoms, under severe penalties, to sell foreign goods for which one had not paid the tax imposed. But people carried on selling fraudulently: they simply sold at a higher price, compensating for the risks to which they were exposed. The traders who committed this fraud were called smugglers.

It was necessary to spread troops on all frontiers to stop the smuggling, which was not prevented. So there you have the four monarchies armed in time of peace in order to stop all trade between themselves.

Under the pretence of levying the sovereign’s rights, employees in the customs and tolls committed a great deal of harassment; and the government, which protected them, seemed to be in league with them, to compel all the traders to become smugglers.

These employees were large in number; men armed with the intent to prevent fraud were in even greater number. All these men consumed a large part of the customs duties and tolls dues at the expense of the state, and yet they were so many citizens taken away from crafts and agriculture.

6

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Taxes on Industry

Our cities from their foundation, and consequently a long time before the monarchy, had recognised the obligation citizens have to contribute to public expenditure.

Composed solely of settlers, it was only from the settlers that they could ask for subsidies. Consequently they levied them on each field and everyone paid by reason of the products he harvested.

This subsidy was raised at little expense. Its assessment was made in each canton by the settlers themselves. Each person paid without being forced, and as no one could complain of being overcharged, so no one thought of paying less than he owed. When, afterwards, some citizens found themselves without belongings, people did not think of demanding subsidies from them. It could not even occur to anyone to make men who had nothing pay. Custom, which determines the rules when it is reasonable, did not allow it.

These citizens who only had their strength thus lived on their work, or on the wage they received from the settlers, and they paid nothing.

This custom continued with the progress of the arts because every custom lasts. Therefore the artisans and the merchants, as well as the farmers and the day-labourers, lived on their wages and no one thought at all of asking them for subsidies.

So long as this custom lasted, everything flourished. Industry, assured of a wage regulated by competition alone and from which nothing had to be deducted, busied itself with ways of increasing this wage, whether by creating new crafts or by perfecting already known skills.

Then everything became useful. The surplus found a use in step with the progress of the arts and commerce. People consumed more: products grew by reason of consumption; and the lands were better cultivated every day.

Matters continued in this state right up to the time of the monarchy. They remained there still even under the first kings. But at length there had to be a transformation.

Because the artisans and merchants lived in ease, people asked: but why should these men who are rich not make a contribution to the subsidies? How have they been able to be exempt? Must the settlers alone [landowners alone: 1798] pay all the expenses, and does not every citizen have the duty to contribute to public expenditure? This reasoning seemed a gleam of enlightenment.

So taxes were placed on industry, and it was no longer permissible to undertake any kind of work, unless one had paid a certain sum of money to the state. It was no longer permitted to work! There is a very strange law. However, when one wishes someone who has nothing to pay for a licence to earn his subsistence, it is very necessary to forbid work to those who do not pay; and in consequence to take from them every means of subsistence.

One does not make the same profit in every occupation any more than in every kind of trade. It therefore seemed fair to create different classes, whether of artisans or of merchants, in order to tax each of them in proportion to the profits they could make.

This operation was not easy. How is one to estimate the amount a man can earn from his hard work? It is bound to happen that in the same occupation and in the same trade the person who earns less will pay as much as the person who earns more. That is a disadvantage which was not seen or which people did not want to see.

The name Guild was given to the different classes of artisans; and because one could only be admitted to them if one had passed as master, they were further given the name of Masteries. As for the classes of merchants, they were called Corporations.

As many guilds were created as the trades that could be distinguished in the mechanical arts; and as many corporations were created as branches of trade were distinguished.

When these distinctions had been made, the tax that each guild or corporation had to pay was set; and, in consequence, those who formed themselves into these bodies not only had the right to work, they also had the right to forbid all work to those who had been excluded; that is to say, to reduce them to begging for their bread.

To work without being a member of one of these bodies was a misdemeanour; and because an individual would not have wanted to stay idle, or rather, because he had been forced to work for his own and his family’s subsistence, he was apprehended and condemned to a fine he could not pay, or that he could only pay to fall into wretchedness.

As the chief branches of trade meet at the trunk from which they arise, still more are joined to these principal branches, and so forth; you may imagine that it will be all the more difficult to disentangle all these branches, as one divides the corporations of merchants and subdivides them again. However, they will divide and subdivide, because the sovereign, seeing that he is paid a new tax as each new corporation emerges, will believe himself richer when he has caused them to multiply.

Then the corporations will entangle like branches at the trunk they join. They will no longer be able to distinguish their privileges: they will blame each other for encroachment, and law suits will be born. It will be the same with the guilds.

All these bodies will be forced to incur great expense, whether to pay taxes, or to pursue their law suits, or to hunt out those who are working without having been incorporated into a guild or a corporation.

Forced to this expense, each of them will levy common funds from its members; and these funds will be wasted in assemblies, meals, buildings, and often in embezzlement.

These expenses will be recouped on the merchandise they sell. They will lay down the law to the consumers because, having the sole right to work, they fix the price of their work as they please. However many artisans and merchants there are, everything must become more expensive; because the guilds and corporations must always find the wherewithal to renew the common funds that they waste.

Besides, there exists in these guilds and corporations an esprit de corps, a kind of point of honour, which forces people to sell at the same price as the others. A person would pass for a traitor if he sold at a lower price; and he would expose himself to unpleasantness if he gave the slightest suspicion there.

Accustomed to laying down the law, these bodies sell dear the advantage of sharing in their privileges. It is not enough to pay for apprenticeship. So long as it lasts one only works for the master’s account; and one must expend many years to learn a trade which one could sometimes know at the end of a few months. The person who has the greatest aptitude is sentenced to an apprenticeship as long as the person who has the least aptitude. From that it results that all those who have no means are excluded for ever from every guild. Have you been received? If you do not succeed there is no more time to serve another apprenticeship: you would no longer have the means to pay for it, and you are condemned to beg.

When the professions were free in our cities, the artisans somehow found themselves scattered widely. The ploughmen, in the moments when they did not apply themselves to cultivation, could work at some mechanical art. They could give work to some children who were not yet strong enough to work in the fields, and they used the profits they had made for cultivation. This expedient was taken from them when all the trades had been formed into guilds.

Thus the guilds and the corporations take all comfort away from the country inhabitants: they reduce to beggary the hard-working citizens who have not the means to pay for an apprenticeship: they force them to pay a high price to a master to learn from him what one could often learn much better on one’s own: finally, they deliver a blow to commerce because, by making everything more expensive, they reduce consumption and consequently production, cultivation and the population. Can one reflect on these abuses and not recognise how contrary they are to public welfare?

7

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Privileged and Exclusive Companies

The privileges accorded to guilds and corporations are iniquitous rights which only seem in order because we find them established. It is true that the competition of a large number of artisans and merchants places limits on the profit that guilds and corporations might draw from their monopoly. But it is no less true, according to what we have just shown, that these bodies take away comfort from many citizens, reduce others to beggary, make everything more expensive, and bring damage to agriculture as to trade.

However, once people became used to regarding monopoly as in the order of things in a large body, it was natural to see it again as in order when it was found in smaller bodies. An abuse which has passed into custom becomes a rule; and because one has judged badly at first, one carries on judging badly.

It was easy to foresee that the profits stemming from a privilege, which were great for each member in a large body, would be greater still as one reduced the number of members. It was no more than a matter of establishing this new monopoly and few obstacles were found in the way.

Salt, which is very common in our four monarchies, was, through free trade, at a price proportionate to the means of the less well-off citizens; and it was consumed on a large scale since it is necessary to men, to animals, and even to the land for which it is an excellent fertilizer.

There was thus bound to be great profit in exercising a salt monopoly. The project for it was made and to that end a privileged and exclusive company was created. The company gave the sovereign a considerable sum, and it gave the great men who protected it a share in its profit. Those who made up this company called themselves contractors because they had contracted with the king. They alone carried out, in his own name, the salt trade in the length and breadth of the kingdom. The first king who found this source of wealth caused the others’ eyes to open, and he was copied.

The price of salt rose suddenly from one to six, seven or eight; and yet the contractors, who alone had the right to buy it at source, paid so poorly for it that people ceased to work several salt pits.

Such was the abuse of this monopoly that the consumption of salt fell to the point where, to make this branch of trade pay, it was necessary to force each of the citizens to take a certain amount per head. Salt was thus a fertilizer taken away from the land: people stopped giving it to animals; and very many subjects only continued to consume it because people forced them not to do without a necessary substance.

The company of contractors cost the state a vast amount. How many employees spread throughout the provinces for the sale of salt! How many armed men to prevent contraband! How many searches to make sure that all the subjects had bought the required amount! How much vexation! How much expense in arrests, seizures, fines, confiscation! In a word, how many families reduced to beggary!

There you have the troubles that this privileged and exclusive company produced. However, it did not yield the king half what it took from the citizens. The greater part of the other half was consumed in expenses. The rest was divided among the contractors: and if they did not have enough profit, as indeed they never found they had enough, they were given ordinance upon ordinance to give them every day greater scope for their privileges; that is to say, to permit them to harry the people more and more.

Once the profit of this monopoly was known, it spread a spirit of greed and plundering. One would have said that it was essential for every branch of trade to be carried out exclusively by companies. They were formed every day: patrons begged for them, often with success. They sold their credit, and they did not hide it. Everyone thought he could permit himself what he saw happening. It was the monopoly of the great.

These companies always had as an excuse the good of the state; and they did not fail to demonstrate in the privileges they were given great advantages for the very trade. They were particularly successful when they proposed to set up new manufactures.

It is clear that new manufactures deserve to be given advantages, that is to say to be multiplied; and the more useful they can be, the more one should reward those to whom the manufactures are owed. But exclusive privileges were granted, and straight away luxury came out of these manufactures. The works which were sold there became costly and scarce, whereas they could have been cheap and plentiful. I return to the consequences I have already repeated: reduction in consumption, in production, in cultivation, in the population; and I add, birth of luxury, growth of misery.

8

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Taxes on Consumption

The true way to make everyone contribute was to place taxes on consumption and our four monarchs placed them on every kind. They persuaded themselves that this imposition would be very productive for them and at the same time an indifferent burden on their subjects. Because in matters of administration one often reconciles the contradictory.

But they deceived themselves, both on the yield which is not as great as it appears, and on the burden which is greater than they thought.

First of all, the yield is not as large as it appears.

It is true that since everyone is forced to consume, everyone is forced to pay; and if one pauses at that consideration alone, one can see that the yield grows by reason of the number of consumers.

But one must first deduct the expenses of collection; expenses which themselves grow by virtue of the number of companies to which one farms out or gives the administration of each of these taxes, and by virtue of the number of employees they have on their payroll.

Besides, these companies alone know the potential yield of each of these taxes, and they put all their skill into concealing it from the government, which itself often closes its eyes to the abuses it sees. The collection would enlighten the public if it was simple, and would be less expensive: but they deliberately make it more complex, as it is not on them that the expenses fall; and it is all the easier for them to make the collection complicated, as the mass of taxes ends by making a totally incomprehensible science from this part of the administration.*

There you have a large part of the yield which is bound to be wasted; and the best that one can imagine for the monarch is that about half the yield comes to him.* But he deceives himself further if he believes that his income is increased by this half.

Taxes, multiplied like consumption, have made everything more expensive for the monarch as for his subjects; and this price rise bears on all expenditure since it raises the cost of labour in every type of work. Should one estimate his revenue to be increased by a third, he would not be richer if for what he used to pay an ounce of silver he in future paid an ounce and a half.

He thinks he is only placing the tax on his subjects and he is placing it on himself. He pays his share and this share is all the larger as he is compelled to greater expenditure. For industry which consumes, this tax is only an advance which it is forced to make. It makes the law in its turn and it forces even the sovereign to reimburse it.

The raw materials on which one works in manufacturing pass through the hands of many artisans and many merchants before they reach the consumers; and with each artisan and each merchant they take on an increase in price, because one must replace turn by turn the taxes that have been paid. So one thinks one is only paying the final tax, placed on the merchandise one is buying, and yet one is reimbursing many more still.

I do not intend to seek the result of these increases through calculations; an Englishman has done it.† It is enough for me to make it understood how much taxes placed on consumption necessarily increase the price of everything; and that consequently the king’s revenues do not grow by virtue of the yield that they pour into his coffers. Let us see if they are burdensome for the peoples.

The government did not suspect they were. It assumed that everyone can at his discretion place such limits to his consumption as he judges right; and it drew the conclusion that no one would pay more than he was willing to pay. According to it, this levy did no harm to anyone. Could one imagine a less onerous one? It left complete freedom.

The government, which reasoned thus, probably only considered as subjects the rich men who consume lavishly at the court or in the capital; and I agree with them that those people had the power to reduce their own consumption, and that it would have been desirable that they should have used the freedom given them. I agree besides that all those who lived in ease could also use this freedom, which is only so in name, since in reality one is compelled to do without what has become necessary.

But the subjects, who only earn from one day to the next just enough for themselves and their families to subsist, are they free to cut back their consumption? However, there you have the majority, and perhaps the government is unaware that there are many among them who scarcely have bread: because I am not talking about those who are begging, many of whom have only been reduced to it by the errors of government itself.

But I want everyone to be free to cut back his consumption; what will be the effects of this supposed freedom?

The monarch, I assume, will be the first to set an example. Economies will be suggested to him, and sooner or later he will have to make them, as, at the high price to which everything has risen, his income is no longer adequate for his expenditure.

I might note at this point that these economies are an evil; because they are at the expense of the cultivator, the artisan and the merchant, who no longer sell the same amount of goods. Consequently, agriculture and trade suffer. But let us go on.

I assume similar economies at the court and in the capital; I also assume like ones in other towns: and step by step I reach the cultivator, who having no surplus on which he can economise does so on the number of his animals, his horses, his ploughs. The final outcome of these economies is thus harmful to agriculture.

Do you wish to see them all from another standpoint? I shall say: comfortably-off men will make fewer clothes. As a result less cloth will be sold from the merchants and less will be made at the drapers, and fewer sheep will be raised in the countryside. So when we follow all these economies in every type of consumption, we see, as a result, the ruin of several manufactures in the towns, and the ruin of agriculture in the countryside. Then a host of citizens who previously found work will seek it in vain. Those unable to find it will beg or steal: and those who do find it will be forced to offer their labour on the cheap and will subsist wretchedly.

In this state of affairs the sovereign, who does not understand why his income is falling, doubles taxes and his income falls again. So it is that, through the economies, which he does not weary of forcing blow by blow on his subjects, he finally succeeds in ruining the arts and agriculture.

I pass over a demonstration of the constraints that the inspections at the gates of towns place on commerce; the processes needed to value the goods, the disputes and law-suits to which these processes often give rise; the harassment by employees who often only look for excuses to make charges; the losses that merchants sustain when, forced to leave their goods at the customs, they lose the right moment for sale. I could yet point out that the duties that are placed on entry and departure are necessarily arbitrary and unfairly distributed. Wine in the cask, for instance, which is only worth ten ounces of silver, will pay as much as a cask worth fifty; and, for the one as for the other, this tax will be the same in a year of scarcity and in a year of plenty, that is to say when they will each of them have changed in price. But, without repeating platitudes already repeated so often and always uselessly, it is enough to have shown that the duties on consumption are the deadliest of all.

9

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Variation in Coinage

We have seen that pieces of money are portions of metal, on to which public authority has placed a stamp to make known the amount of gold and silver they contain.

If, among pieces of coin, one only used pure gold and silver, it would be enough to weigh them to know their worth. But because these metals are amalgamated with a certain amount of copper, whether to work them more easily or to pay the costs of minting, one needs to know further in what relation the amount of gold or silver is to the amount of copper.

