The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume V Part 19

When compulsion may be at all used by a state in borrowing the occasion must determine. But the compulsion ought to be known, and well defined, and well distinguished; for otherwise treaty only weakens the energy of compulsion, while compulsion destroys the freedom of a bargain. The advantage of both is lost by the confusion of things in their nature utterly unsociable. It would be to introduce compulsion into that in which freedom and existence are the same: I mean credit. The moment that shame or fear or force are directly or indirectly applied to a loan, credit perishes.

There must be some impulse, besides public spirit, to put private interest into motion along with it. Moneyed men ought to be allowed to set a value on their money: if they did not, there could be no moneyed men. This desire of acc.u.mulation is a principle without which the means of their service to the state could not exist. The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous, sometimes to a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all states. In this natural, this reasonable, this powerful, this prolific principle, it is for the satirist to expose the ridiculous,--it is for the moralist to censure the vicious,--it is for the sympathetic heart to reprobate the hard and cruel,--it is for the judge to animadvert on the fraud, the extortion, and the oppression; but it is for the statesman to employ it as he finds it, with all its concomitant excellencies, with all its imperfections on its head. It is his part, in this case, as it is in all other cases, where he is to make use of the general energies of Nature, to take them as he finds them.

After all, it is a great mistake to imagine, as too commonly, almost indeed generally, it is imagined, that the public borrower and the private lender are two adverse parties, with different and contending interests, and that what is given to the one is wholly taken from the other. Const.i.tuted as our system of finance and taxation is, the interests of the contracting parties cannot well be separated, whatever they may reciprocally intend. He who is the hard lender of to-day to-morrow is the generous contributor to his own payment. For example, the last loan is raised on public taxes, which are designed to produce annually two millions sterling. At first view, this is an annuity of two millions dead charge upon the public in favor of certain moneyed men; but inspect the thing more nearly, follow the stream in its meanders, and you will find that there is a good deal of fallacy in this state of things.

I take it, that whoever considers any man's expenditure of his income, old or new, (I speak of certain cla.s.ses in life,) will find a full third of it to go in taxes, direct or indirect. If so, this new-created income of two millions will probably furnish 665,000_l._ (I avoid broken numbers) towards the payment of its own interest, or to the sinking of its own capital. So it is with the whole of the public debt. Suppose it any given sum, it is a fallacious estimate of the affairs of a nation to consider it as a mere burden. To a degree it is so without question, but not wholly so, nor anything like it. If the income from the interest be spent, the above proportion returns again into the public stock; insomuch that, taking the interest of the whole debt to be twelve million three hundred thousand pound, (it is something more,) not less than a sum of four million one hundred thousand pound comes back again to the public through the channel of imposition. If the whole or any part of that income be saved, so much new capital is generated,--the infallible operation of which is to lower the value of money, and consequently to conduce towards the improvement of public credit.

I take the expenditure of the _capitalist_, not the value of the capital, as my standard; because it is the standard upon which, amongst us, property, as an object of taxation, is rated. In this country, land and offices only excepted, we raise no faculty tax. We preserve the faculty from the expense. Our taxes, for the far greater portion, fly over the heads of the lowest cla.s.ses. They escape too, who, with better ability, voluntarily subject themselves to the harsh discipline of a rigid necessity. With us, labor and frugality, the parents of riches, are spared, and wisely too. The moment men cease to augment the common stock, the moment they no longer enrich it by their industry or their self-denial, their luxury and even their ease are obliged to pay contribution to the public; not because they are vicious principles, but because they are unproductive. If, in fact, the interest paid by the public had not thus revolved again into its own fund, if this secretion had not again been absorbed into the ma.s.s of blood, it would have been impossible for the nation to have existed to this time under such a debt. But under the debt it does exist and flourish; and this flouris.h.i.+ng state of existence in no small degree is owing to the contribution from the debt to the payment. Whatever, therefore, is taken from that capital by too close a bargain is but a delusive advantage: it is so much lost to the public in another way. This matter cannot, on the one side or the other, be metaphysically pursued to the extreme; but it is a consideration of which, in all discussions of this kind, we ought never wholly to lose sight.

It is never, therefore, wise to quarrel with the interested views of men, whilst they are combined with the public interest and promote it: it is our business to tie the knot, if possible, closer. Resources that are derived from extraordinary virtues, as such virtues are rare, so they must be unproductive. It is a good thing for a moneyed man to pledge his property on the welfare of his country: he shows that he places his treasure where his heart is; and revolving in this circle, we know, that, "wherever a man's treasure is, there his heart will be also." For these reasons, and on these principles, I have been sorry to see the attempts which have been made, with more good meaning than foresight and consideration, towards raising the annual interest of this loan by private contributions. Wherever a regular revenue is established, there voluntary contribution can answer no purpose but to disorder and disturb it in its course. To recur to such aids is, for so much, to dissolve the community, and to return to a state of unconnected Nature. And even if such a supply should be productive in a degree commensurate to its object, it must also be productive of much vexation and much oppression. Either the citizens by the proposed duties pay their proportion according to some rate made by public authority, or they do not. If the law be well made, and the contributions founded on just proportions, everything superadded by something that is not as regular as law, and as uniform in its operation, will become more or less out of proportion. If, on the contrary, the law be not made upon proper calculation, it is a disgrace to the public; wisdom, which fails in skill to a.s.sess the citizen in just measure and according to his means. But the hand of authority is not always the most heavy hand. It is obvious that men may be oppressed by many ways besides those which take their course from the supreme power of the state. Suppose the payment to be wholly discretionary. Whatever has its origin in caprice is sure not to improve in its progress, nor to end in reason. It is impossible for each private individual to have any measure conformable to the particular condition of each of his fellow-citizens, or to the general exigencies of his country. 'Tis a random shot at best.

