An excerpt from the original text.(complete · 50821 words)
F THE EXPENSES OF THE SOVEREIGN OR COMMONWEALTH.
PART I. Of the Expense of Defence.
The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the
violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed
only by means of a military force. But the expense both of preparing this
military force in time of peace, and of employing it in time of war, is
very different in the different states of society, in the different
periods of improvement.
Among nations of hunters, the lowest and rudest state of society, such as
we find it among the native tribes of North America, every man is a
warrior, as well as a hunter. When he goes to war, either to defend his
society, or to revenge the injuries which have been done to it by other
societies, he maintains himself by his own labour, in the same manner as
when he lives at home. His society (for in this state of things there is
properly neither sovereign nor commonwealth) is at no sort of expense,
either to prepare him for the field, or to maintain him while he is in it.
Among nations of shepherds, a more advanced state of society, such as we
find it among the Tartars and Arabs, every man is, in the same manner, a
warrior. Such nations have commonly no fixed habitation, but live either
in tents, or in a sort of covered waggons, which are easily transported
from place to place. The whole tribe, or nation, changes its situation
according to the different seasons of the year, as well as according to
other accidents. When its herds and flocks have consumed the forage of one
part of the country, it removes to another, and from that to a third. In
the dry season, it comes down to the banks of the rivers; in the wet
season, it retires to the upper country. When such a nation goes to war,
the warriors will not trust their herds and flocks to the feeble defence
of their old men, their women and children; and their old men, their women
and children, will not be left behind without defence, and without
subsistence. The whole nation, besides, being accustomed to a wandering
life, even in time of peace, easily takes the field in time of war.
Whether it marches as an army, or moves about as a company of herdsmen,
the way of life is nearly the same, though the object proposed by it be
very different. They all go to war together, therefore, and everyone does
as well as he can. Among the Tartars, even the women have been frequently
known to engage in battle. If they conquer, whatever belongs to the
hostile tribe is the recompence of the victory; but if they are
vanquished, all is lost; and not only their herds and flocks, but their
women and children become the booty of the conqueror. Even the greater
part of those who survive the action are obliged to submit to him for the
sake of immediate subsistence. The rest are commonly dissipated and
dispersed in the desert.
The ordinary life, the ordinary exercise of a Tartar or Arab, prepares him
sufficiently for war. Running, wrestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the
javelin, drawing the bow, etc. are the common pastimes of those who live
in the open air, and are all of them the images of war. When a Tartar or
Arab actually goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds and flocks,
which he carries with him, in the same manner as in peace. His chief or
sovereign (for those nations have all chiefs or sovereigns) is at no sort
of expense in preparing him for the field; and when he is in it, the
chance of plunder is the only pay which he either expects or requires.
An army of hunters can seldom exceed two or three hundred men. The
precarious subsistence which the chace affords, could seldom allow a
greater number to keep together for any considerable time. An army of
shepherds, on the contrary, may sometimes amount to two or three hundred
thousand. As long as nothing stops their progress, as long as they can go
on from one district, of which they have consumed the forage, to another,
which is yet entire; there seems to be scarce any limit to the number who
can march on together. A nation of hunters can never be formidable to the
civilized nations in their neighbourhood; a nation of shepherds may.
Nothing can be more contemptible than an Indian war in North America;
nothing, on the contrary, can be more dreadful than a Tartar invasion has
frequently been in Asia. The judgment of Thucydides, that both Europe and
Asia could not resist the Scythians united, has been verified by the
experience of all ages. The inhabitants of the extensive, but defenceless
plains of Scythia or Tartary, have been frequently united under the
dominion of the chief of some conquering horde or clan; and the havock and
devastation of Asia have always signalized their union. The inhabitants of
the inhospitable deserts of Arabia, the other great nation of shepherds,
have never been united but once, under Mahomet and his immediate
successors. Their union, which was more the effect of religious enthusiasm
than of conquest, was signalized in the same manner. If the hunting
nations of America should ever become shepherds, their neighbourhood would
be much more dangerous to the European colonies than it is at present.
In a yet more advanced state of society, among those nations of husbandmen
who have little foreign commerce, and no other manufactures but those
coarse and household ones, which almost every private family prepares for
its own use, every man, in the same manner, either is a warrior, or easily
becomes such. Those who live by agriculture generally pass the whole day
in the open air, exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. The
hardiness of their ordinary life prepares them for the fatigues of war, to
some of which their necessary occupations bear a great analogy. The
necessary occupation of a ditcher prepares him to work in the trenches,
and to fortify a camp, as well as to inclose a field. The ordinary
pastimes of such husbandmen are the same as those of shepherds, and are in
the same manner the images of war. But as husbandmen have less leisure
than shepherds, they are not so frequently employed in those pastimes.
They are soldiers but soldiers not quite so much masters of their
exercise. Such as they are, however, it seldom costs the sovereign or
commonwealth any expense to prepare them for the field.
Agriculture, even in its rudest and lowest state, supposes a settlement,
some sort of fixed habitation, which cannot be abandoned without great
loss. When a nation of mere husbandmen, therefore, goes to war, the whole
people cannot take the field together. The old men, the women and
children, at least, must remain at home, to take care of the habitation.
All the men of the military age, however, may take the field, and in small
nations of this kind, have frequently done so. In every nation, the men of
the military age are supposed to amount to about a fourth or a fifth part
of the whole body of the people. If the campaign, too, should begin after
seedtime, and end before harvest, both the husbandman and his principal
labourers can be spared from the farm without much loss. He trusts that
the work which must be done in the mean time, can be well enough executed
by the old men, the women, and the children. He is not unwilling,
therefore, to serve without pay during a short campaign; and it frequently
costs the sovereign or commonwealth as little to maintain him in the field
as to prepare him for it. The citizens of all the different states of
ancient Greece seem to have served in this manner till after the second
Persian war; and the people of Peloponnesus till after the Peloponnesian
war. The Peloponnesians, Thucydides observes, generally left the field in
the summer, and returned home to reap the harvest. The Roman people, under
their kings, and during the first ages of the republic, served in the same
manner. It was not till the seige of Veii, that they who staid at home
began to contribute something towards maintaining those who went to war.
In the European monarchies, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman
empire, both before, and for some time after, the establishment of what is
properly called the feudal law, the great lords, with all their immediate
dependents, used to serve the crown at their own expense. In the field, in
the same manner as at home, they maintained themselves by their own
revenue, and not by any stipend or pay which they received from the king
upon that particular occasion.
In a more advanced state of society, two different causes contribute to
render it altogether impossible that they who take the field should
maintain themselves at their own expense. Those two causes are, the
progress of manufactures, and the improvement in the art of war.
Though a husbandman should be employed in an expedition, provided it
begins after seedtime, and ends before harvest, the interruption of his
business will not always occasion any considerable diminution of his
revenue. Without the intervention of his labour, Nature does herself the
greater part of the work which remains to be done. But the moment that an
artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example, quits his
workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is completely dried up. Nature
does nothing for him; he does all for himself. When he takes the field,
therefore, in defence of the public, as he has no revenue to maintain
himself, he must necessarily be maintained by the public. But in a
country, of which a great part of the inhabitants are artificers and
manufacturers, a great part of the people who go to war must be drawn from
those classes, and must, therefore, be maintained by the public as long as
they are employed in its service.
When the art of war, too, has gradually grown up to be a very intricate
and complicated science; when the event of war ceases to be determined, as
in the first ages of society, by a single irregular skirmish or battle;
but when the contest is generally spun out through several different
campaigns, each of which lasts during the greater part of the year; it
becomes universally necessary that the public should maintain those who
serve the public in war, at least while they are employed in that service.
Whatever, in time of peace, might be the ordinary occupation of those who
go to war, so very tedious and expensive a service would otherwise be by
far too heavy a burden upon them. After the second Persian war,
accordingly, the armies of Athens seem to have been generally composed of
mercenary troops, consisting, indeed, partly of citizens, but partly, too,
of foreigners; and all of them equally hired and paid at the expense of
the state. From the time of the siege of Veii, the armies of Rome received
pay for their service during the time which they remained in the field.
Under the feudal governments, the military service, both of the great
lords, and of their immediate dependents, was, after a certain period,
universally exchanged for a payment in money, which was employed to
maintain those who served in their stead.
The number of those who can go to war, in proportion to the whole number
of the people, is necessarily much smaller in a civilized than in a rude
state of society. In a civilized society, as the soldiers are maintained
altogether by the labour of those who are not soldiers, the number of the
former can never exceed what the latter can maintain, over and above
maintaining, in a manner suitable to their respective stations, both
themselves and the other officers of government and law, whom they are
obliged to maintain. In the little agrarian states of ancient Greece, a
fourth or a fifth part of the whole body of the people considered the
themselves as soldiers, and would sometimes, it is said, take the field.
Among the civilized nations of modern Europe, it is commonly computed,
that not more than the one hundredth part of the inhabitants of any
country can be employed as soldiers, without ruin to the country which
pays the expense of their service.
The expense of preparing the army for the field seems not to have become
considerable in any nation, till long after that of maintaining it in the
field had devolved entirely upon the sovereign or commonwealth. In all the
different republics of ancient Greece, to learn his military exercises,
was a necessary part of education imposed by the state upon every free
citizen. In every city there seems to have been a public field, in which,
under the protection of the public magistrate, the young people were
taught their different exercises by different masters. In this very simple
institution consisted the whole expense which any Grecian state seems ever
to have been at, in preparing its citizens for war. In ancient Rome, the
exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same purpose with those of
the Gymnasium in ancient Greece. Under the feudal governments, the many
public ordinances, that the citizens of every district should practise
archery, as well as several other military exercises, were intended for
promoting the same purpose, but do not seem to have promoted it so well.
Either from want of interest in the officers entrusted with the execution
of those ordinances, or from some other cause, they appear to have been
universally neglected; and in the progress of all those governments,
military exercises seem to have gone gradually into disuse among the great
body of the people.
In the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, during the whole period of
their existence, and under the feudal governments, for a considerable time
after their first establishment, the trade of a soldier was not a
separate, distinct trade, which constituted the sole or principal
occupation of a particular class of citizens; every subject of the state,
whatever might be the ordinary trade or occupation by which he gained his
livelihood, considered himself, upon all ordinary occasions, as fit
likewise to exercise the trade of a soldier, and, upon many extraordinary
occasions, as bound to exercise it.
The art of war, however, as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so,
in the progress of improvement, it necessarily becomes one of the most
complicated among them. The state of the mechanical, as well as some other
arts, with which it is necessarily connected, determines the degree of
perfection to which it is capable of being carried at any particular time.
But in order to carry it to this degree of perfection, it is necessary
that it should become the sole or principal occupation of a particular
class of citizens; and the division of labour is as necessary for the
improvement of this, as of every other art. Into other arts, the division
of labour is naturally introduced by the prudence of individuals, who find
that they promote their private interest better by confining themselves to
a particular trade, than by exercising a great number. But it is the
wisdom of the state only, which can render the trade of a soldier a
particular trade, separate and distinct from all others. A private
citizen, who, in time of profound peace, and without any particular
encouragement from the public, should spend the greater part of his time
in military exercises, might, no doubt, both improve himself very much in
them, and amuse himself very well; but he certainly would not promote his
own interest. It is the wisdom of the state only, which can render it for
his interest to give up the greater part of his time to this peculiar
occupation; and states have not always had this wisdom, even when their
circumstances had become such, that the preservation of their existence
required that they should have it.
A shepherd has a great deal of leisure; a husbandman, in the rude state of
husbandry, has some; an artificer or manufacturer has none at all. The
first may, without any loss, employ a great deal of his time in martial
exercises; the second may employ some part of it; but the last cannot
employ a single hour in them without some loss, and his attention to his
own interest naturally leads him to neglect them altogether. Those
improvements in husbandry, too, which the progress of arts and
manufactures necessarily introduces, leave the husbandman as little
leisure as the artificer. Military exercises come to be as much neglected
by the inhabitants of the country as by those of the town, and the great
body of the people becomes altogether unwarlike. That wealth, at the same
time, which always follows the improvements of agriculture and
manufactures, and which, in reality, is no more than the accumulated
produce of those improvements, provokes the invasion of all their
neighbours. An industrious, and, upon that account, a wealthy nation, is
of all nations the most likely to be attacked; and unless the state takes
some new measure for the public defence, the natural habits of the people
render them altogether incapable of defending themselves.
In these circumstances, there seem to be but two methods by which the
state can make any tolerable provision for the public defence.
It may either, first, by means of a very rigorous police, and in spite of
the whole bent of the interest, genius, and inclinations of the people,
enforce the practice of military exercises, and oblige either all the
citizens of the military age, or a certain number of them, to join in some
measure the trade of a soldier to whatever other trade or profession they
may happen to carry on.
Or, secondly, by maintaining and employing a certain number of citizens in
the constant practice of military exercises, it may render the trade of a
soldier a particular trade, separate and distinct from all others.
If the state has recourse to the first of those two expedients, its
military force is said to consist in a militia; if to the second, it is
said to consist in a standing army. The practice of military exercises is
the sole or principal occupation of the soldiers of a standing army, and
the maintenance or pay which the state affords them is the principal and
ordinary fund of their subsistence. The practice of military exercises is
only the occasional occupation of the soldiers of a militia, and they
derive the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence from some
other occupation. In a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer,
or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier; in a standing army,
that of the soldier predominates over every other character; and in this
distinction seems to consist the essential difference between those two
different species of military force.
Militias have been of several different kinds. In some countries, the
citizens destined for defending the state seem to have been exercised
only, without being, if I may say so, regimented; that is, without being
divided into separate and distinct bodies of troops, each of which
performed its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers. In
the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, each citizen, as long as he
remained at home, seems to have practised his exercises, either separately
and independently, or with such of his equals as he liked best; and not to
have been attached to any particular body of troops, till he was actually
called upon to take the field. In other countries, the militia has not
only been exercised, but regimented. In England, in Switzerland, and, I
believe, in every other country of modern Europe, where any imperfect
military force of this kind has been established, every militiaman is,
even in time of peace, attached to a particular body of troops, which
performs its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers.
Before the invention of fire-arms, that army was superior in which the
soldiers had, each individually, the greatest skill and dexterity in the
use of their arms. Strength and agility of body were of the highest
consequence, and commonly determined the fate of battles. But this skill
and dexterity in the use of their arms could be acquired only, in the same
manner as fencing is at present, by practising, not in great bodies, but
each man separately, in a particular school, under a particular master, or
with his own particular equals and companions. Since the invention of
fire-arms, strength and agility of body, or even extraordinary dexterity
and skill in the use of arms, though they are far from being of no
consequence, are, however, of less consequence. The nature of the weapon,
though it by no means puts the awkward upon a level with the skilful, puts
him more nearly so than he ever was before. All the dexterity and skill,
it is supposed, which are necessary for using it, can be well enough
acquired by practising in great bodies.
Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command, are qualities which,
in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of
battles, than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their
arms. But the noise of fire-arms, the smoke, and the invisible death to
which every man feels himself every moment exposed, as soon as he comes
within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be
well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any
considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even
in the beginning of a modern battle. In an ancient battle, there was no
noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was
no invisible cause of wounds or death. Every man, till some mortal weapon
actually did approach him, saw clearly that no such weapon was near him.
In these circumstances, and among troops who had some confidence in their
own skill and dexterity in the use of their arms, it must have been a good
deal less difficult to preserve some degree of regularity and order, not
only in the beginning, but through the whole progress of an ancient
battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly defeated. But the habits
of regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command, can be acquired
only by troops which are exercised in great bodies.