A gold piece considered as a whole is made up of twenty-four parts called carats. If these twenty-four parts were so many parts of gold one would say that the standard of the piece was twenty-four carats. But because there is always some alloy, the standard is always below twenty-four. If there is one part of copper, the standard is at twenty-three, if there are two it is at twenty-two; if there are three it is at twenty-one, etc.

In the same way, one considers a silver piece as a whole to be composed of twelve deniers; and one says that the silver standard is at eleven deniers if the piece contains one part of alloy; that it is at ten if it contains two parts, etc. It is understood that these divisions into twenty-four carats and twelve deniers are arbitrary, and that any other would have been equally suitable to fix the standard of the coinage.

The right to coin money can only belong to the sovereign. That is to say, he alone is worthy of public confidence, he alone can state the standard and the weight of the gold and silver pieces in circulation.
[1798 addition: The sovereign, that is to say, the king in a monarchy, and in a republic the nation or the body which represents it; the sovereign, I say, alone worthy of trust, can alone fix the denomination and the weight of pieces of gold and silver in circulation. The right to coin money can only belong to the sovereign.]

He is not only owed the expenses of minting, he is also owed a duty or a profit for his stamp, which has a value, since it is useful.
[1798 addition: But from whom should he demand his due? The money which is mine today will be yours tomorrow: if it is not fair that you should be made to pay since you do not yet have it, it is no more just that I should be made to pay since it is going to slip away from me. Indeed, it is neither for you nor for me that one coins money, it is for the citizen body: so it is up to this body to pay; in consequence it is for the landowners to pay if the old taxes do not cover this expense.]

But it is in his interest to limit this duty, because too great a profit on his part would invite counterfeiting. He alone sells coins. This monopoly, based on public utility, would become wicked if he abused it. He would have himself to blame for the crimes he had caused, and the need he would be under to punish them.

It is easy to judge that our four monarchs have abused this right and multiplied counterfeiters. They have done more.

In the early days, a livre in coins weighed twelve ounces of silver; and with these twelve ounces, twenty pieces called sous were made, and they were each a twentieth part. So twenty sous made a livre in weight.

Now our four monarchs changed the coinage by degrees. They sold, as the twentieth part of twelve ounces of silver, sous which were only the twenty-fifth part, the thirtieth, the fiftieth; and they finished by making sous which were only the hundredth part of an ounce. However, the public, which had at first judged that twenty sous make a livre, continued through habit to judge that twenty sous make a livre, without much understanding what it meant by sous and by livres. One might have said that their language concealed from them the deceit perpetrated on them, and conspired with the sovereign to deceive them. It is one of the most striking examples of the abuse of words.

When it was recognised that one no longer attached any precise idea to the denominations livre and sou, the monarchs noticed that they had a simpler way of raising or lowering the value of the coinage without changing it. That was to declare that what was worth, for instance, six livres, would in future be worth eight, or would be worth no more than five. So the pieces of money in commerce were, with the same quantity of silver, worth more or less according to what they judged fitting.

This operation is so absurd that if it were an assumption on my part you would say that it was unreal. People would object to me: How do you expect it to enter the sovereign’s mind to persuade the public that six is eight, or only five? What gain would he draw from this clumsy fraud? Would it not rebound on him? And would people not pay him with the same money with which he pays? Monarchs however have regarded these frauds as the great art of finance. Indeed, the least realistic assumptions that I have made are more realistic than many of the facts.

I shall not dwell on all the drawbacks that arise from variation in the coinage. It is enough for me to show how they damage commerce.

Confidence is absolutely necessary in commerce, and to establish it one must have, in the exchanges of value for value, a common measure which is exact and recognised as such. Gold and silver had that advantage when the stamp of the sovereign authority truly attested the standard, and never deceived.

But once the monarch had changed the coins, one could no longer accept them with confidence, because one no longer knew what they were worth. One had either to be deceived or oneself to deceive. So the sovereign’s deception placed deception in lieu of confidence in trade, and people could neither buy nor sell unless forced to by need.

When it pleased the monarch to raise and lower the value of the coins by turn without having changed their standard or their weight, the abuse was greater still; people did not know how to use a measure which, as it varied continually, was no longer a measure.

It is true that they could have disregarded the pretended value which was only in the name given to the piece of money: they could have calculated the amount of silver it contained and used it according to that valuation. That is what the prince did not permit. He wanted an écu, which contained an ounce of silver, to be taken for a hundred sous, six francs or eight livres, at his discretion; and he wanted this, because otherwise he would not have drawn from the fraud the profit that he found in having himself paid when money was low, and in himself paying when money was high. But we must look at the government procedures, to judge better the chaos these changes must produce.

Usually he did not make the coinage fall suddenly to the lowest limit at which he intended to halt it. He brought it down by steps. He issued an ordinance through which he declared that in the space of twenty months écus, for instance, which were worth a hundred sous, would lose 1 per cent a month; and that way he brought it down by degrees to be worth no more than four livres.

One could surmise that the coinage would rise after having fallen; because that was the government’s method of proceeding in this operation, as it thought it would find a profit in these alternate rises and falls. So people no longer knew on what they could count. Cautious people who did not want to lay out their money at the risk of losing it locked it up again. They waited for the moment to use it again with less risk, and trade suffered from this.

Others, less wise, seeing that at the beginning of the reductions one made twenty livres with four écus and that at the end it took five to make the same sum, hastened to put their money in the market place. For the same reason those who were indebted hurried to pay their debts.

So people found it very easy to borrow. This ease deceived incautious merchants who thought they must seize this opportunity to form some new enterprises. They took this money that was offered them, and they bought, but dearly, either because their competing demands raised prices, or because they paid with money which, from one day to the next, was to fall in value.

However, after several reductions, the king himself began to lock up the silver in his strongboxes. Payment at his treasury ceased. So mistrust was general and one saw no more silver in circulation. Merchants who had borrowed it did not have enough for everyday essential expenditure. Then, forced to empty their warehouses and to sell at a 50 or 60 per cent loss, they saw how they had been deceived in their speculations. The majority became bankrupt.

At the height of this crisis, the government suddenly raised the écu of four livres to a hundred sous, and it thought it had gained 25 per cent. But this gain is imaginary, and the harm it brought to the people real.

When I say it raised the écu, I am not speaking with enough precision. It banned the écu whose value it had lowered. It laid down that it should be carried to the mint where it was only received on the basis of four francs; and it made a new écu at the same standard, which it made worth a hundred sous.

Because it raised the duties of its mint to 20 per cent it thought it was finding 20 per cent profit in this operation. But counterfeiters bought the old écus for four livres five, four livres ten; and they made new ones which they sold, like the king, for a hundred sous. The government had thus grossly deceived itself.

For the rest, it matters little what is the standard and the weight of the coinage. It is enough that the stamp guarantees the amount of silver that each piece contains and that the prince, by abusing words, does not embark on placing a value that is imaginary, and hence always variable, in place of a real value which is permanent.

10

Blows Directed Against Commerce: The Exploitation of Mines

In one of our monarchies mines were found which, being very plentiful in gold and silver, suddenly made the owners, the entrepreneurs, the smelters, the refiners and all those who worked these metals wealthy.

When one becomes rich only slowly and by dint of work, one can be economical: but one is wasteful when money easily reproduces itself and seems bound always to reproduce itself in greater quantity. Now the mines that were plentiful in themselves were even richer still in the public estimation.

So those whom they made wealthy hurried to increase their expenditure; and consequently they shared their wealth with the artisans to whom they gave work, with the merchants from whom they bought, and with the farmers whose products they consumed.

The artisans, the merchants, the farmers, become wealthier also in their turn, spent more than they had before, and, in step with the growing consumption among citizens of every estate, prices rose in all the markets.

This rise in prices did harm to those who had lands whose leases they could not yet renew. But that was only for a while. It was more disastrous for people living as rentiers or on wages. It took from them permanently part of their subsistence and forced many to leave the kingdom. Thus the population fell.

Consumption increased further still when the leases of all the lands had been renewed. Then the kingdom appeared to be flourishing. Everyone was rich. The owner of an estate saw his income doubled. The merchants rapidly emptied their shops: there were scarcely sufficient artisans for the works sought from them: the farmers raised more animals, cleared more lands and cultivated them all more intensively.

In this moment of prosperity, people said: Mines are the power of a state. It is a plentiful spring which so to speak causes the other springs to over flow with wealth. You can see how they make the arts, trade and agriculture flourish. This truth was only momentary and one had to hurry to voice it.

Indeed, when a larger quantity of silver had again raised prices, people bought from abroad, where everything cost less, what they had previously bought in the kingdom. Bit by bit the artisans ceased work, the merchants gradually stopped selling and the farmers gradually stopped growing the products that were no longer wanted from them. Manufactures, agriculture, trade, all fell; and among those who previously lived from their work some left the kingdom, others remained there to beg.

So in the last analysis the product of the mines was depopulation and misery. The silver drawn from them crossed the provinces and passed abroad without leaving traces.

However, no one tired of exploiting the mines, and silver was no easier to come by for all that. People lacked it all the more as everything became more expensive in the neighbouring monarchies, where merchandise doubled and tripled in price, because silver had doubled and tripled there.

At last the increase in prices reached the point where people were obliged to abandon the mines. The costs of extracting the gold and the silver became so great that there was no longer profit in exploiting them. Richer ones were sought: none were found.

So a time comes when the exploitation of mines can no longer be carried out profitably. It is not the same for the cultivation of products which are consumed to reproduce themselves. By the abundance with which they renew themselves they increase each time, by reason both of the amount needed for our consumption and of the advances made and to be made; so that, whatever the costs, the product always ensures a profit. It is a spring which does not dry up. The more one takes from it, the more it increases. That is the advantage of the exploitation of the land over the exploitation of mines.

What would have happened if gold and silver had become as common as iron? These metals would have ceased to be the common measure of value, and it would no longer have been possible for the landowners to receive their incomes in the towns where they lived. When they had been forced to retire to their lands, because they would not have been able to cultivate them all by themselves, they would have left the larger part to the settlers whom the lands had enabled to subsist. So, no more towns, no more large fortunes. But also no more begging; and in place of our four monarchies where wretchedness and depopulation grow constantly, we should see a host of agricultural cities which would become more populous every day. How happy we should be if we could find mines rich enough to make all our gold and all our silver useless!

11

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Every Type of Government Borrowing

In the time of our cities, justice was administered in the simplest fashion, that is to say, with few laws and few magistrates. Under the monarchy, laws proliferated with tribunals, magistrates and henchmen of every kind.

Of all the causes which contributed to this abuse, there is only one which enters into my scheme: it is the creation of a host of offices; a creation from which the sovereigns obtained money.

In a monarchy the offices of the magistracy must be venal; since if they were not, intrigue would sell them, and the administration of justice would be plunder.

But, to sell them himself, the sovereign must not multiply efficient offices beyond the need for them, even less create useless ones. If it is a source of income for him, it is only temporary, and it remains charged with debt for eternity. Because an office he sells is rightly a loan, whose interest he pays under the name of wages.

However, when our four monarchs had found this income, they abused it to the point that the magistrates were often obliged to pay out to avoid the tribunals being overburdened with an excessive number of useless members. But this expedient, instead of producing the expected result, was yet another way for the sovereign to make money. So they paid up, and some time later new offices were created.

The nobility was exempt from a large part of the taxes. This ridiculous exemption, which is inexplicable among peoples who were agricultural in their origins, such as those I assume, is easily explained among peoples who were barbarous in origin.

Since the ancient nobles were exempt from taxation, people wanted to become noble to share this prerogative with them; and offices were created simply to sell nobility.

Then the people found itself more and more overburdened. Not only did it bear as an additional burden all the load that the ennobled commoner no longer bore; it also had new taxes placed on it to pay the wages of the new offices.

One would tire of seeing the four monarchs using the same means to make money. But then they had many which they gave up by turn and to which they returned at long intervals.

They especially found great resources in the privileged companies. These had credit. The monarchs borrowed from them, sometimes at 10, 15, 20 per cent, sums which the companies normally borrowed at 5.

At first the people did not deem these loans to be a new expense for it. It did not see that it was itself contracting debt when the sovereign borrowed. However, a part of the taxes was transferred to pay interest to the companies; and soon after, new taxes were imposed to equate tax receipts to total expenditure.

These loans were an endless expense for the state; an expense that was all the greater, as a part of the interest each year went abroad to foreigners who had also lent. The government did not abandon this income but it created another in the borrowings on life annuities; and to tempt greed it thought up tontines. It congratulated itself on contracting debts that snuffed themselves out, and on having found the secret of taking money from the citizens without doing violence to anyone.

This expedient, like all the others, placed it in the need to multiply taxes so as to balance income and expenditure; and it had to lay heavy taxes, as its debts were great. It is true that the debts died out; but the taxes remained; and they were piled up, because life annuities or tontines kept on being created. This operation which had no end filled the towns with idle, useless people who nevertheless lived at the state’s expense.

The companies, in borrowing to lend to the king, had spread among the public an amazing number of bills payable to the bearer and carrying interest at 5 per cent. There were ones of fifty ounces of silver, of a hundred, of a thousand, so as to make it easy for everyone to have the means of lending.

This paper currency seemed to put great impetus into the circulation, and people thought themselves wealthier. With lands, it was said, one always has repairs to carry out: a poor crop takes away some of one’s income, and one often has a lot of trouble getting paid by one’s farmers. Besides, if the circumstance occurs of an exceptional expense, one cannot take it from one’s capital, and there is difficulty in borrowing. But, with a portfolio, one has stock which pays well at maturity; and since, if needed, one can sell some bills, one can always face up to misfortunes.

You can imagine what a blow this new way of thinking delivered to agriculture. Land fell in price. Losses in livestock were not made good: farms were allowed to fall into ruin: farmers were harried for payment; and people bought bills. One needed to have a huge money surplus to contemplate buying an estate: and when a person had done so, he thought of ways of getting a lot out of it without putting anything back.

However, the state’s debts were growing, and the companies, which the government repaid poorly, could no longer keep their undertakings. Then the government put itself in their place and declared that it would pay for them, that is to say, it reduced the rate of interest on public paper from 5 to 4 per cent, to 3, to 2, finally to nothing. Then the ruin of a great many individuals, who had previously been rich, brought down with it a crowd of traders. One saw no more than bankruptcy on bankruptcy; and people learnt that it is not the same with papers, which only have a pretended value, as it is with gold and silver, which have a real value.

People ought at least to have learnt the lesson. But wealth in paper was so convenient that they only sought to deceive themselves; and after a while they again received it with confidence. It seemed that people did not know what to do with their silver.

We have seen how a banker put to work for his own account the funds that several traders entrusted to him. Now let us assume that bankers, rich in silver and especially in credit, associate and form a joint fund to exploit for their mutual profit. This association is a company which will give each of its members a written recognizance of the sum that each of them has provided. This promissory note or bill will be called a share [action] since it gives a title on the bank’s funds called an action in legal terms.

I assume that the capital of this bank amounts to a hundred thousand ounces of silver, and that to make its circulation easier, this capital has been split into a thousand shares, each of a hundred ounces.

These shares will yield 5, 6 per cent, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the bank’s profit. The more they yield the more they will gain favour; and there will soon be several thousands of them among the public.

Every owner of a share has a credit on the bank and finds several advantages in it. The first is security for his money that he is afraid to keep on his premises. The second is the interest he will draw on it, interest which may grow from one day to the next. The third is to be able to place in small portions, and over the length of time he chooses, all the money he will not use for the moment. The fourth is the convenience of being able to pay large sums by the simple conveyance of these claims. The last is to hide one’s property in a wallet, and only to show it when one wants people to see it. These advantages, which everyone weighed up according to his whim, could cause shares originally valued at a hundred ounces to rise to a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty, etc.