When men proceed in this irregular mode, the first contributor is apt to grow peevish with his neighbors. He is but too well disposed to measure their means by his own envy, and not by the real state of their fortunes, which he can rarely know, and which it may in them be an act of the grossest imprudence to reveal. Hence the odium and la.s.situde with which people will look upon a provision for the public which is bought by discord at the expense of social quiet. Hence the bitter heart-burnings, and the war of tongues, which is so often the prelude to other wars. Nor is it every contribution, called voluntary, which is according to the free will of the giver. A false shame, or a false glory, against his feelings and his judgment, may tax an individual to the detriment of his family and in wrong of his creditors. A pretence of public spirit may disable him from the performance of his private duties; it may disable him even from paying the legitimate contributions which he is to furnish according to the prescript of law. But what is the most dangerous of all is that malignant disposition to which this mode of contribution evidently tends, and which at length leaves the comparatively indigent to judge of the wealth, and to prescribe to the opulent, or those whom they conceive to be such, the use they are to make of their fortunes. From thence it is but one step to the subversion of all property.

Far, very far, am I from supposing that such things enter into the purposes of those excellent persons whose zeal has led them to this kind of measure; but the measure itself will lead them beyond their intention, and what is begun with the best designs bad men will perversely improve to the worst of their purposes. An ill-founded plausibility in great affairs is a real evil. In France we have seen the wickedest and most foolish of men, the const.i.tution-mongers of 1789, pursuing this very course, and ending in this very event. These projectors of deception set on foot two modes of voluntary contribution to the state. The first they called patriotic gifts. These, for the greater part, were not more ridiculous in the mode than contemptible in the project. The other, which they called the patriotic contribution, was expected to amount to a fourth of the fortunes of individuals, but at their own will and on their own estimate; but this contribution threatening to fall infinitely short of their hopes, they soon made it compulsory, both in the rate and in the levy, beginning in fraud, and ending, as all the frauds of power end, in plain violence. All these devices to produce an involuntary will were under the pretext of relieving the more indigent cla.s.ses; but the principle of voluntary contribution, however delusive, being once established, these lower cla.s.ses first, and then all cla.s.ses, were encouraged to throw off the regular, methodical payments to the state, as so many badges of slavery.

Thus all regular revenue failing, these impostors, raising the superstructure on the same cheats with which they had laid the foundation of their greatness, and not content with a portion of the possessions of the rich, confiscated the whole, and, to prevent them from reclaiming their rights, murdered the proprietors. The whole of the process has pa.s.sed before our eyes, and been conducted, indeed, with a greater degree of rapidity than could be expected.

My opinion, then, is, that public contributions ought only to be raised by the public will. By the judicious form of our Const.i.tution, the public contribution is in its name and substance a grant. In its origin it is truly voluntary: not voluntary according to the irregular, unsteady, capricious will of individuals, but according to the will and wisdom of the whole popular ma.s.s, in the only way in which will and wisdom can go together. This voluntary grant obtaining in its progress the force of a law, a general necessity, which takes away all merit, and consequently all jealousy from individuals, compresses, equalizes, and satisfies the whole, suffering no man to judge of his neighbor or to arrogate anything to himself. If their will complies with their obligation, the great end is answered in the happiest mode; if the will resists the burden, every one loses a great part of his own will as a common lot. After all, perhaps, contributions raised by a charge on luxury, or that degree of convenience which approaches so near as to be confounded with luxury, is the only mode of contribution which may be with truth termed voluntary.

I might rest here, and take the loan I speak of as leading to a solution of that question which I proposed in my first letter: "Whether the inability of the country to prosecute the war did necessitate a submission to the indignities and the calamities of a peace with the Regicide power?" But give me leave to pursue this point a little further.

I know that it has been a cry usual on this occasion, as it has been upon occasions where such a cry could have less apparent justification, that great distress and misery have been the consequence of this war, by the burdens brought and laid upon the people. But to know where the burden really lies, and where it presses, we must divide the people. As to the common people, their stock is in their persons and in their earnings. I deny that the stock of their persons is diminished in a greater proportion than the common sources of populousness abundantly fill up: I mean constant employment; proportioned pay according to the produce of the soil, and, where the soil fails, according to the operation of the general capital; plentiful nourishment to vigorous labor; comfortable provision to decrepit age, to orphan infancy, and to accidental malady. I say nothing to the policy of the provision for the poor, in all the variety of faces under which it presents itself. This is the matter of another inquiry. I only just speak of it as of a fact, taken with others, to support me in my denial that hitherto any one of the ordinary sources of the increase of mankind is dried up by this war.

I affirm, what I can well prove, that the waste has been less than the supply. To say that in war no man must be killed is to say that there ought to be no war. This they may say who wish to talk idly, and who would display their humanity at the expense of their honesty or their understanding. If more lives are lost in this war than necessity requires, they are lost by misconduct or mistake: but if the hostility be just, the error is to be corrected, the war is not to be abandoned.