A militia, however, in whatever manner it may be either disciplined or
exercised, must always be much inferior to a well disciplined and well
exercised standing army.
The soldiers who are exercised only once a week, or once a-month, can
never be so expert in the use of their arms, as those who are exercised
every day, or every other day; and though this circumstance may not be of
so much consequence in modern, as it was in ancient times, yet the
acknowledged superiority of the Prussian troops, owing, it is said, very
much to their superior expertness in their exercise, may satisfy us that
it is, even at this day, of very considerable consequence.
The soldiers, who are bound to obey their officer only once a-week, or
once a-month, and who are at all other times at liberty to manage their
own affairs their own way, without being, in any respect, accountable to
him, can never be under the same awe in his presence, can never have the
same disposition to ready obedience, with those whose whole life and
conduct are every day directed by him, and who every day even rise and go
to bed, or at least retire to their quarters, according to his orders. In
what is called discipline, or in the habit of ready obedience, a militia
must always be still more inferior to a standing army, than it may
sometimes be in what is called the manual exercise, or in the management
and use of its arms. But, in modern war, the habit of ready and instant
obedience is of much greater consequence than a considerable superiority
in the management of arms.
Those militias which, like the Tartar or Arab militia, go to war under the
same chieftains whom they are accustomed to obey in peace, are by far the
best. In respect for their officers, in the habit of ready obedience, they
approach nearest to standing armies. The Highland militia, when it served
under its own chieftains, had some advantage of the same kind. As the
Highlanders, however, were not wandering, but stationary shepherds, as
they had all a fixed habitation, and were not, in peaceable times,
accustomed to follow their chieftain from place to place; so, in time of
war, they were less willing to follow him to any considerable distance, or
to continue for any long time in the field. When they had acquired any
booty, they were eager to return home, and his authority was seldom
sufficient to detain them. In point of obedience, they were always much
inferior to what is reported of the Tartars and Arabs. As the Highlanders,
too, from their stationary life, spend less of their time in the open air,
they were always less accustomed to military exercises, and were less
expert in the use of their arms than the Tartars and Arabs are said to be.
A militia of any kind, it must be observed, however, which has served for
several successive campaigns in the field, becomes in every respect a
standing army. The soldiers are every day exercised in the use of their
arms, and, being constantly under the command of their officers, are
habituated to the same prompt obedience which takes place in standing
armies. What they were before they took the field, is of little
importance. They necessarily become in every respect a standing army,
after they have passed a few campaigns in it. Should the war in America
drag out through another campaign, the American militia may become, in
every respect, a match for that standing army, of which the valour
appeared, in the last war at least, not inferior to that of the hardiest
veterans of France and Spain.
This distinction being well understood, the history of all ages, it will
be found, hears testimony to the irresistible superiority which a well
regulated standing army has over a militia.
One of the first standing armies, of which we have any distinct account in
any well authenticated history, is that of Philip of Macedon. His frequent
wars with the Thracians, Illyrians, Thessalians, and some of the Greek
cities in the neighbourhood of Macedon, gradually formed his troops, which
in the beginning were probably militia, to the exact discipline of a
standing army. When he was at peace, which he was very seldom, and never
for any long time together, he was careful not to disband that army. It
vanquished and subdued, after a long and violent struggle, indeed, the
gallant and well exercised militias of the principal republics of ancient
Greece; and afterwards, with very little struggle, the effeminate and ill
exercised militia of the great Persian empire. The fall of the Greek
republics, and of the Persian empire was the effect of the irresistible
superiority which a standing arm has over every other sort of militia. It
is the first great revolution in the affairs of mankind of which history
has preserved any distinct and circumstantial account.
The fall of Carthage, and the consequent elevation of Rome, is the second.
All the varieties in the fortune of those two famous republics may very
well be accounted for from the same cause.
From the end of the first to the beginning of the second Carthaginian war,
the armies of Carthage were continually in the field, and employed under
three great generals, who succeeded one another in the command; Amilcar,
his son-in-law Asdrubal, and his son Annibal: first in chastising their
own rebellious slaves, afterwards in subduing the revolted nations of
Africa; and lastly, in conquering the great kingdom of Spain. The army
which Annibal led from Spain into Italy must necessarily, in those
different wars, have been gradually formed to the exact discipline of a
standing army. The Romans, in the meantime, though they had not been
altogether at peace, yet they had not, during this period, been engaged in
any war of very great consequence; and their military discipline, it is
generally said, was a good deal relaxed. The Roman armies which Annibal
encountered at Trebi, Thrasymenus, and Cannae, were militia opposed to a
standing army. This circumstance, it is probable, contributed more than
any other to determine the fate of those battles.
The standing army which Annibal left behind him in Spain had the like
superiority over the militia which the Romans sent to oppose it; and, in a
few years, under the command of his brother, the younger Asdrubal,
expelled them almost entirely from that country.
Annibal was ill supplied from home. The Roman militia, being continually
in the field, became, in the progress of the war, a well disciplined and
well exercised standing army; and the superiority of Annibal grew every
day less and less. Asdrubal judged it necessary to lead the whole, or
almost the whole, of the standing army which he commanded in Spain, to the
assistance of his brother in Italy. In this march, he is said to have been
misled by his guides; and in a country which he did not know, was
surprised and attacked, by another standing army, in every respect equal
or superior to his own, and was entirely defeated.
When Asdrubal had left Spain, the great Scipio found nothing to oppose him
but a militia inferior to his own. He conquered and subdued that militia,
and, in the course of the war, his own militia necessarily became a well
disciplined and well exercised standing army. That standing army was
afterwards carried to Africa, where it found nothing but a militia to
oppose it. In order to defend Carthage, it became necessary to recal the
standing army of Annibal. The disheartened and frequently defeated African
militia joined it, and, at the battle of Zama, composed the greater part
of the troops of Annibal. The event of that day determined the fate of the
two rival republics.
From the end of the second Carthaginian war till the fall of the Roman
republic, the armies of Rome were in every respect standing armies. The
standing army of Macedon made some resistance to their arms. In the height
of their grandeur, it cost them two great wars, and three great battles,
to subdue that little kingdom, of which the conquest would probably have
been still more difficult, had it not been for the cowardice of its last
king. The militias of all the civilized nations of the ancient world, of
Greece, of Syria, and of Egypt, made but a feeble resistance to the
standing armies of Rome. The militias of some barbarous nations defended
themselves much better. The Scythian or Tartar militia, which Mithridates
drew from the countries north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, were the
most formidable enemies whom the Romans had to encounter after the second
Carthaginian war. The Parthian and German militias, too, were always
respectable, and upon several occasions, gained very considerable
advantages over the Roman armies. In general, however, and when the Roman
armies were well commanded, they appear to have been very much superior;
and if the Romans did not pursue the final conquest either of Parthia or
Germany, it was probably because they judged that it was not worth while
to add those two barbarous countries to an empire which was already too
large. The ancient Parthians appear to have been a nation of Scythian or
Tartar extraction, and to have always retained a good deal of the manners
of their ancestors. The ancient Germans were, like the Scythians or
Tartars, a nation of wandering shepherds, who went to war under the same
chiefs whom they were accustomed to follow in peace. ‘Their militia was
exactly of the same kind with that of the Scythians or Tartars, from whom,
too, they were probably descended.’
Many different causes contributed to relax the discipline of the Roman
armies. Its extreme severity was, perhaps, one of those causes. In the
days of their grandeur, when no enemy appeared capable of opposing them,
their heavy armour was laid aside as unnecessarily burdensome, their
laborious exercises were neglected, as unnecessarily toilsome. Under the
Roman emperors, besides, the standing armies of Rome, those particularly
which guarded the German and Pannonian frontiers, became dangerous to
their masters, against whom they used frequently to set up their own
generals. In order to render them less formidable, according to some
authors, Dioclesian, according to others, Constantine, first withdrew them
from the frontier, where they had always before been encamped in great
bodies, generally of two or three legions each, and dispersed them in
small bodies through the different provincial towns, from whence they were
scarce ever removed, but when it became necessary to repel an invasion.
Small bodies of soldiers, quartered in trading and manufacturing towns,
and seldom removed from those quarters, became themselves trades men,
artificers, and manufacturers. The civil came to predominate over the
military character; and the standing armies of Rome gradually degenerated
into a corrupt, neglected, and undisciplined militia, incapable of
resisting the attack of the German and Scythian militias, which soon
afterwards invaded the western empire. It was only by hiring the militia
of some of those nations to oppose to that of others, that the emperors
were for some time able to defend themselves. The fall of the western
empire is the third great revolution in the affairs of mankind, of which
ancient history has preserved any distinct or circumstantial account. It
was brought about by the irresistible superiority which the militia of a
barbarous has over that of a civilized nation; which the militia of a
nation of shepherds has over that of a nation of husbandmen, artificers,
and manufacturers. The victories which have been gained by militias have
generally been, not over standing armies, but over other militias, in
exercise and discipline inferior to themselves. Such were the victories
which the Greek militia gained over that of the Persian empire; and such,
too, were those which, in later times, the Swiss militia gained over that
of the Austrians and Burgundians.
The military force of the German and Scythian nations, who established
themselves upon ruins of the western empire, continued for some time to be
of the same kind in their new settlements, as it had been in their
original country. It was a militia of shepherds and husbandmen, which, in
time of war, took the field under the command of the same chieftains whom
it was accustomed to obey in peace. It was, therefore, tolerably well
exercised, and tolerably well disciplined. As arts and industry advanced,
however, the authority of the chieftains gradually decayed, and the great
body of the people had less time to spare for military exercises. Both the
discipline and the exercise of the feudal militia, therefore, went
gradually to ruin, and standing armies were gradually introduced to supply
the place of it. When the expedient of a standing army, besides, had once
been adopted by one civilized nation, it became necessary that all its
neighbours should follow the example. They soon found that their safety
depended upon their doing so, and that their own militia was altogether
incapable of resisting the attack of such an army.
The soldiers of a standing army, though they may never have seen an enemy,
yet have frequently appeared to possess all the courage of veteran troops,
and, the very moment that they took the field, to have been fit to face
the hardiest and most experienced veterans. In 1756, when the Russian army
marched into Poland, the valour of the Russian soldiers did not appear
inferior to that of the Prussians, at that time supposed to be the
hardiest and most experienced veterans in Europe. The Russian empire,
however, had enjoyed a profound peace for near twenty years before, and
could at that time have very few soldiers who had ever seen an enemy. When
the Spanish war broke out in 1739, England had enjoyed a profound peace
for about eight-and-twenty years. The valour of her soldiers, however, far
from being corrupted by that long peace, was never more distinguished than
in the attempt upon Carthagena, the first unfortunate exploit of that
unfortunate war. In a long peace, the generals, perhaps, may sometimes
forget their skill; but where a well regulated standing army has been kept
up, the soldiers seem never to forget their valour.
When a civilized nation depends for its defence upon a militia, it is at
all times exposed to be conquered by any barbarous nation which happens to
be in its neighbourhood. The frequent conquests of all the civilized
countries in Asia by the Tartars, sufficiently demonstrates the natural
superiority which the militia of a barbarous has over that of a civilized
nation. A well regulated standing army is superior to every militia. Such
an army, as it can best be maintained by an opulent and civilized nation,
so it can alone defend such a nation against the invasion of a poor and
barbarous neighbour. It is only by means of a standing army, therefore,
that the civilization of any country can be perpetuated, or even
preserved, for any considerable time.
As it is only by means of a well regulated standing army, that a civilized
country can be defended, so it is only by means of it that a barbarous
country can be suddenly and tolerably civilized. A standing army
establishes, with an irresistible force, the law of the sovereign through
the remotest provinces of the empire, and maintains some degree of regular
government in countries which could not otherwise admit of any. Whoever
examines with attention, the improvements which Peter the Great introduced
into the Russian empire, will find that they almost all resolve themselves
into the establishment of a well regulated standing army. It is the
instrument which executes and maintains all his other regulations. That
degree of order and internal peace, which that empire has ever since
enjoyed, is altogether owing to the influence of that army.
Men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army, as
dangerous to liberty. It certainly is so, wherever the interest of the
general, and that of the principal officers, are not necessarily connected
with the support of the constitution of the state. The standing army of
Caesar destroyed the Roman republic. The standing army of Cromwell turned
the long parliament out of doors. But where the sovereign is himself the
general, and the principal nobility and gentry of the country the chief
officers of the army; where the military force is placed under the command
of those who have the greatest interest in the support of the civil
authority, because they have themselves the greatest share of that
authority, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. On the
contrary, it may, in some cases, be favourable to liberty. The security
which it gives to the sovereign renders unnecessary that troublesome
jealousy, which, in some modern republics, seems to watch over the
minutest actions, and to be at all times ready to disturb the peace of
every citizen. Where the security of the magistrate, though supported by
the principal people of the country, is endangered by every popular
discontent; where a small tumult is capable of bringing about in a few
hours a great revolution, the whole authority of government must be
employed to suppress and punish every murmur and complaint against it. To
a sovereign, on the contrary, who feels himself supported, not only by the
natural aristocracy of the country, but by a well regulated standing army,
the rudest, the most groundless, and the most licentious remonstrances,
can give little disturbance. He can safely pardon or neglect them, and his
consciousness of his own superiority naturally disposes him to do so. That
degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness, can be tolerated
only in countries where the sovereign is secured by a well regulated
standing army. It is in such countries only, that the public safety does
not require that the sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary
power, for suppressing even the impertinent wantonness of this licentious
liberty.
The first duty of the sovereign, therefore, that of defending the society
from the violence and injustice of other independent societies, grows
gradually more and more expensive, as the society advances in
civilization. The military force of the society, which originally cost the
sovereign no expense, either in time of peace, or in time of war, must, in
the progress of improvement, first be maintained by him in time of war,
and afterwards even in time of peace.
The great change introduced into the art of war by the invention of
fire-arms, has enhanced still further both the expense of exercising and
disciplining any particular number of soldiers in time of peace, and that
of employing them in time of war. Both their arms and their ammunition are
become more expensive. A musket is a more expensive machine than a javelin
or a bow and arrows; a cannon or a mortar, than a balista or a catapulta.
The powder which is spent in a modern review is lost irrecoverably, and
occasions a very considerable expense. The javelins and arrows which were
thrown or shot in an ancient one, could easily be picked up again, and
were, besides, of very little value. The cannon and the mortar are not
only much dearer, but much heavier machines than the balista or catapulta;
and require a greater expense, not only to prepare them for the field, but
to carry them to it. As the superiority of the modern artillery, too, over
that of the ancients, is very great; it has become much more difficult,
and consequently much more expensive, to fortify a town, so as to resist,
even for a few weeks, the attack of that superior artillery. In modern
times, many different causes contribute to render the defence of the
society more expensive. The unavoidable effects of the natural progress of
improvement have, in this respect, been a good deal enhanced by a great
revolution in the art of war, to which a mere accident, the invention of
gunpowder, seems to have given occasion.
In modern war, the great expense of firearms gives an evident advantage to
the nation which can best afford that expense; and, consequently, to an
opulent and civilized, over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient times,
the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend themselves against
the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times, the poor and barbarous
find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilized.
The invention of fire-arms, an invention which at first sight appears to
be so pernicious, is certainly favourable, both to the permanency and to
the extension of civilization.
PART II. Of the Expense of Justice
The second duty of the sovereign, that of protecting, as far as possible,
every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every
other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of
justice, requires two very different degrees of expense in the different
periods of society.
