text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/108

 ¬the end alarmed the people into a sense of the ruin they were rushing on ; hut, alas ! this very voice, which had breathed so happily the gentle accents of peace, was now heard louder than the trumpet of war, to collect our world to battle; spreading throughout the land an uni- versal panic, until the public councils com- plained of sedition, but the forum of the com- plaint only inflamed it. — Instead of leaving it to the sovereign, in the ordinary course of law, to bring the suspected to trial, the evidence was collected by the great public councils; was ex- alted into treason of the highest order, and published by their command. — It was no doubt within their jurisdiction, and was their highest duty to protect the state; to proclaim a con- spiracy if they believed it existed, and to direct prosecutions against the offenders; but it was repugnant to the very elements of the Armatian constitution, to involve individuals in the accu- sations, and to circulate amongst the people the accusing testimonies stamped with their supreme authority, when inferior tribunals were after- wards ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/108


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/109

 ¬wards to judge them. — In any other nation the consequences to the accused must have been fatal : but there is a talisman in Armata which, whilst it is preserved inviolate, will make her immortal— HER COURTS OF JUSTICE SPOKE ALOUD TO HER PARLIAMENT: —THUS FAR SHALT THOU GO, AND NO FARTHER. ¬" In returning to, or rather beginning an account of this extraordinary composition, whose author was only in metaphor brought before you, your surprize at its warlike stimulus will be increased, because I could have subscribed almost to the whole of it except in its remotest ¬APPLICATION. ¬" He set out by truly and perhaps seasonably observing, ' that men were not the insects of a summer, but beings of a superior order, the heirs of immortality — that they should therefore look upwards with pious reverence to their fathers, and downwards with anxious care to their pos- ¬u £ terity — ¬

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/109


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/110

 ¬terity — that when they had accomplished a structure sufficient to maintain social order, much more to govern a great and enlightened people, it was more convenient to repair it when time had defaced it, and to improve it if origi- nally defective, than to tumble it down in a moment to its foundations — that society was not a gang of miscreants, plundering and mur- dering one another, reviling all the institutions ordained to lead us into the paths of bappiness and virtue, but a pyramid of human beings, rising in majestic order and harmonious in all its parts — that it was fit religion should conse- crate such a structure — that her ministers should therefore be held in high respect, and should not be supported on the alms of those whom it was their duty to correct — that government also should preserve an attitude of dignity and wis- dom, composed of high magistrates, invested with corresponding authorities and supported by revenues to secure obedience and indepen- dence — that a people, above all, for whose hap- piness this mighty system was fashioned and ¬sup- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/110


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/111

 ¬supported, should in their morals and manners be assimilated; that they should not be buried like dogs, as if they were to sleep for ever, but be remembered by monumental inscriptions, recording the achievements of those who had lived before them, and reminding the living that their histories would be read by those who were to follow them — that societies, however wisely constructed, were subject nevertheless to be shaken by the follies and wickedness of man- kind, and that in those awful conjunctures the utmost fortitude became necessary to those who were to ride in such storms, yet tempered with a spirit of gentleness and mercy, shrinking back when called upon to strike, though justice and even necessity might demand the blow/ — He summed up all by a most eloquent reprobation of an unprincipled regicide, declaring in lan- guage which I hope will always be remembered, that the immolation of the unhappy prince whom fate had set upon this volcanic pinnacle, and who, without any crimes of his own, must, in the harshest construction, have been the vic- ¬h 3 tim ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/111


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/112

 ¬tim of the crimes of others, was base and in- human; and in its wanton aggravation by in- dignity and insult, embittered by the foul mur- der of his queen and their helpless infants, cast a dismal shade over the moral world, suffering, as it were, an eclipse by the interposition of some infernal spirit between the Divine Creator and the beings who must perish but in his light. — Believe me, I feel for the hallowed shade of departed genius, and have endeavoured not to degrade, though it is beyond my power to do justice to such a distinguished composition ; but you have no doubt been looking in vain all this while, and through all this eloquence, for any possible incitement to war, though intended by himself and applied by others to justify and provoke it, — If the work had been undertaken to illustrate the principles and duties of civil society in the pure abstract, it would have been as just as it was beautiful ; but as a picture of Capetia, before her revolution, it* was unfounded almost throughout, and in all that followed it was only an exquisite and in many parts a sublime ¬ex^ ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/112


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/113

 ¬exposure of the unhappy state to which she had been reduced by the desertion of Armata from her post: and how the rushing into battle with this delirious people was either to reform them or to secure ourselves, it is past my comprehension even to imagine." — " And of mine also,' 1 1 hastily replied : — " had you nobody then to say so in your great public councils?" ¬" We had many," said Morven : — " occasions consummate the human character. — A political star of the first magnitude was then in his zenith, amidst a constellation of the brightest statesmen, who solemnly and repeatedly protested against the leap we were about to take, whilst we yet stood upon the brink. — They condemned the principle of this war, and foretold the conse- quences, but the delusion was too dense to be dispelled; and, that you may judge of its den- sity, I will give you a specimen of the hap- piest and most approved manner in which this phalanx of great talents was opposed by those who supported their adversaries. To deny their ¬11 4 talents ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/113


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/114

 ¬talents was impossible; and how do you think they went to work to run them down? — In no other way than by reiterating day after day in all accessible channels of public information, that talents were not only useless, but at all times perfectly ridiculous, and mischievously inconsistent with the wholesome government of a great nation. —You may think, perhaps, I am imposing upon you, or that I am in jest, as you have frequently before imagined; but I most seriously assure you, that this was the only order of the day amongst their opponents for years together." I laughed heartily, and said " it re- minded me of the defence of a lunatic in Eng- land, before the commissioners who had impri- soned him: — He said that those who were at large were an insane majority, and shut up all the rest only because they had the sense to differ from them. — Now from the account you give me of Armata, at this period, your judges, I suppose, would have been imprisoned and the madman discharged." — " Perhaps they might," waid Morven ; " and indeed, since this new dis- covery, ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/114


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/115

 ¬covery, it is not at all an uncommon imposture to pretend even to be a natural fool, in hopes of superior preferment. ¬" But it is high time to return to the subject, though I seek no apology for the digression. A novel derives its fame from the genius of its author, and its merit principally consists in a fanciful departure from truth; but the best writ- ten Histo?y can only be interesting when it is believed to be true." ¬ CHAP-

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/115


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/116

 ¬ CHAPTER IX. ¬In which Morten gives the Author an Account of the War -with Capet ia. ¬¦ A war now immediately followed between Armata and this unhappy country, which soon involving many other powerful nations against her, the entire mass of her population, from the very instinct of self-preservation, became one general camp; and her wild democracy being unequal to the rule of a people so circumstanced, the commander of her armies became her King. The stupendous exertions she then made are unparalleled, and nothing could have prevented her from overpowering all the states con- federated against her, but the wealth and energies of our extraordinary people. — We had lost the season at the outset, of turning Capetia into the paths of peace, or (if that were found to be hopeless) of leaving her to be herself con- sumed ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/116


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/117

 ¬sumed in the flames her madness had kindled ; and even after they had spread beyond her own territories, and were laying waste our world, Armata, in various stages, might, under other counsels, have extinguished them. — Had the new dynasty of Capetia, when it became firmly established and supported by the undoubted voice of her people, been sincerely acknowledged by other nations before their resistance to it had first overwhelmed them, I see no reason ' for thinking that the general tranquillity might not have been more securely settled than by the destructive scenes that followed, which besides the waste of human life and the enormous ad- ditions to our public burthens, gave a new and alarming character to other nations, from the necessity of large military establishments, coun- tenancing in our own country, from the danger of foreign combinations, a force beyond our finances, and at variance with the spirit of our free constitution. ¬" But the practicability of safe pacification ¬had ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/117


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/118

 ¬had its period. — When the extraordinary person at the head of the Capetian monarchy, who, under a different treatment, might have been to the full as pacific as other princes, began to see that his throne except through Avar was insecure, it is no wonder that, after having trampled upon and overthrown so many powerful kingdoms, his ambition should be lifted up beyond per- haps the impulses of his original character, even to the hope of universal empire. — To have made peace with him then, though brought down at last to a seemingly safe level by signal reverses, when there was a fair prospect of his final sub- jugation, became a doubtful question in the councils of Armata, dividing those in opinion who were divided in nothing else, combining for the occasion the authors of the war and those who had always condemned and continued to condemn them. — On the one hand, in our ex- hausted condition, a failure of the force of nations, or even a protracted contest, would have been fatal, as they looked only to Armata for resources ; but on the other hand, an humbled ¬and ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/118


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/119

 ¬and mortified ambition might have been un- safely left at the head of a numerous and power- ful people, even if his original dispositions had been like those of other men. — Animals, how- ever large and powerful, if not by nature feroci- ous, may be handled as if they were our children, and are daily conducted with safety through our most populous cities, but when cruelly goaded and roused up almost to madness, they destroy everv thins: in their course, and there is then no safety but in their deaths. — It was nevertheless a most difficult matter for decision, and in a case where such imminent dangers were on either side impending, it would be most unfair in weighing them, to measure them by the events I am to relate; but it is impossible to be the historian of Armata in such a crisis of her affairs without expressing the utmost admiration of the character of her people. ¬" When from her mistaken counsels, she was so deeply involved at last, as to have no safe retreat from the course she had taken, she then ¬rose ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/119