The bank, which wanted to respond to the public’s eagerness, sold these shares, I assume, for a million ounces of silver. Now it does not need to have this million in hand, because, so long as it is trusted, it is confident that the shareholders will not all come at the same time to ask for their money. It will be enough for the bank to keep sufficient to pay those who will be in the position of needing ready money; and this will be, for example, a hundred thousand ounces, more or less, according to the circumstances.

These shares, like all other negotiable bills, gained or lost value depending on the eagerness with which they were sought after. If many people wanted to buy them, and few wanted to sell them, they rose in price: they fell, on the other hand, if many people wanted to sell, and few wanted to buy them. Sometimes a rumour, true or false, which will cause a loss to the bank will spread alarm and everyone will want to sell: at other times a rumour, just as true or false, will restore confidence, and everyone will want to buy. With these possibilities stock-jobbing will become the profession of many of those persons who will only be busy spreading confidence and alarm by turns. The bank itself, when it is confident of being able to re-establish its credit, will let it fall at intervals so that it can practise jobbing its own shares. It will buy them when it has caused them to fall: it will re-sell them when it has caused them to rise again.

The government could borrow from this bank, and it borrowed at high interest rates. But it turned it to its account in another way. The government had paper which was losing heavily; in particular the revenue farmers’ bills had fallen massively on all markets. It obliged the bank’s directors to create shares, whose value they had not received, and with these shares it caused the revenue farmers’ bills to be bought. Immediately these bills rose in price. People rushed for them: they rose still more. The rumours that were sown maintained the public delirium; and people rushed all the more to buy them as they believed they must always rise. When, by this manipulation, the bills had been made to rise above par again, the bank’s directors sold them to withdraw the exceptional shares that they had created, and they withdrew them with profit. So it was that in turn the bank’s bills and the tax farmers’ bills were promoted: sometimes the latter were good, sometimes the former; and the public did not perceive that all were bad.

It was only left now for the government to bank on its own account, and it did so. When it had borrrowed from the bank to the point where it could no longer pay, it took the place of the bankers. Then it created more shares, and it did so all the more, as it believed that in future the paper would serve it in place of silver.

These shares, multiplied to excess, fell in price from one day to the next. Soon no one bought any more, and the shareholders demanded their capital. Much skill was now required. A great display of gold and silver was made. However, payment was made slowly, with the excuse that everyone could not be paid at once; and trusted persons came to receive huge sums in public which they secretly took back to the bank. But though such deceits could be repeated, they could not always succeed. The collapse of the bank in the end produced a general upheaval.

12

Blows Directed Against Commerce: The Policing of Grain Import and Export

What one understands by grain policing is the regulations that the government makes when it wants to direct the grain trade itself. To judge the effects of this policing, I assume that this trade had enjoyed complete and entire freedom at all times in our four monarchies; and that in consequence, as merchants have multiplied in response to need, the circulation of grain was unimpeded and put cereals everywhere at their true price.

This was the state of affairs when, in one of our four monarchies, it was asked which could be more profitable, to allow the import and export of grain, or to forbid them both; and soon the decision was taken for prohibition. It is not the case that disadvantages had been noticed in the freedom. But if, in the normal way, those who govern let matters carry on as they did before them, it also sometimes happens that they innovate for the joy of innovating. They want their ministry to be epoch-making. Then they make changes under the pretence of correcting, and disorder begins.

Our lands, they maintain, produce in normal years as much as we consume. It follows that our corn will fall to too low a price if more than we need is brought to us; and we will be short of it if we export some of the cereals we need. This problem has not yet arisen; but it is possible, and it is wise to anticipate it. Such was the cause of the prohibitions.

It is not true that this disadvantage was possible. You will be persuaded of that if you recall how free circulation necessarily puts corn at a level everywhere. People do not import more than is needed, because this excess would not sell, or would be sold at a loss; and one does not export cereals that are needed, since there would not be a profit in selling them elsewhere. These prohibitions thus rest on false assumptions: let us see what were their results.

In a first year of surplus the price of corn fell: in a second it fell further: it became dirt cheap in a third. The people cheered a government which procured it bread so cheaply. But this surplus was a calamity for the growers; and it would have been a source of wealth for them if it could have been sold abroad. So it is that the favours of Heaven turned into scourges through man’s supposed wisdom.

The people did little work. They could subsist without needing to work much. Often they did not think of asking for work and, for the most part, the cultivators did not think of giving them any. The labourers, previously hard-working, acquired a habit of idleness; and they demanded higher wages when the growers could scarcely pay meagre ones.

Cultivation fell: fewer lands were sown; and years of dearth occurred. The price of corn was excessive.

The people then asked for work. Forced by competition, every kind of worker offered to work on the cheap. They only earned low wages, and yet bread was dear.

There you have the result of the regulations which forbade export and import. It was no longer possible either for corn or for wages to find their true price; and there was only wretchedness, now among the cultivators, now among the common people.

You will say that all that was needed was to allow import. And that is what they said too in the other monarchies which perceived all the benefit they could draw from it. They offered corn and it was taken. But if the need of the moment had greater force than the regulations, it did not get them revoked. The government persisted in its maxims.

It is very well done, the government in another monarchy was saying, to forbid export because one must not expose oneself to scarcity. But one must never forbid import, which can make good the deficiency in a year of dearth. So export was forbidden and import allowed.

But as soon as export was no longer allowed, the grower sold in lesser quantity and at a lower price. As he was less rich, he was in less of a position to cultivate, and he grew less. Therefore, from year to year, the harvest was always less abundant; and export which had been banned to avoid exposure to scarcity produced an opposite effect: people went short. To add to the misery, import provided for nothing.

It must be noted that when I say that export was forbidden, it is the case that heavy duties had been placed on the exit of grain; and when I say that import had been allowed, it is that no duty had been placed on its entry.

In this state of affairs the merchants had several risks to run.

If a large number of competitors simultaneously brought a large quantity of grain, they caused the price to fall; and it could happen that most of them did not find an adequate profit in the sale. They made a loss, if they sold at the low price to which the grain had fallen; and if they wanted to take it back, they made another loss as they had to pay exit duties. Often they were even forced by the people or the government to give up their corn at a fixed price. So you can imagine that, since the country, which was open to them on entry, was closed to them on exit, they were not going to bring corn at the risk of being forced to sell it at a loss; and that, consequently, permission to import provided for nothing. We may conclude that, however free import may appear, it is ineffective whenever export is not allowed.

It is not export that one should forbid, they said in another monarchy. The more one exports, the higher the price of our corn: the higher its price, the more profit there will be for the grower, and the more profit there is for the grower: the more he will grow; and the more he grows, the more flourishing agriculture will be. So one must encourage export: one must even allow a bounty to the exporters. But one must not allow import, as it would make our corn fall to a miserable price.

One cannot deny that, in this monarchy, people reasoned better than in the other two. Export produced abundance, as had been expected.

But the bounty was too much: because export carries the bounty with it, since one exports whenever one finds more advantage in selling abroad than at home. Besides, this bounty had the disadvantage of preventing corn from reaching its true price; because the native merchants, who had received the bounty, could sell at a lower price than the foreign merchants.

There were still more disadvantages in forbidding import. This prohibition was not complete: it consisted in entry dues that were stiffer or weaker.

They were stiffer when corn was at a low price; because it was judged that import, if allowed, would have made it fall all the more. That was an error because merchants do not carry their corn into markets where they sell it less favourably.

These duties were weaker when corn was at too high a price in the monarchy. It was then that there was a need to have prices lowered; and since import would produce this result, people were right in judging that it should be approved.

There were several years during which this monarchy enjoyed the plenty it owed to export, when, a bad harvest having brought dearth, the entry duties were reduced: they were even cut back completely.

But the foreign merchants, who, for a long time, had not been at all accustomed to congregate in this monarchy’s markets, could not immediately take every necessary measure to bring it enough corn. Most of them lacked carters, agents or representatives for this purpose. So too few of them came and the dearth continued.

Then the government forbade export. A useless precaution. Could it imagine that native merchants would take abroad cereals they could sell more profitably in their own country?

As it had forbidden import, this monarchy deprived itself of any expedient in a dearth, and placed itself at the mercy of monopolists.

Now when monopolists have a stranglehold on trade, the price of corn can no longer be permanent. It rises and falls suddenly in turn, and as though by shocks; it is costly or cheap depending on the rumours that it is or is not arriving.

During these variations the government does not know what course to take. From one day to the next it increases the entry duties on corn: from one day to the next it reduces them.

Therefore foreign merchants themselves have no idea on what they may count. If, when the import duties were slight, they got ready to make consignments in the hope of the profit that the high price seemed to promise them, often, when their corn arrived, the import duties had risen, because cereals had fallen in price; and they found that they had incurred large costs to bring their corn and to take it away at a downright loss. You can imagine that they tired of trading with this monarchy and that consequently when it was in dearth they left it there.

So there were only abuses in these three monarchies. In the fourth it was reckoned that one should have no permanent prohibition or interdiction, either of export or of import; but that one should, turn by turn, allow and forbid export and import, following the circumstances. This course seemed the wisest, and yet it was the least wise. It had all the drawbacks we have mentioned and even greater ones still.

It had, I say, all the drawbacks when it forbade export or import: and it had even greater ones, because it injected an uncertainty into trade which constantly held up the circulation of grain.

Since, in this monarchy, the policing varied following the ever-varying circumstances, prohibitions and permissions could only be transitory. Export was permitted with the proviso: until it is otherwise ordained, when the corn fell in price; and when it rose import was allowed, always with the proviso: until it is otherwise ordained. This proviso was necessary, because circumstances could change from one day to the next; and they were bound to change, without the government being able to predict the variations, since it rested with the monopolists to make the price of cereals fall when they wanted to import, and to make them rise when they wanted to export.

But when import was allowed for an uncertain time, people in the heart of the monarchy did not know if one could export before the permission was revoked; as a result there were risks in taking steps to export; and those who did not want to incur them, only saw in the permission the equivalent of a prohibition. So the internal provinces did not benefit from these outlets, which seemed to be closed to them almost as soon as they had been opened.

Merchants on the frontiers who foresaw a new prohibition rushed to send their corn abroad. They set up their storehouses outside the country to remove them from the police. Then the corn rapidly rose in price, because export was happening in rapid succession and in a large amount.

Permission to export, favourable to the merchants alone, came too late for the ploughman. As he was obliged to pay his lease, his taxation, wages of the day-labourers, he had sold the corn when it was at a low price; or if he had not sold it, permission still came too late, since the season that was right for the work of tillage had already passed. In the one case he had lost on the sale of his grain, in the other he could not use his profit to ensure for himself an abundant crop for the next year.

Finally, these short-lived permissions were all the more harmful as the cultivator, fearing a prohibition, hurried to sell; and consequently sold badly, or at too low a price.

However, all the surplus corn had been exported, when a harvest was reaped that was inadequate for consumption. Then the government banned export and allowed import, still with the clause which left its duration uncertain. Immediately the native merchants, who congratulated themselves on having sent their corn abroad, hurried to bring it back at various times, but each time in a small quantity; and people bought back from them at a very high price what had been sold to them cheaply.

The dearness lasted. They sustained it because they were the only sellers. The foreigner did not come at all, either because, lacking the time to take measures for sending consignments, he feared he would only arrive when import had been forbidden, or because he feared being forced by some blow from authority to leave his corn at a low price.

There you have the results of temporary permissions. There are no rules, either for giving them or for revoking them. All the duties on the entry or exit of cereals are necessarily arbitrary, and one could not say why one placed them at one rate rather than another. So export and import are only carried out at risk every time they occur following uncertain and changeable regulations. Then trust is lost, and trade, given up to monopolists, is continually stopped in its tracks. Let us move on to the regulations which it has been thought necessary to make on the internal circulation of grain.

13

Blows Directed Against Commerce: The Policing of the Internal Circulation of Grain

If import and export had always enjoyed complete and full freedom, the government would never have been in the position of interfering in the internal circulation of cereals. It would not have felt the need, because within each state cereals would have circulated themselves just as from one state to another.

But when it had once been disturbed in a part of its course, circulation could no longer carry on anywhere regularly; and we have just seen the disturbance wrought in our four monarchies by regulations that people felt obliged to make on export and import.

If governments had seen that these regulations were the prime cause of these disturbances they would have spared themselves a lot of trouble: they did not see it. So, to cure the ills they had produced, they placed themselves in need to make fresh ones, by making regulations on the internal circulation of grain.

In our four monarchies, the various regulations on export and import have had the same effect as exclusive privileges given to native merchants: hence the excessive price.

With this excessive price, dearth might merely appear to be there. But often it must have been real, because, when export was allowed, people hurried to send out the corn; and, when import was allowed, people were not in such haste to bring it back.

But since foreigners did not bring it, whether the dearth was real or merely in appearance made little difference; all the government could do was to busy itself with ways of getting it to arrive. So there you have it forced to become a corn merchant.

It caused corn to come in at great cost, and it sold none. However, the price fell: the fact is there merely appeared to be a dearth. Up to that point the merchants had held back from putting it on sale because they hoped for a greater increase in price. But when they saw that corn was coming, they hurried to carry theirs to market, to profit from the time when the price was still high.

Since the government had not sold its corn, on another occasion it caused less to arrive, and it sold that. It had assumed that the dearth was never more than in appearance. But this one was found to be genuine. So there was not enough corn, and the dearth continued.

As it was still persuaded that the dearth was only in appearance, the government had the granaries opened, and compelled several merchants to sell their corn at the price it set. But authority could not strike everywhere at the same time. People concealed corn to keep it away from coercion. So while corn was cheap, or below the true price in one place, it was dear or above in another. Soon the dearth was dreadful and widespread.

Then, as it had been convinced that dearths are sometimes genuine, the government feared they were always so. It had not caused enough corn to arrive, and not to fall into the same trap on another occasion it had corn brought, and sold it in such a huge amount that everywhere it fell to a dirt-cheap price.

So it made nothing but mistakes. It had been wrong to place itself in the position of itself having to provide for the people’s subsistence; and it made a second, even greater mistake, a consequence of the first, that of forcing open the granaries and claiming to fix the price of grain.

It did not know either the population, the production or the consumption. So it did not have the slightest idea in what ratio the quantity of corn stood with regard to the need. The disproportion could be stronger or weaker. There was such a province where on occasion it could be huge: sometimes too it could be almost negligible everywhere. What rule should one follow to assess the exact amount of corn one needed?

But should the government have known the relationship between the quantity and need, had it calculated all the costs of cultivation, of storage, of transport to require the cultivators and the merchants to give up the corn at the price fixed?

Forced to commit unjust actions to put right its mistakes, the government thought by these acts of authority to set right the disturbance it had caused, and it caused even greater ones.

It ordered all those who had corn to declare its amount. Therefore it felt that it needed to know this. But it should have begun by winning trust; and that order alone would have caused trust to be lost, if it was not already. For why should it want to know the amount of corn that each person was keeping in his barns unless it was intending to dispose of it by fiat? People made unreliable declarations.

False declarations are not always made with impunity. Often people were betrayed, and often the accusations themselves were false. The government ordered searches; but the force with which they were made caused such great disturbances that it reckoned it had better at least suspend them. So it remained in its ignorance, and each individual hid his corn.

When trade is perfectly free, the quantity and the need are apparent in all the markets. Then goods put themselves at their true price, and plenty spreads equally everywhere. That is what we have proved sufficiently.