That the stock of the common people, in numbers, is not lessened, any more than the causes are impaired, is manifest, without being at the pains of an actual numeration. An improved and improving agriculture, which implies a great augmentation of labor, has not yet found itself at a stand, no, not for a single moment, for want of the necessary hands, either in the settled progress of husbandry or in the occasional pressure of harvests. I have even reason to believe that there has been a much smaller importation, or the demand of it, from a neighboring kingdom, than in former times, when agriculture was more limited in its extent and its means, and when the time was a season of profound peace.

On the contrary, the prolific fertility of country life has poured its superfluity of population into the ca.n.a.ls, and into other public works, which of late years have been undertaken to so amazing an extent, and which have not only not been discontinued, but, beyond all expectation, pushed on with redoubled vigor, in a war that calls for so many of our men and so much of our riches. An increasing capital calls for labor, and an increasing population answers to the call. Our manufactures, augmented both for the supply of foreign and domestic consumption, reproducing, with the means of life, the mult.i.tudes which they use and waste, (and which many of them devour much more surely and much more largely than the war,) have always found the laborious hand ready for the liberal pay. That the price of the soldier is highly raised is true.

In part this rise may be owing to some measures not so well considered in the beginning of this war; but the grand cause has been the reluctance of that cla.s.s of people from whom the soldiery is taken to enter into a military life,--not that, but, once entered into, it has its conveniences, and even its pleasures. I have seldom known a soldier who, at the intercession of his friends, and at their no small charge, had been redeemed from that discipline, that in a short time was not eager to return to it again. But the true reason is the abundant occupation and the augmented stipend found in towns and villages and farms, which leaves a smaller number of persons to be disposed of. The price of men for new and untried ways of life must bear a proportion to the profits of that mode of existence from whence they are to be bought.

So far as to the stock of the common people, as it consists in their persons. As to the other part, which consists in their earnings, I have to say, that the rates of wages are very greatly augmented almost through the kingdom. In the parish where I live it has been raised from seven to nine s.h.i.+llings in the week, for the same laborer, performing the same task, and no greater. Except something in the malt taxes and the duties upon sugars, I do not know any one tax imposed for very many years past which affects the laborer in any degree whatsoever; while, on the other hand, the tax upon houses not having more than seven windows (that is, upon cottages) was repealed the very year before the commencement of the present war. On the whole, I am satisfied that the humblest cla.s.s, and that cla.s.s which touches the most nearly on the lowest, out of which it is continually emerging, and to which it is continually falling, receives far more from public impositions than it pays. That cla.s.s receives two million sterling annually from the cla.s.ses above it. It pays to no such amount towards any public contribution.

I hope it is not necessary for me to take notice of that language, so ill suited to the persons to whom it has been attributed, and so unbecoming the place in which it is said to have been uttered, concerning the present war as the cause of the high price of provisions during the greater part of the year 1796. I presume it is only to be ascribed to the intolerable license with which the newspapers break not only the rules of decorum in real life, but even the dramatic decorum, when they personate great men, and, like bad poets, make the heroes of the piece talk more like us Grub-Street scribblers than in a style consonant to persons of gravity and importance in the state. It was easy to demonstrate the cause, and the sole cause, of that rise in the grand article and first necessary of life. It would appear that it had no more connection with the war than the moderate price to which all sorts of grain were reduced, soon after the return of Lord Malmesbury, had with the state of politics and the fate of his Lords.h.i.+p's treaty. I have quite as good reason (that is, no reason at all) to attribute this abundance to the longer continuance of the war as the gentlemen who personate leading members of Parliament have had for giving the enhanced price to that war, at a more early period of its duration. Oh, the folly of us poor creatures, who, in the midst of our distresses or our escapes, are ready to claw or caress one another, upon matters that so seldom depend on our wisdom or our weakness, on our good or evil conduct towards each other!

An untimely shower or an unseasonable drought, a frost too long continued or too suddenly broken up with rain and tempest, the blight of the spring or the s.m.u.t of the harvest will do more to cause the distress of the belly than all the contrivances of all statesmen can do to relieve it. Let government protect and encourage industry, secure property, repress violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that they have to do. In other respects, the less they meddle in these affairs, the better; the rest is in the hands of our Master and theirs.

We are in a const.i.tution of things wherein "_modo sol nimius, modo corripit imber_."--But I will push this matter no further. As I have said a good deal upon it at various times during my public service, and have lately written something on it, which may yet see the light, I shall content myself now with observing that the vigorous and laborious cla.s.s of life has lately got, from the _bon-ton_ of the humanity of this day, the name of the "_laboring poor_." We have heard many plans for the relief of the "_laboring poor_." This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used to excite compa.s.sion) has not been used for those who can, but for those who cannot labor,--for the sick and infirm, for orphan infancy, for languis.h.i.+ng and decrepit age; but when we affect to pity, as poor, those who must labor or the world cannot exist, we are trifling with the condition of mankind. It is the common doom of man, that he must eat his bread by the sweat of his brow,--that is, by the sweat of his body or the sweat of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is, as might be expected, from the curses of the Father of all blessings; it is tempered with many alleviations, many comforts. Every attempt to fly from it, and to refuse the very terms of our existence, becomes much more truly a curse; and heavier pains and penalties fall upon those who would elude the tasks which are put upon them by the great Master Workman of the world, who, in His dealings with His creatures, sympathizes with their weakness, and, speaking of a creation wrought by mere will out of nothing, speaks of six days of _labor_ and one of _rest_. I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man _poor_; I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely because they are men. This affected pity only tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek resources where no resources are to be found, in something else than their own industry and frugality and sobriety. Whatever may be the intention (which, because I do not know, I cannot dispute) of those who would discontent mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in the consequences, as if they were our worst enemies.