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/120

 ¬rose even superior to herself, great and power- ful as she ever had been — the combined nations were in themselves nothing — they had indeed brave and numerous armies, but without the sinews of war they were no better than the leaden men which are sold as toys for our children ; — the money of Armata could alone breathe life into them or set them in motion, and it was for her alone to march them from the remotest regions, to end the contest in the Capetian capi- tal; but though the husbandmen, the manu- facturers, the shopkeepers* and miners of Armata, or in other words her People, had bent their bodies, and bathed their foreheads with the sweat of labour to furnish the supplies for this auxiliary force ; they had a still nobler part to perform for the honour of their country — they were before-hand with the legions they had created, and finished at a single blow the mur- ¬
 * The author has only printed the word shopkeepers in italics, because Morven, from some reason or other, raised his voice when he pronounced it. -derous ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/120


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/121

 derous contest which had been desolating our world. ¬ " There is near us another island, in union with Armata, and forming with her one em- pire^which came in for her full proportion of this glory; the hardy sons of Patricia were in all our ranks, and her soil produced the immor- tal hero who conducted the battle. ¬" No victory in human annals ever produced results so sudden and extraordinary. — The ad- versary, whose ambition and whose boast had been our destruction — who had built a thousand vessels to convey his armies to our shores — and who was then erecting a column, even within our view, to be crowned with his colossal statue pointing at us with his finger for his own, now fled when no one was pursuing, and gave him- self up as a prisoner to the commander of a single ship. ¬ " Such a fate of so wonderful a being affords a ¬con- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/121


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/122

 ¬convincing" proof that our apparent destinies may generally be referred to ourselves. — In the earliest and most flourishing periods of his astonishing career, he was (in my opinion) more sinned against than sinning, and even when he was pushing on his legions to the most distant territories, I was for a while in spirit on his side, because I thought there was a conspiracy of governments against him, inconsistent with the principles of our own. — Some have thought he was so weak as not to see that there was no security for his own sovereignty whilst the sovereigns combined against him had an un- limited power over the persons and resources of their subjects; but my belief is that he foresaw this danger though he upheld their governments, because he feared a worse in their subversion. — He had seated himself upon an imperial throne with a mock and servile representation, and trembled at the influence of free constitutions. — . This was the rock on which he split. — If by politic and moral conventions when the sword was in his hand to enforce them, instead of by ¬a sys- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/122


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/123

 ¬a system of oppression and subversion, he had balanced in their own states the princes who opposed him, giving an interest to their people to support him, he might have surrounded him- self with grateful and independent nations, to have guarded and almost to have adored him ; but he left them insulted, pillaged, degraded, and in the hands of their uncontrouled and justly incensed kings, who of course made use of them to destroy him. — They were no lo??ger mercenary, reluctant armies, but nations em- bodied against their oppressors. ¬" From the moment I marked this base and senseless policy I foresaw his ruin, because he was now opposing the progression of a world which, in spite of all obstacles, will advance, because God has ordained it. ¬" It is a grand and useful example, when the ends of men who abuse mighty trusts are thus signally disastrous. — We see distinctly the Divine Providence superintending and judging us, and ¬i when ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/123


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/124

 ¬when I visited Capetia whilst Armata was passing through her provinces in triumph, the evidence of it was decisive. — This mighty man, who had shaken the earth, collected all its spoils, and overwhelmed its dominions, was not to be seen or heard of even in his own capital, amidst the trophies of his universal conquests." ¬I was moved by this just description, and said to Morven, " that it reminded me of a passage in our Sacred Scriptures most divinely eloquent, and which, since the days of the Psalmist, had never been so strikingly illus- trated : — ¬I I myself have seen the ungodly in great power, ' and flourishing like a green bay-tree. — I passed 1 by, and lo, he was gone. — / sought him, but his ' place zvas no where to be found' ¬" So prosperous a conclusion of a war so pro- tracted and ruinous, was a fair and a national occasion of triumph to its authors and supporters ; ¬but ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/124


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/125

 ¬but giving them all just credit for honest in- tentions, and for their vigorous exertions, it is the office of impartial history to condemn them. — They themselves created the mighty antagonist. — Their mistaken counsels rendered his subjugation indispensable, and his dominion so powerful that it could not be overthrown without almost the ruin of their country. — Allowing them, even, for argument's sake, all the pre-eminence over their opponents they contend for, what would there be in the comparison to boast of? because sup- posing the storm to have been inevitable, and in the end to have been skilfully weathered by them, which of two pilots would you prefer? — him who, though he saw it gathering, sailed out into the midst of it, and though laden with money only escaped by throwing overboard his cargo, or the other who, seeing the tempest also, would have remained in the harbour till it was overblown : ¬" I have now brought you down from the earliest ages to the present times, and the history ¬i 2 is ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/125


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/126

 is therefore finished; but one reflection presents itself too forcibly to be suppressed.

"To such a people as Armata victory ought to be no triumph but in its consequences. — She ought to consult the happiness of the nation that has been subdued, as faithfully as her own — she should hail the dawn of a representative government, the only antidote to despotism or revolution, and now that the evils of war have been terminated by her warlike exertions, her friendly influence should succeed them for the preservation of peace; but lest the fortunate close of this bloody æra should be confounded in future times with its unhappy commencement, she ought to blazon upon her national banners the auspicious principles of her own revolution — the guarantee to every people of the government of their own choice, whilst the independence of other nations shall be reciprocally respected.

CHAP

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/126


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/127

 ¬ CHAPTER X. ¬In which Morten relates to the Author the condition of Armata on the conclusion of the War, and asks his opinion and adtice. ¬" We are now arrived at a most interesting and painful conjuncture, to the particulars of which I must ask your utmost attention. — You have been cast upon the shores of the island, which has received you in a moment of great difficulty, and my father, as I have repeatedly told you, having always held up to me the English people as the great masters of political wisdom, I cannot but. look to you for counsel r in this arduous posture of our affairs. ¬" Not many months have passed since the glorious conclusion of the war whose history I have related, and up to that period, notwith- standing the immense sums expended in the contest, no sinew of the state appeared to be relaxed ; no want was felt any where, and ad- ¬i 3 ditional ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/127


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/128

 ¬ditional burthens, instead of appearing to oppress the people, were overshadowed by voluntary gifts; agriculture flourished beyond the experi- ence of former times; and our manufactures, though struck at by hostile conspiracies against their very existence, monopolised the markets of the world. — Peace came at last, so often invoked as the source of every blessing; but how shall I find credit when I tell you that scarcely had she finished her dove-like flight, and alighted amongst us, amidst universal acclamations, when our prosperity vanished like an enchantment! — The landholders looked in vain to their most opulent tenants for their rents, and they in their turn, even if their rents were remitted, could barely maintain themselves on the soil; labour- ers and servants in husbandry were every where discharged, and thronged our roads seeking in vain throughout the land for employ- ment, and with their children begging their bread. — The manufacturers, though they suffer- ed less, being partly upheld by foreign markets, yet without home consumption, could not but ¬languish, ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/128


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/129

 ¬languish, and money bad every where disap- peared. — In such a state of a nation it is need- less to say that its revenue must suffer; yet the common remedy by an increased taxation must needs be desperate when the people are already sinking under their present burthens. — It is a maxim in the medical world, that many distempers may be said to be cured when their causes are ascertained ; but the wisest men among us are lost in amazement, and I cannot therefore help pausing here, to ask you what course would be pursued by England if she were in similar distress? — what, I pray you, can be the source of this sudden prostration of our happy condition, and what is the re- medy?" ¬" You have given me," I said, " no materials for answering your questions, and I must first put several to you; but perplex me no more by any appeals to England; my understanding is quite bewildered by referring to a state of things so dissimilar. ¬i 4 " To ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/129


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/130

 ¬" To begin then the series of my inquiries, let me ask how much you have added to your public debt in the prosecution of your late glo- rious war, and what is now the proportion of the whole of it taken together to the tangible con- vertible property of your nation — or, to simplify my question by dividing it, what proportion does your debt bear to the precious metals, which with us, as with you, are accepted by all nations as the universal representative of wealth ?" Movven could not help smiling at this first proposition, and answered, (in jest as I at first supposed,) that it had increased tint fold, and amounted to more than all the precious metals that had been dug from the bowels of the earth since the discovery of the countries which contained them, and that if all nations were to empty into the treasury of Armata every coin in circulation amongst them, laying at her feet in bullion all that had been fashioned from gold or silver into vessels and utensils for luxury or use, tearing from the brows the diadems of all princes, and throwing down into the fur- nace ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/130


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/131

 ¬nace the sacred images from the shrines of all temples throughout their whole planet, it would not perhaps be sufficient to extinguish the debt. ¬" But let me abandon this general description, which, though calculated to excite astonish- ment, is absurdly misapplied to a subject which requires the utmost possible precision. — I had forgotten also that I was speaking to a stranger from another world, who can know nothing of our mines and metals, or of their supposed pro- ductions and values; and having prepared my- self besides to satisfy your inquiries, I can give you the whole account in your own English money, and unless this twin of your earth lias been for some cause or other disinherited, and all the wealth bestowed by nature upon her brother, the figures of the accountant will even outstrip my figures of speech. ¬" To place the subject in the clearest point of view — the island of Annate, though shaken by ¬various ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/131


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/132

 various revolutions, and though engaged in wars through many centuries, had nevertheless, on the accession of her present sovereign, a debt rather less than an hundred millions of your money, bearing an interest of about five millions; but from the expenses of the war with Hesperia and Capetia united, the Country was delivered over to the charge of the minister I have already described to you, with a debt increased to the immense amount of two hundred and sixty millions, with an annual burthen of thirteen millions, speaking in your English money.