Among nations of hunters, as there is scarce any property, or at least
none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour; so there is
seldom any established magistrate, or any regular administration of
justice. Men who have no property, can injure one another only in their
persons or reputations. But when one man kills, wounds, beats, or defames
another, though he to whom the injury is done suffers, he who does it
receives no benefit. It is otherwise with the injuries to property. The
benefit of the person who does the injury is often equal to the loss of
him who suffers it. Envy, malice, or resentment, are the only passions
which can prompt one man to injure another in his person or reputation.
But the greater part of men are not very frequently under the influence of
those passions; and the very worst men are so only occasionally. As their
gratification, too, how agreeable soever it may be to certain characters,
is not attended with any real or permanent advantage, it is, in the
greater part of men, commonly restrained by prudential considerations. Men
may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security,
though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of
those passions. But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the
hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the
passions which prompt to invade property; passions much more steady in
their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever
there is a great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich
man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the
few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites
the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and
prompted by envy to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter
of the civil magistrate, that the owner of that valuable property, which
is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive
generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times
surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can
never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the
powerful arm of the civil magistrate, continually held up to chastise it.
The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily
requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no
property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days
labour, civil government is not so necessary.
Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as the necessity of
civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable
property; so the principal causes, which naturally introduce
subordination, gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable
property.
The causes or circumstances which naturally introduce subordination, or
which naturally and antecedent to any civil institution, give some men
some superiority over the greater part of their brethren, seem to be four
in number.
The first of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of personal
qualifications, of strength, beauty, and agility of body; of wisdom and
virtue; of prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation of mind. The
qualifications of the body, unless supported by those of the mind, can
give little authority in any period of society. He is a very strong man,
who, by mere strength of body, can force two weak ones to obey him. The
qualifications of the mind can alone give very great authority. They are
however, invisible qualities; always disputable, and generally disputed.
No society, whether barbarous or civilized, has ever found it convenient
to settle the rules of precedency of rank and subordination, according to
those invisible qualities; but according to something that is more plain
and palpable.
The second of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of age. An
old man, provided his age is not so far advanced as to give suspicion of
dotage, is everywhere more respected than a young man of equal rank,
fortune, and abilities. Among nations of hunters, such as the native
tribes of North America, age is the sole foundation of rank and
precedency. Among them, father is the appellation of a superior; brother,
of an equal; and son, of an inferior. In the most opulent and civilized
nations, age regulates rank among those who are in every other respect
equal; and among whom, therefore, there is nothing else to regulate it.
Among brothers and among sisters, the eldest always takes place; and in
the succession of the paternal estate, every thing which cannot be
divided, but must go entire to one person, such as a title of honour, is
in most cases given to the eldest. Age is a plain and palpable quality,
which admits of no dispute.
The third of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of fortune.
The authority of riches, however, though great in every age of society,
is, perhaps, greatest in the rudest ages of society, which admits of any
considerable inequality of fortune. A Tartar chief, the increase of whose
flocks and herds is sufficient to maintain a thousand men, cannot well
employ that increase in any other way than in maintaining a thousand men.
The rude state of his society does not afford him any manufactured produce
any trinkets or baubles of any kind, for which he can exchange that part
of his rude produce which is over and above his own consumption. The
thousand men whom he thus maintains, depending entirely upon him for their
subsistence, must both obey his orders in war, and submit to his
jurisdiction in peace. He is necessarily both their general and their
judge, and his chieftainship is the necessary effect of the superiority of
his fortune. In an opulent and civilized society, a man may possess a much
greater fortune, and yet not be able to command a dozen of people. Though
the produce of his estate may be sufficient to maintain, and may, perhaps,
actually maintain, more than a thousand people, yet, as those people pay
for every thing which they get from him, as he gives scarce any thing to
any body but in exchange for an equivalent, there is scarce anybody who
considers himself as entirely dependent upon him, and his authority
extends only over a few menial servants. The authority of fortune,
however, is very great, even in an opulent and civilized society. That it
is much greater than that either of age or of personal qualities, has been
the constant complaint of every period of society which admitted of any
considerable inequality of fortune. The first period of society, that of
hunters, admits of no such inequality. Universal poverty establishes their
universal equality; and the superiority, either of age or of personal
qualities, are the feeble, but the sole foundations of authority and
subordination. There is, therefore, little or no authority or
subordination in this period of society. The second period of society,
that of shepherds, admits of very great inequalities of fortune, and there
is no period in which the superiority of fortune gives so great authority
to those who possess it. There is no period, accordingly, in which
authority and subordination are more perfectly established. The authority
of an Arabian scherif is very great; that of a Tartar khan altogether
despotical.
The fourth of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of birth.
Superiority of birth supposes an ancient superiority of fortune in the
family of the person who claims it. All families are equally ancient; and
the ancestors of the prince, though they may be better known, cannot well
be more numerous than those of the beggar. Antiquity of family means
everywhere the antiquity either of wealth, or of that greatness which is
commonly either founded upon wealth, or accompanied with it. Upstart
greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness. The hatred
of usurpers, the love of the family of an ancient monarch, are in a great
measure founded upon the contempt which men naturally have for the former,
and upon their veneration for the latter. As a military officer submits,
without reluctance, to the authority of a superior by whom he has always
been commanded, but cannot bear that his inferior should be set over his
head; so men easily submit to a family to whom they and their ancestors
have always submitted; but are fired with indignation when another family,
in whom they had never acknowledged any such superiority, assumes a
dominion over them.
The distinction of birth, being subsequent to the inequality of fortune,
can have no place in nations of hunters, among whom all men, being equal
in fortune, must likewise be very nearly equal in birth. The son of a wise
and brave man may, indeed, even among them, be somewhat more respected
than a man of equal merit, who has the misfortune to be the son of a fool
or a coward. The difference, however will not be very great; and there
never was, I believe, a great family in the world, whose illustration was
entirely derived from the inheritance of wisdom and virtue.
The distinction of birth not only may, but always does, take place among
nations of shepherds. Such nations are always strangers to every sort of
luxury, and great wealth can scarce ever be dissipated among them by
improvident profusion. There are no nations, accordingly, who abound more
in families revered and honoured on account of their descent from a long
race of great and illustrious ancestors; because there are no nations
among whom wealth is likely to continue longer in the same families.
Birth and fortune are evidently the two circumstances which principally
set one man above another. They are the two great sources of personal
distinction, and are, therefore, the principal causes which naturally
establish authority and subordination among men. Among nations of
shepherds, both those causes operate with their full force. The great
shepherd or herdsman, respected on account of his great wealth, and of the
great number of those who depend upon him for subsistence, and revered on
account of the nobleness of his birth, and of the immemorial antiquity or
his illustrious family, has a natural authority over all the inferior
shepherds or herdsmen of his horde or clan. He can command the united
force of a greater number of people than any of them. His military power
is greater than that of any of them. In time of war, they are all of them
naturally disposed to muster themselves under his banner, rather than
under that of any other person; and his birth and fortune thus naturally
procure to him some sort of executive power. By commanding, too, the
united force of a greater number of people than any of them, he is best
able to compel any one of them, who may have injured another, to
compensate the wrong. He is the person, therefore, to whom all those who
are too weak to defend themselves naturally look up for protection. It is
to him that they naturally complain of the injuries which they imagine
have been done to them; and his interposition, in such cases, is more
easily submitted to, even by the person complained of, than that of any
other person would be. His birth and fortune thus naturally procure him
some sort of judicial authority.
It is in the age of shepherds, in the second period of society, that the
inequality of fortune first begins to take place, and introduces among men
a degree of authority and subordination, which could not possibly exist
before. It thereby introduces some degree of that civil government which
is indispensably necessary for its own preservation; and it seems to do
this naturally, and even independent of the consideration of that
necessity. The consideration of that necessity comes, no doubt,
afterwards, to contribute very much to maintain and secure that authority
and subordination. The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to
support that order of things, which can alone secure them in the
possession of their own advantages. Men of inferior wealth combine to
defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in
order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the
possession of theirs. All the inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel, that
the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of
those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their
lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority; and that upon
their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in
subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel
themselves interested to defend the property, and to support the
authority, of their own little sovereign, in order that he may be able to
defend their property, and to support their authority. Civil government,
so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality,
instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who
have some property against those who have none at all.
The judicial authority of such a sovereign, however, far from being a
cause of expense, was, for a long time, a source of revenue to him. The
persons who applied to him for justice were always willing to pay for it,
and a present never failed to accompany a petition. After the authority of
the sovereign, too, was thoroughly established, the person found guilty,
over and above the satisfaction which he was obliged to make to the party,
was like-wise forced to pay an amercement to the sovereign. He had given
trouble, he had disturbed, he had broke the peace of his lord the king,
and for those offences an amercement was thought due. In the Tartar
governments of Asia, in the governments of Europe which were founded by
the German and Scythian nations who overturned the Roman empire, the
administration of justice was a considerable source of revenue, both to
the sovereign, and to all the lesser chiefs or lords who exercised under
him any particular jurisdiction, either over some particular tribe or
clan, or over some particular territory or district. Originally, both the
sovereign and the inferior chiefs used to exercise this jurisdiction in
their own persons. Afterwards, they universally found it convenient to
delegate it to some substitute, bailiff, or judge. This substitute,
however, was still obliged to account to his principal or constituent for
the profits of the jurisdiction. Whoever reads the instructions (They are
to be found in Tyrol’s History of England) which were given to the judges
of the circuit in the time of Henry II will see clearly that those judges
were a sort of itinerant factors, sent round the country for the purpose
of levying certain branches of the king’s revenue. In those days, the
administration of justice not only afforded a certain revenue to the
sovereign, but, to procure this revenue, seems to have been one of the
principal advantages which he proposed to obtain by the administration of
justice.
This scheme of making the administration of justice subservient to the
purposes of revenue, could scarce fail to be productive of several very
gross abuses. The person who applied for justice with a large present in
his hand, was likely to get something more than justice; while he who
applied for it with a small one was likely to get something less. Justice,
too, might frequently be delayed, in order that this present might be
repeated. The amercement, besides, of the person complained of, might
frequently suggest a very strong reason for finding him in the wrong, even
when he had not really been so. That such abuses were far from being
uncommon, the ancient history of every country in Europe bears witness.
When the sovereign or chief exercises his judicial authority in his own
person, how much soever he might abuse it, it must have been scarce
possible to get any redress; because there could seldom be any body
powerful enough to call him to account. When he exercised it by a bailiff,
indeed, redress might sometimes be had. If it was for his own benefit
only, that the bailiff had been guilty of an act of injustice, the
sovereign himself might not always be unwilling to punish him, or to
oblige him to repair the wrong. But if it was for the benefit of his
sovereign; if it was in order to make court to the person who appointed
him, and who might prefer him, that he had committed any act of
oppression; redress would, upon most occasions, be as impossible as if the
sovereign had committed it himself. In all barbarous governments,
accordingly, in all those ancient governments of Europe in particular,
which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the administration
of justice appears for a long time to have been extremely corrupt; far
from being quite equal and impartial, even under the best monarchs, and
altogether profligate under the worst.
Among nations of shepherds, where the sovereign or chief is only the
greatest shepherd or herdsman of the horde or clan, he is maintained in
the same manner as any of his vassals or subjects, by the increase of his
own herds or flocks. Among those nations of husbandmen, who are but just
come out of the shepherd state, and who are not much advanced beyond that
state, such as the Greek tribes appear to have been about the time of the
Trojan war, and our German and Scythian ancestors, when they first settled
upon the ruins of the western empire; the sovereign or chief is, in the
same manner, only the greatest landlord of the country, and is maintained
in the same manner as any other landlord, by a revenue derived from his
own private estate, or from what, in modern Europe, was called the demesne
of the crown. His subjects, upon ordinary occasions, contribute nothing to
his support, except when, in order to protect them from the oppression of
some of their fellow-subjects, they stand in need of his authority. The
presents which they make him upon such occasions constitute the whole
ordinary revenue, the whole of the emoluments which, except, perhaps, upon
some very extraordinary emergencies, he derives from his dominion over
them. When Agamemnon, in Homer, offers to Achilles, for his friendship,
the sovereignty of seven Greek cities, the sole advantage which he
mentions as likely to be derived from it was, that the people would honour
him with presents. As long as such presents, as long as the emoluments of
justice, or what may be called the fees of court, constituted, in this
manner, the whole ordinary revenue which the sovereign derived from his
sovereignty, it could not well be expected, it could not even decently be
proposed, that he should give them up altogether. It might, and it
frequently was proposed, that he should regulate and ascertain them. But
after they had been so regulated and ascertained, how to hinder a person
who was all-powerful from extending them beyond those regulations, was
still very difficult, not to say impossible. During the continuance of
this state of things, therefore, the corruption of justice, naturally
resulting from the arbitrary and uncertain nature of those presents,
scarce admitted of any effectual remedy.
But when, from different causes, chiefly from the continually increasing
expense of defending the nation against the invasion of other nations, the
private estate of the sovereign had become altogether insufficient for
defraying the expense of the sovereignty; and when it had become necessary
that the people should, for their own security, contribute towards this
expense by taxes of different kinds; it seems to have been very commonly
stipulated, that no present for the administration of justice should,
under any pretence, be accepted either by the sovereign, or by his
bailiffs and substitutes, the judges. Those presents, it seems to have
been supposed, could more easily be abolished altogether, than effectually
regulated and ascertained. Fixed salaries were appointed to the judges,
which were supposed to compensate to them the loss of whatever might have
been their share of the ancient emoluments of justice; as the taxes more
than compensated to the sovereign the loss of his. Justice was then said
to be administered gratis.
Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country.
Lawyers and attorneys, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and
if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they
actually perform it. The fees annually paid to lawyers and attorneys,
amount, in every court, to a much greater sum than the salaries of the
judges. The circumstance of those salaries being paid by the crown, can
nowhere much diminish the necessary expense of a law-suit. But it was not
so much to diminish the expense, as to prevent the corruption of justice,
that the judges were prohibited from receiving my present or fee from the
parties.
The office of judge is in itself so very honourable, that men are willing
to accept of it, though accompanied with very small emoluments. The
inferior office of justice of peace, though attended with a good deal of
trouble, and in most cases with no emoluments at all, is an object of
ambition to the greater part of our country gentlemen. The salaries of all
the different judges, high and low, together with the whole expense of the
administration and execution of justice, even where it is not managed with
very good economy, makes, in any civilized country, but a very
inconsiderable part of the whole expense of government.
The whole expense of justice, too, might easily be defrayed by the fees of
court; and, without exposing the administration of justice to any real
hazard of corruption, the public revenue might thus be entirely discharged
from a certain, though perhaps but a small incumbrance. It is difficult to
regulate the fees of court effectually, where a person so powerful as the
sovereign is to share in them and to derive any considerable part of his
revenue from them. It is very easy, where the judge is the principal
person who can reap any benefit from them. The law can very easily oblige
the judge to respect the regulation though it might not always be able to
make the sovereign respect it. Where the fees of court are precisely
regulated and ascertained where they are paid all at once, at a certain
period of every process, into the hands of a cashier or receiver, to be by
him distributed in certain known proportions among the different judges
after the process is decided and not till it is decided; there seems to be
no more danger of corruption than when such fees are prohibited
altogether. Those fees, without occasioning any considerable increase in
the expense of a law-suit, might be rendered fully sufficient for
defraying the whole expense of justice. But not being paid to the judges
till the process was determined, they might be some incitement to the
diligence of the court in examining and deciding it. In courts which
consisted of a considerable number of judges, by proportioning the share
of each judge to the number of hours and days which he had employed in
examining the process, either in the court, or in a committee, by order of
the court, those fees might give some encouragement to the diligence of
each particular judge. Public services are never better performed, than
when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and
is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them. In the
different parliaments of France, the fees of court (called epices and
vacations) constitute the far greater part of the emoluments of the
judges. After all deductions are made, the neat salary paid by the crown
to a counsellor or judge in the parliament of Thoulouse, in rank and
dignity the second parliament of the kingdom, amounts only to 150 livres,
about £6:11s. sterling a-year. About seven years ago, that sum was in the
same place the ordinary yearly wages of a common footman. The distribution
of these epices, too, is according to the diligence of the judges. A
diligent judge gains a comfortable, though moderate revenue, by his
office; an idle one gets little more than his salary. Those parliaments
are, perhaps, in many respects, not very convenient courts of justice; but
they have never been accused; they seem never even to have been suspected
of corruption.
