The part of taxation, which now remains to be considered, is that which, at every instant, presents to any one, a secure and useful employ of all the capitals at his disposal, and of all the savings which prudence hath induced him to make. The utility of the public funds, which are nothing else but the national debt, might seem established by these few words; but further details are necessary.
I have adopted the estimate by which England is supposed to contain 9,300,000 inhabitants; one-third cultivates the land, one-third is engaged in manufactures, and of the remaining third, 600,000 at most share among them the neat produce of cultivation and the arts, in proportion to the capitals with which they keep in play those two engines of opulence. All the remaining part of the people, as dependents under whatever denomination, look, for their subsistence, to the friendship, humour, pride, or wants of the 600,000 proprietors.
Out of 70 millions, at which the landed revenue throughout Great Britain is computed, 33 millions are absorbed by the unavoidable expences, and accessary charges attending cultivation, or annexed to the property. The proprietors share among themselves 20 or 25 millions; the other 12 millions go through the hands of farmers, as a very equitable recompence for their trouble, and as a liberal interest for a personal stock of 120 millions necessary to the produce of the revenue. (Vide Mr. Arthur Young.) On the best use possible of these last 120 millions, solely depends the increase of landed profits: but it is only by degrees, and the concurrence of favourable circumstances, that the landed property can effectually receive the increase of the capital, which is calculated to augment that produce.—Does it conduce to the interest of the State, that, till then, the farmer should keep inactive the capital appropriated to so material an object, or that he should lay it out to improve the lands before it is wanted, or that, waiting for the instant of need, he should employ it in such manner as not to have it at command when the needful time is arrived?—This question cannot be answered, I think, but in the negative; and it appears to me, that, on this point at least, I may assert positively, that an establishment, which puts into the hands of the farmer, at the very juncture when he wants it, that portion of his capital which had hitherto been useless, and which however was, till then, (owing to such an establishment) advantageous to some one else, is, of all others, the most profitable, wherever the object is, to give to every capital that degree of activity and utility of which it is susceptible. Therefore, a reimbursement which would deprive the capitalists, farmers, and active proprietors, of a resource equally safe and profitable, would not only prove fatal to the order of citizens especially interested in the landed revenue, but to all those who, whilst the money intended for the improvement of land, is unapplied, make use of it in some advantageous speculation, which becomes important to the arts, and to commerce.
We have already observed, that out of the three last millions of inhabitants, 600,000 capitalists only share among themselves the neat profits of the arts, and of cultivation. There remain therefore 2 millions 400,000 dependents, who look up, for their subsistence, to the caprice, the pride, or wants of those opulent men. Now out of that number of dependents under every denomination, servants, clerks, lawyers, physicians, &c. several thousands are to be reckoned, who, tired of their situation, put by constantly, part of the wages of servitude, in order to secure to themselves and their posterity a more free and less equivocal existence.—Would the State be benefited, were this class of men, as essential as any other parts of society, to bury, as it were, the surplus of their layings-out, till they should have amassed the sum they might think sufficient for their intended purpose?—Would not the money, thus lying idle, occasion a chasm in circulation, which would turn to the prejudice of trade, thereby deprived of part of its resources?—Besides, if the want of a chest, safe from the attempt of robbers, and other inconveniences, a chest which is not only a security for them, but affords an interest for the money therein deposited, should necessitate them prematurely to embark in some scheme foreign to their occupation, which must be either abandoned or neglected: would not that knowledge, which they have derived from experience in all matters relating to their primitive avocation, be entirely lost to the public?—A reimbursement therefore which would deprive that part of society, much more wretched and dependent than either the mechanic or the cultivator, of a resource which, from its certainty, induces the former to fulfill with more zeal and exactness, the duties they have imposed on themselves, would prove a measure as hostile to humanity, as it would be contrary to sound policy.
In the immensity of commercial operations, how many capitals to a considerable amount, unemployed during two, three, four, and six months, are indispensably wanted at the precise period! Would it turn out to the advantage of the State, if a considerable capital, useless for six months to the holders, and for the like space of time essentially wanted by those who possess none, should lie dormant in the proprietor’s chest, till time should give it life, and make it useful?