“Now I cannot surely be charged with leaning upon the memory of any man, however illustrious, when I assert that so enormous a debt, characterized too by so rapid an increase, ought to have inspired the utmost providence in the administration of our finances; neither can I hazard any censure which I shall at all. regard, when I further assert, that if the popular council, having the uncontrouled dominion over the

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/132


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/133

 ¬public wealth, had been itself more under the controul of the people who were to sustain the burthens they laid upon them, the debt would not probably, in so short a period, have reached this magnitude, much less have enabled me to tell you that the same minister left it swoln from the two hundred and sixty millions and upwards, which I gave you, to the sum of Jive hundred and forty millions, increasing the annual taxation before given you from thirteen to above thirty millions ; which in the further prosecution of the war by his successors, and by the public councils acting upon his system, again swelled to the almost incredible amount of nearly seven hundred millions, still speaking in your English money. — Yet the most alarm- ing part is still behind, in the increased ex- penditure, which, unless corrected, seems to mock all redemption. — The same minister found it only about twenty-one and left it nearly sivty millions annually, and it has under his ¬ successors been still advancing. ¬ The ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/133


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/134

 ¬" The collateral burthens, -which all equally press upon the people, rose in the same pro- portion ; and notwithstanding the universal boast of increasing- prosperity, the same minister found the poor supported by rates not much exceeding the sum of two millions, but left it more than Jive, which afterwards increased under his suc- cessors to nearly seven millions, still speaking in your English money. ¬" But other evils must be added. — To pro- duce an annual revenue of so vast an extent many taxes were resorted to of the most per- nicious character, particularly affecting the ad- ministration of justice ; and having thus closed the account of the taxes upon the living, I will conclude the subject with their dominion after death. ¬" The highest duty to government only twenty years ago, cither on wills or on inheritances, amounted to only sixty pounds, but now (except when the property vests in near relations or kin- dred) ¬ {{c|( \

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/134


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/135

 ¬tired) on the former it may amount to above two hundred times that sum, and on the latter to nearly three hundred, as the highest duty on the first may be fifteen thousand, and on the last above twenty thousand pounds, without taking into the account a proportion of the property transmitted, which in some cases amounts to a tenth. ¬" This is the most grievous of all our burthens. — The justest government may have occasion to resort to a moderate dutv on alienations and transmissions of all descriptions of property, but it ought to advance with the most cautious and even trembling steps. — A mighty nation in its public character should scorn to sit like a vulture over departing breath. ¬(t It may appear perhaps ungrateful to a country that embraced my beloved parents and myself in the hour of our peril and distress, that I should have exposed her difficulties in the manner I have done ; but I appeal for my motives to the Great Searcher of hearts. — It is ¬of ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/135


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/136

 {{c|( 126 > ¬of the utmost importance that the public con- dition in all its details should be universally kn< >aii and understood. — Ignorance can do no mischief if wisdom has materials to correct it, and evil-disposed persons are always most suc- cessfully resisted, when, though no facts are con- cealed or misrepresented, erroneous conclusions may be denied." ¬I expressed the utmost satisfaction at this, just and honest declaration after an exposure sufficiently dismal ; saying*, " that I was well aware of the abundant wealth which might belong to a nation beyond the value of its universal representative, or even to a thousand times its amount. — Goon, then," I added, "that I may know your whole state, before I tell you what I think of it ; and the next question which I shall therefore put to you is, what part of the substance of the people is taken by your govern- ment in the shape of direct taxes, or, of the indirect ones, arising from the increased prices of commodities which are taxed ? and as it is ¬extremely ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/136


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/137

 extremely difficult to arrive at the total amount of property in a great country, tell me, in the rough, putting it in English money that I may understand you, how much does your government at an average take from the subject out of every pound he possesses?"—"It is difficult," he said, "to answer that question, because taxation is unequal, and cannot possibly be equalized; but if resort could be had to an equal rate comprehending the aggregate of the various sources, I should say it amounted to one half at the least."

"I must further ask you, whether you have any other burthens upon property besides those which are directly levied by your government for the support of the state?"—"We have," said Morven, "the clergy and the poor.

"With regard to the former, though it is a heavy burthen, yet we suffer more in the manner of its collection, than in the amount.—The ministers who bring us the consolations of religion

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/137


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/138

 ¬religion ought to be regarded with reverence and affection. — It is a most evil policy to make the common orders of the people consider them as their oppressors. — They ought never to be personally seen in the demand of what is destined for their support. — Deductions from temporal advantages for the maintenance of spiritual comforts should be guarded as much as possible from being constantly felt, and little difficulty would attend an arrangement which would add dignity to the clergy without abridging their revenues, and improve their connection with the multitude they are to instruct. ¬" As to the support of what is called the poor, the amount of which I have already related, it has spread pauperism through all the middle classes of the community. — In the earlier periods of our history the burthen of maintaining them was scarcely felt, our ancient law confining it to the relief of ' the lame, the blind, and the ' impotent, and such others amongst them as were ' unable to work.' — Every principle of humanity ¬demanded ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/138


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/139

 ¬demanded that support from those whom Provi- dence had exempted from such severe infirmities; but every principle of sound policy opposed its. further extension, and it was limited at first, in every district, to one-fortieth, which, speaking in your coin, would be only sixpence in the pound; but, by a strange departure from the principle of the original law, it now often exceeds forty times that amount, and in some places even the annual value of the property on which it professes to be a tax. — To be entitled to relief, it is no longer necessary that the appli- cant should bring himself within any of the descriptions of the ancient law; neither blind- ness, nor lameness, nor impotence, nor even inability to work, are necessary qualifications for support; large houses in every district being now built for the reception of almost any body who chooses to go into them, and from a pro- stration of morals it is no longer felt as a humi- liation or a reproach ; even they who, from their own improvidence, have contracted marriage though they knew themselves to be utterly k incapable ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/139


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/140

 ¬incapable of maintaining their children, have a claim to cast them upon the public as soon as they, arc born, and to live with them as inmates in those receptacles intended for the promotion of industry and the relief of want, but which, from the very nature of things, under the best management, become the abodes of vice and misery; where the aged, the diseased, the idle, and the profligate, the two first classes being everywhere out-numbered, are heaped upon one another, giving birth by their debaucheries to a new race of paupers, till they become " a kind of putrid mass above ground ; cor- rupted themselves and corrupting all about them." — To finish the picture of abuse : this enormous and still growing burthen is almost exclusively cast upon the proprietors and occu- piers of land, who ought least to be called upon to bear it, as neither their diseases nor their vices contribute in any kind of proportion to the aggregate of the poor. — The simplicity of a country life furnishes but a small contingent of either. — The vicious and the distempered ¬arc ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/140


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/141

 ¬are hourly vomited forth from the mines and manufactories, where contaminating multitudes and unwholesome labour produce every disgust- ing variety of decrepitude and crime, yet neither the proprietors of those establishments, nor the capitalists who roll along the streets of our cities in splendid carriages, pay any thing like their proportions to the support of the idle and the unhealthy they have produced. — Almost the whole is cast upon the cultivators of the soil, who, except in the very houses I have de- scribed, supported by their property and labour, see nothing around them but innocence and health. ¬" Your questions," said Morven, " arc now answered ; and I burn with impatience to hear how England would deal with the evils I have stated." — I felt, I confess, rather hurt at this insulting reference to my beloved country, after what I had formerly said; but contented myself for the present with informing him that other questions yet remained. ¬k 2 " How,* ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/141


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/142

 ¬" How," I asked, " after the return of peace, should there have been no markets for the far- mer's produce ? — Surely, in peace, as in war, your people must be fed ?" ¬t{{c|( The demands of government during war," he answered, " were enormous, and supplied by contracts at very high prices, to be sent beyond seas for the support of fleets and armies, and the inhabitants of countries which were the seats of war, besides the sustenance of immense numbers of prisoners at home. — On the cessation of hostilities this vast consumption not only suddenly stopped, but the tide turned against us, and great quantities of foreign corn were poured in from those very countries whose battles we had been fighting, not only with our blood but our treasure ; so that remaining comparatively unburthened, they could raise every kind of grain at one-third of the expense which falls upon the Armatian farmer. — With this foreign grain of every description our markets now became glutted, whilst our own ¬pro- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/142