But when one has once taken all freedom from trade, it is no longer possible to judge, either if there is really an imbalance between the quantity and the need, or what it is. If it were slight, it grows from day to day, through the people’s fear and the monopolists’ greed. Then circulation is constantly suspended by the obstacles it finds in its path; and it can happen that all the provinces have shortages at the same time, or at least that they experience scarcity one after the other.

It is true that the government redoubled its efforts in these circumstances. But its operations, always slow, could not bring help equally everywhere, as a crowd of merchants spread out on every side would have been able to do. Yet it found itself compelled to all the greater expenditure as the purchases on its behalf were made lavishly and sometimes dishonestly.

It was making useless attempts to settle the disorders. Its first regulations had produced them: its last regulations were bound to perpetuate them, or even to make them grow more.

It persuaded itself that the high price or dearth resulted from a residue of freedom. Consequently, It was forbidden to all persons to undertake trade in grain without having obtained permission for it from officials appointed for that purpose.

It was forbidden to all others, farmers or landowners to interfere directly or indirectly in carrying out this trade.

Any association between grain merchants was forbidden unless it had been authorised.

It was forbidden to pay a deposit on corn or to buy corn unripe, standing, before the harvest.

It was forbidden to sell corn other than in the markets.

It was forbidden to make hoards of grain.

It was forbidden to let it move from one province into another without having obtained permission.

There you have what in an abuse of language was called police regulations, as if order could have emerged from these regulations.

Yet the farmer could only sell to licensed merchants, who alone had permission to undertake the grain trade.

He was forced to sell his corn within the year; because the prohibition on amassing it did not allow him to place one crop upon another.

On the other hand, however much he needed money, he could not sell before he had harvested. So he only had a limited time for selling; and he saw himself placed in the power of a small number of merchants.

The prohibition on selling anywhere except in the markets caused him to have to leave the cultivation of his fields at intervals. He could have sold his corn to his neighbour; but his neighbour was obliged to go to the market to buy it. So they were both forced to expenses they could have been spared.

If he wanted to pay a debt or the wages of his day-labourers with his grain, he was accused of having sold elsewhere than in the market. He was treated with the same injustice if he advanced grain to a ploughman who did not have enough for sowing. This generous action was a fictitious sale, a fraud, in the jargon of the officers of the grain police.

Even the freedom given to merchants was limited. They needed leave to form an association, that is to say, to get together on the ways to provision the state. Without this leave it was left to each of them to carry on this trade individually, and as best they could.

Finally, a province suffering from dearth could not draw grain from a neighbouring province where there was a surplus. If permission was never refused, even if it was given the moment it was possible, it always came too late because it had to be awaited. The disorder was all the greater when, in order to cause a fresh price rise, permission was deliberately delayed. That is what happened on occasion.

On the one hand, the prohibitions removed all freedom from trade: on the other, the prohibitions authorised monopoly. Normally the officials from whom permission had to be sought did not give it for nothing, and you can judge why people bought it from them.

In this disorder the townspeople could not be assured of subsistence. So it was down to the government to provide it, and it created privileged companies to provision the towns, especially the capital. They alone might buy in the countryside what was set aside for this provisioning: or at least, you could only sell to others after they had made their purchases; and because you could only sell to them, you had to hand over the corn at the price they wished to pay. This final regulation, which was always fatal for the countryside, was sometimes so for the towns themselves, in whose favourit had been made. However much care was taken that bread should not become dearer in the capital, it could not always be prevented because the privileged companies introduced high prices in succession everywhere.

14

Blows Directed Against Commerce: The Manoeuvres of Monopolists

We have seen monopoly born from the regulations made for the policing of grain. In my design to make known the monopolists’ manoeuvres I should need them to give me some notes themselves. I shall limit myself to a few observations.

You could not carry on the corn trade at all without having obtained their permission. But it was not enough to ask for it in order to get it; you also needed to have protection; and protection was hardly ever granted except to those who would pay for it, or who would give up a share in their profit.

So the right to make a monopoly of corn was sold in some way to the highest and last bidder; and often when a person had bought it he also had to give money to prevent its being sold to others. Few people could therefore enjoy this privilege. Also the monopolists were too small in number to carry out a sufficiently extensive trade to deal with the needs of all the provinces. But they were not concerned with trading on a large scale: they simply cared about making a huge profit.

This profit was guaranteed to them, if they bought cheaply and sold dear.

Small farmers are forced to sell early from the month of September, October or November in order to pay the landowners, taxation, and the ex penses of cultivation. So then the price of grain falls through the surge of sellers. That is the time that the monopolists seize on to fill their stores; and they dictate to the farmers, who can only sell to them.

However, they used deception, as it would be dangerous for them to take advantage too openly of the exclusive right to carry on the grain trade. They provisioned themselves in the provinces where the harvest had been most plentiful, and they spread the rumour that it had been even more plentiful elsewhere. To confirm these reports, they made fictitious sales between themselves in public view in the markets, and delivered corn at the lowest price to each other. Then, as they had been given the privilege of buying every where, they went to the farms and they bought, or paid a deposit, on corn at the low price they had themselves set in the markets.

So now their only rivals are the large farmers who, not having been so pressed to make money, have waited for the moment to sell more advantageously. But these farmers have only a limited time in which to sell, as they are forbidden to hoard grain. The privileged merchants, on the other hand, sell when they wish. In the end it will happen that they are the sole sellers.

Then they put on sale a little at a time. They spread rumours about the latest harvests. They persuade that these have not been as plentiful as had been thought. Once again they do not fail to confirm this by fictitious sales, and they deliver corn to each other in public at the highest price.

So there is dearth; it is not that corn is lacking, but that it has been withheld from consumption.

However, the dearth is not general, because it matters to the monopolists themselves that it should not be. They must be able to pride themselves on the low price they maintain in some provinces in order to acquit themselves of the high price they set in others; and it is enough for them that dearth passes over all the provinces in turn. They caused such great disorders that sometimes in a province one saw the people compelled to feed themselves on all sorts of nasty roots; while in a nearby province the best wheat was thrown to the animals.

As they alone were responsible for making cereals flow back everywhere they were lacking, they did so slowly, with various excuses; and they found great profit in their slowness because they made the high price last.

Thus these monopolists made themselves wealthy, because they bought at a low price and they sold dear. There were others who made themselves no less wealthy, and yet bought at a high price and sold at a low one. I mean to speak of the commissioners who made purchases and sales of grain on the government’s account.

They were given 2 per cent profit on each purchase and 2 per cent on the sale.

The more grain they bought and the dearer they bought it, the more profit they had as a result. So they bought whatever the price was.

To make their operations easier, the merchants had been ordered to notify their associations, to make a declaration of their storehouses, and only to deal in the regulated markets on such and such a day and hour.

As all the merchants were known and all their storehouses revealed, it was easy to abort all their schemes. Wherever they might turn up to buy, the commissioners outbid them; and wherever they might present themselves to sell, the commissioners sold at a discount. So as the merchants could not keep up the competition without ruining themselves, one after the other they gave up the grain trade, and then the commissioners alone bought and sold.

The commissioners had an interest in buying much and dearly, since the 2 per cent profit was greater because of the high price of the purchases; and although the 2 per cent profit on the sale was smaller because of the low price, they had no less interest in selling cheaply, because they became the sole grain merchants.

It was the government that made all the advances for the purchases, as it made all the losses on the sales. It cost it several millions a year; and if it is true that to find one million, it was obliged to set three million in taxes, you may judge how this monopoly was in every way at the state’s expense.

The advances were paid to the commissioners in ready money. For the most part they turned their money to account in the capital, and they paid in the provinces or abroad with exchange operations. So this monopoly became a banking capital for them, or rather a veritable speculation.

15

Blows Directed Against Commerce: Obstacles to the Circulation of Grain, When the Government Wishes to Restore to Trade the Freedom It Took from It

Monopolists were always placing dearth, or at least high prices, somewhere, when in one of our monarchies this branch of administration was given to a minister who returned freedom to trade.

But when disorder has reached a certain point, a revolution, however good it may be, is never accomplished without causing violent shocks; and it is often necessary to take countless precautionary measures to restore order.

The new minister who wanted the public good, and whom even his enemies recognised as enlightened, took all the measures that prudence had suggested to him. But there was one thing which did not depend on him: that is the weather, and it was wanting.

In dealing with the circulation of cereals we have seen that it can only be carried out by a host of merchants spread everywhere. These merchants are so many canals through which the grain circulates. Now these canals had been broken and it was time to mend them.

Indeed, to succeed in any type of trade it is not enough to have the freedom to carry it on; one must, as we have already noted, have obtained contacts, and these contacts can only be the fruits of experience, which is often slow. One must also have capital, stores, carters, agents, correspondents: in a word one must have taken many precautions and many measures.

So the freedom returned to the grain trade was a benefit that could not be enjoyed the moment it was granted. A word from the monarch had been enough to wipe out this freedom; a word did not restore it, and there was high price a few months later.

“Look at what freedom produces.” That is how the common people reasoned, and they were almost the entire nation. They thought that the dearness was a result of freedom. People did not want to see that monopoly could not have fallen under the first blows directed at it, and that there could not be enough merchants yet to set cereals at their true price.

But, people were saying, we need bread every day. Now, because people are free to bring it to us, is it certain that they will bring it to us and will not put us in danger of doing without?

So they forgot the high prices and dearth that had occurred in turn in all the provinces, when the ministers took away all freedom on the pretext of not leaving the people’s subsistence to chance.

So they were counting on a small number of monopolists who could make a large profit by selling little, rather than on a large number of merchants who could only make a large profit by selling a great deal.

The merchants must have a wage: it is their due. But it is not for the sovereign or the people to set this wage: it is for competition, for competition alone. Now this wage will be smaller in proportion as competition is greater. Thus corn will be at a lower price when merchants multiply with freedom, than when their number is reduced by the police regulations. I add that one will be more assured of having it. For it will only be at a lower price because all the merchants, vying with each other, will offer it cheaply, and will be happy with a smaller profit.

They have as much need to sell as we to buy. Busy in anticipating where corn must go up in price, they will hurry all the more to come to our help, as those who arrive first are those who sell at the highest price. There is more cause to judge that they will bring us too much corn than to fear that they will not bring us enough.

These reasonings counted for nothing in the people’s mind. They thought that the one task of government was to procure them cheap bread. The police regulations seemed to have been issued for this purpose. In truth, they produced an opposite effect: but this was not known; and people wanted the police regulations, because they wanted cheap bread. So every time that it became dearer the people asked the government to have the price lowered.

There were only two ways to satisfy them. The government had to buy grain itself to sell again at a loss, or it had to force merchants to deliver their corn at the price it had fixed.

Of these two ways the first tended to ruin the state; the second was unjust and odious; and both accustomed the people to think that it was for the government to obtain cheap bread for them, whatever it cost either in money or in injustice.

From this another prejudice arose, even more opposed to the grain trade, if that is possible. That is, the people, who believed these violations just, since they were enacted for them, regarded the grain merchants as grasping men who took advantage of their needs. Once that opinion was rooted, a person could not engage in this trade if he cared for his reputation: it had to be left to those vile creatures who counted money for everything and honour for nothing.

It was the behaviour of the government that had produced these prejudices. They had so triumphed that often even those possessed of integrity, and what is called wit, were not shielded from them. No doubt we must respect the rights of property, said people whom one could not suspect of evil purpose; but we claim the rights of humanity for the people. From that they concluded that the government can, must even, regulate the price of corn and compel merchants to deliver it at the prices it has set.

The rights of humanity opposed to those of property! What gibberish! It was so decreed that one should say the most absurd things to oppose the operations of the new minister. But you, who believe you care for the people, would you like the strong-boxes of wealthy men to be broken open under the pretence of giving alms? Doubtless not: and you want the barns to be forced open! Are you also ignorant of the fact that cheapness is always, of necessity, followed by dearness; and that in consequence it is a calamity for the people, as much as for the merchant and the landowner? If you are unaware of this, I refer you back to what I have said.

It seemed that everyone was condemned to reason badly on this matter: poets, geometricians, philosophers, metaphysicians, in a word almost all literary men, and especially those whose trenchant tone hardly allows one to take their doubts for doubts, and who do not permit one to think differently from them. These men always saw excellent matter in the works which were written in favour of the grain police. These were, however, works in which, in place of clarity, exactitude and principles, one found only contradictions; and one could have proved that the author had written in favour of the freedom he wished to contest. The fact is that it is impossible to establish anything exact when people want to put limits on freedom to trade. Where indeed should one place these limits?

Deaf to all the suggestions, the new minister showed courage. He let them speak and write, and carried on with his initial moves. However, people were still very far from feeling the effects of freedom. Corn was dear in one province while it was cheap in another. The fact is that it did not circulate; there were not yet enough merchants. Besides, the people, who believed that export was necessarily the precursor of dearth, became alarmed at the sight of grain on the move. “There will be none left for us,” they said; and at that seditious cry [seditious is omitted in 1798], they rose in revolt. Then evil-minded men went round the markets, spread new alarms and caused riots. Such are the chief obstacles in the way of the re-establishment of freedom. Time will remove them if the government perseveres.

16

Blows Directed Against Commerce: The Luxury of a Great Capital City

Of the four monarchies I have postulated, I no longer make more than one, and I build a great capital city in that place where people come from all the provinces. Those who are rich enough to enjoy all the comforts found there gradually settle there. Others come there for business, others out of curiosity, many because they do not have the means of living elsewhere. Because, with nothing, one can often make great outlays in that place, as it offers resources of every kind. It even offers some which ought to be inadmissible, and yet which people do not hide.

Wealth brings forth the arts. There will thus be a large number of craftsmen. They will occasion great consumption. They will make foodstuffs rise in price, and they will attract money from the provinces, where people will be rich enough to seek out the goods in demand in the capital. Their handiwork will be at a higher price than it would have been had they chosen another place for their establishment: because their subsistence and their raw materials will have to be brought there at great expense.

If they had been spread throughout the provinces they would make the capital’s money flow back. They would bring plenty because, wherever they established themselves, they would increase the number of consumers, and they would help to spread wealth with less inequality. These considerations brought about the wish that manufactures should be established in the provinces; but this project remained a pipe dream.

Craftsmen do not mind that their products are costly, provided they are assured a sale. Now, where could they sell better than in a town of luxury, where without ever appreciating goods, people only value them in so far as they are highly priced? Where will they be in closer reach of realising their talents, whether they deal with the individuals to whom they sell their work themselves, or whether they deal with traders who vie to offer them the highest wages? Would it be possible for them to take advantage of the public’s whims from the depths of the provinces, to make and give it a product based on transitory fashions? Finally, I imagine that when they enjoy complete freedom they can spread into many different places; but when they are only free to work in the shelter of a privilege, do they not have to settle in the place where they are at hand to beg for this privilege, to have it renewed, and to prevent its being given to others? So then manufactures could only set up in the capital and, after the capital, in the large towns.

Once everything becomes more expensive in a great capital, goods that were made to be common there become scarce; and it is there that artisans direct all their energy to obtain for wealthy people the enjoyment of luxury articles, that is to say those pleasures sought through vanity, which boredom requires in one’s idle existence.

The complicated levying of a mass of taxes, manoeuvres of exclusive companies, public paper issues, banks, speculation, and the grain monopoly were the paths open to fortune along which people hurried en masse. From there new men emerged, one after another, who, made wealthy on the spoils of the people, made a striking contrast with the beggars who multiplied from one day to the next.

The Great had set the example of luxury: but at least their luxury was limited by their means. There was no limit to that of the upstarts, because they could spend all the more lavishly, as they became wealthy all the more easily. Because at one and the same time they were made to be imitated and imitation was out of reach, they seemed to prepare the ruin of every rank of citizen.