The fees of court seem originally to have been the principal support of
the different courts of justice in England. Each court endeavoured to draw
to itself as much business as it could, and was, upon that account,
willing to take cognizance of many suits which were not originally
intended to fall under its jurisdiction. The court of king’s bench,
instituted for the trial of criminal causes only, took cognizance of civil
suits; the plaintiff pretending that the defendant, in not doing him
justice, had been guilty of some trespass or misdemeanour. The court of
exchequer, instituted for the levying of the king’s revenue, and for
enforcing the payment of such debts only as were due to the king, took
cognizance of all other contract debts; the planitiff alleging that he
could not pay the king, because the defendant would not pay him. In
consequence of such fictions, it came, in many cases, to depend altogether
upon the parties, before what court they would choose to have their cause
tried, and each court endeavoured, by superior dispatch and impartiality,
to draw to itself as many causes as it could. The present admirable
constitution of the courts of justice in England was, perhaps, originally,
in a great measure, formed by this emulation, which anciently took place
between their respective judges: each judge endeavouring to give, in his
own court, the speediest and most effectual remedy which the law would
admit, for every sort of injustice. Originally, the courts of law gave
damages only for breach of contract. The court of chancery, as a court of
conscience, first took upon it to enforce the specific performance of
agreements. When the breach of contract consisted in the non-payment of
money, the damage sustained could be compensated in no other way than by
ordering payment, which was equivalent to a specific performance of the
agreement. In such cases, therefore, the remedy of the courts of law was
sufficient. It was not so in others. When the tenant sued his lord for
having unjustly outed him of his lease, the damages which he recovered
were by no means equivalent to the possession of the land. Such causes,
therefore, for some time, went all to the court of chancery, to the no
small loss of the courts of law. It was to draw back such causes to
themselves, that the courts of law are said to have invented the
artificial and fictitious writ of ejectment, the most effectual remedy for
an unjust outer or dispossession of land.
A stamp-duty upon the law proceedings of each particular court, to be
levied by that court, and applied towards the maintenance of the judges,
and other officers belonging to it, might in the same manner, afford a
revenue sufficient for defraying the expense of the administration of
justice, without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the
society. The judges, indeed, might in this case, be under the temptation
of multiplying unnecessarily the proceedings upon every cause, in order to
increase, as much as possible, the produce of such a stamp-duty. It has
been the custom in modern Europe to regulate, upon most occasions, the
payment of the attorneys and clerks of court according to the number of
pages which they had occasion to write; the court, however, requiring that
each page should contain so many lines, and each line so many words. In
order to increase their payment, the attorneys and clerks have contrived
to multiply words beyond all necessity, to the corruption of the law
language of, I believe, every court of justice in Europe. A like
temptation might, perhaps, occasion a like corruption in the form of law
proceedings.
But whether the administration of justice be so contrived as to defray its
own expense, or whether the judges be maintained by fixed salaries paid to
them from some other fund, it does not seen necessary that the person or
persons entrusted with the executive power should be charged with the
management of that fund, or with the payment of those salaries. That fund
might arise from the rent of landed estates, the management of each estate
being entrusted to the particular court which was to be maintained by it.
That fund might arise even from the interest of a sum of money, the
lending out of which might, in the same manner, be entrusted to the court
which was to be maintained by it. A part, though indeed but a small part
of the salary of the judges of the court of session in Scotland, arises
from the interest of a sum of money. The necessary instability of such a
fund seems, however, to render it an improper one for the maintenance of
an institution which ought to last for ever.
The separation of the judicial from the executive power, seems originally
to have arisen from the increasing business of the society, in consequence
of its increasing improvement. The administration of justice became so
laborious and so complicated a duty, as to require the undivided attention
of the person to whom it was entrusted. The person entrusted with the
executive power, not having leisure to attend to the decision of private
causes himself, a deputy was appointed to decide them in his stead. In the
progress of the Roman greatness, the consul was too much occupied with the
political affairs of the state, to attend to the administration of
justice. A praetor, therefore, was appointed to administer it in his
stead. In the progress of the European monarchies, which were founded upon
the ruins of the Roman empire, the sovereigns and the great lords came
universally to consider the administration of justice as an office both
too laborious and too ignoble for them to execute in their own persons.
They universally, therefore, discharged themselves of it, by appointing a
deputy, bailiff or judge.
When the judicial is united to the executive power, it is scarce possible
that justice should not frequently be sacrificed to what is vulgarly
called politics. The persons entrusted with the great interests of the
state may even without any corrupt views, sometimes imagine it necessary
to sacrifice to those interests the rights of a private man. But upon the
impartial administration of justice depends the liberty of every
individual, the sense which he has of his own security. In order to make
every individual feel himself perfectly secure in the possession of every
right which belongs to him, it is not only necessary that the judicial
should be separated from the executive power, but that it should be
rendered as much as possible independent of that power. The judge should
not be liable to be removed from his office according to the caprice of
that power. The regular payment of his salary should not depend upon the
good will, or even upon the good economy of that power.
PART III. Of the Expense of public Works and public Institutions.
The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth, is that of
erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works,
which though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great
society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay
the expense to any individual, or small number of individuals; and which
it, therefore, cannot be expected that any individual, or small number of
individuals, should erect or maintain. The performance of this duty
requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods
of society.
After the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence
of the society, and for the administration of justice, both of which have
already been mentioned, the other works and institutions of this kind are
chiefly for facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for
promoting the instruction of the people. The institutions for instruction
are of two kinds: those for the education of the youth, and those for the
instruction of people of all ages. The consideration of the manner in
which the expense of those different sorts of public works and
institutions may be most properly defrayed will divide this third part of
the present chapter into three different articles.
ARTICLE I.—Of the public Works and Institutions for facilitating the
Commerce of the Society.
And, first, of those which are necessary for facilitating Commerce in
general.
That the erection and maintenance of the public works which facilitate the
commerce of any country, such as good roads, bridges, navigable canals,
harbours, etc. must require very different degrees of expense in the
different periods of society, is evident without any proof. The expense of
making and maintaining the public roads of any country must evidently
increase with the annual produce of the land and labour of that country,
or with the quantity and weight of the goods which it becomes necessary to
fetch and carry upon those roads. The strength of a bridge must be suited
to the number and weight of the carriages which are likely to pass over
it. The depth and the supply of water for a navigable canal must be
proportioned to the number and tonnage of the lighters which are likely to
carry goods upon it; the extent of a harbour, to the number of the
shipping which are likely to take shelter in it.
It does not seem necessary that the expense of those public works should
be defrayed from that public revenue, as it is commonly called, of which
the collection and application are in most countries, assigned to the
executive power. The greater part of such public works may easily be so
managed, as to afford a particular revenue, sufficient for defraying their
own expense without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the
society.
A highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may, in most cases,
be both made add maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make
use of them; a harbour, by a moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the
shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage, another institution for
facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own
expense, but affords a small revenue or a seignorage to the sovereign. The
post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above
defraying its own expense, affords, in almost all countries, a very
considerable revenue to the sovereign.
When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters
which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight
or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works
exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. It
seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such
works. This tax or toll, too, though it is advanced by the carrier, is
finally paid by the consumer, to whom it must always be charged in the
price of the goods. As the expense of carriage, however, is very much
reduced by means of such public works, the goods, notwithstanding the
toll, come cheaper to the consumer than they could otherwise have done,
their price not being so much raised by the toll, as it is lowered by the
cheapness of the carriage. The person who finally pays this tax,
therefore, gains by the application more than he loses by the payment of
it. His payment is exactly in proportion to his gain. It is, in reality,
no more than a part of that gain which he is obliged to give up, in order
to get the rest. It seems impossible to imagine a more equitable method of
raising a tax. When the toll upon carriages of luxury, upon coaches,
post-chaises, etc. is made somewhat higher in proportion to their weight,
than upon carriages of necessary use, such as carts, waggons, etc. the
indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute, in a very easy
manner, to the relief of the poor, by rendering cheaper the transportation
of heavy goods to all the different parts of the country.
When high-roads, bridges, canals, etc. are in this manner made and
supported by the commerce which is carried on by means of them, they can
be made only where that commerce requires them, and, consequently, where
it is proper to make them. Their expense, too, their grandeur and
magnificence, must be suited to what that commerce can afford to pay. They
must be made, consequently, as it is proper to make them. A magnificent
high-road cannot be made through a desert country, where there is little
or no commerce, or merely because it happens to lead to the country villa
of the intendant of the province, or to that of some great lord, to whom
the intendant finds it convenient to make his court. A great bridge cannot
be thrown over a river at a place where nobody passes, or merely to
embellish the view from the windows of a neighbouring palace; things which
sometimes happen in countries, where works of this kind are carried on by
any other revenue than that which they themselves are capable of
affording.
In several different parts of Europe, the toll or lock-duty upon a canal
is the property of private persons, whose private interest obliges them to
keep up the canal. If it is not kept in tolerable order, the navigation
necessarily ceases altogether, and, along with it, the whole profit which
they can make by the tolls. If those tolls were put under the management
of commissioners, who had themselves no interest in them, they might be
less attentive to the maintenance of the works which produced them. The
canal of Languedoc cost the king of France and the province upwards of
thirteen millions of livres, which (at twenty-eight livres the mark of
silver, the value of French money in the end of the last century) amounted
to upwards of nine hundred thousand pounds sterling. When that great work
was finished, the most likely method, it was found, of keeping it in
constant repair, was to make a present of the tolls to Riquet, the
engineer who planned and conducted the work. Those tolls constitute, at
present, a very large estate to the different branches of the family of
that gentleman, who have, therefore, a great interest to keep the work in
constant repair. But had those tolls been put under the management of
commissioners, who had no such interest, they might perhaps, have been
dissipated in ornamental and unnecessary expenses, while the most
essential parts of the works were allowed to go to ruin.
The tolls for the maintenance of a highroad cannot, with any safety, be
made the property of private persons. A high-road, though entirely
neglected, does not become altogether impassable, though a canal does. The
proprietors of the tolls upon a high-road, therefore, might neglect
altogether the repair of the road, and yet continue to levy very nearly
the same tolls. It is proper, therefore, that the tolls for the
maintenance of such a work should be put under the management of
commissioners or trustees.
In Great Britain, the abuses which the trustees have committed in the
management of those tolls, have, in many cases, been very justly
complained of. At many turnpikes, it has been said, the money levied is
more than double of what is necessary for executing, in the completest
manner, the work, which is often executed in a very slovenly manner, and
sometimes not executed at all. The system of repairing the high-roads by
tolls of this kind, it must be observed, is not of very long standing. We
should not wonder, therefore, if it has not yet been brought to that
degree of perfection of which it seems capable. If mean and improper
persons are frequently appointed trustees; and if proper courts of
inspection and account have not yet been established for controlling their
conduct, and for reducing the tolls to what is barely sufficient for
executing the work to be done by them; the recency of the institution both
accounts and apologizes for those defects, of which, by the wisdom of
parliament, the greater part may, in due time, be gradually remedied.
The money levied at the different turnpikes in Great Britain, is supposed
to exceed so much what is necessary for repairing the roads, that the
savings which, with proper economy, might be made from it, have been
considered, even by some ministers, as a very great resource, which might,
at some time or another, be applied to the exigencies of the state.
Government, it has been said, by taking the management of the turnpikes
into its own hands, and by employing the soldiers, who would work for a
very small addition to their pay, could keep the roads in good order, at a
much less expense than it can be done by trustees, who have no other
workmen to employ, but such as derive their whole subsistence from their
wages. A great revenue, half a million, perhaps {Since publishing the two
first editions of this book, I have got good reasons to believe that all
the turnpike tolls levied in Great Britain do not produce a neat revenue
that amounts to half a million; a sum which, under the management of
government, would not be sufficient to keep in repair five of the
principal roads in the kingdom}, it has been pretended, might in this
manner be gained, without laying any new burden upon the people; and the
turnpike roads might be made to contribute to the general expense of the
state, in the same manner as the post-office does at present.
That a considerable revenue might be gained in this manner, I have no
doubt, though probably not near so much as the projectors of this plan
have supposed. The plan itself, however, seems liable to several very
important objections.
First, If the tolls which are levied at the turnpikes should ever be
considered as one of the resources for supplying the exigencies of the
state, they would certainly be augmented as those exigencies were supposed
to require. According to the policy of Great Britain, therefore, they
would probably he augmented very fast. The facility with which a great
revenue could be drawn from them, would probably encourage administration
to recur very frequently te this resource. Though it may, perhaps, be more
than doubtful whether half a million could by any economy be saved out of
the present tolls, it can scarcely be doubted, but that a million might be
saved out of them, if they were doubled; and perhaps two millions, if they
were tripled {I have now good reason to believe that all these conjectural
sums are by much too large.}. This great revenue, too, might be levied
without the appointment of a single new officer to collect and receive it.
But the turnpike tolls, being continually augmented in this manner,
instead of facilitating the inland commerce of the country, as at present,
would soon become a very great incumbrance upon it. The expense of
transporting all heavy goods from one part of the country to another,
would soon be so much increased, the market for all such goods,
consequently, would soon be so much narrowed, that their production would
be in a great measure discouraged, and the most important branches of the
domestic industry of the country annihilated altogether.
Secondly, A tax upon carriages, in proportion to their weight, though a
very equal tax when applied to the sole purpose of repairing the roads, is
a very unequal one when applied to any other purpose, or to supply the
common exigencies of the state. When it is applied to the sole purpose
above mentioned, each carriage is supposed to pay exactly for the wear and
tear which that carriage occasions of the roads. But when it is applied to
any other purpose, each carriage is supposed to pay for more than that
wear and tear, and contributes to the supply of some other exigency of the
state. But as the turnpike toll raises the price of goods in proportion to
their weight and not to their value, it is chiefly paid by the consumers
of coarse and bulky, not by those of precious and light commodities.
Whatever exigency of the state, therefore, this tax might be intended to
supply, that exigency would be chiefly supplied at the expense of the
poor, not of the rich; at the expense of those who are least able to
supply it, not of those who are most able.
Thirdly, If government should at any time neglect the reparation of the
high-roads, it would be still more difficult, than it is at present, to
compel the proper application of any part of the turnpike tolls. A large
revenue might thus be levied upon the people, without any part of it being
applied to the only purpose to which a revenue levied in this manner ought
ever to be applied. If the meanness and poverty of the trustees of
turnpike roads render it sometimes difficult, at present, to oblige them
to repair their wrong; their wealth and greatness would render it ten
times more so in the case which is here supposed.
In France, the funds destined for the reparation of the high-roads are
under the immediate direction of the executive power. Those funds consist,
partly in a certain number of days labour, which the country people are in
most parts of Europe obliged to give to the reparation of the highways;
and partly in such a portion of the general revenue of the state as the
king chooses to spare from his other expenses.