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/143

 ¬produce remained in our granaries unsold; he- cause the importers could sell at a large profit, for a price which would scarcely pay the labour and taxes upon an Armatian farm." ¬" But where was your government all this while ?" ¬" Our government," he answered, " was no otherwise in fault than in not being perhaps sufficiently on its guard to prevent the evil at the very first moment of the peace ; and when at last it proceeded to pass a law to check im- portations, it had great difficulties to encoun- ter; the multitude, who, in all nations, are honest and upright, but who, upon the most important occasions, arc often quite incapable of understanding their own interests, became every where tumultuous, even to riot and rebel- lion, reasoning (if it deserve the name) that whatever had a tendency to raise the price of bread, without any reference to the causes of the, then prices of grain, was an unjust and ¬k 3 cruel ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/143


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/144

 ¬cruel disregard of the wants and sufferings of the poor, but their ignorance was soon proved by the event. — When the foreign corn was selling cheap in our markets, whilst that of their own country remained in the barns undisposed of, bread was undoubtedly cheaper, but they had then no money to buy it with however cheap, because their masters could no longer employ them, and they were every where discharged. — When grain fetched an encouraging price to the growers, they were all employed, and wages of course rose in proportion to the value of their labour to their employers; but when, from the sale of foreign corn in all the markets, it sunk below any profit from home cultivation, bread, as I have just told you, became cheaper, but the clamourers had no bread at all. — A cheap loaf was but a sorry sight to those who had only to look at it. — The kingdom therefore presented every where a face of the utmost distress ; nor is the law which even now regulates importations by any means sufficiently protective, because that which was intended to be the lowest price ¬in ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/144


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/145

 ¬in our markets became generally the highest, ;r consequence foretold in our public councils when the law was in progress, by one of the ablest men in our country. — The law indeed would be sufficiently protective, if, when tire ports were open under it, our markets were only refreshed by the fair commerce of foreign countries until they fell again below the importing standard; but that is by no means the case: the impor- tations are not made by foreigners, but by capi- talists amongst ourselves, who having money enough to stand the losses of unsuccessful specu- lations, can bring in their corn at the most favourable times, and being allowed to ware- house without duties, have their granaries al- ways full, when the law enables them to sell ; which suddenly throws down the markets, to the ruin of our agricultural classes. ¬" But the mistaken notion, which crippled ¬the law in its formation, was very soon exposed. ¬When the ruined farmers had in many places ¬discharged their labourers, and throughout the ¬k 4 whole ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/145


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/146

 ¬whole country had reduced their establishments, the unemployed with their children fell of course upon the public; and the manufacturers and traders, whose customers now filled our poor-houses and our prisons, found out at last that God has so fashioned the world, that all his creatures must flourish or decay to- gether. ¬" Another evil of almost equal magnitude overhangs us. — We have a creature called the bletur, which is not only the perfection of ani- mal food, but whose covering, given it by na- ture, becomes when manufactured our own also, and for many ages has been the pride and wealth of our country- — -Would you then believe, that though other nations produce the same animals, at such an inferior price, from their climates and untaxed conditions, as to render all competition ridiculous; yet this raw material is suffered to be imported and worked up here, whilst the breeders of Armata can scarcely pay their shep- herds for the care of their flocks, and are every ¬where ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/146


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/147

 ¬where breaking up their farms, even in those parts of the island proverbially famous for their pro- pagation?' ¬I could not here help interrupting again, by asking — " Where was your government all this while? — or rather perhaps I should ask, have you any government at all ?" — " Certainly," he an- swered, " we have, and one that is justly the envy of our world; but nothing is perfect. — The matter was lately brought before the great council, and was passed over without redress; but you must not be hasty in judging of the national character from such a seemingly absurd determination. — The great council is composed of men far superior, from talents and informa- tion, to those of any other country, but who are now and then obliged to suffer their own good sense to be overshadowed by the non- sense of others ; they are not chosen equally by the various classes of an intelligent people, but are got together in such a manner that local interests and local prejudices sometimes ¬prevail ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/147


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/148

 ¬prevail over the opinions of enlightened statesmen. — If yon had understood our lan- guage, it would have amused you to have been present at their debate. — The greater number said that they would not depart from an ancient policy of free importation, under which the country had so long flourished, and I have no doubt they believed they were pursuing its best interests ; but they probably never looked into an account — they knew nothing of the immense and alarming increase of the importations com- plained of, nor their former proportions at dif- ferent periods to the home growth, nor the effect of this increase upon the staple of the country, nor did they consider whether our own bleturs might not be brought by proper encou- ragements to a higher, perhaps to a perfec- tion equal with those of any other country, so as in time to supply most of our manufactures at as cheap a rate, preserving within ourselves the immense sums annually drained from us by purchasing abroad what we might produce at home. When this improvident conclusion of ¬the ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/148


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/149

 ¬the select body was brought before the whole council, they, without, further examination, confirmed it; and then, as innocently as the ble- turs which were the subjects of their decision, went out of the fold in which they had been penned to scatter themselves over the capital, where I will very soon carry you to see them/' ¬" Have you now," said Morven, " any other questions to propose? — I am impatient to hear your opinions/' ¬" Others yet remain. ¬" Is there any fixed interest of money amongst you r and, if there be, arc there any means by which avarice and chicanery can successfully evade the law which creates the limitation ?" — " There are," he replied, " and to such an extent as to render it difficult, if not impossible, for men possessed of the clearest and most unburthened property to borrow the smallest sums for the im- provement of their estates." ¬" In ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/149


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/150

 In what state are your manufactures? — Are your people equally industrious as formerly, and are they equal to other nations in the ingenious arts ?" ¬" As much beyond them," he answered, " as the sun outshines the smallest star that only twinkles when he has set. There are some arts, perhaps, in which, as we do not prize them so highly as others, we may be inferior; but in all the great improvements of the higher, which assist human labour, and which can only be brought to perfection by the deepest know- ledge of chemistry and mechanics, we have no equals, nor can ever, I believe, be rivalled. There is a force and robustness, if I may so express myself, in the natives of Armata, as if they were of a different species from the ordinary race of men." ¬" I rejoice to hear it — one question then only remains — ¬" Have you fisheries ? — Are your seas prolific, ¬and ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/150


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/151

 and are the fish directed by a mysterious instinct, as in our world, to visit periodically the coasts of the ocean, as if brought thither by the Divine command for the sustentation of man?"

"You seem," answered my friend, "to have been describing this country in adverting to your own. The fish of this planet are prolific beyond all other creatures, and are bound, as with you, to an appointed course. The finger of God, visible as it is throughout all his works, seems here to be more distinct and manifest; pointing with a benevolent clearness to this inexhaustible source of food. The supply has been always a great national object, but improvement has not reached its height, and never can reach it whilst a most improvident and enormous duty upon salt, amounting to thirty times and upwards of the value of the commodity, is suffered to remain as it is at present regulated by our laws."

CHAP-

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/151


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/152

 ¬ CHAPTER XL ¬In which the Author begins to deliver his opinion concerning the state of Armata, and the remedies for the difficulties which Morven had related. ¬" You shall now then," I said, " be possessed of my opinions — I have little, indeed, to com- municate, having only in a manner to give you back what is your own. Your answers to my various inquiries have been so enlightened, that T can hardly mistake the condition of your coun- try, but its novelty throughout has perplexed me. The remedies, though they may be diffi- cult in the application, are in their principles obvious and simple. ¬" Your government, according to your own admission, had long ago absorbed a much larger proportion of the public wealth than can pos- sibly be consistent with the prosperity, I had almost said with the existence of any state. ¬And ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/152


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/153

 ¬And no ordinary cause of war — nothing, indeed, short of self protection from an invading force could have justified the launching out into such •a wasteful system of expenditure, as to have in- creased ten-fold in less than thirty years the burthen of ten centuries." " We had no choice," said Morven, interrupting me, " after the short opportunity I pointed out to you had passed ; we sought to avoid war, but it. was fastened upon us." ¬• " I am in no condition," I answered, " to dis- pute with you upon facts ; but your adversaries were in the phrenzy of a sanguinary revolution, and were more likely to destroy themselves than to injure others. — You should therefore have exerted your influence with other governments to leave them unmolested ; and if, by a firm and faithful combination, some safe direction could not be given to so inflamed and dangerous a people, all nations should have stood aloof from them as from the mouth of a volcano, attaching their own subjects by wise and indul- gent ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/153