Indeed, as one could only make oneself noticed through expenditure, disorder found its way in turn into all fortunes; and every rank became confused by degrees by the very efforts that it made to single itself out. From the trends people followed it seemed they had immense desires; and from the frivolities they were happy with, it seemed they had no wants. Whim set the price of the smallest things. If people did not enjoy them, they wished to appear to enjoy them, because they supposed others did; lacking enthusiasm they took its language and made fools of themselves enthusing about everything. However one was struck by it, one had to obey the whims of fashion. It was the sole arbiter of taste and feeling and set down for everyone what he was to want, say, do and think: because thinking was the latest fashion.

In this disorder people spoke out against finance since financiers had more ways of becoming rich. But did not citizens of every degree have cause to reproach themselves in the same way? If they obtained less wealth was it because they were less greedy or because they could not? It is the general morality one should condemn; but in a century of corruption every order inveighs against the others.

I wish a monarchy could never be too rich. Indeed, the vice that destroys it is not in excessive wealth: it is in the inequality of its division, an inequality that becomes monstrous in a century of finance.

But what! you will say, must one make a new division of land, and limit each citizen to the same number of arpents? No, indubitably; that project would be chimerical. Perfect equality can only be maintained in a republic such as Sparta; and I agree that in a monarchy men are not Spartans. What must be done, you will ask? Every citizen must be able to live from his work; and I say that wherever there are beggars the government is vicious.

I am very well aware that it is supposed that everyone can live from his work: because the rich man, who does nothing, says to the unhappy person without bread, “Go and work.” Thus luxury which multiplies beggars hardens hearts, and there are no more resources for the needy. But let us see if every citizen can find work.

It is observed with reason that the luxury of the large towns gives a livelihood to many artisans, and consequently people say that luxury is a good thing. But how many men who would have been useful in the countryside flock to the capital to beg there, seduced by the profits that some make in a capital? Even some men of parts are reduced to wretchedness, because it is impossible for them to work in competition with those who set up before them, and who are in fashion. Is it not known that rich people, without knowing why, follow each other to the same shops, and that a skilful or lucky craftsman practises his own trade almost exclusively? Are you unaware that in matters of luxury the name of the workman is not unimportant?

Luxury creeps up imperceptibly on all conditions; and if a person is not rich he wants to appear so. Then he economises on necessities to be able to buy luxuries. So one takes away the work of the most useful artisans, and in consequence one takes away their bread. Besides, if in a time when wealth is spread too unequally, a small number of wealthy men cause costly manufactures to flourish, how few citizens are then rich enough to join in sustaining the commoner manufactures? If luxury gives some artisans a livelihood, it correspondingly reduces a greater number of them to beggary. There you have the results it produces in towns, especially in the capital. Let us move to the countryside.

The provinces have to pay at the capital the revenues of the landowners who live there and the Prince’s revenues; a huge debt which grows every day with taxation. It is true that, through the vast consumption made there, the capital gives back to the provinces the money it has received from them; and it makes agriculture flourish there, in proportion as it draws products from them in ever greater amounts. But it cannot draw equally from each, and so agriculture cannot flourish equally in all.

Abundance is found in the countryside surrounding the capital, and there the most recalcitrant soil is made fertile. Abundance is also found in the most remote provinces when they have easy communications with the capital. But when they lack outlets, you can judge the poverty by the wan complexion of the inhabitants, by the villages falling into ruin, and by the fallow fields. They produce little, because the wealthiest consumers, to whom the lands belong, live in the capital where they consume the products of other provinces. They produce little, because these consumers prefer to the genuine wealth of a cultivated soil intrigue which opens the path to fortune for some, paper documents with which they have more income and greater ease in wasting it, in short luxury which ruins all. Not only do they fail to make the necessary advances to obtain more abundant crops for themselves, they also place the farmers in a situation where they cannot make them. They cause them expense: they take some of their animals away from them; in a word they seem to take from them every means of cultivation. However, the farmers, more numerous than the farms, are reduced by competition to inadequate rewards. As they are reduced to hand-to-mouth subsistence, they deny themselves what is necessary in order to pay a master who, in the bosom of softness, has as his maxim that peasants must not be in easy circumstances, and who does not perceive that the wealth of the ploughman would enrich himself. So it is only too true that the luxury of a great capital is a source of wretchedness and devastation.

17

Blows Directed Against Commerce: The Rivalry of Nations

In order to judge what must happen to several rival nations who are each attempting to trade exclusively, I am moving the people we have observed into Asia Minor. I give it Mysia, Lydia, Bythinia and other provinces, and I make a kingdom with Troy as its capital.*

But since I only want to observe the results of the envy of nations, I assume, to remove every other cause, that this people no longer has in its customs or its government any of the vices with which I have reproached it. It will be at this moment an agricultural nation. It is fostering the skills that bear on agriculture: it is beginning to develop others: it is putting more refinement into the conveniences of life. But its habits are still simple, as is its government. It is unacquainted with tolls, customs, taxes, guilds, corporations or any kind of privilege, nor does it know what we call grain police. Each citizen is free to choose for his subsistence the type of work that suits him, and the government only demands a contribution which is adjusted to the needs of the state, and which the nation pays willingly. Such are the new Trojans. But you must allow me still more assumptions.

I assume, then, that in the centuries when they lived, centuries before all tradition, Asia, Egypt, Greece and Italy, as well as the islands scattered in the seas which separate these continents, were so many civilised countries whose peoples were beginning to have some trade with each other; while all the rest of Europe was still in barbarism.

Finally, my last assumption will be that the arts had not yet made as much progress anywhere as among the Trojans. Everywhere else they seemed in their infancy. Yet luxury was still unknown even at Troy.

The population must be large in all the countries I have just assumed. Many reasons contribute to it: the simplicity of manners, subsistence assured in work of one’s choice, and agriculture which makes all the more progress as it is prized more.

However, all the lands we have covered with civilised nations are not equally fertile; and, in consequence, all do not produce the means of subsistence for a similar population in a comparable area. Greece, for example, is nowhere near as fertile as Egypt; and many maritime coasts would be sparsely inhabited if they were confined to the produce of their soil alone.

But in places where agriculture cannot feed a large population, industry makes up for it, and trade enables a large populace to live there on the surplus of the agricultural nations. This people, to whom the soil seems to deny the essentials, becomes the carrier of the others. It deals with everyone’s surplus; it brings back the means of subsistence to its own soil, and because it has acquired a habit of the thrift with which it was forced to begin, it ends up enriching itself. There you see what must happen to the nations that live on unproductive soil along the sea coast. Trading nations from their location, they are the first to carry out commission trade or trafficking.

Then all the ports were open to traders. All the peoples gave import and export complete freedom. The surplus was constantly poured from one to the other. Through the competition of every possible merchant, each good was at its true price; and the plenty which spread among all the nations seemed, through a kind of ebb and flow, to tend to set itself everywhere at the same level.

This trade was particularly profitable to the Trojans. The progress they had made in the arts drew to them all the merchants of every nation. They worked up both the raw materials of their soil and those which they drew from abroad; and their manufactures, which flourished more every day, gave subsistence to a host of artisans.

Happy in this position, the peoples did not know how to sustain it. Why, they said, send the Trojans those prime materials we can work up ourselves? Is it reasonable to carry our money and our products abroad to give subsistence to artisans there, who, by consuming in our midst, would increase our population and our wealth? So all the peoples considered ways in which each could establish the same manufactures among themselves.

But the trading nations particularly aroused envy. These nations, poor in their soil, were becoming rich and populous and seemed to owe their wealth and population to the blindness of others. Why should we leave them to carry out all the trade virtually alone, the envious peoples were saying? Shall we still suffer them for long to make profits out of us which we could make ourselves? It is we who make them subsist, it is we who make them wealthy. Let us close our ports to them, they will fall into wretchedness and soon they will no longer exist.

These reflections are not as well-based as they appear. The Author of nature, in Whose eyes all the peoples, despite the prejudices that divide them, are as one republic, or rather as just one family, has established needs amongst them. These needs are a consequence of the difference in climate which causes one people to lack things of which another has a surplus, and which gives each of them different types of industry. A curse on the people that would like to do without all the others. It would be as absurd as a citizen who, regretting the profits made from him in society, wished to provide by himself for all his needs. If a people did without the trading nations, if it destroyed them, it would be less rich itself through its actions, since it would reduce the number of consumers to whom it sold its surplus products.

Besides, the traders do not really belong to any country. They form a nation which is spread everywhere and which has its separate interests. A people is therefore mistaken if it thinks it is working for itself when it sacrifices all to its merchants. By excluding those of other nations, it sells its goods at a lower price, and it buys foreign goods at a higher one; its manufactures collapse, its agriculture deteriorates, and it makes fresh losses every day. It is only the competition of all the merchants that can make trade flourish to the benefit of each people. Do and let do [faire & laisser faire], there then is what should be the aim of all the nations. Trade that is always open and always free, alone can contribute to the happiness of all together and of each individually.

But that is not how people reasoned. A state, they said, is only rich and powerful in proportion to the money that circulates; and money only circulates in greater quantity in so far as one carries on a more extensive trade. Every nation that understands its real interests must therefore think of ways to become the sole trading nation.

This reasoning appears clear-cut and people act upon it. So there you have the peoples working to make each other poorer: because in wanting to take trade away from each other, each of them trades less. Let us see the effects of this policy.

The Trojans who had ports on the Aegean Sea, on the Propontis and on the Black Sea were still masters of all the islands adjacent to their continent. In this position, where they could carry on an extensive trade alongside the other peoples, they wished to engage in it exclusively. So they set up customs posts everywhere: they subjected foreign merchants who exported or imported to taxation; finally they closed the ports completely to them.

The people applauded the government’s wisdom. It thought it was going to carry on all the trade by itself; and it handled no more than before, because it could not leave its manufactures and its fields to board ship.

Trade shrank considerably when it was no longer carried out through the intervention of the trading nations. This complete change brought with it the failure of many manufactures; and agriculture was damaged because there were fewer products, once the inability to export had made any surplus useless.

However, the government did not suspect the error it had made. On the contrary it believed that trade was bringing more wealth than ever into the state: it judged thus from the fortunes of some Trojan merchants.

But these traders were making themselves rich at the expense of the state: as they had no rivals when they bought and sold, they alone set the price of things. Every day they cut back the income of the artisan and the ploughman and sold dearly whatever they brought from abroad.

In their mutual rivalry, the peoples could not restrict themselves to closing their ports and denying each other trade in the hope of conducting it exclusively. They yet had to arm, and they armed. In wars that were disastrous for all, they congratulated themselves in turn on the blows they thought they were inflicting, and which only bore on trade to ruin it equally everywhere. Large armies by land, and large fleets at sea, made it necessary to snatch one section of the citizens forcibly from the plough and from manufactures, and to burden the other with taxes. These acts of violence were renewed with each war, always with new abuses because peace, which only came through exhaustion, never lasted long enough to allow the warring powers to make good their losses.

Trade, which had fallen during the war, did not pick up easily in peacetime. People did not dare to engage in enterprises demanding large advances, and whose prospects could evaporate in the first hostilities. None the less the government invited the people and even the nobility to carry out trade. It offered its protection to the dealers, and it seemed only concerned to make the trade flourish that it had wrecked and that it was to ruin further.

When one has power one believes that everything is possible. One does not mistrust one’s intellect at all, and because one has given orders, one does not imagine one could find obstacles. There lies the reason why an error which has been made in public administration is made again and is made for a long time. It becomes a maxim of state and prejudices rule. The Trojans persisted in closing their ports to trading nations, they persisted in making war on them, and yet they were searching for what could be the cause of the decay of their trade.

They thought they had found it, when having meditated that enterprises needed even larger advances as they were exposed to greater risks, they imagined that trade could only continue to be carried on by companies which brought together the capital of several rich merchants. So they only had to allow as many to be formed as was judged fitting. But a company presented itself. It made the state see great advantages in the types of trade it projected. It exaggerated the advances it would have to make. It represented that after having made the outlay it would not be fair that it should be deprived of profit due to its hard work; and it demanded an exclusive privilege. It was given it.

This privilege was a blow directed at freedom since it gave one single company a right which belonged to all the citizens. The traders protested, but in vain. The new company gave the money, and the privilege was confirmed.

As soon as the government realised that these privileges could be sold, it sold more. As this abuse passed into custom it became the rule; and soon people regarded exclusive privileges as a protection granted to trade.

However, to sell exclusive privileges to craftsmen and traders was to exile those to whom none were sold. Many left the kingdom and bore away manufactures with them. It is true that the government forbade them to leave the state under severe penalties. But when they had passed over to a foreign land, it was no longer possible to punish them, and yet one could not prevent them from crossing there. This prohibition made them desert in greater numbers.

When manufactures in a kingdom enjoy complete freedom they multiply in relation to need. It is not the same when they belong to an exclusive company. As the interest of this company is much less to sell a great deal than to sell dearly, it thinks to make the largest profit with the least trading. Besides, it finds an advantage in reducing the number of manufactures, namely that the workers, remaining in larger numbers than it can employ, are reduced, if they do not want to beg, to working for almost nothing.

It was not only that labour cost these exclusive companies little. They also wanted to make a new profit on raw materials. They represented to the government how much the export of raw materials abroad was contrary to the interests of trade, and their sale overseas was forbidden. They therefore bought them at rock-bottom prices and as a result agriculture was more neglected every day.

While customs duties, taxes and exclusive privileges troubled trade and agriculture, luxury grew with wretchedness: the state, which no longer subsisted except through expedients, was continually contracting new debts: and financial speculation raised itself in the midst of the debris of public wealth.

There you have the condition in which the Trojan monarchy found itself. Such a condition was near enough that of all the monarchies which had armed to take from each other certain branches of trade. One would not have guessed from the means that they used that they wanted to become richer.

When the government is for ever borrowing, the interest on money is necessarily very high: it is especially so at a time when luxury, which sets no limits to needs, compels the richest to borrow.

If it is the citizens who lend to the state, capital leaves trade to let a host of rentiers subsist without work, men who are useless, whose number grows continually.

If it is foreigners, the capital not only leaves trade, it also leaves the state which ruins itself by degrees.

Then the traders who are finding it difficult to borrow, or who only find money at high interest rates, are powerless to form great enterprises. How should they form them? Their businesses are almost always tied up with that of the government to which the exclusive companies have lent their credit; and in consequence mistrust of government banishes all confidence from trade. It is therefore very difficult for trade to flourish in such monarchies.

One did not see such drawbacks among the trading republics. On the contrary, great confidence reigned there because traders enjoyed complete freedom there and the government, without luxury and debt, assured their fortunes. They had a great advantage in trade over the traders of the monarchies because they could borrow at low interest rates, and having some saving, they thought less of making huge profits every time than to make small ones often. All the capital thus stayed in trade and made it flourish.

But of all the peoples, the wisest or the happiest were the agrarian republics. With little concern to carry out the trade themselves, they had not thought to close their ports to foreign merchants who came to carry away their surplus produce, and they lived in plenty.

This was the state of affairs, when new branches of trade changed everything.

The Phoenicians [the Dutch: Daire, Mélanges], a republican trading people, found to the east of Europe a country peopled by a host of cities, which seemed to them all the more barbaric, as possessed of plenty of gold and silver, they attached no value to them. This discovery, which gave them the means to carry out a much greater trade, soon gave them preponderance over all the trading nations.

In the Trojan monarchy, where exclusive companies had got hold of all the known trade, they had even greater need to make discoveries. It was the sole expedient for merchants who had bought no privileges at all. So as they were reduced to looking for some new branch of trade in unknown lands, they penetrated into the Caspian Sea; and from there by the Oxus, they went upstream to India. It was a vast, fertile country where the arts were cultivated, and where labour was all the cheaper, as a large population lived there in plenty with few needs.