In turning our view from the lower to the higher cla.s.ses, it will not be necessary for me to show at any length that the stock of the latter, as it consists in their numbers, has not yet suffered any material diminution. I have not seen or heard it a.s.serted; I have no reason to believe it: there is no want of officers, that I have ever understood, for the new s.h.i.+ps which we commission, or the new regiments which we raise. In the nature of things, it is not with their persons that the higher cla.s.ses princ.i.p.ally pay their contingent to the demands of war.

There is another, and not less important part, which rests with almost exclusive weight upon them. They furnish the means

"how War may, best upheld, Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, In all her equipage."

Not that they are exempt from contributing also by their personal service in the fleets and armies of their country. They do contribute, and in their full and fair proportion, according to the relative proportion of their numbers in the community. They contribute all the mind that actuates the whole machine. The fort.i.tude required of them is very different from the unthinking alacrity of the common soldier or common sailor in the face of danger and death: it is not a pa.s.sion, it is not an impulse, it is not a sentiment; it is a cool, steady, deliberate principle, always present, always equable,--having no connection with anger,--tempering honor with prudence,--incited, invigorated, and sustained by a generous love of fame,--informed, moderated, and directed by an enlarged knowledge of its own great public ends,--flowing in one blended stream from the opposite sources of the heart and the head,--carrying in itself its own commission, and proving its t.i.tle to every other command by the first and most difficult command, that of the bosom in which it resides: it is a fort.i.tude which unites with the courage of the field the more exalted and refined courage of the council,--which knows as well to retreat as to advance,--which can conquer as well by delay as by the rapidity of a march or the impetuosity of an attack,--which can be, with Fabius, the black cloud that lowers on the tops of the mountains, or, with Scipio, the thunderbolt of war,--which, undismayed by false shame, can patiently endure the severest trial that a gallant spirit can undergo, in the taunts and provocations of the enemy, the suspicions, the cold respect, and "mouth honor" of those from whom it should meet a cheerful obedience,--which, undisturbed by false humanity, can calmly a.s.sume that most awful moral responsibility of deciding when victory may be too dearly purchased by the loss of a single life, and when the safety and glory of their country may demand the certain sacrifice of thousands.

Different stations of command may call for different modifications of this fort.i.tude, but the character ought to be the same in all. And never, in the most "palmy state" of our martial renown, did it s.h.i.+ne with brighter l.u.s.tre than in the present sanguinary and ferocious hostilities, wherever the British arms have been carried. But in this most arduous and momentous conflict, which from its nature should have roused us to new and unexampled efforts, I know not how it has been that we have never put forth half the strength which we have exerted in ordinary wars. In the fatal battles which have drenched the Continent with blood and shaken the system of Europe to pieces, we have never had any considerable army, of a magnitude to be compared to the least of those by which in former times we so gloriously a.s.serted our place as protectors, not oppressors, at the head of the great commonwealth of Europe. We have never manfully met the danger in front; and when the enemy, resigning to us our natural dominion of the ocean, and abandoning the defence of his distant possessions to the infernal energy of the destroying principles which he had planted there for the subversion of the neighboring colonies, drove forth, by one sweeping law of unprecedented despotism, his armed mult.i.tudes on every side, to overwhelm the countries and states which had for centuries stood the firm barriers against the ambition of France, we drew back the arm of our military force, which had never been more than half raised to oppose him. From that time we have been combating only with the other arm of our naval power,--the right arm of England, I admit,--but which struck almost unresisted, with blows that could never reach the heart of the hostile mischief. From that time, without a single effort to regain those outworks which ever till now we so strenuously maintained, as the strong frontier of our own dignity and safety no less than the liberties of Europe,--with but one feeble attempt to succor those brave, faithful, and numerous allies, whom, for the first time since the days of our Edwards and Henrys, we now have in the bosom of France itself,--we have been intrenching and fortifying and garrisoning ourselves at home, we have been redoubling security on security to protect ourselves from invasion, which has now first become to us a serious object of alarm and terror. Alas! the few of us who have protracted life in any measure near to the extreme limits of our short period have been condemned to see strange things,--new systems of policy, new principles, and not only new men, but what might appear a new species of men. I believe that any person who was of age to take a part in public affairs forty years ago (if the intermediate s.p.a.ce of time were expunged from his memory) would hardly credit his senses, when he should hear from the highest authority that an army of two hundred thousand men was kept up in this island, and that in the neighboring island there were at least fourscore thousand more. But when he had recovered from his surprise on being told of this army, which has not its parallel, what must be his astonishment to be told again that this mighty force was kept up for the mere purpose of an inert and pa.s.sive defence, and that in its far greater part it was disabled by its const.i.tution and very essence from defending us against an enemy by any one preventive stroke or any one operation of active hostility? What must his reflections be, on learning further, that a fleet of five hundred men of war, the best appointed, and to the full as ably commanded as this country ever had upon the sea, was for the greater part employed in carrying on the same system of unenterprising defence? What must be the sentiments and feelings of one who remembers the former energy of England, when he is given to understand that these two islands, with their extensive and everywhere vulnerable coast, should be considered as a garrisoned sea-town? What would such a man, what would any man think, if the garrison of so strange a fortress should be such, and so feebly commanded, as never to make a sally,--and that, contrary to all which has. .h.i.therto been seen in war, an infinitely inferior army, with the shattered relics of an almost annihilated navy, ill-found and ill-manned, may with safety besiege this superior garrison, and, without hazarding the life of a man, ruin the place, merely by the menaces and false appearances of an attack? Indeed, indeed, my dear friend, I look upon this matter of our defensive system as much the most important of all considerations at this moment. It has oppressed me with many anxious thoughts, which, more than any bodily distemper, have sunk me to the condition in which you know that I am.