But it may be urged, a man buying stock in the public funds, would lend to the seller (were no such funds established) the sum which he gives for his purchase.—That he might do so, there is not the least doubt: But could he depend on receiving the money at the time appointed for the repayment? May not the best man to-day, be a bankrupt to-morrow, and break for a million; and if the enterprise, to the execution of which a merchant appropriates, to be paid in six months, that portion of his capital, which till then has been to him unprofitable, should require that punctuality which alone could insure its success, will not prudence compel him to give up six months interest, that his undertaking may not be left entirely to chance?—Will not the public have lost the fruit which might have been reaped from that dormant capital, had the owner been at liberty to dispose of it?—And, will the same public flatter themselves that the six months interest which the merchant was obliged to sacrifice, in order to secure the execution of his plan, will not be reckoned in the expenditure?
Some will say, with no small degree of acrimony, “How many drones are supported at the expence of the public funds! These are only an encouragement to idleness.”
But do the persons before spoken of, come within this description? And, if the man who has laboured in his youth, chooses to repose himself in his old-age, is this pretended idleness any thing more than that otium, that leisure, so justifiable, and so sweet, after a toilsome life, when the state of the mind, and of the heart, cease to make labour necessary?—And, supposing, that after his death his wealth devolves to an ideot, must the son of an industrious father, who has served the State both by his œconomy and labour, be deprived of his resource?
It might be objected, that my reasoning derives its force from the bare supposition of a total reimbursement, the possibility of which no one can admit; but were it subjoined, that, by acknowledging the impracticability of the measure, we suppose its expediency;—were it farther said, that the public papers have often spoken of, and do still point out as the readiest and surest way to effect it, the application of the sponge;—were it added, that the first geniuses of England, France, nay, of all Europe, have advanced, and do still maintain, that such a measure will one day or other become unavoidable;—then we should be forced to acknowledge, that it would be no inconsiderable service to humanity, to spare no endeavours to convince the people, that no greater ease, power, or happiness, would accrue to them, were the nation to resolve upon its own disgrace.
Nor would it, in my opinion, be a more difficult talk to prove, that from a real and gradual reimbursement, no other advantage could result, than bringing about by degrees and more imperceptibly, an evil which would prove equally unprofitable to all.
I set aside the outcry against the interest yearly paid to foreigners, as the produce of the sums vested by them in the funds, because I think ruin impossible, where the money borrowed at 4 or 5, is laid out at an interest of 6, 7, or even 10 per cent. I likewise overlook the declamatory complaints on the fate of the handicraft and husbandman; because the laws of Lycurgus should be revived, or the government must confine itself to protect those two classes of men against every sort of private vexation, and to secure to them the trifling salary to which they are every where and forever doomed. In spite of avarice the salary must be raised, if the prices of every necessary should increase; and were these to fall in their value, mutiny itself could not prevent a diminution of wages.
That part of the people which truly deserves, and should engage the attention of government, is that crowd of dependents, in the other class, of which I have already spoken: like the cultivator and artificer, they have no other stock than the passions and wants of the capitalists. These would be much more wretched than the others, if the education they have received, carrying their thoughts constantly and in spite of themselves beyond the present moment, government should in a manner compel them to center them all within that narrow space. The merchant never has more in the funds than that portion of his capital, which, for the moment, is useless to his trade. The farmer, and the proprietor who manages his own estate, considered under these two heads, have at no time in the funds more than that portion of their capitals, the actual use of which upon the lands they cultivate, might turn rather to their prejudice than profit. The annihilating of the public funds, or, in other words, a partial reimbursement, a gradual discharge of the debt, could therefore affect those three orders of stockholders no farther than to deprive them of this way of increasing their capitals, without running any risk; and those are, undoubtedly, the smallest part of the sums which constitute the national debt. Which is, then, the order of citizens that receives the larger share of the interest funded for that debt? It is that multitude of dependents whom the political œconomy of society has doomed to toilsome occupations useful to that society, or to laborious studies, of which that very society daily reaps the benefit: it is to that multitude of widows and orphans of both sexes, whose future support the unfortunate class above-mentioned thought to have secured by means of the present privations which they had imposed on themselves: it is to those children whose elder brothers are in possession of all the family real estate, and whose parents hoped to have fixed their condition and settled their fortune by the only means that can effectually obviate, not the injustice of an unequal division, since it is admitted, but the inconvenience resulting from the indivisibility of the landed property, which devolves to the eldest.
Yet if, in a State, we must be father, brother, sister, widow, orphan, capitalist, in fine, or without a capital, but with the faculty of acquiring one; which, then, is the class of citizens interested in paying off, either totally, or in part and by degrees, the national debt, when once it is incurred? Besides, if the reimbursement cannot be effected but at the public expence, what advantage will the public derive from this operation?