This discovery introduced a new form of luxury into the monarchy. People admired the beauty of the fabrics made in India, and novelty giving them a value which grew in some way by reason of the remoteness of the country, the merchants who were the first to open up this trade earned from 150 to 200 per cent.

So this trade appeared very lucrative: indeed it was for the merchants. It would have been for the state itself, if people had gained 150 per cent on the goods they carried to India; because, on this assumption, it would have made the manufactures of the kingdom flourish. But the Indians had no need of articles which were made in the West; and gold and silver were almost the only goods which one could give them in exchange for theirs. So it was on the return journey that the merchants made a profit of 150 per cent; and consequently they made it at the state’s expense.

People were not used to making such distinctions. The merchants were making their fortunes by carrying on a trade that was burdensome for the state, and people said, the state is becoming wealthy.

Once this trade seemed to be conducted with so many advantages by some individual merchants, it was not hard to prove to the government that it would be conducted with still more benefit by an exclusive company. It was even proved to the government that the individuals who were carrying on the trade could not conduct it; and although it was convinced of their impotence, so that it followed that it was pointless to forbid them the trade, the government prohibited them, and gave an exclusive privilege for fifteen years to a company.

So there you have many merchants excluded from a trade which they had discovered at their own risk and with their own capital, and yet the company did not carry it on. Companies are slow in their operations: they lose a lot of time in debating and they incur many expenses before starting. The latter did not start at all: it simply prevented the trade being carried on by others.

A second company was formed, a third, several in succession, and the government which was making a habit of forming them still believed that it was to its advantage to form more. It was so convinced of this that it fin-ally formed one to which it gave the greatest help, down to advancing it the capital it needed.

The last named, despite some intermittent success, had soon used up the greater part of its capital. It could see the moment when it was going to lose its credit; and because it was important for it to conceal its losses, it had the idea of making a distribution to its shareholders as if the trade had produced a profit. But this fraudulent shift, which patched up its credit for a while, made an even greater hole in its coffers. Soon it was reduced to borrowing at high interest rates, and it only kept going through the help it received from the government.

But why is the selfsame trade at the same time lucrative and ruinous? It is lucrative when individuals carry it on, because it is then run economically. It is enough for merchants to be in touch with the merchants of the countries where they trade. At the most they will have factors wherever they need to have depots; and they avoid all useless expenditure because they see to everything by themselves.

It is not the same for companies. In the capital they need administrators, directors, clerks, employees: they need other administrators, other directors, other clerks, other employees wherever they form establishments. They also need, in addition to the counters and the warehouses, buildings as a monument to the vanity of the directors they employ. Forced to such outlays, how much will they not lose in embezzlement, in negligence, in incompetence? They pay for all the errors of those they employ to serve them; and all the more arise, as the administrators who succeed each other at the whim of faction, and who each see differently, never allow a sensible, sustained plan to be made. They form badly contrived enterprises: they carry them out as though randomly; and in an administration that seems to tie itself up in knots, they employ self-interested men to complicate it further. The direction of these companies is thus necessarily vicious.

But the India Company had further vices beyond that of its constitution. It wanted to be warlike and conquering. It interfered in the quarrels of the Indian princes: it had soldiers, forts: it acquired possessions; and its employees thought themselves sovereigns. It is thus easy to understand how its direction absorbed more than the products of trade.

However, this company persisted in wanting to keep its privileges; and it based its case on the assertion that this trade was impossible for individual traders. But it spoke for the interests of its employees who alone were amassing wealth. Indeed, its experience proved that it could no longer carry on this trade itself. So what risk was there in freeing the trade? The worst is that everyone would have abandoned it. But they would have carried it on, since they had done it before. [1798 addition: If it is possible to conduct the trade profitably individuals will carry it on, otherwise it will not be carried on.]

The Indian trade excited the greed of the trading nations. The Red Sea opened it to the Phoenicians. They were not slow to engage in it, and they carried to India the gold which they drew from the west of Europe. But it seemed that exclusive companies were to set up everywhere. One was formed to which the Phoenicians abandoned this trade.

This company had in their republic, as in a monarchy, the vices inherent in its constitution. However, it maintained itself better than that of the Trojans, because it found itself in more favourable circumstances.

The Phoenicians had conquered several islands, the only ones where spices grew; and they had believed they would keep to themselves the exclusive sale of these products, by giving these islands to a company that was concerned to close them to every foreign merchant. It was these products which supported their company. It would have been ruined, like all the others, if, without unique possessions, it had been confined to the Indian trade. Enlightened Phoenicians were not unaware of this. They did not count at all on the lasting nature of a company that was at one and the same time warlike and trading, and they judged with reason that it would have been more advantageous for their republic to leave complete freedom to trade, and to share even that of spices with foreign nations.

However, the example of an exclusive company among the Phoenicians was a great argument in Troy for protecting the India Company. How, people said, can this company be contrary to freedom and trade since similar ones are being established among free, mercantile peoples? But if those who made this objection foresaw the reply, they were in bad faith; and if they did not foresee it, they were very ill-informed. Nevertheless, similar reasoning blinded the government to the extent that it did not tire of making fresh efforts constantly to support this company.

The Egyptians [the English: Daire, Mélanges], situated so advantageously for trading from East to West, found it hard to see without envy the riches that the trade was bringing to the Phoenicians. So they tried to share them, and they opened up the same routes for themselves. Bit by bit the other peoples of Asia, copying each other, devoted themselves to the trade, and all arrived in India by different routes. The latecomers counted on the same profits as the first had made. They did not foresee that the competition of so many trading nations would make everything more expensive in Indian markets; and that the goods that were bought there at a higher price would resell at a lower one, because they were becoming commoner. On the contrary, with the great movement that was growing in the trade, people were convinced every day of the maxim that a state is only powerful in so far as it is rich, and that it is only rich in so far as it trades.

It is not that I blame the trading. I think one should allow a people to do whatever it thinks right. The government has nothing to prescribe in this respect. It certainly must not encourage trading exclusively, nor even agriculture. All its protection is limited to watching what is happening, to allowing it to be done, to lifting obstacles and maintaining order. So the country districts should not be trampled on, they will be repopulated with a surplus which will flow again into the towns to fill them with craftsmen, and into the ports to fill them with sailors. Then all will be brought to worth by an effort which will be applied to everything, and the nation will be truly powerful.

But, in order not to trample on the country districts, must one remove all the taxes? Doubtless not. Because it is the lands which must pay the taxes, since they alone are able to pay. As we have noted, whatever tax we place on them, the artisans and the merchants never pay, because if they work they are reimbursed and if they do not work they beg. In a word, whatever way one sets about to make them contribute, it is always the landowners who pay for the wage-earners, since it is the owners who pay the wages: we have already said so. One must therefore place taxes on the lands: one must give industry complete freedom, and one must not allow any of the abuses to arise which we have seen in governments.

All these abuses were to a greater or lesser extent introduced among the nations of Asia; and when they removed all freedom from trade, and with the repercussion ruined agriculture, they wanted to become trading nations and each wanted to be so exclusively. From that came frequent wars in India, in Asia, and continued upheavals in trade. It fell in turn everywhere, and it only picked up feebly among the nations which had had more success. All contracted debts, all multiplied taxes; and to support trade they all seemed to compete in ruining agriculture, without which, however, there was no trade at all. Disorder was the same everywhere, or near enough.

At last people realised that land is the greatest source of wealth; and it was proposed among the Trojans to encourage agriculture by allowing export and import of corn at the same time. Our soil, they said, is naturally fertile, and, if well cultivated, it will be an inexhaustible resource for us. Competition between the nations will set corn at its true price. Assured of the sale of their grains, cultivators will clear all the lands; and each year we shall have a greater stock for trade.

In Egypt, export alone was allowed: frequently the government even encouraged it by bounties. Wealthy through their soil, the Egyptians were so also through their trade, and they then dominated on the seas. Following this example, many people among the Trojans wanted export at least to be allowed: others opposed it, and the public, who did not know what to think, was fearful, whether it was allowed, or whether it was forbidden.

Among the lines of argument sustained on this matter, the best did not convince, and the worst had the advantage of being numerous. The government which, like the public, did not know what to think, obeyed the cry which appeared the strongest, allowing and forbidding export in turn; and because for lack of principles it conducted itself timidly, it usually only granted a freedom that it circumscribed, and which for that reason it left open to the greatest abuses. In a word, one would have said, by its behaviour, that it wanted to cause dearth to favour the monopolists.

In the meantime it was learnt that the Egyptians had just forbidden export; and this news seemed to make those who laid the blame on it in Troy win the argument.

We have proved that it is in the interest of all the nations to grant freedom to import and export: we note here that this freedom must procure the greatest advantages, or at least procure them more promptly, when it comes together with all the causes which can contribute to the progress of agriculture.

Although there were abuses in Egypt, old customs still caused agriculture to be respected. They had as a maxim that taxes should never be set except on the net product of the land, and this product was assessed in the way that was most favourable to the cultivator. A farmer knew what he ought to pay. Confident that he would never be asked for more, he lived in comfort. He was left all the advances he needed to cultivate the fields and to improve them; and the tax could never, on whatever excuse, be levied on these advances. He even had an opportunity to make himself wealthy, which contributed to the progress of agriculture. The fact is that leases lasted for twenty, twenty-five or thirty years. So, during the first four or five years of a lease, rich farmers could direct all their profits into plantations, into clearance of land, into increasing their livestock. They could even use some of their property for this purpose, and they often did so, because they were guaranteed being able to withdraw with profit the advances they had made, in fifteen or twenty years’ time. In a word, through the length of their leases, they were able to cultivate a farm with the same self-interest as if it had been their own; and the proprietors themselves found a great advantage in it, because at each renewal of the lease they considerably increased their revenues.

There you have the causes which came together with the freedom to export in Egypt, and you can imagine that great advantages must have resulted from them.

In Troy, for quite some time, a large number of abuses contributed to the deterioration of agriculture. Leases were for nine years: the law did not allow longer ones to be fixed; and even if it had allowed it, agriculture would have drawn few advantages. What could one expect from the farmers? In general they only earned enough to subsist wretchedly. Little assured of their advances, they were often reduced to selling their animals, or even down to their ploughs, in order to pay their taxes. Poor as they were, they pretended to appear even poorer; because the taxes, which were arbitrary and fell on the individual, grew the moment a ploughman allowed any comfortable living to show. In this state of affairs, the fields fell fallow: people only cultivated in so far as they were forced by necessity; and the majority of farms were far from productive. One may judge from this exposition that, in the Trojan monarchy, time was needed to obtain for themselves all the advantages one must expect from the freedom of trade in corn.

You will no doubt ask why the Egyptians had forbidden export after encouraging it: the fact is that they had not allowed import. There was dearness following a bad harvest and foreigners brought no corn, or did not bring enough. In these circumstances, the government thought it should take the useless precaution of forbidding export, which was not happening and which could not happen.

The Trojans ought to have given the corn trade complete freedom, and they ought also to have made all the causes which can contribute to the progress of agriculture come together. But when a state falls into decay, people think neither about agriculture, nor of the causes which bring damage to it, nor of the ways to set it right. The sole maxim held is that one must make money; and when one has made it, one thinks one has more power, because one can raise larger armies. But in supposing that large armies create power, one must know how the monarch has the money, to judge if his power is well founded.

Is it the cultivators who give the money; and after having given it, do they live in ease? I can conceive that the sovereign is rich; and if he puts his wealth to use he will be powerful. But does he only have money because he has borrowed it? Then he has none. He only has debts. In order to pay them, he will ruin his people; and before he has paid them, he will already have contracted new ones.

Nevertheless, that is the position in which the chief powers of Asia found themselves. Everywhere one spoke of making money enter the state: one spoke of preventing it from leaving: in a word, one only spoke of the need to have it; and governments, which only conducted themselves by the principles of finance, could not think of ways to make agriculture flourish.

With this financial policy, monarchs believed themselves powerful, or prided themselves on becoming so. But the distant centuries in which I make them live must forgive them this error. They did not foresee how easily the richest empires, especially those of Asia, would be overthrown; and they could believe that some day there would be financial conquerors. They deceived themselves.

18

Blows Directed Against Commerce: How Traders’ Speculations Have as Their Outcome the Ruin of Trade

When trade enjoys complete freedom, it is possible to have a large number of competitors; and then the undertakings are exposed to greater or lesser risk, in proportion as they are more or less large scale. Let us see what the trader’s speculations can be in such circumstances. What matters for them is to ensure the greatest possible profit.

A farmer who takes land on a lease estimates its return on the basis of the crops in normal years, and according to the current price of foodstuffs in the markets.

There you have his first speculation. It is founded on a supposition that is more or less probable: but the outcome is uncertain. He will make a profit if he gathers as much produce as he has expected, and if he realises the price on which he has counted. In the opposite case, he will make losses. He will have few products to sell should hail take away some of his harvest; and yet he will be obliged to part with them at a low price if his neighbours have produced plentiful crops.

Such is the danger to which he is exposed when he acts according to the commonest speculation.

If he thinks of a new form of cultivation and is the first to try it out, his speculations will be all the more uncertain. Because they will only have as a basis analogies which he cannot yet judge, and where experience alone can assure success.

Finally, should he see products which are at a higher price, because they are at one and the same time scarcer and more sought after, and he grows them in preference, his enterprise will be all the riskier. Either his soil will not be right for them, or they will cease to be so eagerly sought after, or they will become plentiful because other growers will have made the same speculation.

For the soundness of his undertakings he needs to have made sure of the nature of his soil, to have always grasped exactly the changing tastes of the crowd, and to have taken into consideration the endeavours of the other cultivators.

As they are unable to calculate all these things, the farmers always expose themselves to risk. They win, they lose; but they all contribute to the progress of agriculture, some by their mistakes, the others by their success; and finally in each region, a way of farming is established, which could often be improved in many respects, but whose excellence seems in general confirmed by experience. Then the cultivator conforms to custom and speculates less each day.

The craftsman also makes speculations. These bear on the current price of raw materials, on the wage that custom allots him, on the public’s taste for certain works, and on the number of those who work alongside him in the same way.

The commonest artefacts which everyone uses are those where there are the fewest risks to incur. The price of the raw material varies little as it is always in good supply. The wage due to the worker is better known since these kinds of articles are always traded: they are there in large quantity, and it is a daily need that makes them sought after, not a passing fad. Finally, the number of craftsmen adjusts itself naturally to the needs of society, and consequently their competition, which is always much the same, puts little variation in their wages.

The profits in this type of work are thus better guaranteed: they renew themselves constantly. But they are insignificant. The worker whom they enable to live from day to day can only make small economies; and again he often makes them on his necessities, and could not change his condition without great difficulty.

These types of craftsmen have few speculations to make: for them to subsist it is enough for them to act as people did before them. But those who study the tastes of the rich, those who want to create new tastes, the craftsmen of luxury goods, in a word, if they can hope to earn greater profits, they also have more matters to take into account.

The raw materials on which they work normally being scarcer, and so costlier, become more and more expensive, as their articles become more fashionable. So they must limit themselves to smaller profits: too high a price could put off those who commission them.

Fashion, fickle by its nature, guarantees them nothing; and yet it is on this basis that they build all their speculations. Huge profits, if they make them, even come to work against them, because they soon see a host of rivals whom the lure of gain beckons to work in the same fashion. Then it often happens that one is hard-pushed to live from a trade which has made those who first carried it on wealthy.