Should it please Providence to restore to me even the late weak remains of my strength, I propose to make this matter the subject of a particular discussion. I only mean here to argue, that the mode of conducting the war on our part, be it good or bad, has prevented even the common havoc of war in our population, and especially among that cla.s.s whose duty and privilege of superiority it is to lead the way amidst the perils and slaughter of the field of battle.

The other causes which sometimes affect the numbers of the lower cla.s.ses, but which I have shown not to have existed to any such degree during this war,--penury, cold, hunger, nakedness,--do not easily reach the higher orders of society. I do not dread for them the slightest taste of these calamities from the distress and pressure of the war.

They have much more to dread in that way from the confiscations, the rapines, the burnings, and the ma.s.sacres that may follow in the train of a peace which shall establish the devastating and depopulating principles and example of the French Regicides in security and triumph and dominion. In the ordinary course of human affairs, any check to population among men in ease and opulence is less to be apprehended from what they may suffer than from what they enjoy. Peace is more likely to be injurious to them in that respect than war. The excesses of delicacy, repose, and satiety are as unfavorable as the extremes of hards.h.i.+p, toil, and want to the increase and multiplication of our kind. Indeed, the abuse of the bounties of Nature, much more surely than any partial privation of them, tends to intercept that precious boon of a second and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed in the first great command to man from the All-Gracious Giver of all,--whose name be blessed, whether He gives or takes away! His hand, in every page of His book, has written the lesson of moderation. Our physical well-being, our moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all depend on that control of all our appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions which the ancients designed by the cardinal virtue of _temperance_.

The only real question to our present purpose, with regard to the higher cla.s.ses, is, How stands the account of their stock, as it consists in wealth of every description? Have the burdens of the war compelled them to curtail any part of their former expenditure?--which, I have before observed, affords the only standard of estimating property as an object of taxation. Do they enjoy all the same conveniences, the same comforts, the same elegancies, the same luxuries, in the same or in as many different modes as they did before the war?

In the last eleven years there have been no less than three solemn inquiries into the finances of the kingdom, by three different committees of your House. The first was in the year 1786. On that occasion, I remember, the report of the committee was examined, and sifted and bolted to the bran, by a gentleman whose keen and powerful talents I have ever admired. He thought there was not sufficient evidence to warrant the pleasing representation which the committee had made of our national prosperity. He did not believe that our public revenue could continue to be so productive as they had a.s.sumed. He even went the length of recording his own inferences of doubt in a set of resolutions which now stand upon your journals. And perhaps the retrospect on which the report proceeded did not go far enough back to allow any sure and satisfactory average for a ground of solid calculation. But what was the event? When the next committee sat, in 1791, they found, that, on an average of the last four years, their predecessors had fallen short, in their estimate of the permanent taxes, by more than three hundred and forty thousand pounds a year. Surely, then, if I can show, that, in the produce of those same taxes, and more particularly of such as affect articles of luxurious use and consumption, the four years of the war have equalled those four years of peace, flouris.h.i.+ng as they were beyond the most sanguine speculations, I may expect to hear no more of the distress occasioned by the war.

The additional burdens which have been laid on some of those same articles might reasonably claim some allowance to be made. Every new advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to retrench the quant.i.ty of his consumption; and if, upon the whole, he pays the same, his property, computed by the standard of what he voluntarily pays, must remain the same. But I am willing to forego that fair advantage in the inquiry. I am willing that the receipts of the permanent taxes which existed before January, 1793, should be compared during the war, and during the period of peace which I have mentioned. I will go further. Complete accounts of the year 1791 were separately laid before your House. I am ready to stand by a comparison of the produce of four years up to the beginning of the year 1792 with that of the war. Of the year immediately previous to hostilities I have not been able to obtain any perfect doc.u.ments; but I have seen enough to satisfy me, that, although a comparison including that year might be less favorable, yet it would not essentially injure my argument.

You will always bear in mind, my dear Sir, that I am not considering whether, if the common enemy of the quiet of Europe had not forced us to take up arms in our own defence, the spring-tide of our prosperity might not have flowed higher than the mark at which it now stands. That consideration is connected with the question of the justice and the necessity of the war. It is a question which I have long since discussed. I am now endeavoring to ascertain whether there exists, in fact, any such necessity as we hear every day a.s.serted, to furnish a miserable pretext for counselling us to surrender at discretion our conquests, our honor, our dignity, our very independence, and, with it, all that is dear to man. It will be more than sufficient for that purpose, if I can make it appear that we have been stationary during the war. What, then, will be said, if, in reality, it shall be proved that there is every indication of increased and increasing wealth, not only poured into the grand reservoir of the national capital, but diffused through all the channels of all the higher cla.s.ses, and giving life and activity, as it pa.s.ses, to the agriculture, the manufactures, the commerce, and the navigation of the country?