By the ancient law of France, as well as by that of most other parts of
Europe, the labour of the country people was under the direction of a
local or provincial magistracy, which had no immediate dependency upon the
king’s council. But, by the present practice, both the labour of the
country people, and whatever other fund the king may choose to assign for
the reparation of the high-roads in any particular province or generality,
are entirely under the management of the intendant; an officer who is
appointed and removed by the king’s council who receives his orders from
it, and is in constant correspondence with it. In the progress of
despotism, the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of
every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of
every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose. In
France, however, the great post-roads, the roads which make the
communication between the principal towns of the kingdom, are in general
kept in good order; and, in some provinces, are even a good deal superior
to the greater part of the turnpike roads of England. But what we call the
cross roads, that is, the far greater part of the roads in the country,
are entirely neglected, and are in many places absolutely impassable for
any heavy carriage. In some places it is even dangerous to travel on
horseback, and mules are the only conveyance which can safely be trusted.
The proud minister of an ostentatious court, may frequently take pleasure
in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great
highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose
applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his
interest at court. But to execute a great number of little works, in which
nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the
smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have
nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which
appears, in every respect, too mean and paltry to merit the attention of
so great a magistrate. Under such an administration therefore, such works
are almost always entirely neglected.
In China, and in several other governments of Asia, the executive power
charges itself both with the reparation of the high-roads, and with the
maintenance of the navigable canals. In the instructions which are given
to the governor of each province, those objects, it is said, are
constantly recommended to him, and the judgment which the court forms of
his conduct is very much regulated by the attention which he appears to
have paid to this part of his instructions. This branch of public police,
accordingly, is said to be very much attended to in all those countries,
but particularly in China, where the high-roads, and still more the
navigable canals, it is pretended, exceed very much every thing of the
same kind which is known in Europe. The accounts of those works, however,
which have been transmitted to Europe, have generally been drawn up by
weak and wondering travellers; frequently by stupid and lying
missionaries. If they had been examined by more intelligent eyes, and if
the accounts of them had been reported by more faithful witnesses, they
would not, perhaps, appear to be so wonderful. The account which Bernier
gives of some works of this kind in Indostan, falls very short of what had
been reported of them by other travellers, more disposed to the marvellous
than he was. It may too, perhaps, be in those countries, as it is in
France, where the great roads, the great communications, which are likely
to be the subjects of conversation at the court and in the capital, are
attended to, and all the rest neglected. In China, besides, in Indostan,
and in several other governments of Asia, the revenue of the sovereign
arises almost altogether from a land tax or land rent, which rises or
falls with the rise and fall of the annual produce of the land. The great
interest of the sovereign, therefore, his revenue, is in such countries
necessarily and immediately connected with the cultivation of the land,
with the greatness of its produce, and with the value of its produce. But
in order to render that produce both as great and as valuable as possible,
it is necessary to procure to it as extensive a market as possible, and
consequently to establish the freest, the easiest, and the least expensive
communication between all the different parts of the country; which can be
done only by means of the best roads and the best navigable canals. But
the revenue of the sovereign does not, in any part of Europe, arise
chiefly from a land tax or land rent. In all the great kingdoms of Europe,
perhaps, the greater part of it may ultimately depend upon the produce of
the land: but that dependency is neither so immediate nor so evident. In
Europe, therefore, the sovereign does not feel himself so directly called
upon to promote the increase, both in quantity and value of the produce of
the land, or, by maintaining good roads and canals, to provide the most
extensive market for that produce. Though it should be true, therefore,
what I apprehend is not a little doubtful, that in some parts of Asia this
department of the public police is very properly managed by the executive
power, there is not the least probability that, during the present state
of things, it could be tolerably managed by that power in any part of
Europe.
Even those public works, which are of such a nature that they cannot
afford any revenue for maintaining themselves, but of which the
conveniency is nearly confined to some particular place or district, are
always better maintained by a local or provincial revenue, under the
management of a local and provincial administration, than by the general
revenue of the state, of which the executive power must always have the
management. Were the streets of London to be lighted and paved at the
expense of the treasury, is there any probability that they would be so
well lighted and paved as they are at present, or even at so small an
expense? The expense, besides, instead of being raised by a local tax upon
the inhabitants of each particular street, parish, or district in London,
would, in this case, be defrayed out of the general revenue of the state,
and would consequently be raised by a tax upon all the inhabitants of the
kingdom, of whom the greater part derive no sort of benefit from the
lighting and paving of the streets of London.
The abuses which sometimes creep into the local and provincial
administration of a local and provincial revenue, how enormous soever they
may appear, are in reality, however, almost always very trifling in
comparison of those which commonly take place in the administration and
expenditure of the revenue of a great empire. They are, besides, much more
easily corrected. Under the local or provincial administration of the
justices of the peace in Great Britain, the six days labour which the
country people are obliged to give to the reparation of the highways, is
not always, perhaps, very judiciously applied, but it is scarce ever
exacted with any circumstance of cruelty or oppression. In France, under
the administration of the intendants, the application is not always more
judicious, and the exaction is frequently the most cruel and oppressive.
Such corvees, as they are called, make one of the principal instruments of
tyranny by which those officers chastise any parish or communeaute, which
has had the misfortune to fall under their displeasure.
Of the public Works and Institution which are necessary for facilitating
particular Branches of Commerce.
The object of the public works and institutions above mentioned, is to
facilitate commerce in general. But in order to facilitate some particular
branches of it, particular institutions are necessary, which again require
a particular and extraordinary expense.
Some particular branches of commerce which are carried on with barbarous
and uncivilized nations, require extraordinary protection. An ordinary
store or counting-house could give little security to the goods of the
merchants who trade to the western coast of Africa. To defend them from
the barbarous natives, it is necessary that the place where they are
deposited should be in some measure fortified. The disorders in the
government of Indostan have been supposed to render a like precaution
necessary, even among that mild and gentle people; and it was under
pretence of securing their persons and property from violence, that both
the English and French East India companies were allowed to erect the
first forts which they possessed in that country. Among other nations,
whose vigorous government will suffer no strangers to possess any
fortified place within their territory, it may be necessary to maintain
some ambassador, minister, or consul, who may both decide, according to
their own customs, the differences arising among his own countrymen, and,
in their disputes with the natives, may by means of his public character,
interfere with more authority and afford them a more powerful protection
than they could expect from any private man. The interests of commerce
have frequently made it necessary to maintain ministers in foreign
countries, where the purposes either of war or alliance would not have
required any. The commerce of the Turkey company first occasioned the
establishment of an ordinary ambassador at Constantinople. The first
English embassies to Russia arose altogether from commercial interests.
The constant interference with those interests, necessarily occasioned
between the subjects of the different states of Europe, has probably
introduced the custom of keeping, in all neighbouring countries,
ambassadors or ministers constantly resident, even in the time of peace.
This custom, unknown to ancient times, seems not to be older than the end
of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century; that is, than the
time when commerce first began to extend itself to the greater part of the
nations of Europe, and when they first began to attend to its interests.
It seems not unreasonable, that the extraordinary expense which the
protection of any particular branch of commerce may occasion, should be
defrayed by a moderate tax upon that particular branch; by a moderate
fine, for example, to be paid by the traders when they first enter into
it; or, what is more equal, by a particular duty of so much per cent. upon
the goods which they either import into, or export out of, the particular
countries with which it is carried on. The protection of trade, in
general, from pirates and freebooters, is said to have given occasion to
the first institution of the duties of customs. But, if it was thought
reasonable to lay a general tax upon trade, in order to defray the expense
of protecting trade in general, it should seem equally reasonable to lay a
particular tax upon a particular branch of trade, in order to defray the
extraordinary expense of protecting that branch.
The protection of trade, in general, has always been considered as
essential to the defence of the commonwealth, and, upon that account, a
necessary part of the duty of the executive power. The collection and
application of the general duties of customs, therefore, have always been
left to that power. But the protection of any particular branch of trade
is a part of the general protection of trade; a part, therefore, of the
duty of that power; and if nations always acted consistently, the
particular duties levied for the purposes of such particular protection,
should always have been left equally to its disposal. But in this respect,
as well as in many others, nations have not always acted consistently; and
in the greater part of the commercial states of Europe, particular
companies of merchants have had the address to persuade the legislature to
entrust to them the performance of this part of the duty of the sovereign,
together with all the powers which are necessarily connected with it.
These companies, though they may, perhaps, have been useful for the first
introduction of some branches of commerce, by making, at their own
expense, an experiment which the state might not think it prudent to make,
have in the long-run proved, universally, either burdensome or useless,
and have either mismanaged or confined the trade.
When those companies do not trade upon a joint stock, but are obliged to
admit any person, properly qualified, upon paying a certain fine, and
agreeing to submit to the regulations of the company, each member trading
upon his own stock, and at his own risk, they are called regulated
companies. When they trade upon a joint stock, each member sharing in the
common profit or loss, in proportion to his share in this stock, they are
called joint-stock companies. Such companies, whether regulated or
joint-stock, sometimes have, and sometimes have not, exclusive privileges.
Regulated companies resemble, in every respect, the corporation of trades,
so common in the cities and towns of all the different countries of
Europe; and are a sort of enlarged monopolies of the same kind. As no
inhabitant of a town can exercise an incorporated trade, without first
obtaining his freedom in the incorporation, so, in most cases, no subject
of the state can lawfully carry on any branch of foreign trade, for which
a regulated company is established, without first becoming a member of
that company. The monopoly is more or less strict, according as the terms
of admission are more or less difficult, and according as the directors of
the company have more or less authority, or have it more or less in their
power to manage in such a manner as to confine the greater part of the
trade to themselves and their particular friends. In the most ancient
regulated companies, the privileges of apprenticeship were the same as in
other corporations, and entitled the person who had served his time to a
member of the company, to become himself a member, either without paying
any fine, or upon paying a much smaller one than what was exacted of other
people. The usual corporation spirit, wherever the law does not restrain
it, prevails in all regulated companies. When they have been allowed to
act according to their natural genius, they have always, in order to
confine the competition to as small a number of persons as possible,
endeavoured to subject the trade to many burdensome regulations. When the
law has restrained them from doing this, they have become altogether
useless and insignificant.
The regulated companies for foreign commerce which at present subsist in
Great Britain, are the ancient merchant-adventurers company, now commonly
called the Hamburgh company, the Russia company, the Eastland company, the
Turkey company, and the African company.
The terms of admission into the Hamburgh company are now said to be quite
easy; and the directors either have it not in their power to subject the
trade to any troublesome restraint or regulations, or, at least, have not
of late exercised that power. It has not always been so. About the middle
of the last century, the fine for admission was fifty, and at one time one
hundred pounds, and the conduct of the company was said to be extremely
oppressive. In 1643, in 1645, and in 1661, the clothiers and free traders
of the west of England complained of them to parliament, as of
monopolists, who confined the trade, and oppressed the manufactures of the
country. Though those complaints produced no act of parliament, they had
probably intimidated the company so far, as to oblige them to reform their
conduct. Since that time, at least, there have been no complaints against
them. By the 10th and 11th of William III. c.6, the fine for admission
into the Russia company was reduced to five pounds; and by the 25th of
Charles II. c.7, that for admission into the Eastland company to forty
shillings; while, at the same time, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, all the
countries on the north side of the Baltic, were exempted from their
exclusive charter. The conduct of those companies had probably given
occasion to those two acts of parliament. Before that time, Sir Josiah
Child had represented both these and the Hamburgh company as extremely
oppressive, and imputed to their bad management the low state of the
trade, which we at that time carried on to the countries comprehended
within their respective charters. But though such companies may not, in
the present times, be very oppressive, they are certainly altogether
useless. To be merely useless, indeed, is perhaps, the highest eulogy
which can ever justly be bestowed upon a regulated company; and all the
three companies above mentioned seem, in their present state, to deserve
this eulogy.
The fine for admission into the Turkey company was formerly twenty-five
pounds for all persons under twenty-six years of age, and fifty pounds for
all persons above that age. Nobody but mere merchants could be admitted; a
restriction which excluded all shop-keepers and retailers. By a bye-law,
no British manufactures could be exported to Turkey but in the general
ships of the company; and as those ships sailed always from the port of
London, this restriction confined the trade to that expensive port, and
the traders to those who lived in London and in its neighbourhood. By
another bye-law, no person living within twenty miles of London, and not
free of the city, could be admitted a member; another restriction which,
joined to the foregoing, necessarily excluded all but the freemen of
London. As the time for the loading and sailing of those general ships
depended altogether upon the directors, they could easily fill them with
their own goods, and those of their particular friends, to the exclusion
of others, who, they might pretend, had made their proposals too late. In
this state of things, therefore, this company was, in every respect, a
strict and oppressive monopoly. Those abuses gave occasion to the act of
the 26th of George II. c. 18, reducing the fine for admission to twenty
pounds for all persons, without any distinction of ages, or any
restriction, either to mere merchants, or to the freemen of London; and
granting to all such persons the liberty of exporting, from all the ports
of Great Britain, to any port in Turkey, all British goods, of which the
exportation was not prohibited, upon paying both the general duties of
customs, and the particular duties assessed for defraying the necessary
expenses of the company; and submitting, at the same time, to the lawful
authority of the British ambassador and consuls resident in Turkey, and to
the bye-laws of the company duly enacted. To prevent any oppression by
those bye-laws, it was by the same act ordained, that if any seven members
of the company conceived themselves aggrieved by any bye-law which should
be enacted after the passing of this act, they might appeal to the board
of trade and plantations (to the authority of which a committee of the
privy council has now succeeded), provided such appeal was brought within
twelve months after the bye-law was enacted; and that, if any seven
members conceived themselves aggrieved by any bye-law which had been
enacted before the passing of this act, they might bring a like appeal,
provided it was within twelve months after the day on which this act was
to take place. The experience of one year, however, may not always be
sufficient to discover to all the members of a great company the
pernicious tendency of a particular bye-law; and if several of them should
afterwards discover it, neither the board of trade, nor the committee of
council, can afford them any redress. The object, besides, of the greater
part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other
corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as
to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a
high fine, but by many other contrivances. The constant view of such
companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they
can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for
those which they import, as much understocked as they can; which can be
done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new
adventurers from entering into the trade. A fine, even of twenty pounds,
besides, though it may not, perhaps, be sufficient to discourage any man
from entering into the Turkey trade, with an intention to continue in it,
may be enough to discourage a speculative merchant from hazarding a single
adventure in it. In all trades, the regular established traders, even
though not incorporated, naturally combine to raise profits, which are
noway so likely to be kept, at all times, down to their proper level, as
by the occasional competition of speculative adventurers. The Turkey
trade, though in some measure laid open by this act of parliament, is
still considered by many people as very far from being altogether free.
The Turkey company contribute to maintain an ambassador and two or three
consuls, who, like other public ministers, ought to be maintained
altogether by the state, and the trade laid open to all his majesty’s
subjects. The different taxes levied by the company, for this and other
corporation purposes, might afford a revenue much more than sufficient to
enable a state to maintain such ministers.