Moved at random, and victims of fashion’s whims, these craftsmen are often exposed to finding themselves resourceless. Those who have many competitors, because they came to it too late, have not been able to accumulate savings; and those who have worked in more favourable circumstances had not thought of making any. They did not foresee that there would come a time when their work earned them less.

As they do not have enough capital to wait for the moment to sell profitably, they have scarcely finished an article than they are sometimes reduced to selling it cheaply. Often they even find themselves unable to work because they cannot buy the raw materials.

Then a merchant who wants to extend his trade offers them his help. He agrees to guarantee them a wage provided they are happy to work for him exclusively. The craftsmen accept conditions that need dictates to them; and they come by degrees, one after another, to place themselves on the merchants’ payroll.

Much the same is the case with the farmers: to fulfil their undertakings they need to have sold their products within fixed quarters. Besides, they are not normally rich enough to build storehouses where they might keep them, while they wait for the moment to sell them advantageously. So they believe themselves only too happy to be able to hand over to the merchants those products for which they cannot find a sale in the markets; and yet these merchants only buy them when they are at a low price, and they can count on selling them on at a profit.

Thus everything seems to favour the merchants who form great undertakings. Masters of all the tradable goods, they seem to have all the wealth of the state in their hands to make themselves rich from the toil of the ploughmen and the skill of the craftsmen. There you have a vast field of speculation for them.

You can see that these speculations bear on the need of the craftsman to be paid his wage, and the cultivator’s need to sell his products, and the need the public will have for the works of the craftsman and the products of the grower.

It is in the merchant’s interest to buy at the lowest price and to sell at the highest. So it matters to him that there should be a large number of artisans of every description, so that by their competition they bring themselves down to lower wages. For the same reason it also matters to him that many cultivators should be in a hurry to sell. Finally, it is important to him to have few competitors in the undertakings in which he is engaged.

You may conceive that with an exclusive privilege, he will easily obtain all these advantages; and that in contrast he will often be frustrated in them if trade enjoys complete freedom. Then speculations will be all the harder for him, as the success of his undertakings will depend on a host of circumstances that one cannot feed into a calculation, or that it is impossible to foresee.

However advantageously he has dealt with the craftsmen and the growers, he can be mistaken in his expectations. Because if it is with foodstuffs of prime need that he has filled his storehouses, an abundant crop which causes their price to fall will rob him of all his anticipated profit. It may even be that their sale will not reimburse him the costs of purchase and carriage.

Besides, there is absolutely no way to be sure of the consumption of them that must be made in the places where he counts on selling. A thousand accidents may reduce consumption as they may increase it; and when he knows what to rely on in this respect, how is he to know the proportion between the goods he is buying and the consumption to be made of them? Is he to know the quantity with which his rivals are furnished? So it could happen, against his expectation, that he had bought too much, and that he found himself reduced to having to sell at a loss. There are absolutely no speculations which could guide him with certainty in this respect. So he will be forced to conduct himself in these enterprises as though groping, following experience.

Such are the dangers to which he is exposed when he trades in goods of primary need; and yet those are the ones whose sale is most certain.

Second-order goods, of which we create so many needs, are not all equally necessary. Their use may be recent, and sometimes they are passing tastes which give way to others. So there is often a moment to grasp. If they are too ordinary, people will get tired of them; and if they are too scarce, the high price will limit the number of consumers. So by what calculations would it be possible to ensure for oneself the promised profits in this type of trade?

These difficulties which are found especially in the great commercial undertakings should trouble the government little. For it is not through a small number of entrepreneurs, who make themselves exclusively wealthy, that trade must be carried on. Rather, it is important that it is carried on by a great number who are content to live comfortably, and who enable a large number of craftsmen and cultivators to live in the same comfort.

Now when trade enjoys complete freedom, it is naturally conducted by a large number of entrepreneurs who share between them all the branches of trade and all the profits. Then it is difficult and almost impossible for a merchant to obtain wealth that is markedly disproportionate to that of his rivals. He would have to engage in undertakings where his speculations would be accompanied by too many uncertainties: he would not dare to venture it.

There you have the chief advantage of freedom of trade. It multiplies traders: it makes competition as considerable as possible: it shares out wealth with less inequality, and it brings every good down to its true price.

But if it matters to the state that there should be a large number of entrepreneurs, it matters to the entrepreneurs to be few in number. All difficulties are smoothed in the path of an exclusive company, because its undertakings, whatever they may be, call for few speculations. Since it alone has the right to buy from the producer and to sell on, it sets the wage of the craftsman and that of the cultivator at will; and because with the smallest trade it is assured of the greatest profit, it will burn some of the goods it has in the warehouses, if it fears that by making them plentiful it will lower their price.

Such then is the secret motive which causes exclusive privileges to be solicited; it is that people want large, guaranteed profits: still larger ones are always desired, and people always want them with fewer risks. So it is that the speculations of merchants always have as their final point the ruin of trade itself.

This motive is found again in finance whose speculations, as straight-forward as they are easy, seem to leave nothing to chance, and ruin trade in its essence, because they ruin agriculture. If it undertakes to raise taxes, it acts so that for each million it pours into the king’s coffers it levies two. If the state asks it for money, it lends it at 10 per cent and borrows at 5. If it acts as the king’s banker, its profit is all the more assured as it makes itself mistress of all the government’s operations. All depends on it, because one can do nothing without money, and it is it alone that can find money wherever it is needed.

Just reflect on the companies of merchants and financiers and you will recognise that they must imperceptibly draw to themselves all the money in circulation. If they pour it out constantly, it never ceases to return to them. On each occasion they take a new part of it. People owe them money, people owe even more: their credits mount up, and finally it happens that the state has contracted debts with them that it cannot pay. There you have, at bottom, what the speculations of high finance come to, and there you have too what they must produce.

Political speculations would present great difficulties if one had to study every component part of government, and direct them to the general good. But in a century when it is believed that all can be done with money, they become easy, because they are only concerned with the transitory devices which prepare the state’s ruin: that is what we have shown. The ruin of everything. There then, you have the final outcome of the speculations of trade, high finance and politics in centuries where abuses have multiplied.

19

Conclusion of the First Two Parts

We have seen how wealth spreads everywhere when trade enjoys full and permanent freedom. It pours continuously from one province into another. Agriculture is flourishing: people cultivate the arts even in the hamlets: each citizen finds a comfortable existence in work of his choice: all is brought to value; and one does not catch a glimpse of those fortunes out of all proportion which bring luxury and wretchedness.

Everything changes in step with different causes which bring blows to freedom of trade. We have run through these causes, which are wars, tolls, customs, guilds, exclusive privileges, taxes on consumption, variations in coinage, exploitation of mines, every kind of government borrowing, the grain police, the luxury of a great capital, the rivalry of nations, finally the spirit of finance which enters every part of the administration. [1798 addition: Doubtless there are still more causes.]

Then disorder is at its height. Wretchedness grows with luxury: the towns fill with beggars: the countryside loses population; and the state which has contracted huge debts appears to have no further expedients except those which bring about its ruin.

We have been able to see in the first part of this work that Economic Science, which is difficult because it is naturally complicated, becomes easy when it has been simplified, that is to say when one has reduced it to some elementary propositions which, being determined with precision, appear trivial truths. Then this science develops by itself. Propositions arise one from the other, as so many consequences or as propositions that are in turn identical; and the statement of the question shows its solution so visibly, that one finds it in some fashion, without the need to reason.

In the second part I have reduced the reasoning to a simple narration. There I show the advantages of an entire and permanent freedom: I make known the causes which may undermine it: I make their results known: I do not hide the faults of governments, and I confirm the principles which I have established in the first part.

However, I have only picked up the principal abuses. It was all the more pointless for me to dwell on others as there is a means to destroy them all, that is to give trade full, complete and permanent freedom. I believe I have proved that.

Above all I have wished to spread light on a science which seems unknown, at least in practice. If I have succeeded in that, it will only remain to know whether the nations are capable of conducting themselves according to the light. This doubt, if it came from a man who had more talents and greater fame, would perhaps open their eyes, but, as for me, I know well that I shall only make those who have eyes see.

Nations are like children. In general they only do what they see to do; and what they have done, they go on doing for a long time, sometimes for ever.

It is not reason that makes them change, it is whim or authority.

Whim corrects nothing: it substitutes abuse for abuse, and disorders come always in increasing number.

Authority could correct: but usually it alleviates rather than corrects. It is still remarkable for it to alleviate. It has its passions, its prejudices, its routine, and it seems that experience teaches it nothing. How many mistakes have been made! How many times have they been repeated! And they are still repeated!

However, Europe is becoming more enlightened. There is a government which sees abuses, which thinks of ways to correct them; and it would please the monarch to demonstrate the truth. So there you have the moment when every good citizen must seek out the truth. It would be enough to find it. We are no longer in a time when courage was needed to speak the truth, and we live in a reign where its discovery would not be lost.

THE END

The initial 1776 edition concludes:

End of the Second Part

The third part of this work has not been written. The author will work on it, if the first two parts create a demand.

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[1. ] Condillac’s birth date is established beyond question by his baptismal certificate, which says on 1 October 1714 that he was born on the previous day (see Jean B. Sgard, ed., Corpus Condillac [Geneva and Paris: Slatkine, 1981], 31). Yet many accounts of his life, such as that in Auguste Lebeau, Condillac: Économiste (Paris, 1903), erroneously give the year of his birth as 1715.

[2. ] The above account of Condillac’s family and early years is drawn from Sgard, Corpus Condillac, which also has a family tree and much more detailed information about his wider family.

[3. ] Count G. Baguenault de Puchesse, Condillac, sa vie, son oeuvre, son influence (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1910), 9,20.

[4. ] This is under the editorship of Jean Sgard and is referred to as Sgard, Corpus Condillac.

[5. ] Puchesse, Condillac, 15.

[6. ] L’abbé Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Oeuvres philosophiques de Condillac, ed. Georges Le Roy, vol. 33 of Corpus générale des philosophes françaises (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947–51), 2:533.

[7. ] L’abbé Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Lettres inédites à Gabriel Cramer, ed. Georges Le Roy (Paris, 1953), 35, 52, 59, 77.

[8. ] Laurence L. Bongie, “Diderot’s femme savante,” in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution, 1977), 166:149–63, and Puchesse, Condillac, 13.

[9. ] L’abbé Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Traité des sensations, in Oeuvres de Condillac (Paris, 1798), 3:52.

[10. ] Eighteenth-century taste valued poetry very highly, and Turgot wrote a lot of it, while it launched Marmontel on his career when he won a prize which brought him to Voltaire’s attention (Jean François Marmontel, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, Mémoires [Paris: Amable Costes, 1819], 87, 118)

[11. ] L’abbé Raynal, baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm, and Denis Diderot, Correspondance littéraire, ed. Maurice Tourneux (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877), 12:343.

[12. ] John Lough, “Lemonnier’s painting, Une soirée chez Mme Geoffrin en 1755,” French Studies 45, no. 3 (1991): 268–78.

[13. ] L’abbé Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Oeuvres de Condillac, vol. 1, l’Essai sur l’origine des connoissances humaines (Paris, 1798), 230.

[14. ] See Condillac, Lettres inédites, 54.

[15. ] Denis Diderot, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 15 (Paris: Le Club Française, 1973), 224.

[16. ] John S. Spink, “Un abbé philosophe: l’affaire de J.-M. de Prades,” Dix-huitième siècle 3 (1971): 157–59.

[17. ] See Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 63–64.

[18. ] H. Bédarida, Parme et la France de 1748 à 1789 (Paris: Champion, 1928), 89.

[19. ] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau, ses amis et ses ennemis, correspondance, ed. M. G. Streckeisen-Moultou (Paris, 1865), 237.

[20. ] Bédarida, Parme et la France, 257.

[21. ] Bédarida, Parme et la France, gives an exhaustive account of the French presence in Parma based on archival material.

[22. ] In Émile (234), Rousseau advocated that the tutor learn a new craft alongside his pupil, as the only sure way of seeing that the pupil learnt well. Condillac probably expected his correspondent to be aware of this.

[23. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 72.

[24. ] Bédarida, Parme et la France, 446, summarises the poem in French. The original Italian poem is in Carlo I. Frugoni, Opere poetiche, collected and published by P. Manara and C. C. Rezzonico (Parma, 1779), 7:339–46.

[25. ] Condillac, Oeuvres philosophiques, 2:545.

[26. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 151.

[27. ] Ibid., 148, 150.

[28. ] H. Bédarida, “Lettres inédites de Condillac,” Annales de l’université de Grenoble (1924): 233.

[29. ] Ibid., 236–37.

[30. ] See Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 152, for the Beccaria letter, and François Moureau, “Condillac et Mably: dix lettres inédites ou retrouvées,” Dix-huitièmesiècle 23 (1991): 199, for that to La Condamine.

[31. ] U. Benassi, “II precettore famoso d’un nostro Duca,” Bollettino Storico Piacentino 18, no. 1 (1923): 9.

[32. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 74.

[33. ] Benassi, “II precettore famoso,” 10.

[34. ] Puchesse, Condillac, 126.

[35. ] F. Piva, “Condillac a Venezia. Conalcune lettere inedite,” in Studi Francesi, no. 64, Anno 22 (1) (1978): 77.

[36. ] Ibid., 81–82.

[37. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 76.

[38. ]Mémoires secrets (London: Adamson, 1777–89), 3:194.

[39. ] Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), Correspondance, ed. Theodore Besterman (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, and University of Toronto Press, 1968), 70:127, letter 14319.

[40. ]Mémoires secrets, 4:177–80.

[41. ] Voltaire, Correspondance, 71:21.

[42. ] Puchesse, Condillac, 140–41.

[43. ] Ibid., 18.

[44. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 92.

[45. ] Claude-Adrien Helvétius, Correspondance générale (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation and University of Toronto Press, 1991), 3:264–65.

[46. ] Ibid., 304. Her death may have been the sad circumstance referred to in Condillac’s letter of 9 October 1768 to the Prince of Parma (Condillac, Oeuvres philosophiques, 2:549).

[47. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 154–55.

[48. ] The first chapter of Sgard, Corpus Condillac, “Réalites et légendes,” summarises many different and sometimes contradictory accounts of his personality given in mostly nineteenth-century works. Modern scholars have had as varied views as Roger Lefèvre, who entitled his book Condillac, ou la joie de vivre (Paris: Seghers, 1966), and Isabel Knight (The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment [New Haven, Conn., 1968], 6), who saw his life as austere.

[49. ] Mme du Deffand was the correspondent of Horace Walpole over many years.

[50. ] Julie de Lespinasse, Lettres inédites, introduction by M. Charles Henry (1887), 8.

[51. ] See Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 82–85, for some details of the management of the abbey.

[52. ] Bédarida, Parme et la France, 417.

[53. ] Ibid., 417 footnote.

[54. ] Ibid., 418.

[55. ] Turgot, as a friend and colleague of Malesherbes, preferred public opinion to judge works, provided they were not seditious or blasphemous; and as a man eager to extend toleration into religious matters, he was hesitant to use his influence to have work censored even when it was opposed to his policies. Thus he allowed Necker’s De la législation et du commerce des grains to pass the censors in 1775.

[56. ] Raynal, Grimm and Diderot, Correspondance littéraire, March 1775, 11:53ff.

[57. ] Belin gives the mss. no. of the Archives de la Chambre syndicate des libraires et imprimeurs de Paris 22016, 273.

[58. ] It forms volume 22 of the 1798 edition of Condillac’s Oeuvres. Count Potocki’s invitation and Condillac’s reply are printed on pp. 199–202. Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 101–2, gives an excerpt from the third letter. Condillac’s brother Mably thought highly of the work (see letters to Wielhorski, quoted in Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 121).

[59. ]Mémoires secrets, 16:10.