The Finance Committee which has been appointed in this session has already made two reports. Every conclusion that I had before drawn, as you know, from my own observation, I have the satisfaction of seeing there confirmed by that great public authority. Large as was the sum by which the committee of 1791 found the estimate of 1786 to have been exceeded in the actual produce of four years of peace, their own estimate has been exceeded during the war by a sum more than one third larger. The same taxes have yielded more than half a million beyond their calculation. They yielded this, notwithstanding the stoppage of the distilleries, against which, you may remember, I privately remonstrated. With an allowance for that defalcation, they have yielded sixty thousand pounds annually above the actual average of the preceding four years of peace. I believe this to have been without parallel in all former wars. If regard be had to the great and unavoidable burdens of the present war, I am confident of the fact.

But let us descend to particulars. The taxes which go by the general name of a.s.sessed Taxes comprehend the whole, or nearly the whole, domestic establishment of the rich. They include some things which belong to the middling, and even to all but the very lowest cla.s.ses.

They now consist of the duties on houses and windows, on male servants, horses, and carriages. They did also extend to cottages, to female servants, wagons, and carts used in husbandry, previous to the year 1792,--when, with more enlightened policy, at the moment that the possibility of war could not be out of the contemplation of any statesman, the wisdom of Parliament confined them to their present objects. I shall give the gross a.s.sessment for five years, as I find it in the Appendix to the Second Report of your committee.

1791 ending 5th April 1792 1,706,334 1792 1793 1,585,991 1793 1794 1,597,623 1794 1795 1,608,196 1795 1796 1,625,874

Here will be seen a gradual increase during the whole progress of the war; and if I am correctly informed, the rise in the last year, after every deduction that can be made, affords the most consoling and encouraging prospect. It is enormously out of all proportion.

There are some other taxes which seem to have a reference to the same general head. The present minister many years ago subjected bricks and tiles to a duty under the excise. It is of little consequence to our present consideration, whether these materials have been employed in building more commodious, more elegant, and more magnificent habitations, or in enlarging, decorating, and remodelling those which sufficed for our plainer ancestors. During the first two years of the war, they paid so largely to the public revenue, that in 1794 a new duty was laid upon them, which was equal to one half of the old, and which has produced upwards of 165,000_l._ in the last three years. Yet, notwithstanding the pressure of this additional weight,[40] there has been an actual augmentation in the consumption. The only two other articles which come under this description are the stamp-duty on gold and silver plate, and the customs on gla.s.s plates. This latter is now, I believe, the single instance of costly furniture to be found in the catalogue of our imports. If it were wholly to vanish, I should not think we were ruined. Both the duties have risen, during the war, very considerably in proportion to the total of their produce.

We have no tax among us on the most necessary articles of food. The receipts of our Custom-House, under the head of Groceries, afford us, however, some means of calculating our luxuries of the table. The articles of tea, coffee, and cocoa-nuts I would propose to omit, and to take them instead from the excise, as best showing what is consumed at home. Upon this principle, adding them all together, (with the exception of sugar, for a reason which I shall afterwards mention,) I find that they have produced, in one mode of comparison, upwards of 272,000_l._, and in the other mode upwards of 165,000_l._, more during the war than in peace.[41] An additional duty was also laid in 1795 on tea, another on coffee, and a third on raisins,--an article, together with currants, of much more extensive use than would readily be imagined. The balance in favor of our argument would have been much enhanced, if our coffee and fruit s.h.i.+ps from the Mediterranean had arrived, last year, at their usual season. They do not appear in these accounts. This was one consequence arising (would to G.o.d that none more afflicting to Italy, to Europe, and the whole civilized world had arisen!) from our impolitic and precipitate desertion of that important maritime station. As to sugar,[42] I have excluded it from the groceries, because the account of the customs is not a perfect criterion of the consumption, much having been reexported to the North of Europe, which used to be supplied by France; and in the official papers which I have followed there are no materials to furnish grounds for computing this reexportation. The increase on the face of our entries is immense during the four years of war,--little short of thirteen hundred thousand pounds.

The increase of the duties on beer has been regularly progressive, or nearly so, to a very large amount.[43] It is a good deal above a million, and is more than equal to one eighth of the whole produce.

Under this general head some other liquors are included,--cider, perry, and mead, as well as vinegar and verjuice; but these are of very trifling consideration. The excise duties on wine, having sunk a little during the first two years of the war, were rapidly recovering their level again. In 1795 a heavy additional duty was imposed upon them, and a second in the following year; yet, being compared with four years of peace to 1790, they actually exhibit a small gain to the revenue. And low as the importation may seem in 1796, when contrasted with any year since the French treaty in 1787, it is still more than 3000 tuns above the average importation for three years previous to that period. I have added sweets, from which our fact.i.tious wines are made; and I would have added spirits, but that the total alteration of the duties in 1789, and the recent interruption of our distilleries, rendered any comparison impracticable.