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/154

 ¬gent councils, increasing for the time their mili- tary establishments, and keeping within their own territories in a state of impregnable defence. ¬" But supposing the views of other nations to have been different, or that differing from yours in opinion, your mediation had been re- jected, you were completely independent of them all, and as far therefore as your own country was concerned nothing ought to have removed you from a system of defence. You are an island with immense naval and military strength. Within yourselves you were secure — and you ought not, though you were involved in war, to have carried it beyond your own limits. — A contrary system could not have been contem- plated by men of common discretion without foreseeing a ruinous expense ; but nothing seems to have occurred to your most sagacious finan- ciers beyond the simple question of the compe- tency of the new taxes to pay the interest of additional loans ; their bearings upon the springs of national industry and prosperous commerce ¬appear- ¬ ¬appear

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/154


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/155

 appear to have been wholly overlooked, except in the closets of a few speculative writers who foresaw the ruin of the system, but miscalculated its period, from not taking into account the almost incredible energies of your extraordinary people. This was a great evil; because when the æra of their prophecies had passed away, it operated as a kind of license for unbounded pro-fusion. Œconomists were of course discountenanced, and jobbers of every description encouraged in a triumphant cry against factious predictions, until it seems to have become a received or rather an unquestionable axiom amongst you, that no debt which figures could extend to denominate would ever affect the invulnerable and immortal Armata; since, contrary to the experience of our jockeys in England, the more weight she had carried the greater had been her speed. That this bubble did not burst whilst hostilities continued may easily be accounted for.—Whilst your government was the universal paymaster, your forges resounded night and day, your looms were incessantly plied

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/155


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/156

 plied, and your warehouses for manufactures and natural productions were almost hourly emptied and replenished; high prices and prompt payments were considered as symbols of the most permanent prosperity, and the just pride of national glory confirmed the delusion:—well may it be called delusion! because the traffic which you imagined had enriched you was carried on with your own capitals, and every article purchased was paid for with your own money. Individual sellers were, no doubt, often more than compensated for their proportions of what all of you were to discharge, but the community of course became poor in the proportion of the amount expended, since the amount expended was their own. When peace therefore came, which had been so long and so anxiously looked for, markets of every description and the prices of all commodities became comparatively nothing, whilst the people were bent to the earth by the interest of the money borrowed to pay for the goods which had been sold. Your great purchaser was, no doubt, most liberal and punctual

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/156


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/157

 punctual in his payments, but they could only be made by his putting his hand into your own pockets. It is folly to say, that the public debt of a nation is nothing, being only owing from the community at large to a part of it, and so returning in a circle; likening it to money due from members of the same family to one another, which, it was said, would leave the family just the same as if no such loans amongst themselves had existed. There might be some colour for this comparison if the whole population were public creditors in equal proportions; but what would become of the argument, if the lenders were not more than a twelfth part of the people, and if those who, when the taxes were brought back by government into circulation, received any part of them for services or from favour were but another twelfth part of them?—could it, in such a case, be maintained as a grave argument that the five-sixths of the public, paying the same as individuals, but receiving nothing in return for their equal contributions, were yet on a footing of equality with others who

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/157


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/158

 who were more than indemnified, and even with those who had been enriched? or could it be hazarded as doctrine by any political œconomist, that a nation so circumstanced could be equally powerful or prosperous, or its inhabitants equally happy as if the public wealth flowed in a natural current through all the various classes of the civilized world? Such sophistry might well pass current in England, where nobody has an interest in questioning it, because our debt is too insignificant to raise up antagonists to oppose it; but if we had seventy millions to pay annually, a sum more than half the rental of our whole kingdom, and if only three or four millions of our people, out of our whole great population, received any part of it back again, but remained in a comparative state of poverty and exclusion, the air would ring with exclamations against the propagation of an error so palpably dangerous and destructive.

"It cannot, indeed, be better exposed, since it should only be met by ridicule, than by telling you

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/158


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/159

 you of a loss which I personally suffered before I left England, and for which I was not a little laughed at amongst my acquaintance—

"I happened to go, after a theatrical representation in London, to a general rendezvous for refreshment in the neighbourhood of the play-house: whilst I was at supper, there came into my box a person in a state of great agitation and distress.—His appearance bespoke the utmost poverty, and I was therefore not a little surprized to see him pull out of his pocket a time-piece, of great beauty, set round with precious stones, which he offered to sell me just at any price I would set upon it, adding, that nothing but finding an immediate purchaser could save himself and an infant family from destruction. I excused myself, by saying, that I hoped he would not think I meant to insult him by any suspicion of his honesty, but that common prudence, as well as justice to others, inspired a reasonable restraint in such a case upon the most charitable feelings. I told

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/159


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/160

 I told him, however, giving him at the same time my address, that what he asked for was at his service, but not as the price of his watch, which should be re-delivered on the re-payment of the money. He seemed greatly affected by my proposal, returned me a thousand thanks, pressed my hands between his, and turning aside, as if to conceal his tears, retired with the bank notes I had given him. On returning home I shewed the watch to my family, taking not a little credit for having refused so advantageous a bargain, saying it must be, at least, of equal value with my own, which had cost me five times the money. I now put my hand into my pocket to make the comparison, but found I had it not. To cut the matter short, which you no doubt already anticipate, it was my own watch I had paid for, which this ingenious stranger had deprived me of in the play-house, and sold to me as his." Seeing my friend almost convulsed with laughter, I could not help saying to him, "Laughable as it may be, it is scarcely an exaggeration of the account you

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/160


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/161

 you have been giving me of your country during your late war, and if you understood Latin I would say to you—

"The true way of estimating the disastrous consequences of your present taxation, is to figure to yourself (if you can bear the reflection) the sensation it would at this moment produce, if some new and unexpected source of annual revenue were to start up to the amount of twenty millions of your money.—Would it not in your present condition be like a resurrection from the dead?—Yet in this one reign you have created a perpetual burthen of nearly twice that sum. Could volumes so strikingly detail the effect of this worst of evils?

"The cause of your distress is therefore the clearest imaginable.—Your government collects in taxes so large a proportion of your property, that the rest is not sufficient to support your people; in such a case it is a mistake to Rh

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/161


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/162

 of the want of a circulating medium as an accidental and temporary cause of your difficulties, capable of being removed by politic contrivances. We have a vulgar saying in England, that you can have no more of a cat than his skin; and if out of twenty shillings, not less than ten are consumed by government and by collateral burthens, ten only can remain in real and substantial circulation; the scarcity of money may be lamented, and ingenious devices may be held out as remedies, but without a radical system of improvement, rendering property more productive, and trade more prosperous, what danger can be greater than opportunities of borrowing, when there are no means of repaying what is borrowed?—If land, from having sunk below its former rental, is mortgaged to more than half its value, would it be any thing like an advantage to the proprietor to find out even a fair lender, who would advance him money on the remaining part? since, without some means of improvement, his estate in the end must infallibly be sold. "The

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/162


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/163

 ¬" The same consequences apply equally to com- munities as to individuals, and there is there- fore no safety for Armata, but, first, in the wis- dom of her government, and in the energies of her people, to raise the value of every species of property, by the almost infinite ways within their reach ; and secondly, by the immediate reduction of her expenditure to square with her revenue, as far as can be made consistent with the public safety and the principles of national justice. ¬" A great orator in our ancient world, when asked what was the first, and the second, and the third perfection of eloquence, still answered Action, not to exclude other perfections but to mark its superior importance ; so I, who am no orator at all, but a plain man, speaking plainly of the policy of an exhausted country, must say that your fiwst, and your second, and your third duty, is retrenchment, meaning, as the rhetorician, not that it is your zchole duty, but only that its pre-eminence may be felt. ¬" I am ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/163


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/164

 ¬" I am aware of the great difficulties which must attend a satisfactory execution of this momentous trust, but after what you have related of Armata, / cannot doubt the result. — On the contrary, a severe and unexampled pressure may open men's eyes to their real con- dition, and give such a simultaneous impulse to your government and people, as to make them act harmoniously and firmly, in devising and submitting to the measures necessary for the redemption of your affairs. ¬u In this grand process of restoration, it is of the first importance that the public mind should not take a wrong direction, looking for savings' which in the aggregate would be as nothing, whilst principles of justice, which are every thing, were disregarded. — Your retrenchments must not have the character of confiscations nor of revolutionary heat, and the different classes of your people, so happily blended as to have a common interest, must not be set at variance. — No justice can be done where irri- tation ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/164


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/165

 ¬tation prevails, and in England therefore no court is permitted to sit in judgment, unless they who are to pronounce it are dispassionate and unbiassed. — I can see no distinction between the members of a community in a great crisis of its affairs — when a ship is in distress all on board must take their turns at the pump. — The public creditor undoubtedly lends his money upon the faith of the whole nation, pledged through its government to a stipulated return, and it is a most sacred pledge; but the landholder im- proves his property upon the same faith, that he shall enjoy its profits, subject only to an equal burthen upon all. — What colour then is there for saying, that, if that revenue were to fall short to which the public creditor looked when he lent his money, the deficiency should be made up to him by disproportionate burthens upon lands on which he had no mort- gage, nor their proprietors any special benefit from the loans? ¬ " Neither — and for the same reasons — ought ¬ you ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/165