Regulated companies, it was observed by Sir Josiah Child, though they had
frequently supported public ministers, had never maintained any forts or
garrisons in the countries to which they traded; whereas joint-stock
companies frequently had. And, in reality, the former seem to be much more
unfit for this sort of service than the latter. First, the directors of a
regulated company have no particular interest in the prosperity of the
general trade of the company, for the sake of which such forts and
garrisons are maintained. The decay of that general trade may even
frequently contribute to the advantage of their own private trade; as, by
diminishing the number of their competitors, it may enable them both to
buy cheaper, and to sell dearer. The directors of a joint-stock company,
on the contrary, having only their share in the profits which are made
upon the common stock committed to their management, have no private trade
of their own, of which the interest can be separated from that of the
general trade of the company. Their private interest is connected with the
prosperity of the general trade of the company, and with the maintenance
of the forts and garrisons which are necessary for its defence. They are
more likely, therefore, to have that continual and careful attention which
that maintenance necessarily requires. Secondly, The directors of a
joint-stock company have always the management of a large capital, the
joint stock of the company, a part of which they may frequently employ,
with propriety, in building, repairing, and maintaining such necessary
forts and garrisons. But the directors of a regulated company, having the
management of no common capital, have no other fund to employ in this way,
but the casual revenue arising from the admission fines, and from the
corporation duties imposed upon the trade of the company. Though they had
the same interest, therefore, to attend to the maintenance of such forts
and garrisons, they can seldom have the same ability to render that
attention effectual. The maintenance of a public minister, requiring
scarce any attention, and but a moderate and limited expense, is a
business much more suitable both to the temper and abilities of a
regulated company.
Long after the time of Sir Josiah Child, however, in 1750, a regulated
company was established, the present company of merchants trading to
Africa; which was expressly charged at first with the maintenance of all
the British forts and garrisons that lie between Cape Blanc and the Cape
of Good Hope, and afterwards with that of those only which lie between
Cape Rouge and the Cape of Good Hope. The act which establishes this
company (the 23rd of George II. c.51 ), seems to have had two distinct
objects in view; first, to restrain effectually the oppressive and
monopolizing spirit which is natural to the directors of a regulated
company; and, secondly, to force them, as much as possible, to give an
attention, which is not natural to them, towards the maintenance of forts
and garrisons.
For the first of these purposes, the fine for admission is limited to
forty shillings. The company is prohibited from trading in their corporate
capacity, or upon a joint stock; from borrowing money upon common seal, or
from laying any restraints upon the trade, which may be carried on freely
from all places, and by all persons being British subjects, and paying the
fine. The government is in a committee of nine persons, who meet at
London, but who are chosen annually by the freemen of the company at
London, Bristol, and Liverpool; three from each place. No committeeman can
be continued in office for more than three years together. Any
committee-man might be removed by the board of trade and plantations, now
by a committee of council, after being heard in his own defence. The
committee are forbid to export negroes from Africa, or to import any
African goods into Great Britain. But as they are charged with the
maintenance of forts and garrisons, they may, for that purpose export from
Great Britain to Africa goods and stores of different kinds. Out of the
moneys which they shall receive from the company, they are allowed a sum,
not exceeding eight hundred pounds, for the salaries of their clerks and
agents at London, Bristol, and Liverpool, the house-rent of their offices
at London, and all other expenses of management, commission, and agency,
in England. What remains of this sum, after defraying these different
expenses, they may divide among themselves, as compensation for their
trouble, in what manner they think proper. By this constitution, it might
have been expected, that the spirit of monopoly would have been
effectually restrained, and the first of these purposes sufficiently
answered. It would seem, however, that it had not. Though by the 4th of
George III. c.20, the fort of Senegal, with all its dependencies, had been
invested in the company of merchants trading to Africa, yet, in the year
following (by the 5th of George III. c.44), not only Senegal and its
dependencies, but the whole coast, from the port of Sallee, in South
Barbary, to Cape Rouge, was exempted from the jurisdiction of that
company, was vested in the crown, and the trade to it declared free to all
his majesty’s subjects. The company had been suspected of restraining the
trade and of establishing some sort of improper monopoly. It is not,
however, very easy to conceive how, under the regulations of the 23d
George II. they could do so. In the printed debates of the house of
commons, not always the most authentic records of truth, I observe,
however, that they have been accused of this. The members of the committee
of nine being all merchants, and the governors and factors in their
different forts and settlements being all dependent upon them, it is not
unlikely that the latter might have given peculiar attention to the
consignments and commissions of the former, which would establish a real
monopoly.
For the second of these purposes, the maintenance of the forts and
garrisons, an annual sum has been allotted to them by parliament,
generally about £13,000. For the proper application of this sum, the
committee is obliged to account annually to the cursitor baron of
exchequer; which account is afterwards to be laid before parliament. But
parliament, which gives so little attention to the application of
millions, is not likely to give much to that of £13,000 a-year; and the
cursitor baron of exchequer, from his profession and education, is not
likely to be profoundly skilled in the proper expense of forts and
garrisons. The captains of his majesty’s navy, indeed, or any other
commissioned officers, appointed by the board of admiralty, may inquire
into the condition of the forts and garrisons, and report their
observations to that board. But that board seems to have no direct
jurisdiction over the committee, nor any authority to correct those whose
conduct it may thus inquire into; and the captains of his majesty’s navy,
besides, are not supposed to be always deeply learned in the science of
fortification. Removal from an office, which can be enjoyed only for the
term of three years, and of which the lawful emoluments, even during that
term, are so very small, seems to be the utmost punishment to which any
committee-man is liable, for any fault, except direct malversation, or
embezzlement, either of the public money, or of that of the company; and
the fear of the punishment can never be a motive of sufficient weight to
force a continual and careful attention to a business to which he has no
other interest to attend. The committee are accused of having sent out
bricks and stones from England for the reparation of Cape Coast Castle, on
the coast of Guinea; a business for which parliament had several times
granted an extraordinary sum of money. These bricks and stones, too, which
had thus been sent upon so long a voyage, were said to have been of so bad
a quality, that it was necessary to rebuild, from the foundation, the
walls which had been repaired with them. The forts and garrisons which lie
north of Cape Rouge, are not only maintained at the expense of the state,
but are under the immediate government of the executive power; and why
those which lie south of that cape, and which, too, are, in part at least,
maintained at the expense of the state, should be under a different
government, it seems not very easy even to imagine a good reason. The
protection of the Mediterranean trade was the original purpose or pretence
of the garrisons of Gibraltar and Minorca; and the maintenance and
government of those garrisons have always been, very properly, committed,
not to the Turkey company, but to the executive power. In the extent of
its dominion consists, in a great measure, the pride and dignity of that
power; and it is not very likely to fail in attention to what is necessary
for the defence of that dominion. The garrisons at Gibraltar and Minorca,
accordingly, have never been neglected. Though Minorca has been twice
taken, and is now probably lost for ever, that disaster has never been
imputed to any neglect in the executive power. I would not, however, be
understood to insinuate, that either of those expensive garrisons was
ever, even in the smallest degree, necessary for the purpose for which
they were originally dismembered from the Spanish monarchy. That
dismemberment, perhaps, never served any other real purpose than to
alienate from England her natural ally the king of Spain, and to unite the
two principal branches of the house of Bourbon in a much stricter and more
permanent alliance than the ties of blood could ever have united them.
Joint-stock companies, established either by royal charter, or by act of
parliament, are different in several respects, not only from regulated
companies, but from private copartneries.
First, In a private copartnery, no partner without the consent of the
company, can transfer his share to another person, or introduce a new
member into the company. Each member, however, may, upon proper warning,
withdraw from the copartnery, and demand payment from them of his share of
the common stock. In a joint-stock company, on the contrary, no member can
demand payment of his share from the company; but each member can, without
their consent, transfer his share to another person, and thereby introduce
a new member. The value of a share in a joint stock is always the price
which it will bring in the market; and this may be either greater or less
in any proportion, than the sum which its owner stands credited for in the
stock of the company.
Secondly, In a private copartnery, each partner is bound for the debts
contracted by the company, to the whole extent of his fortune. In a
joint-stock company, on the contrary, each partner is bound only to the
extent of his share.
The trade of a joint-stock company is always managed by a court of
directors. This court, indeed, is frequently subject, in many respects, to
the control of a general court of proprietors. But the greater part of
these proprietors seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business
of the company; and when the spirit of faction happens not to prevail
among them, give themselves no trouble about it, but receive contentedly
such halfyearly or yearly dividend as the directors think proper to make
to them. This total exemption front trouble and front risk, beyond a
limited sum, encourages many people to become adventurers in joint-stock
companies, who would, upon no account, hazard their fortunes in any
private copartnery. Such companies, therefore, commonly draw to themselves
much greater stocks, than any private copartnery can boast of. The trading
stock of the South Sea company at one time amounted to upwards of
thirty-three millions eight hundred thousand pounds. The divided capital
of the Bank of England amounts, at present, to ten millions seven hundred
and eighty thousand pounds. The directors of such companies, however,
being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it
cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same
anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery
frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are
apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master’s
honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it.
Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in
the management of the affairs of such a company. It is upon this account,
that joint-stock companies for foreign trade have seldom been able to
maintain the competition against private adventurers. They have,
accordingly, very seldom succeeded without an exclusive privilege; and
frequently have not succeeded with one. Without an exclusive privilege,
they have commonly mismanaged the trade. With an exclusive privilege, they
have both mismanaged and confined it.
The Royal African company, the predecessors of the present African
company, had an exclusive privilege by charter; but as that charter had
not been confirmed by act of parliament, the trade, in consequence of the
declaration of rights, was, soon after the Revolution, laid open to all
his majesty’s subjects. The Hudson’s Bay company are, as to their legal
rights, in the same situation as the Royal African company. Their
exclusive charter has not been confirmed by act of parliament. The South
Sea company, as long as they continued to be a trading company, had an
exclusive privilege confirmed by act of parliament; as have likewise the
present united company of merchants trading to the East Indies.
The Royal African company soon found that they could not maintain the
competition against private adventurers, whom, notwithstanding the
declaration of rights, they continued for some time to call interlopers,
and to persecute as such. In 1698, however, the private adventurers were
subjected to a duty of ten per cent. upon almost all the different
branches of their trade, to be employed by the company in the maintenance
of their forts and garrisons. But, notwithstanding this heavy tax, the
company were still unable to maintain the competition. Their stock and
credit gradually declined. In 1712, their debts had become so great, that
a particular act of parliament was thought necessary, both for their
security and for that of their creditors. It was enacted, that the
resolution of two-thirds of these creditors in number and value should
bind the rust, both with regard to the time which should be allowed to the
company for the payment of their debts, and with regard to any other
agreement which it might be thought proper to make with them concerning
those debts. In 1730, their affairs were in so great disorder, that they
were altogether incapable of maintaining their forts and garrisons, the
sole purpose and pretext of their institution. From that year till their
final dissolution, the parliament judged it necessary to allow the annual
sum of £10,000 for that purpose. In 1732, after having been for many years
losers by the trade of carrying negroes to the West Indies, they at last
resolved to give it up altogether; to sell to the private traders to
America the negroes which they purchased upon the coast; and to employ
their servants in a trade to the inland parts of Africa for gold dust,
elephants teeth, dyeing drugs, etc. But their success in this more
confined trade was not greater than in their former extensive one. Their
affairs continued to go gradually to decline, till at last, being in every
respect a bankrupt company, they were dissolved by act of parliament, and
their forts and garrisons vested in the present regulated company of
merchants trading to Africa. Before the erection of the Royal African
company, there had been three other joint-stock companies successively
established, one after another, for the African trade. They were all
equally unsuccessful. They all, however, had exclusive charters, which,
though not confirmed by act of parliament, were in those days supposed to
convey a real exclusive privilege.
The Hudson’s Bay company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had
been much more fortunate than the Royal African company. Their necessary
expense is much smaller. The whole number of people whom they maintain in
their different settlements and habitations, which they have honoured with
the name of forts, is said not to exceed a hundred and twenty persons.
This number, however, is sufficient to prepare beforehand the cargo of
furs and other goods necessary for loading their ships, which, on account
of the ice, can seldom remain above six or eight weeks in those seas. This
advantage of having a cargo ready prepared, could not, for several years,
be acquired by private adventurers; and without it there seems to be no
possibility of trading to Hudson’s Bay. The moderate capital of the
company, which, it is said, does not exceed one hundred and ten thousand
pounds, may, besides, be sufficient to enable them to engross the whole,
or almost the whole trade and surplus produce, of the miserable though
extensive country comprehended within their charter. No private
adventurers, accordingly, have ever attempted to trade to that country in
competition with them. This company, therefore, have always enjoyed an
exclusive trade, in fact, though they may have no right to it in law. Over
and above all this, the moderate capital of this company is said to be
divided among a very small number of proprietors. But a joint-stock
company, consisting of a small number of proprietors, with a moderate
capital, approaches very nearly to the nature of a private copartnery, and
may be capable of nearly the same degree of vigilance and attention. It is
not to be wondered at, therefore, if, in consequence of these different
advantages, the Hudson’s Bay company had, before the late war, been able
to carry on their trade with a considerable degree of success. It does not
seem probable, however, that their profits ever approached to what the
late Mr Dobbs imagined them. A much more sober and judicious writer, Mr
Anderson, author of the Historical and Chronological Deduction of
Commerce, very justly observes, that upon examining the accounts which Mr
Dobbs himself has given for several years together, of their exports and
imports, and upon making proper allowances for their extraordinary risk
and expense, it does not appear that their profits deserve to be envied,
or that they can much, if at all, exceed the ordinary profits of trade.
The South Sea company never had any forts or garrisons to maintain, and
therefore were entirely exempted from one great expense, to which other
joint-stock companies for foreign trade are subject; but they had an
immense capital divided among an immense number of proprietors. It was
naturally to be expected, therefore, that folly, negligence, and
profusion, should prevail in the whole management of their affairs. The
knavery and extravagance of their stock-jobbing projects are sufficiently
known, and the explication of them would be foreign to the present
subject. Their mercantile projects were not much better conducted. The
first trade which they engaged in, was that of supplying the Spanish West
Indies with negroes, of which (in consequence of what was called the
Assiento Contract granted them by the treaty of Utrecht) they had the
exclusive privilege. But as it was not expected that much profit could be
made by this trade, both the Portuguese and French companies, who had
enjoyed it upon the same terms before them, having been ruined by it, they
were allowed, as compensation, to send annually a ship of a certain
burden, to trade directly to the Spanish West Indies. Of the ten voyages
which this annual ship was allowed to make, they are said to have gained
considerably by one, that of the Royal Caroline, in 1731; and to have been
losers, more or less, by almost all the rest. Their ill success was
imputed, by their factors and agents, to the extortion and oppression of
the Spanish government; but was, perhaps, principally owing to the
profusion and depredations of those very factors and agents; some of whom
are said to have acquired great fortunes, even in one year. In 1734, the
company petitioned the king, that they might be allowed to dispose of the
trade and tonnage of their annual ship, on account of the little profit
which they made by it, and to accept of such equivalent as they could
obtain from the king of Spain.
In 1724, this company had undertaken the whale fishery. Of this, indeed,
they had no monopoly; but as long as they carried it on, no other British
subjects appear to have engaged in it. Of the eight voyages which their
ships made to Greenland, they were gainers by one, and losers by all the
rest. After their eighth and last voyage, when they had sold their ships,
stores, and utensils, they found that their whole loss upon this branch,
capital and interest included, amounted to upwards of £237,000.
In 1722, this company petitioned the parliament to be allowed to divide
their immense capital of more than thirty-three millions eight hundred
thousand pounds, the whole of which had been lent to government, into two
equal parts; the one half, or upwards of £16,900,000, to be put upon the
same footing with other government annuities, and not to be subject to the
debts contracted, or losses incurred, by the directors of the company, in
the prosecution of their mercantile projects; the other half to remain as
before, a trading stock, and to be subject to those debts and losses. The
petition was too reasonable not to be granted. In 1733, they again
petitioned the parliament, that three-fourths of their trading stock might
be turned into annuity stock, and only one-fourth remain as trading stock,
or exposed to the hazards arising from the bad management of their
directors. Both their annuity and trading stocks had, by this time, been
reduced more than two millions each, by several different payments from
government; so that this fourth amounted only to £3,662,784:8:6. In 1748,
all the demands of the company upon the king of Spain, in consequence of
the assiento contract, were, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, given up
for what was supposed an equivalent. An end was put to their trade with
the Spanish West Indies; the remainder of their trading stock was turned
into an annuity stock; and the company ceased, in every respect, to be a
trading company.