[60. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 101.

[61. ] The Sgard catalogue of his letters mentions fifty-eight, but it is clear both from their content and from what some of his correspondents wrote to him that he was a busy and quite chatty letter-writer.

[62. ] Rousseau wrote his own account of these events, the Histoire du précédent écrit (1782). It is printed with his Dialogues in Rousseau, Juge de Jean Jacques, texte présénté par Michel Foucault (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962), 321–22.

[63. ] This is referred to in Mémoires secrets (vol. 22, for 10 Jan. 1783). The abbé Reyrac is said to have taken the manuscript, while trembling, only on the assurance that it contained nothing against the state, morals or religion. He later handed it over to the family. This source contains the inaccuracy that the abbé de Condillac was Rousseau’s pupil. It was his nephew, M. de Mably’s son, also known as Condillac, whom Rousseau found an unsatisfactory pupil.

[64. ] Though Baguenault de Puchesse can speak of family tradition about his distinguished ancestor, it must be noted that he was writing over a century after Mme de Sainte-Foy’s death in 1807. On the abbé’s character the testimony of d’Autroche, speaking to an assemblage of intelligent men who will have had some acquaintance with Condillac, carries more weight.

[65. ] Puchesse, Condillac, 166.

[66. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 102, 106.

[67. ] Ibid., 107. Mably’s letter of 6 January 1780 to a cousin, printed in Puchesse, Condillac, 273–74, shows that the brothers kept in touch, though by that time Condillac’s visits to Paris where Mably lived were very brief. In a letter to a Polish count after Condillac’s death, he spoke of his sharp sorrow on the loss of his brother whom he loved tenderly (Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 121), and for Bonnot de Saint-Marcellin, see ibid., 22.

[68. ] Puchesse, Condillac, 23–24.

[69. ] Sgard, Corpus Condillac, 102–3.

[70. ] Puchesse, Condillac, v.

[71. ]Commerce and Government is abbreviated to CG hereafter; page references are to the edition presented in this volume.

[72. ] A. Murphy, Richard Cantillon: Entrepreneur and Economist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 251.

[73. ] Z. Kenessey, “Why Das Kapital Remained Un finished,” in Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, ed. William J. Barber, vol. 5, Themes in Pre-Classical, Classical and Marxian Economics (Aldershot, Hants.: Edward Elgar, 1991).

[74. ] Gustave Schelle, Turgot (Paris, 1909), 154.

[75. ] Steven Kaplan (Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976]) provides a detailed and authoritative account of French policy with regard to grain from the 1750s to the 1770s and the particular impact of the need to feed Paris. This has much influenced the account which follows.

[76. ] Perhaps the most succinct account of the physiocrat reform programme is to be found in Philosophic rurale, where, with Mirabeau, Quesnay shows in twenty-two pages how freeing food markets and substituting the taxation of rents for all other taxes could double the capital of France in nine years (Marquis de Mirabeau [Victor Riqueti] and François Quesnay, Philosophic rurale [Amsterdam, 1763; reprinted in 1972 by Scientia Verlag Aalen], 2:354–75). Their argument is explained in Walter Eltis, “The Grand Tableau of François Quesnay’s economies,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 3, no. 1 (1996): 21–43.

[77. ] Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 141–42.

[78. ] See G. Faccarello, “‘Nil Repente!’: Galiani and Necker on economic reforms,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 1, no. 3 (1994): 519–50, for an account of Galiani’s analysis.

[79. ] Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 550–52.

[80. ] Ibid., 552.

[81. ] Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 4:45.

[82. ] See Schelle, Turgot, ch. 13; Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 4:44–55; and E. Faure, La Disgrâce de Turgot, 12 mai 1776 (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), Part 2, chs. 3–4, for detailed accounts of the bread riots (“La guerre des farines”) of 1775.

[83. ] Kaplan, Bread, Politics, 509.

[84. ] See Schelle, Turgot, ch. 14; Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 5:1–12; and Faure, La Disgrâce de Turgot, Part 3, chs. 4–5, for accounts of the February– March decrees.

[85. ] See Schelle, Turgot, ch. 16; Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 5:12–20; and Faure, La Disgrâce de Turgot, Part 3, chs. 6–7, for accounts of Turgot’s fall.

[86. ] Schelle, Turgot, 251–52.

[87. ] Ibid., 252.

[88. ] See Faccarello, “‘Nil Repente!’,” for an account of the contemporary explanations of Galiani and Necker for the practical failure of Turgot’s reforms, and the general implications for price reform programmes—in eighteenth-century France and in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. See also Walter Eltis, “France’s free market reforms in 1774–5 and Russia’s in 1991–3: the immediate relevance of L Abbé de Condillac’s analysis,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 1, no. 1 (1993): 5–19.

[89. ] According to J. Hecht, “La vie de François Quesnay,” in François Quesnay et la physiocratie (Paris: Institut National d’Études Démographiques, 1958), 252, Condillac was a frequent visitor (habitué) to Quesnay’s entresol in the Palace of Versailles.

[90. ] Philippe Steiner (“L’économie politique du royaume agricole François Quesnay,” in Nouvelle histoire de la pensée économique, edited by Alain Béraud and Gilbert Faccarello [Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1992], 227–28) refers to similarities between the article “Évidence” which Quesnay contributed to the Encyclopédie in 1756 and the Traité des sensations and the Traité des animaux which Condillac published in 1754 and 1755, and suggests that Quesnay’s article is borrowed largely from Condillac. According to Louis Salleron (editorial notes in François Quesnay et la physiocratie, 397), Quesnay’s article is developed from fundamental ideas which he first presented in his Essai phisique sur l’oeconomie animale (1736; 2 nd ed., Paris, 1747), so the priority for some of the argument is Quesnay’s.

[91. ] G. Vaggi (The Economics of François Quesnay [London: Macmillan, 1987]) shows from a careful interpretation of detailed physiocratic sources (including especially Quesnay’s articles “Grains” and “Hommes”) that farmers gain profits wherever the current price of corn exceeds the fundamental price (prix fondamental) and that there is a general tendency for profits to arise from this source. Walter Eltis (“François Quesnay: a reinterpretation, 1: The Tableau économique,” Oxford Economic Papers 27 [1975]: 176–77) shows that the equilibrium incomes of large farmers necessarily include the equivalent of a normal profit on the large capital sums they have to invest in la grande culture. It none the less requires considerable textual exegesis to find profits in Quesnay. In most of his writings incomes consist only of the revenues of landowners and the earnings of those who work in the productive and sterile sectors.

[92. ] Turgot’s Réflexions. . . appeared in three successive issues of Éphémérides (1769, vols. 11 and 12, and 1770, vol. 1), and Du Pont made such extensive changes to his text that Turgot wrote on 2 February 1770, “I insist absolutely that you conform to my manuscript from now on. . . the passage on avances foncières has caused me particular heart-ache; you know how I argued on this subject with l’abbé Baudeau in your presence; I may be wrong, but we each wish to be ourselves and not someone else” (Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot, 3:374). It was none the less Du Font’s version of the Réflexions. . . and not one based on Turgot’s manuscript which he republished in 1808–11 in his nine-volume Oeuvres de M. Turgot. Peter D. Groenewegen (The Economics of A. R. J. Turgot [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977], xx), following Schelle’s account in Turgot (Oeuvres de Turgot, 3:373–84), suggests that “all these changes and additions were designed to give the Ré flections a greater Physiocratic flavour and to remove conflicts between Turgot’s economics and Physiocratic thought.” See also Robert L. Meek, Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 37–38.

[93. ] Quesnay’s detailed accounts of la petite culture and la grande culture are set out in the articles “Fermiers” and “Grains” which he published in the Encyclopédie in 1756 and 1757. Their significance and the interconnections between methods of farming and the extent of the agricultural surplus are set out in Eltis, “François Quesnay.”

[94. ] Lebeau (Condillac, 138–47) discusses the significance of the new passages.

[95. ] See Daniel Klein, “Deductive economic methodology in the French Enlightenment,” History of Political Economy 17, no. 1 (1958): 52–53, for a similar account of the rejection of the economics of Commerce and Government by Baudeau and Le Trosne. He does not refer to the extent of Condillac’s common ground with the physiocrats so that, as with Turgot, they could have welcomed his support and acquiesced in the differences.

[96. ] Terence Hutchison, Before Adam Smith: The Emergence of Political Economy, 1662–1776 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 324.

[97. ] In 1769 Turgot elegantly derived the relationship between the relative marginal utilities of commodities and their relative values in exchange in his uncompleted “Valeurs et monnaies.” His rigorous analysis took the form of two persons trading two commodities. The influence of the opportunity cost of producing the commodities and the generalisation of the argument beyond two persons and two commodities are sketchily indicated. It is not known if Condillac saw Turgot’s manuscript; if he did, he certainly extended the argument, which is why he is widely credited with the principal French originality in the development of the relationship between utility and value, and its implications for an efficient economy. Turgot’s analysis of utility, value and demand is set out and discussed in detail in G. Faccarello, “Turgot et l’économie politique sensualiste,” in Nouvelle histoire de la pensée économique, vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1992), 254–88.

[98. ] The deductive nature of Condillac’s methodology is emphasised in Klein, “Deductive economic methodology.”

[99. ] Erich W. Streissler, “The influence of German economics on the work of Menger and Marshall,” in Carl Menger and His Legacy in Economics, edited by Bruce J. Caldwell, Annual Supplement to vol. 22 of the History of Political Economy (1990), 35.

[100. ] A variety of detailed articles in Larousse (1866–79), which quote extensively from the Encyclopédie and other sources, provide a general source of information on the history of French currency and weights and measures.

[* ]Footnote added in 1798 : Since the first edition of this work I have shown in my Logic that the art of dealing well with a science comes down to the art of creating its language well. Also, when I said that the language of Economic Science needed to be created, the public, for whom this science was still often no more than an indecipherable code, had no difficulty in believing this: because it thought, justly, that a language that is not understood is a badly constructed language.

[* ] It is not that I think that each settler only ever sells his surplus; but I think that everything that is sold is surplus for some one of them. For example, if there was a great dearth in Spain, I do not doubt that France would sell there some of the grain necessary for her own consumption: but she would replace it with what she bought in the North, and she would only replace it because there was a nation in the North where there was a surplus of corn.

[* ]Footnote added in 1798 : Sharecroppers [métayers] are farmers who do not make the same advances. But these distinctions are useless for my purpose. For me it is enough that there are farmers.

[* ] It is estimated that the money which circulates in the states of Europe is in general equal to at least half the product of the land, and at most to two-thirds, [R. Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (Paris, 1755), Book 2, Chapter 3]. I have drawn the basis of this chapter from this work, and several observations of which I have made use in other chapters. It is one of the best works I know on this subject: but I am far from knowing them all.

[* ] Is it really true, I have been asked, that growth of commerce raises the interest rate? I reply that it necessarily makes it rise if it increases the number of borrowers. Now that is what can happen and what I assume.

[† ] There you have a case where the growth of commerce causes the rate of interest to fall.

[* ] I often see that many objections can be raised against my arguments. They arise in great number in the complicated subject I am treating, and which I seek above all to simplify. I should like to reply to them all at once. But that is impossible. To be understood I must take myself from proposition to proposition: as, in the last resort, if no one understood me I should be wrong to write. Happily my reader cannot interrupt me, however much he wants to. He must necessarily put down my book, or wait for my response to his problems. However, I do not delude myself that I can reply to all; as people might make some very strange objections.

[* ] In the early days king only signified what we now understand by chief: 1798 footnote.

[* ] Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du Commerce, Part 1, Chapter 15.

[* ] One must remember that, whatever amount of money there is in a nation, it cannot ever have a value equal to all of its production.

[* ] One knows how Sully, who was naturally clear-sighted, had difficulty in unravelling this chaos.

[* ] There are writers who claim that for a million to come into the king’s coffers the subjects must pay three. I am not in a position to make exact calculations on this matter.

[† ] See Remarques sur les avantages et les désavantages de la France et de la Grande-Bretagne par rapport au Commerce [Louis-Joseph Plumart de Dangeul (Paris, 1754)], 394, where the English work [Matthew Decker, An Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade (Edinburgh, 1743)] is cited.

[* ] [“The wisdom of the reader will have little difficulty in discovering in the course of this chapter that Condillac’s imaginary kingdom of Troy is France.” (Eugène Daire and G. de Molinari, Mélanges d’économie politique [Paris, 1847], 1:427.)]

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An Introduction to Pre-Smithian Economic Thought

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Table of Contents

1: 1. Pieter de la Court, Political Maxims of the State of Holland (1662)

PART I.

CHAP. I.

CHAP. II.

CHAP. III.

CHAP. IV.

CHAP. V.

CHAP. VI.

CHAP. VII.

CHAP. VIII.

CHAP. IX.

CHAP. X.

CHAP. XI.

CHAP. XII.

CHAP. XIII.

CHAP. XIV.

CHAP. XV.

CHAP. XVI.

CHAP. XVII.

CHAP. XVIII.

CHAP. XIX.

CHAP. XX.

CHAP. XXI.

CHAP. XXII.

CHAP. XXIII.

CHAP. XXIV.

CHAP. XXV.

CHAP. XXVI.

2: 2. Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade (1690)

INTRODUCTION

THE PREFACE.5

||*Of Trade and the Stock, or Wares of Trade.

|9|*Of the Quantity and Quality of Wares.

Of the Value and Price of Wares.

Of Mony, Credit and Interest.

Of the Use and Benefit of Trade.

|62|*Of the Chief Causes that Promote TRADE.

|71|*Of the Chief Causes of the Decay of TRADE in England, and Fall of the RENTS of LAND.

3: 3. Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade (1691)

INTRODUCTION by Jacob H. Hollander, Ph. D.

THE PREFACE.

* A DISCOURSE Concerning the Abatement of INTEREST.

10|*A Discourse of COYNED MONEY.

||* Postscript. Upon farther Consideration of the Foregoing Matters, I think fit to add the following Notes.

4: 4. Andrew Fletcher, Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland (1697)

the second DISCOURSE concerning the AFFAIRS OF SCOTLAND; written in the year 1698

SPEECHES by a Member of the Parliament which Began at Edinburgh the 6th of May, 1703

5: 5. Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, Cato’s Letters (1721)

NO. 64. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1722. Trade and Naval Power the Offspring of Civil Liberty only, and cannot subsist without it. (Trenchard)

Sir,

6: 6. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1723)

[1]The Grumbling Hive: o r, Knaves turn’d Honest.a

[23]THE MORAL.

7: 7. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws (1748)

BOOK XX.

OF LAWS IN RELATION TO COMMERCE, CONSIDERED IN ITS NATURE AND DISTINCTIONS.

CHAP. I.

Of Commerce.

CHAP. II.

Of the Spirit of Commerce.

CHAP. III.

Of the Poverty of the People.

CHAP. IV.

Of Commerce in different Governments.

CHAP. V.

Of Nations that have entered into an œconomical Commerce.

CHAP. VI.

Some Effects of an extensive Navigation.

CHAP. VII.

The Spirit of England, with respect to Commerce.

CHAP. VIII.

In what manner the œconomical Commerce has been sometimes restrained.

CHAP. IX.

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A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

||Of Trade and the* Stock, or Wares of Trade.

|9|**Of the Quantity and Quality of Wares.*

|62|**Of the Chief Causes that Promote* TRADE.

|71|**Of the Chief Causes of the Decay of* TRADE in England, and Fall of the RENTS of LAND.

INTRODUCTION
by Jacob H. Hollander, Ph. D.

10|**A Discourse of* COYNED MONEY.

||* Postscript.
Upon farther Consideration of the Foregoing Matters, I think fit to add the following Notes.