The ancient staple of our island, in which we are clothed, is very imperfectly to be traced on the books of the Custom-House: but I know that our woollen manufactures flourish. I recollect to have seen that fact very fully established, last year, from the registers kept in the West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re. This year, in the West of England, I received a similar account, on the authority of a respectable clothier in that quarter, whose testimony can less be questioned, because, in his political opinions, he is adverse, as I understand, to the continuance of the war. The princ.i.p.al articles of female dress for some time past have been muslins and calicoes.[44] These elegant fabrics of our own looms in the East, which serve for the remittance of our own revenues, have lately been imitated at home, with improving success, by the ingenious and enterprising manufacturers of Manchester, Paisley, and Glasgow. At the same time the importation from Bengal has kept pace with the extension of our own dexterity and industry; while the sale of our printed goods,[45] of both kinds, has been with equal steadiness advanced by the taste and execution of our designers and artists. Our woollens and cottons, it is true, are not all for the home market. They do not distinctly prove, what is my present point, our own wealth by our own expense. I admit it: we export them in great and growing quant.i.ties: and they who croak themselves hoa.r.s.e about the decay of our trade may put as much of this account as they choose to the creditor side of money received from other countries in payment for British skill and labor.

They may settle the items to their own liking, where all goes to demonstrate our riches. I shall be contented here with whatever they will have the goodness to leave me, and pa.s.s to another entry, which is less ambiguous,--I mean that of silk.[46] The manufactory itself is a forced plant. We have been obliged to guard it from foreign compet.i.tion by very strict prohibitory laws. What we import is the raw and prepared material, which is worked up in various ways, and worn in various shapes by both s.e.xes. After what we have just seen, you will probably be surprised to learn that the quant.i.ty of silk imported during the war has been much greater than it was previously in peace; and yet we must all remember, to our mortification, that several of our silk s.h.i.+ps fell a prey to Citizen Admiral Richery. You will hardly expect me to go through the tape and thread, and all the other small wares of haberdashery and millinery to be gleaned up among our imports. But I shall make one observation, and with great satisfaction, respecting them. They gradually diminish, as our own manufactures of the same description spread into their places; while the account of ornamental articles which our country does not produce, and we cannot wish it to produce, continues, upon the whole, to rise, in spite of all the caprices of fancy and fas.h.i.+on. Of this kind are the different furs[47] used for m.u.f.fs, tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and linings, which, as the chief of the kind, I shall particularize. You will find them below.

The diversions of the higher cla.s.ses form another and the only remaining head of inquiry into their expenses: I mean those diversions which distinguish the country and the town life,--which are visible and tangible to the statesman,--which have some public measure and standard.

And here, when, I look to the report of your committee, I, for the first time, perceive a failure. It is clearly so. Whichever way I reckon the four years of peace, the old tax on the sports of the field has certainly proved deficient since the war. The same money, however, or nearly the same, has been paid to government,--though the same number of individuals have not contributed to the payment. An additional tax was laid in 1791, and during the war has produced upwards of 61,000_l._, which is about 4000_l._ more than the decrease of the old tax, in one scheme of comparison, and about 4000_l._ less, in the other scheme. I might remark, that the amount of the new tax, in the several years of the war, by no means bears the proportion which it ought to the old.

There seems to be some great irregularity or other in the receipt. But I do not think it worth while to examine into the argument. I am willing to suppose that many, who, in the idleness of peace, made war upon partridges, hares, and pheasants, may now carry more n.o.ble arms against the enemies of their country. Our political adversaries may do what they please with that concession. They are welcome to make the most of it. I am sure of a very handsome set-off in the other branch of expense,--the amus.e.m.e.nts of a town life.

There is much gayety and dissipation and profusion which must escape and disappoint all the arithmetic of political economy. But the theatres are a prominent feature. They are established through every part of the kingdom, at a cost unknown till our days. There is hardly a provincial capital which does not possess, or which does not aspire to possess, a theatre-royal. Most of them engage for a short time, at a vast price, every actor or actress of name in the metropolis: a distinction which in the reign of my old friend Garrick was confined to very few. The dresses, the scenes, the decorations of every kind, I am told, are in a new style of splendor and magnificence: whether to the advantage of our dramatic taste, upon the whole, I very much doubt. It is a show and a spectacle, not a play, that is exhibited. This is undoubtedly in the genuine manner of the Augustan age, but in a manner which was censured by one of the best poets and critics of that or any age:--

Migravit ab aure voluptas Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana: Quatuor aut plures aulaea premuntur in horas, Dum fugiunt equitum turmae, peditumque catervae;--

I must interrupt the pa.s.sage, most fervently to deprecate and abominate the sequel:--

Mox trahitur manibus regum fortuna retortis.

I hope that no French fraternization, which the relations of peace and amity with systematized regicide would a.s.suredly sooner or later draw after them, even if it should overturn our happy Const.i.tution itself, could so change the hearts of Englishmen as to make them delight in representations and processions which have no other merit than that of degrading and insulting the name of royalty. But good taste, manners, morals, religion, all fly, wherever the principles of Jacobinism enter; and we have no safety against them but in arms.

The proprietors, whether in this they follow or lead what is called the town, to furnish out these gaudy and pompous entertainments, must collect so much more from the public. It was but just before the breaking out of hostilities, that they levied for themselves the very tax which, at the close of the American war, they represented to Lord North as certain ruin to their affairs to demand for the state. The example has since been imitated by the managers of our Italian Opera.