It ought to be observed, that in the trade which the South Sea company
carried on by means of their annual ship, the only trade by which it ever
was expected that they could make any considerable profit, they were not
without competitors, either in the foreign or in the home market. At
Carthagena, Porto Bello, and La Vera Cruz, they had to encounter the
competition of the Spanish merchants, who brought from Cadiz to those
markets European goods, of the same kind with the outward cargo of their
ship; and in England they had to encounter that of the English merchants,
who imported from Cadiz goods of the Spanish West Indies, of the same kind
with the inward cargo. The goods, both of the Spanish and English
merchants, indeed, were, perhaps, subject to higher duties. But the loss
occasioned by the negligence, profusion, and malversation of the servants
of the company, had probably been a tax much heavier than all those
duties. That a joint-stock company should be able to carry on successfully
any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any
sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all
experience.
The old English East India company was established in 1600, by a charter
from Queen Elizabeth. In the first twelve voyages which they fitted out
for India, they appear to have traded as a regulated company, with
separate stocks, though only in the general ships of the company. In 1612,
they united into a joint stock. Their charter was exclusive, and, though
not confirmed by act of parliament, was in those days supposed to convey a
real exclusive privilege. For many years, therefore, they were not much
disturbed by interlopers. Their capital, which never exceeded £744,000,
and of which £50 was a share, was not so exorbitant, nor their dealings so
extensive, as to afford either a pretext for gross negligence and
profusion, or a cover to gross malversation. Notwithstanding some
extraordinary losses, occasioned partly by the malice of the Dutch East
India company, and partly by other accidents, they carried on for many
years a successful trade. But in process of time, when the principles of
liberty were better understood, it became every day more and more
doubtful, how far a royal charter, not confirmed by act of parliament,
could convey an exclusive privilege. Upon this question the decisions of
the courts of justice were not uniform, but varied with the authority of
government, and the humours of the times. Interlopers multiplied upon
them; and towards the end of the reign of Charles II., through the whole
of that of James II., and during a part of that of William III., reduced
them to great distress. In 1698, a proposal was made to parliament, of
advancing two millions to government, at eight per cent. provided the
subscribers were erected into a new East India company, with exclusive
privileges. The old East India company offered seven hundred thousand
pounds, nearly the amount of their capital, at four per cent. upon the
same conditions. But such was at that time the state of public credit,
that it was more convenient for government to borrow two millions at eight
per cent. than seven hundred thousand pounds at four. The proposal of the
new subscribers was accepted, and a new East India company established in
consequence. The old East India company, however, had a right to continue
their trade till 1701. They had, at the same time, in the name of their
treasurer, subscribed very artfully three hundred and fifteen thousand
pounds into the stock of the new. By a negligence in the expression of the
act of parliament, which vested the East India trade in the subscribers to
this loan of two millions, it did not appear evident that they were all
obliged to unite into a joint stock. A few private traders, whose
subscriptions amounted only to seven thousand two hundred pounds, insisted
upon the privilege of trading separately upon their own stocks, and at
their own risks. The old East India company had a right to a separate
trade upon their own stock till 1701; and they had likewise, both before
and after that period, a right, like that or other private traders, to a
separate trade upon the £315,000, which they had subscribed into the stock
of the new company. The competition of the two companies with the private
traders, and with one another, is said to have well nigh ruined both. Upon
a subsequent occasion, in 1750, when a proposal was made to parliament for
putting the trade under the management of a regulated company, and thereby
laying it in some measure open, the East India company, in opposition to
this proposal, represented, in very strong terms, what had been, at this
time, the miserable effects, as they thought them, of this competition. In
India, they said, it raised the price of goods so high, that they were not
worth the buying; and in England, by overstocking the market, it sunk
their price so low, that no profit could be made by them. That by a more
plentiful supply, to the great advantage and conveniency of the public, it
must have reduced very much the price of India goods in the English
market, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have raised very much
their price in the Indian market, seems not very probable, as all the
extraordinary demand which that competition could occasion must have been
but as a drop of water in the immense ocean of Indian commerce. The
increase of demand, besides, though in the beginning it may sometimes
raise the price of goods, never fails to lower it in the long-run. It
encourages production, and thereby increases the competition of the
producers, who, in order to undersell one another, have recourse to new
divisions or labour and new improvements of art, which might never
otherwise have been thought of. The miserable effects of which the company
complained, were the cheapness of consumption, and the encouragement given
to production; precisely the two effects which it is the great business of
political economy to promote. The competition, however, of which they gave
this doleful account, had not been allowed to be of long continuance. In
1702, the two companies were, in some measure, united by an indenture
tripartite, to which the queen was the third party; and in 1708, they were
by act of parliament, perfectly consolidated into one company, by their
present name of the United Company of Merchants trading to the East
Indies. Into this act it was thought worth while to insert a clause,
allowing the separate traders to continue their trade till Michaelmas
1711; but at the same time empowering the directors, upon three years
notice, to redeem their little capital of seven thousand two hundred
pounds, and thereby to convert the whole stock of the company into a joint
stock. By the same act, the capital of the company, in consequence of a
new loan to government, was augmented from two millions to three millions
two hundred thousand pounds. In 1743, the company advanced another million
to government. But this million being raised, not by a call upon the
proprietors, but by selling annuities and contracting bond-debts, it did
not augment the stock upon which the proprietors could claim a dividend.
It augmented, however, their trading stock, it being equally liable with
the other three millions two hundred thousand pounds, to the losses
sustained, and debts contracted by the company in prosecution of their
mercantile projects. From 1708, or at least from 1711, this company, being
delivered from all competitors, and fully established in the monopoly of
the English commerce to the East Indies, carried on a successful trade,
and from their profits, made annually a moderate dividend to their
proprietors. During the French war, which began in 1741, the ambition of
Mr Dupleix, the French governor of Pondicherry, involved them in the wars
of the Carnatic, and in the politics of the Indian princes. After many
signal successes, and equally signal losses, they at last lost Madras, at
that time their principal settlement in India. It was restored to them by
the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; and, about this time the spirit of war and
conquest seems to have taken possession of their servants in India, and
never since to have left them. During the French war, which began in 1755,
their arms partook of the general good fortune of those of Great Britain.
They defended Madras, took Pondicherry, recovered Calcutta, and acquired
the revenues of a rich and extensive territory, amounting, it was then
said, to upwards of three millions a-year. They remained for several years
in quiet possession of this revenue; but in 1767, administration laid
claim to their territorial acquisitions, and the revenue arising from
them, as of right belonging to the crown; and the company, in compensation
for this claim, agreed to pay to government £400,000 a-year. They had,
before this, gradually augmented their dividend from about six to ten per
cent.; that is, upon their capital of three millions two hundred thousand
pounds, they had increased it by £128,000, or had raised it from one
hundred and ninety-two thousand to three hundred and twenty thousand
pounds a-year. They were attempting about this time to raise it still
further, to twelve and a-half per cent., which would have made their
annual payments to their proprietors equal to what they had agreed to pay
annually to government, or to £400,000 a-year. But during the two years in
which their agreement with government was to take place, they were
restrained from any further increase of dividend by two successive acts of
parliament, of which the object was to enable them to make a speedier
progress in the payment of their debts, which were at this time estimated
at upwards of six or seven millions sterling. In 1769, they renewed their
agreement with government for five years more, and stipulated, that during
the course of that period, they should be allowed gradually to increase
their dividend to twelve and a-half per cent; never increasing it,
however, more than one per cent. in one year. This increase of dividend,
therefore, when it had risen to its utmost height, could augment their
annual payments, to their proprietors and government together, but by
£680,000, beyond what they had been before their late territorial
acquisitions. What the gross revenue of those territorial acquisitions was
supposed to amount to, has already been mentioned; and by an account
brought by the Cruttenden East Indiaman in 1769, the neat revenue, clear
of all deductions and military charges, was stated at two millions
forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-seven pounds. They were said,
at the same time, to possess another revenue, arising partly from lands,
but chiefly from the customs established at their different settlements,
amounting to £439,000. The profits of their trade, too, according to the
evidence of their chairman before the house of commons, amounted, at this
time, to at least £400,000 a-year; according to that of their accountant,
to at least £500,000; according to the lowest account, at least equal to
the highest dividend that was to be paid to their proprietors. So great a
revenue might certainly have afforded an augmentation of £680,000 in their
annual payments; and, at the same time, have left a large sinking fund,
sufficient for the speedy reduction of their debt. In 1773, however, their
debts, instead of being reduced, were augmented by an arrear to the
treasury in the payment of the four hundred thousand pounds; by another to
the custom-house for duties unpaid; by a large debt to the bank, for money
borrowed; and by a fourth, for bills drawn upon them from India, and
wantonly accepted, to the amount of upwards of twelve hundred thousand
pounds. The distress which these accumulated claims brought upon them,
obliged them not only to reduce all at once their dividend to six per
cent. but to throw themselves upon the mercy of govermnent, and to
supplicate, first, a release from the further payment of the stipulated
£400,000 a-year; and, secondly, a loan of fourteen hundred thousand, to
save them from immediate bankruptcy. The great increase of their fortune
had, it seems, only served to furnish their servants with a pretext for
greater profusion, and a cover for greater malversation, than in
proportion even to that increase of fortune. The conduct of their servants
in India, and the general state of their affairs both in India and in
Europe, became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry: in consequence of
which, several very important alterations were made in the constitution of
their government, both at home and abroad. In India, their principal
settlements or Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, which had before been
altogether independent of one another, were subjected to a
governor-general, assisted by a council of four assessors, parliament
assuming to itself the first nomination of this governor and council, who
were to reside at Calcutta; that city having now become, what Madras was
before, the most important of the English settlements in India. The court
of the Mayor of Calcutta, originally instituted for the trial of
mercantile causes, which arose in the city and neighbourhood, had
gradually extended its jurisdiction with the extension of the empire. It
was now reduced and confined to the original purpose of its institution.
Instead of it, a new supreme court of judicature was established,
consisting of a chief justice and three judges, to be appointed by the
crown. In Europe, the qualification necessary to entitle a proprietor to
vote at their general courts was raised, from five hundred pounds, the
original price of a share in the stock of the company, to a thousand
pounds. In order to vote upon this qualification, too, it was declared
necessary, that he should have possessed it, if acquired by his own
purchase, and not by inheritance, for at least one year, instead of six
months, the term requisite before. The court of twenty-four directors had
before been chosen annually; but it was now enacted, that each director
should, for the future, be chosen for four years; six of them, however, to
go out of office by rotation every year, and not be capable of being
re-chosen at the election of the six new directors for the ensuing year.
In consequence of these alterations, the courts, both of the proprietors
and directors, it was expected, would be likely to act with more dignity
and steadiness than they had usually done before. But it seems impossible,
by any alterations, to render those courts, in any respect, fit to govern,
or even to share in the government of a great empire; because the greater
part of their members must always have too little interest in the
prosperity of that empire, to give any serious attention to what may
promote it. Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small
fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock,
merely for the influence which he expects to aquire by a vote in the court
of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in
the appointment of the plunderers of India; the court of directors, though
they make that appointment, being necessarily more or less under the
influence of the proprietors, who not only elect those directors, but
sometimes over-rule the appointments of their servants in India. Provided
he can enjoy this influence for a few years, and thereby provide for a
certain number of his friends, he frequently cares little about the
dividend, or even about the value of the stock upon which his vote is
founded. About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of
which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other
sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so
perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the
improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their
administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of
the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
This indifference, too, was more likely to be increased than diminished by
some of the new regulations which were made in consequence of the
parliamentary inquiry. By a resolution of the house of commons, for
example, it was declared, that when the £1,400,000 lent to the company by
government, should be paid, and their bond-debts be reduced to £1,500,000,
they might then, and not till then, divide eight per cent. upon their
capital; and that whatever remained of their revenues and neat profits at
home should be divided into four parts; three of them to be paid into the
exchequer for the use of the public, and the fourth to be reserved as a
fund, either for the further reduction of their bond-debts, or for the
discharge of other contingent exigencies which the company might labour
under. But if the company were bad stewards and bad sovereigns, when the
whole of their neat revenue and profits belonged to themselves, and were
at their own disposal, they were surely not likely to be better when
three-fourths of them were to belong to other people, and the other
fourth, though to be laid out for the benefit of the company, yet to be so
under the inspection and with the approbation of other people.
It might be more agreeable to the company, that their own servants and
dependants should have either the pleasure of wasting, or the profit of
embezzling, whatever surplus might remain, after paying the proposed
dividend of eight per cent. than that it should come into the hands of a
set of people with whom those resolutions could scarce fail to set them in
some measure at variance. The interest of those servants and dependants
might so far predominate in the court of proprietors, as sometimes to
dispose it to support the authors of depredations which had been committed
in direct violation of its own authority. With the majority of
proprietors, the support even of the authority of their own court might
sometimes be a matter of less consequence than the support of those who
had set that authority at defiance.
The regulations of 1773, accordingly, did not put an end to the disorder
of the company’s government in India. Notwithstanding that, during a
momentary fit of good conduct, they had at one time collected into the
treasury of Calcutta more than £3,000,000 sterling; notwithstanding that
they had afterwards extended either their dominion or their depredations
over a vast accession of some of the richest and most fertile countries in
India, all was wasted and destroyed. They found themselves altogether
unprepared to stop or resist the incursion of Hyder Ali; and in
consequence of those disorders, the company is now (1784) in greater
distress than ever; and, in order to prevent immediate bankruptcy, is once
more reduced to supplicate the assistance of government. Different plans
have been proposed by the different parties in parliament for the better
management of its affairs; and all those plans seem to agree in supposing,
what was indeed always abundantly evident, that it is altogether unfit to
govern its territorial possessions. Even the company itself seems to be
convinced of its own incapacity so far, and seems, upon that account
willing to give them up to government.
With the right of possessing forts and garrisons in distant and barbarous
countries is necessarily connected the right of making peace and war in
those countries. The joint-stock companies, which have had the one right,
have constantly exercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly
conferred upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously, how cruelly, they
have commonly exercised it, is too well known from recent experience.
When a company of merchants undertake, at their own risk and expense, to
establish a new trade with some remote and barbarous nation, it may not be
unreasonable to incorporate them into a joint-stock company, and to grant
them, in case of their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain
number of years. It is the easiest and most natural way in which the state
can recompense them for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment, of
which the public is afterwards to reap the benefit. A temporary monopoly
of this kind may be vindicated, upon the same principles upon which a like
monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that of a new
book to its author. But upon the expiration of the term, the monopoly
ought certainly to determine; the forts and garrisons, if it was found
necessary to establish any, to be taken into the hands of government,
their value to be paid to the company, and the trade to be laid open to
all the subjects of the state. By a perpetual monopoly, all the other
subjects of the state are taxed very absurdly in two different ways:
first, by the high price of goods, which, in the case of a free trade,
they could buy much cheaper; and, secondly, by their total exclusion from
a branch of business which it might be both convenient and profitable for
many of them to carry on. It is for the most worthless of all purposes,
too, that they are taxed in this manner. It is merely to enable the
company to support the negligence, profusion, and malversation of their
own servants, whose disorderly conduct seldom allows the dividend of the
company to exceed the ordinary rate of profit in trades which are
altogether free, and very frequently makes a fall even a good deal short
of that rate. Without a monopoly, however, a joint-stock company, it would
appear from experience, cannot long carry on any branch of foreign trade.