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/166

 ¬you to lay disproportionate burthens upon the profits of any manufactures or ingenious arts, begun in any given state of your country, that you may keep what is termed good faith with a very limited number of your subjects. — Every just government, however, must proceed in ex^ treme or in new cases with the utmost cau- tion, taking care that no principle is adopted which works a wrong, however small in the particular instance it may appear, because it opens a door to other wrongs, the extent of which cannot be known, and saps the very foundations of the social contract. — The true course to be pursued is, after all, most difficult; in the details, though the principles, as I have said, are clear ; since with every qualification of wisdom and justice in those who may have to act, or of fortitude and patience in those who are to suffer, differences of opinion must always attend any sudden and cutting reforms in great national establishments, both as to the extent of reductions and the seasons for their accomplishment. — Every class will feel most ¬acutely ¬ ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/166


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/167

 acutely for itself, and it is difficult to be a righteous judge in our own cause. — This prejudice may even extend to cases where there can be no approach to self-interest, and it may perhaps most powerfully affect my own judgment at this moment, when I am discussing the policy of another world. — The first object of retrenchment after the general peace you have described, ought undoubtedly, to some extent or other, to be the reduction of your naval and military forces; because their services are no longer necessary for your safety; but they may again be necessary, and the utmost skill and caution are therefore required to preserve their fabric and constitution, when you diminish their extent. — The condition also of many who have so nobly served you, is a subject I almost weep to think on. — It should be remembered, that those brave men have been for years together in most perilous and unwholesome stations; that their pay could not be sufficient to support them, and in many cases their families also, — left behind them, oppressed with poverty

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/167


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/168

 poverty and the wretchedness of separation. — It is surely, therefore, an intemperate spirit that would drown the acclamations of joy for victories purchased with their blood, by a clamour to dismiss them, at once, to hopeless misery. — A reduction you must nevertheless make, since an unusual pressure demands it, but let not their cause be prejudiced by imaginary dangers to your civil government, which, with one stroke of a pen, can sweep away their very name and existence. — Be firm, then, in your purpose to lop off all burthens which lean without necessity upon your revenues, but be gentle and considerate in the process; softening, as far as possible, the severe privations which duty may compel you to inflict.

"Let me deceive you however in nothing. — I am no authority on this part of your case. — I was bred to arms from my earliest youth in my own world, and feel such an enthusiasm in every thing that regards the naval or military professions, that if the subject had arisen with us, and

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/168


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/169

 ¬and I had been placed in our public coun- cils, I should probably have differed in opinion from those with whom I differ in nothing else." ¬ CHAP-

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/169


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/170

 ¬ CHAPTER XII. ¬In which the Author continues to deliver his Opinion upon the State and Condition of Armat a. ¬"Another momentous duty now presents it- self, and of a more pleasant character. — Whilst you are reducing your expenditure, every effort ought to be made, and, if possible, without the aid of new burthens, to regenerate the public estate, which neither in its value nor in any of its resources, has nearly reached its height.— From an inhabitant of another world you cannot expect details; but, founding myself upon your own statements, I will point out some manifest errors in your system, and advert to the most obvious remedies : ¬" In the first place, then, to enable a state to collect a great and direct revenue from the property of the people, it ought to be a grand object to make all collateral burthens press upon ¬them ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/170


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/171

 ¬them as lightly as possible by the most refined policy in the administrations of all inferior departments, and to suffer no abuses whatsoever to prevail in them : this is not the work of a day, but of painful and long-continued labour in the legislative body, and throughout all the magistracies of the country* ¬" That this duty has been wholly lost sight of in a most vital part of your concerns, you have yourself admitted and lamented. — Nothing indeed can be so extravagantly absurd and preposterous as the management or rather the creation of your poor, by which your government suffers to escape from it, (without any relief to its subjects, but on the contrary op- pressingand corrupting them,) an annual revenue of nearly half your general taxes when your late war began, since you have stated that above seven millions are every year collected on that account. — To advise you, in this case, requires no local knowledge; an inhabitant of the moon, dropped down from it upon your surface, would, ¬m in ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/171


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/172

 ¬iii the very next moment, be fully qualified to condemn the absurd and disgraceful system of your laws. — It was an insult, (though I am sure not intended,) to ask me what England would do in a condition to which she never can be reduced. — England would never have per- mitted her houses of charity, if a mistaken policy had erected them, to be converted into the haunts of vagabonds and prostitutes to knot and gender in, throwing the whole burthen of their debaucheries upon the industrious classes of her people — England would laugh to scorn the laboured system of folly you have described, bringing no comfort to the necessitous, whilst it swallows up, in many instances, the entire property on which it professes to be a tax — England, instead of setting up courts through- out the whole country to play at foot-ball with the unhappy, whom she meant to protect, driving them to and fro from one part of the kingdom to the other — England would begin by confining public charity to those who were real objects of charitable support ; and, wise in ¬all ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/172


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/173

 ¬all her regulations, would then enact a system of equal and local contribution from all who, from any source of property or industry, could spare it ; a contribution which the wealthy would not feel, and which would be felt even by the lowest orders not as a burthen, but as a protection from ever being themselves the objects of a degrading and corrupting relief. — Those mischievous receptacles of vice and misery, which you so justly and feelingly re- probated, would then be everywhere rased to the foundations ;, the poor would be restored to their domestic comforts, and contributing millions to an useless and devouring taxation, would be enabled to relieve the public as they became themselves relieved. — When by such a new system of laws, as wise and protective as the present is absurd and oppressive, the mites of almost the poorest came to be dropped into the boxes of so blessed an institution throughout every district in your country, pauperism would soon entirely disappear. — It often indeed exists in its most wretched and degraded forms, when ¬m 2 what ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/173


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/174

 ¬what can be saved amongst the lower classes, instead of being deposited weekly, for their own benefit, is consumed nightly, in haunts where liquid fire is prepared for them, utterly destroy- ing their constitutions, and disqualifying them from all the duties of good husbands, or fathers, or subjects, not one of which an habitual drunkard was ever yet qualified to fulfil. ¬" But the subject of your pauperism is far from being finished. — Humanity cannot pronounce that the poor shall receive no alms when they can work, if there be no work for them. — ¦ Every thing therefore you have said regarding those oppressive burthens, in the whole of which I have just concurred with you, must go com- pletely for nothing, and be without any possible remedy until this radical and destructive defect in your present condition is removed. ¬" Your laws for the support of the poor were made in a sound and wholesome state of your country, when it was a just legal presump- tion, ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/174


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/175

 ¬tion, that every man who was able and wiHing to work might find employment; but that is not the case now, and the evil may be most distinctly traced to your great taxation, and to an erroneous policy, which, by depressing agriculture, has depressed every thing else. — To use the words of a great poet of England, ' We track the felon home/ — This most important subject lies within the narrowest compass, and may be summed up in a word. — Indeed, you have almost exhausted it yourself, and I have little that is my own to offer. ¬" The mischief began in the mistaken system you adopted for the importation of foreign grain; but however your government might have been perplexed and almost overborne on the first consideration of the subject, I cannot anticipate that it will suffer such a monstrous evil to continue. — It must surely see that the profits of a few importing merchants, engaged in speculations of this description, can never cir- culate with the same advantage as if the same ¬M 3 capital ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/175


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/176

 ¬capital were flowing in various channels as a kind of irrigation of wealth through every nook and corner of your island, giving universal spirit to agriculture, and employment to millions who must become national burthens when it declines. ¬" You will now, of course, ask for the remedies, which appear to me as obvious as the evils to which they are to be applied. — You must not expect that remedial effects can be sudden, when the causes of your difficulties are con- sidered ; but if they are wisely adopted and firmly persevered in, I will warrant the result. ¬" The soil, then, of every country, and the bringing to the utmost perfection its various productions, are the foundations of all wealth and prosperity. — You might as well hope to see the human body in active motion when palsy had reached the heart, or a tree flourishing after its roots were decayed, as expect to see manu- factures, or arts, or industry of any description ¬pro- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/176


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/177

 ¬when agriculture has declined. — In an island like Armata, where the earth and the climate are so propitious, no man ought to be able to set his foot upon the ground, except upon the public roads, or the streets of cities, without treading upon human sustenance ; and it ought to be a fundamental policy to bring your entire surface into the best considered use by prudent and appropriate culti- vation. — Well directed bounties, and skilful relaxations of your imposts where they press tod severely, might still accomplish this object; and the unnatural state of your country for so long a period most imperiously demands the attempt; as, without some immediate exertion, thousands, perhaps millions of acres, will soon fall back into the desart more rapidly than they were reclaimed. ¬" This retrogression of agriculture would be ¬portentous, if the causes were not obvious. — ¬The lands I principally speak of were not ¬brought into cultivation by a natural course of ¬M 4 bus- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/177