Once during the war, if not twice, (I would not willingly misstate anything, but I am not very accurate on these subjects,) they have raised the price of their subscription. Yet I have never heard that any lasting dissatisfaction has been manifested, or that their houses have been unusually and constantly thin. On the contrary, all the three theatres have been repeatedly altered, and refitted, and enlarged, to make them capacious of the crowds that nightly flock to them; and one of those huge and lofty piles, which lifts its broad shoulders in gigantic pride, almost emulous of the temples of G.o.d, has been reared from the foundation at a charge of more than fourscore thousand pounds, and yet remains a naked, rough, unsightly heap.

I am afraid, my dear Sir, that I have tired you with these dull, though important details. But we are upon a subject which, like some of a higher nature, refuses ornament, and is contented with conveying instruction. I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed distress and predicting the immediate ruin of their country. These birds of evil presage at all times have grated our ears with their melancholy song; and, by some strange fatality or other, it has generally happened that they have poured forth their loudest and deepest lamentations at the periods of our most abundant prosperity. Very early in my public life I had occasion to make myself a little acquainted with their natural history. My first political tract in the collection which a friend has made of my publications is an answer to a very gloomy picture of the state of the nation, which was thought to have been drawn by a statesman of some eminence in his time. That was no more than the common spleen of disappointed ambition: in the present day I fear that too many are actuated by a more malignant and dangerous spirit. They hope, by depressing our minds with a despair of our means and resources, to drive us, trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom, from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in strict concert and cooperation. If, with the report of your Finance Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. Nor must we forget that they are unwearied agitators, bold a.s.sertors, dexterous sophisters. Proof must be acc.u.mulated upon proof, to silence them. With this view, I shall now direct your attention to some other striking and unerring indications of our flouris.h.i.+ng condition; and they will, in general, be derived from other sources, but equally authentic: from other reports and proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, all which unite with wonderful force of consent in the same general result.

Hitherto we have seen the superfluity of our capital discovering itself only in procuring superfluous accommodation and enjoyment, in our houses, in our furniture, in our establishments, in our eating and drinking, our clothing, and our public diversions: we shall now see it more beneficially employed in improving our territory itself: we shall see part of our present opulence, with provident care, put out to usury for posterity.

To what ultimate extent it may be wise or practicable to push inclosures of common and waste lands may be a question of doubt, in some points of view: but no person thinks them already carried to excess; and the relative magnitude of the sums laid out upon them gives us a standard of estimating the comparative situation of the landed interest. Your House, this session, appointed a committee on waste lands, and they have made a report by their chairman, an honorable baronet, for whom the minister the other day (with very good intentions, I believe, but with little real profit to the public) thought fit to erect a board of agriculture.

The account, as it stands there, appears sufficiently favorable. The greatest number of inclosing bills pa.s.sed in any one year of the last peace does not equal the smallest annual number in the war, and those of the last year exceed by more than one half the highest year of peace.

But what was my surprise, on looking into the late report of the Secret Committee of the Lords, to find a list of these bills during the war, differing in every year, and[48] larger on the whole by nearly one third! I have checked this account by the statute-book, and find it to be correct. What new brilliancy, then, does it throw over the prospect, bright as it was before! The number during the last four years has more than doubled that of the four years immediately preceding; it has surpa.s.sed the five years of peace, beyond which the Lords' committees have not gone; it has even surpa.s.sed (I have verified the fact) the whole ten years of peace. I cannot stop here. I cannot advance a single step in this inquiry without being obliged to cast my eyes back to the period when I first knew the country. These bills, which had begun in the reign of Queen Anne, had pa.s.sed every year in greater or less numbers from the year 1723; yet in all that s.p.a.ce of time they had not reached the amount of any two years during the present war; and though soon after that time they rapidly increased, still at the accession of his present Majesty they were far short of the number pa.s.sed in the four years of hostilities.

In my first letter I mentioned the state of our inland navigation, neglected as it had been from the reign of King William to the time of my observation. It was not till the present reign that the Duke of Bridgewater's ca.n.a.l first excited a spirit of speculation and adventure in this way. This spirit showed itself, but necessarily made no great progress, in the American war. When peace was restored, it began of course to work with more sensible effect; yet in ten years from that event the bills pa.s.sed on that subject were not so many as from the year 1793 to the present session of Parliament. From what I can trace on the statute-book, I am confident that all the capital expended in these projects during the peace bore no degree of proportion (I doubt, on very grave consideration, whether all that was ever so expended was equal) to the money which has been raised for the same purposes since the war.[49] I know that in the last four years of peace, when they rose regularly and rapidly, the sums specified in the acts were not near one third of the subsequent amount. In the last session of Parliament, the Grand Junction Company, as it is called, having sunk half a million, (of which I feel the good effects at my own door,) applied to your House for permission to subscribe half as much more among themselves. This Grand Junction is an inosculation of the Grand Trunk; and in the present session, the latter company has obtained the authority of Parliament to float two hundred acres of land, for the purpose of forming a reservoir, thirty feet deep, two hundred yards wide at the head, and two miles in length: a lake which may almost vie with that which once fed the now obliterated ca.n.a.l of Languedoc.