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/178

 ¬husbandry, but were forced into production at an expense that your markets during war could only repay ; and the utmost exertion of unprotected proprietors can never, I fear, redeem them from the consequences of such an improvi- dent course — the State alone can save them, and the public loss will otherwise be ten-fold the amount of the greatest sacrifice which need be made to prevent returning barrenness from deso- lating your land. ¬" It is not Money that government could be asked for, but, as I have just said, the skilful ma- nagement of revenue, and an unremitting atten. tion in her legislature to the smaller springs of national ceconomy, which are not examined or thought of when the body politic is in a rude state of health, — the science of agriculture is by no means at its height; and in the almost miraculous advance of chemistry, new means may be found, from the concentration of known composts and the discovery of new, to lessen the cost of culture, and to increase its returns. — But here ¬again ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/178


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/179

 ¬again your revenue stalks like a ghost across my path whichever way I turn; as otherwise you have a superior unbounded source of im- provement trodden under your very feet, and cast as refuse into your rivers, beyond all that chemistry is ever likely to discover. — You have salt, you say, in endless abundance, but your necessity turns it into money, even to forty times its value, instead of spreading it abroad for vari- ous uses, to rise up in property which no money could purchase. — After thus taxing to the very hone this life's blood of your people, why, to be consistent, do you not bind up by law their veins and arteries to prevent circulation? — Do you know what salt alone would do for you if it were not seized upon as revenue and clung to perhaps as a plank which you cannot quit in your distress? — I will speak of its other uses hereafter ; but can you be so ignorant as not to know, that by taking the tax upon it directly as money, you rob yourselves of fifty times its amount in the productions of your soil, in your fisheries and manufac- tures, ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/179


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/180

 ¬tures, and in the universal prosperity of the country ? ¬" Lime, which has caused to start into life the most inert and sterile parts of Great Britain, is just nothing as a manure when compared with salt, which differs from it, besides, in two remark- able qualities, decisive of its superior value. — Lime, and I believe all other known composts, are powerful only according to the quantities in which they are used, whereas salt, to be use- ful, must be sparingly employed ; it corrupts vegetable substances when mixed with them in small quantities, but preserves them when it predominates in the mass. — It is needless there- fore to add, that independently of its compara- tive lightness, the expense both of the article and its carriage must be very greatly diminished. Yet you rob the mother of your people of this food which indulgent nature has cast into her lap, sufficient, as you will see hereafter, to feed all her children, even if their numbers were doubled. ¬" Nothing ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/180


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/181

 ¬" Nothing indeed can so clearly expose the infinite danger of public profusion, as the neces- sity it imposes upon almost all governments, of direct taxation upon articles of universal and in- dispensable consumption: such revenues are un- doubtedly always great, and, in moderation, are therefore the best; but when they are pushed beyond the mark, which an enlightened view of the whole concerns of a country would make manifest to a great statesman, the advantages obtained arc countervailed and become nothing; because they dry up other sources of wealth and improvement which would carry even greater burthens, whilst the national prosperity was preserved. ¬u To continue this momentous subject, be assured that the very being of your country, above all at this moment, depends upon your making your own soil support your most ex- tended population, and that to consider popu- lation as an evil, is to be wiser than God, who, in your earth as in mine, commanded man to in- crease ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/181


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/182

 ¬crease and multiply, and who, I am persuaded, throughout all creation, has ordained that no- thing should go backward or stand still. ¬" If there were no other proof of the pre- eminence of agriculture, let it be remembered that it is the greatest source of labour, and in a proportion little understood, because it not only comprehends the direct and immediate labour upon its surface and in its bowels, but the labour also of various arts and manufactures, whose raw materials it produces. — Labour, in- deed, is the salt of the earth, the preserver and nourisher of all things — the curse that man should eat his bread with the sweat of his brow, was mercifully repealed in the very moment it was pronounced, and was changed even into a bless- ing — Labour gave him bread, and a comfort along with it, which nothing like labour can bestow. If the earth produced spontaneously, it might be a paradise for angels, but no habitation for beings formed like ourselves; without labour, what could support or adorn the whole fabric ¬of ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/182


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/183

 ¬of society? — It would vanish like an enchant- ment. ¬" The curse of death was also revoked, not only by the promise of immortal life hereafter, but to deliver man at the very moment from the barrenness of the earth that was cursed. — With- out death, he might have toiled and sweated, but the ground would have yielded nothing ; death therefore was ordained to revolve with life in a mysterious and fructifying circle. — The cor- ruption of all created things returning into the bosom of nature, brings them back again to re- ward the industry of man. Every animal that dies ; all vegetables, and they have lives also, every substance which dissolves and becomes offensive, every heterogeneous mixture, which upon the surface would stagnate and become malignant, brought back by human wisdom into their allotted stations, become the future parents of a renovated world. ¬" Can we suppose then that God has per- formed ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/183


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/184

 ¬formed those stupendous miraeles tor nothing: When our Scripture tells us that man was formed from the dust of the earth, it should not perhaps be taken in a sense too literal — to the Almighty, matter was not necessary for his creation, though his frame was to be material — it may mean that he could live only by the earth, and was to return to it after death. -"The first national object then is to feed your own people, and to find employment for them all. On such asubjcct you cannot ex- pect details, nor can you need them. — In a country whose splendid history you have passed along- like a kind of fairy tale before me, your means must be infinite. — You have not only the rich- est and most various surface to work upon, but subterranean treasures, inexhaustible and un- equalled ; you have still to make new roads and railways, and canals, and facilities of yet undis- covered descriptions, for the transport of their pro- ductions, which should over-spread your soil as if there were a net-work thrown over it. — The car- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/184


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/185

 ¬riage of manure, of materials for building, and of all articles of traffic, or provisions, are heavy taxes upon the raw materials, and by every pos- sible means should be diminished ; an obser- vation equally applying to every species of human labour, whether employed upon the earth or in arts and manufactures, which should be cur- tailed and lessened not only by the utmost stretch of accidental inventions, but should be drawn out and rewarded and consecrated by the state. ¬" This may be thought a paradox whilst the poor are calling out every where for employ- ment ; but be assured no greater delusion ever existed than that the matchless ingenuity of your people, in the construction of mechanical aids, can in any possible instance be an evil. I was shocked, indeed, to hear of outrages, which I should have expected only to have existed amongst the very dregs of a civilized people. The mistaken or rather the delirious incitement, is when numbers are unemployed ; but how many more would be without employ- ment. ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/185


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/186

 ¬ment, or rather how many thousands, and tens and hundreds of thousands would be starving* if the machinery they attack were overthrown ? In the present condition of your country you could not send a single bale of your manufac- tures into a foreign market, if they were to be worked up only by manual labour, and then not only the turbulent destroyers, but the most diligent of your people must perish. Having been blessed with religious parents, my mind was directed, from my earliest youth, to contem- plate the benevolent dispensations of an offended God ; and in nothing have they inspired a more constant and grateful admiration than that when the first and greatest of his works had been cast down for disobedience into the most forlorn and helpless condition, he should not only be gifted to subdue to his use and dominion all inferior things, but that, fashioned after the image of Heaven, he should be enabled to scan its most distant worlds, and to augment his own strength in mitigation of his appointed labour, by engines so tremendously powerful as would crush, with ¬a sin- ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/186


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/187

 ¬a single stroke, his weak frame to atoms, whilst they form, under his directing skill, the smallest and most delicate things for the uses and orna- ments of the world. ¬" You must heat down those insane outrages by the whole strength and vigour of your laws. Select the guiltiest for condign punishment; but let no such guilt be spared'* ¬Morven here expressed his highest satisfac- tion. Taking me by the hand, he assured me that the very existence of Armata depended upon the most unremitting execution of the laws in this respect; and I was glad to find that her government had acted with the greatest promp- titude and firmness in stigmatizing and punish- ing this opprobrium of a civilized world. ¬As I was preparing to finish the little I had to say to him, he desired we might pause a moment, that what had been last said might be the better remembered; and opening the door, which led ¬x to ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/187


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/188

 ¬to the adjoining apartment, I found a supper of twelve covers prepared for us, and a mixed company of men and women, apparently most accomplished; but being then an utter stranger to the language, I shall postpone all my obser- vations upon Armatian society till I have to speak hereafter of the manners and amusements of the capital ; yet I cannot pass over that the women I saw were most beautiful, several of them singing delightfully, and that, from their address and manner of speaking, it was well, perhaps, for my repose, that I could not under- stand what they said. — The reader, indeed, will have to condole with me hereafter that I ever became more susceptible. ¬ CHAP-

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/188


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/189

 ¬ CHAPTER XIII. ¬In which the Author concludes his Opinion upon the State and Condition of Armata. ¬When Morven visited me next morning, he expressed his impatience to hear what had been left unfinished the night before ; and I then pro- ceeded as follows : — ¬" The more I reflect upon every part of your statement, the more I am convinced that a grand system of well directed industry, sup- ported at once by your government and people, would give an entire new face to your country; but it cannot be even begun without re-casting the laws which regulate the importations of what your own soil could produce. I am sen- sible that this subject is complicated in the details, and that I cannot be qualified to deal with them; but a sound principle gives a sure direction throughout all the branches of ¬N C political ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/189


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/69

 Hodgkin has left a remarkable record of his skill in handwriting in his ‘Calligraphia Græca.’ It was written in 1794, and was dedicated to Hodgkin's friend Dr. Young, at whose suggestion it was composed. Young also furnished the gnomic sentences from various authors, which Hodgkin wrote in beautiful Greek characters, and his friend Henry Ashby engraved. A translation by Young of Lear's curse into Greek iambics, undertaken ‘rogatu viri omnium disertissimi Edmundi Burke,’ was also added. The work was not published till 1807, when it appeared together with ‘Pœcilographia Græca,’ in which nineteen Greek alphabets of various periods are figured, and some seven hundred contractions used in Greek manuscripts are given. Some of the latter were brought under Hodgkin's notice by Porson, with whom he had a slight acquaintance. Hodgkin also published, besides school and exercise books: He likewise took part in ‘Excerpta ex J. F. Bastii commentatione cum tabulis lithographicis a J. Hodgkin transcripta,’ 1835.
 * 1) ‘Definitions of some of the Terms made use of in Geography and Astronomy,’ London, 1804; 2nd edit., 1812.
 * 2) ‘Specimens of Greek Penmanship,’ London, 1804.
 * 3) ‘An Introduction to Writing,’ 4th edit., London, 1811.
 * 4) ‘A Sketch of the Greek Accidence,’ London, 1812.

HODGKIN, JOHN (1800–1875), barrister and quaker preacher, son of (1766–1845) [q. v.], was born at Pentonville, London, on 11 March 1800. He and his brother [q. v.] were educated at home, partly by their father, and, besides receiving a very thorough classical training, acquired a taste for physical science. John Stuart Mill was one of the few associates of their boyhood. Having chosen the profession of the law, John Hodgkin became a pupil of Harrison, a conveyancer, who belonged to the school of Preston and of Brodie. As a conveyancer Hodgkin successfully represented and carried forward the traditions of this school, which aimed at conciseness and brevity, at a time when the legislature had not yet interfered to curtail the intolerably diffuse style of legal documents. He soon obtained a large practice, but was chiefly eminent as a teacher of law. His chambers were always crowded with pupils, with whom he read for an hour a day some legal text-book, even when fully occupied with his practice. He was an earnest advocate of legal reform, and published about 1827 a pamphlet entitled ‘Observations on the Establishment of a General Register of Titles,’ strongly pleading for that measure. He rarely appeared in court except to uphold some opinion which he had given on a disputed question of title; and at the early age of forty-three, in consequence of a severe illness, he retired from the legal profession, and devoted the remainder of his life to religious and philanthropic work. He held a high position among the preachers of the quaker body, visited their congregations in Ireland, France, and America, and was for two years ‘clerk’ to their yearly meeting, a position corresponding to that of moderator in the church of Scotland. His visit to America in 1861 was especially important from its coincidence with the outbreak of the civil war, which made the position of the quakers one of peculiar difficulty, as their two great ‘testimonies’ against war and against slavery tended to draw them in opposite directions. At the time of the Irish famine of 1845–6 John Hodgkin assisted zealously in the work of the relief committees established by his co-religionists in Dublin and London. He struggled long, but in the end unsuccessfully, to introduce improved methods of fishing among the seafaring population of the ‘Claddagh,’ near Galway. He also had a large share in the preparation of the Encumbered Estates Act (1849), a measure which, as he hoped, would remove some of the worst economical evils under which Ireland was labouring. The position of one of the judges of the court founded by this act was offered him by Lord John Russell, but he declined it. During the last ten or twelve years of his life he took an active part in the proceedings of the Social Science congress.

His youth and middle life were passed at Tottenham. Thence he removed at the age of fifty-eight to Lewes, where he resided during the latter years of his life. He died at Bournemouth on 5 July 1875, aged 75. He was thrice married, and left issue by each marriage. His first wife was Elizabeth, daughter of [q. v.]

HODGKIN, THOMAS, M.D. (1798–1866), physician, son of (1766–1845) [q. v.], and brother of (1800–1875) [q. v.], was born at Tottenham, Middlesex, 17 Aug. 1798. He was educated at home, and acquired a good knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and German. He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, London, in Paris, and in Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1823, publishing a thesis ‘De absorbendi functione.’ He settled in prac


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/190

 ¬political occonomy. Until you come into the* full enjoyment of what wisdom is sure to bestow, you must, of course, have temporary arrange- ments according to circumstances, that provi- sions may be alwa} r s obtained at steady and reasonable rates; but, in the meantime, your undoubted policy is universal cultivation", and when that is accomplished, or so far ad- vanced as to feed your people, not a blade or seed, or grain of any description ought to be permitted to enter the ports of your country, times of famine or scarcity excepted ; and even then the quantity should be measured by the decision of some high and responsible tri- bunal, to secure unfluctuating prices, not so high as to distress the poor, nor so lozv as to throw them out of bread, when the landholders, who employ them, are undersold by general and jobbing importations. ¬" To speak plainly — It is my clear opinion that this cannot be accomplished in the present state of things, except by protecting duties, ¬which ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/190


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/191

 ¬which should be so regulated as to ensure im- portation, without enabling it to overpower the agriculture of your own country. ¬" It would be speaking at random to be more particular in concerns so new to me, but the principle is universal. Importations of natural productions may occasionally be politic, because manufactures are often taken in return ; but advantages may be purchased too dearly, and no price can be more ruinous than when foreign harvests have an injurious interference with the natural productions of any nation. ¬" To avoid this evil, affecting alike manufac- tures and agriculture, protecting duties have been constantly resorted to by all governments, and I cannot even conceive the danger of adopt- ing them upon the present occasion, nor the difficulty of settling their amounts. — After fixing a proper standard, you might then keep up your present warehousing system, that you might always have a supply ; securing to the ¬n 3 importer ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/191


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/192

 ¬importer a fair prospect of profit, without which he would not import, but still keeping him in subordination to your own cultivators, without which your own soil will infallibly be neglected. — This system, however, need be but temporary, like parental duties towards an infant until his growth and strength are completed; because, to say that notwithstanding the most politic protections and bounties, such a country as you have described to me will be found unequal in the end to the support of its own popu- lation, or that provisions are likely to be dearer in proportion as your whole surface is brought into well-directed cultivation, are propositions which no man in England, who dreaded the re- straints ofamad-house, would venture to advance. ¬" Anticipating, therefore, that a more pro- tective system will now be speedily adopted, I may revert with some hope to the condition of your poor. When agriculture shall have re- vived, and with it the labour which is insepa- rable from its prosperity, the ancient legal -presumption, ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/192


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/193

 ¬presumption, that men who can work may find employment, will revive also ; and you may then, without inhumanity or injustice act up to, or even re-enact your ancient laws which limit the objects of relief to those whose activities from age, or from disease, or in short from any disabling infirmities have been destroyed. I know nothing, of course, of your various dis- tricts or of the burthens imposed upon them, but I should not be at all surprized if, from the very evils we have been discussing, the rates should be found to be greater in the agricultural than in the manufacturing departments ; because your husbandmen and country servants, of all descriptions, when employed upon lower wages or discharged from employment, would fall of course as burthens upon the places where their families were settled ; but on the renovation of agriculture the very reverse of this would immediately succeed, and the rates in these places would not only be the lowest, but would lead to universal reductions, because, as labour increased and extended, wages would extend ¬\ \ and ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/193


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/194

 ¬and increase in proportion, the whole of which would circulate amongst your manufacturers and traders, who lost their best customers when agriculture declined. ¬" You are not, perhaps, aware of the propor- tional ascendancy of land over other sources of wealth and employment. — But speaking gene- rally, and not from any positive calculation, a tax upon property in England would bear upon land and houses, as opposed to trades and manu- factures, in the proportion of above seven to three; and in the numbers of actual contri- butors of above jour to two. — This disproportion marks besides only the pre-eminence of agri- culture in the ordinary condition of a nation ; but if England were in your exhausted condi- tion, and were called upon for a mighty exertion, you would see how her genius would triumph. — When pressed down with a weight which threatened destruction, her energies would rebound, and raise her as much higher than her former elevation, as difficulties appeared ¬to ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/194


text:
Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/195

 ¬to sink her beneath it. — It is in adversity only, that nations, like individuals, can be estimated; like ships, you can know nothing of them in a harbour ; you must try them in the storm, and prove them by the weather that they make. — England, I am sure, — (but it is a romance so to speak of her, as in a state she can never be brought to) — England would begin by a grand systematic benevolence to the distressed — but her wisdom would inform her that this humane deliverance would be only ruin to her people, if not immediately followed up by a system which would enable them to support themsejves ; and, remembering the efforts she had made for other nations, which were comparatively unbur- thened, she would regulate all her concerns with them upon a just scale, and by well-considered imposts, until she could cherish all her children in her own bosom, by making her fertile soil repay protected cultivation, neither mocking the husbandman by the ruinous vibrations of markets, nor distressing the poor by prices beyond their reach. — When property was thus ¬put ¬

title: Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/195