To buy in one market, in order to sell with profit in another, when there
are many competitors in both; to watch over, not only the occasional
variations in the demand, but the much greater and more frequent
variations in the competition, or in the supply which that demand is
likely to get from other people; and to suit with dexterity and judgment
both the quantity and quality of each assortment of goods to all these
circumstances, is a species of warfare, of which the operations are
continually changing, and which can scarce ever be conducted successfully,
without such an unremitting exertion of vigilance and attention as cannot
long be expected from the directors of a joint-stock company. The East
India company, upon the redemption of their funds, and the expiration of
their exclusive privilege, have a right, by act of parliament, to continue
a corporation with a joint stock, and to trade in their corporate capacity
to the East Indies, in common with the rest of their fellow subjects. But
in this situation, the superior vigilance and attention of a private
adventurer would, in all probability, soon make them weary of the trade.
An eminent French author, of great knowledge in matters of political
economy, the Abbe Morellet, gives a list of fifty-five joint-stock
companies for foreign trade, which have been established in different
parts of Europe since the year 1600, and which, according to him, have all
failed from mismanagement, notwithstanding they had exclusive privileges.
He has been misinformed with regard to the history of two or three of
them, which were not joint-stock companies and have not failed. But, in
compensation, there have been several joint-stock companies which have
failed, and which he has omitted.
The only trades which it seems possible for a joint-stock company to carry
on successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those, of which all
the operations are capable of being reduced to what is called a routine,
or to such a uniformity of method as admits of little or no variation. Of
this kind is, first, the banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance
from fire and from sea risk, and capture in time of war; thirdly, the
trade of making and maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and, fourthly,
the similar trade of bringing water for the supply of a great city.
Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse,
the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon
any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering
speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous
and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it. But the
constitution of joint-stock companies renders them in general, more
tenacious of established rules than any private copartnery. Such
companies, therefore, seem extremely well fitted for this trade. The
principal banking companies in Europe, accordingly, are joint-stock
companies, many of which manage their trade very successfully without any
exclusive privilege. The bank of England has no other exclusive privilege,
except that no other banking company in England shall consist of more than
six persons. The two banks of Edinburgh are joint-stock companies, without
any exclusive privilege.
The value of the risk, either from fire, or from loss by sea, or by
capture, though it cannot, perhaps, be calculated very exactly, admits,
however, of such a gross estimation, as renders it, in some degree,
reducible to strict rule and method. The trade of insurance, therefore,
may be carried on successfully by a joint-stock company, without any
exclusive privilege. Neither the London Assurance, nor the Royal Exchange
Assurance companies have any such privilege.
When a navigable cut or canal has been once made, the management of it
becomes quite simple and easy, and it is reducible to strict rule and
method. Even the making of it is so, as it may be contracted for with
undertakers, at so much a mile, and so much a lock. The same thing may be
said of a canal, an aqueduct, or a great pipe for bringing water to supply
a great city. Such under-takings, therefore, may be, and accordingly
frequently are, very successfully managed by joint-stock companies,
without any exclusive privilege.
To establish a joint-stock company, however, for any undertaking, merely
because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or,
to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which
take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might
be capable of thriving, if they had such an exemption, would certainly not
be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly reasonable, with
the circumstance of being reducible to strict rule and method, two other
circumstances ought to concur. First, it ought to appear with the clearest
evidence, that the undertaking is of greater and more general utility than
the greater part of common trades; and, secondly, that it requires a
greater capital than can easily be collected into a private copartnery. If
a moderate capital were sufficient, the great utility of the undertaking
would not be a sufficient reason for establishing a joint-stock company;
because, in this case, the demand for what it was to produce, would
readily and easily be supplied by private adventurers. In the four trades
above mentioned, both those circumstances concur.
The great and general utility of the banking trade, when prudently
managed, has been fully explained in the second book of this Inquiry. But
a public bank, which is to support public credit, and, upon particular
emergencies, to advance to government the whole produce of a tax, to the
amount, perhaps, of several millions, a year or two before it comes in,
requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into any private
copartnery.
The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private
people, and, by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an
individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society. In order
to give this security, however, it is necessary that the insurers should
have a very large capital. Before the establishment of the two joint-stock
companies for insurance in London, a list, it is said, was laid before the
attorney-general, of one hundred and fifty private usurers, who had failed
in the course of a few years.
That navigable cuts and canals, and the works which are sometimes
necessary for supplying a great city with water, are of great and general
utility, while, at the same time, they frequently require a greater
expense than suits the fortunes of private people, is sufficiently
obvious.
Except the four trades above mentioned, I have not been able to recollect
any other, in which all the three circumstances requisite for rendering
reasonable the establishment of a joint-stock company concur. The English
copper company of London, the lead-smelting company, the glass-grinding
company, have not even the pretext of any great or singular utility in the
object which they pursue; nor does the pursuit of that object seem to
require any expense unsuitable to the fortunes of many private men.
Whether the trade which those companies carry on, is reducible to such
strict rule and method as to render it fit for the management of a
joint-stock company, or whether they have any reason to boast of their
extraordinary profits, I do not pretend to know. The mine-adventurers
company has been long ago bankrupt. A share in the stock of the British
Linen company of Edinburgh sells, at present, very much below par, though
less so than it did some years ago. The joint-stock companies, which are
established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting some particular
manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the
diminution of the general stock of the society, can, in other respects,
scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most
upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to
particular branches of the manufacture, of which the undertakers mislead
and impose upon them, is a real discouragement to the rest, and
necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would
otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and
which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements
the greatest and the most effectual.
ART. II.—Of the Expense of the Institution for the Education of
Youth.
The institutions for the education of the youth may, in the same manner,
furnish a revenue sufficient for defraying their own expense. The fee or
honorary, which the scholar pays to the master, naturally constitutes a
revenue of this kind.
Even where the reward of the master does not arise altogether from this
natural revenue, it still is not necessary that it should be derived from
that general revenue of the society, of which the collection and
application are, in most countries, assigned to the executive power.
Through the greater part of Europe, accordingly, the endowment of schools
and colleges makes either no charge upon that general revenue, or but a
very small one. It everywhere arises chiefly from some local or provincial
revenue, from the rent of some landed estate, or from the interest of some
sum of money, allotted and put under the management of trustees for this
particular purpose, sometimes by the sovereign himself, and sometimes by
some private donor.
Have those public endowments contributed in general, to promote the end of
their institution? Have they contributed to encourage the diligence, and
to improve the abilities, of the teachers? Have they directed the course
of education towards objects more useful, both to the individual and to
the public, than those to which it would naturally have gone of its own
accord? It should not seem very difficult to give at least a probable
answer to each of those questions.
In every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who
exercise it, is always in proportion to the necessity they are under of
making that exertion. This necessity is greatest with those to whom the
emoluments of their profession are the only source from which they expect
their fortune, or even their ordinary revenue and subsistence. In order to
acquire this fortune, or even to get this subsistence, they must, in the
course of a year, execute a certain quantity of work of a known value;
and, where the competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are
all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every
man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness.
The greatness of the objects which are to be acquired by success in some
particular professions may, no doubt, sometimes animate the exertions of a
few men of extraordinary spirit and ambition. Great objects, however, are
evidently not necessary, in order to occasion the greatest exertions.
Rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an
object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions.
Great objects, on the contrary, alone and unsupported by the necessity of
application, have seldom been sufficient to occasion any considerable
exertion. In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some
very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy
fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession?
The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished, more
or less, the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence,
so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund,
altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular
professions.
In some universities, the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a
small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part
arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. The necessity of
application, though always more or less diminished, is not, in this case,
entirely taken away. Reputation in his profession is still of some
importance to him, and he still has some dependency upon the affection,
gratitude, and favourable report of those who have attended upon his
instructions; and these favourable sentiments he is likely to gain in no
way so well as by deserving them, that is, by the abilities and diligence
with which he discharges every part of his duty.
In other universities, the teacher is prohibited from receiving any
honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of
the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is, in this
case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set
it. It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can;
and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or
does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest,
at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it
altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer
him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that
authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it
is his interest to employ that activity in any way from which he can
derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from
which he can derive none.
If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the
college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the
greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either
are, or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to
be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his
neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect
his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public
professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the
pretence of teaching.
If the authority to which he is subject resides, not so much in the body
corporate, of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous persons,
in the bishop of the diocese, for example, in the governor of the
province, or, perhaps, in some minister of state, it is not, indeed, in
this case, very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty
altogether. All that such superiors, however, can force him to do, is to
attend upon his pupils a certain number of hours, that is, to give a
certain number of lectures in the week, or in the year. What those
lectures shall be, must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher;
and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he
has for exerting it. An extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is
liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. In its nature, it
is arbitrary and discretionary; and the persons who exercise it, neither
attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps
understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom
capable of exercising it with judgment. From the insolence of office, too,
they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to
censure or deprive him of his office wantonly and without any just cause.
The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it,
and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the
meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. It is by powerful
protection only, that he can effectually guard himself against the bad
usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most
likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by
obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready, at all
times, to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour
of the body corporate, of which he is a member. Whoever has attended for
any considerable time to the administration of a French university, must
have had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an
arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind.
Whatever forces a certain number of students to any college or university,
independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less
to diminish the necessity of that merit or reputation.
The privileges of graduates in arts, in law, physic, and divinity, when
they can be obtained only by residing a certain number of years in certain
universities, necessarily force a certain number of students to such
universities, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers. The
privileges of graduates are a sort of statutes of apprenticeship, which
have contributed to the improvement of education just as the other
statutes of apprenticeship have to that of arts and manufactures.
The charitable foundations of scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc.
necessarily attach a certain number of students to certain colleges,
independent altogether of the merit of those particular colleges. Were the
students upon such charitable foundations left free to choose what college
they liked best, such liberty might perhaps contribute to excite some
emulation among different colleges. A regulation, on the contrary, which
prohibited even the independent members of every particular college from
leaving it, and going to any other, without leave first asked and obtained
of that which they meant to abandon, would tend very much to extinguish
that emulation.
If in each college, the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct each student
in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily chosen by the student,
but appointed by the head of the college; and if, in case of neglect,
inability, or bad usage, the student should not be allowed to change him
for another, without leave first asked and obtained; such a regulation
would not only tend very much to extinguish all emulation among the
different tutors of the same college, but to diminish very much, in all of
them, the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective
pupils. Such teachers, though very well paid by their students, might be
as much disposed to neglect them, as those who are not paid by them at all
or who have no other recompense but their salary.
If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant
thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing to his students, that
he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better
than nonsense. It must, too, be unpleasant to him to observe, that the
greater part of his students desert his lectures; or perhaps, attend upon
them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. If he is
obliged, therefore, to give a certain number of lectures, these motives
alone, without any other interest, might dispose him to take some pains to
give tolerably good ones. Several different expedients, however, may be
fallen upon, which will effectually blunt the edge of all those
incitements to diligence. The teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils
himself the science in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some
book upon it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language,
by interpreting it to them into their own, or, what would give him still
less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and by now and then
making an occasional remark upon it, he may flatter himself that he is
giving a lecture. The slightest degree of knowledge and application will
enable him to do this, without exposing himself to contempt or derision,
by saying any thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The
discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all
his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham lecture, and to
maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of
the performance.
The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not
for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or, more properly
speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to
maintain the authority of the master, and, whether he neglects or performs
his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he
performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume
perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and
folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty,
there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students
ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance
upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known
wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint may, no doubt,
be in some degree requisite, in order to oblige children, or very young
boys, to attend to those parts of education, which it is thought necessary
for them to acquire during that early period of life; but after twelve or
thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or
restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education.
Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that so far from
being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master,
provided he shews some serious intention of being of use to them, they are
generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the
performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a
good deal of gross negligence.
Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for the teaching of which
there are no public institutions, are generally the best taught. When a
young man goes to a fencing or a dancing school, he does not, indeed,
always learn to fence or to dance very well; but he seldom fails of
learning to fence or to dance. The good effects of the riding school are
not commonly so evident. The expense of a riding school is so great, that
in most places it is a public institution. The three most essential parts
of literary education, to read, write, and account, it still continues to
be more common to acquire in private than in public schools; and it very
seldom happens, that anybody fails of acquiring them to the degree in
which it is necessary to acquire them.
In England, the public schools are much less corrupted than the
universities. In the schools, the youth are taught, or at least may be
taught, Greek and Latin; that is, everything which the masters pretend to
teach, or which it is expected they should teach. In the universities, the
youth neither are taught, nor always can find any proper means of being
taught the sciences, which it is the business of those incorporated bodies
to teach. The reward of the schoolmaster, in most cases, depends
principally, in some cases almost entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of
his scholars. Schools have no exclusive privileges. In order to obtain the
honours of graduation, it is not necessary that a person should bring a
certificate of his having studied a certain number of years at a public
school. If, upon examination, he appears to understand what is taught
there, no questions are asked about the place where he learnt it.
The parts of education which are commonly taught in universities, it may
perhaps be said, are not very well taught. But had it not been for those
institutions, they would not have been commonly taught at all; and both
the individual and the public would have suffered a good deal from the
want of those important parts of education.
The present universities of Europe were originally, the greater part of
them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of
churchmen. They were founded by the authority of the pope; and were so
entirely under his immediate protection, that their members, whether
masters or students, had all of them what was then called the benefit of
clergy, that is, were exempted from the civil jurisdiction of the
countries in which their respective universities were situated, and were
amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. What was taught in the
greater part of those universities was suitable to the end of their
institution, either theology, or something that was merely preparatory to
theology.
When Christianity was first established by law, a corrupted Latin had
become the common language of all the western parts of Europe. The service
of the church, accordingly, and the translation of the Bible which were
read in churches, were both in that corrupted Latin; that is, in the
common language of the country, After the irruption of the barbarous
nations who overturned the Roman empire, Latin gradually ceased to be the
language of any part of Europe. But the reverence of the people naturally
preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the
circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable, are no
more. Though Latin, therefore, was no longer understood anywhere by the
great body of the people, the whole service of the church still continued
to be performed in that language. Two different languages were thus
established in Europe, in the same manner as in ancient Egypt: a language
of the priests, and a language of the people; a sacred and a profane, a
learned and an unlearned language. But it was necessary that the priests
should understand something of that sacred and learned language in which
they were to officiate; and the study of the Latin language therefore
made, from the beginning, an essential part of university education.
It was not so with that either of the Greek or of the Hebrew language. The
infallible decrees of the church had pronounced the Latin translation of
the Bible, commonly called the Latin Vulgate, to have been equally
dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore of equal authority with the
Greek and Hebrew originals. The knowledge of those two languages,
therefore, not being indispensably requisite to a churchman, the study of
them did not for a long time make a necessary part of the common course of
university education. There are some Spanish universities, I am assured,
in which the study of the Greek language has never yet made any part of
that course. The first reformers found the Greek text of the New
Testament, and even the Hebrew text of the Old, more favourable to their
opinions than the vulgate translation, which, as might naturally be
supposed, had been gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of the
Catholic Church. They set themselves, therefore, to expose the many errors
of that translation, which the Roman catholic clergy were thus put under
the necessity of defending or explaining. But this could not well be done
without some knowledge of the original languages, of which the study was
therefore gradually introduced into the greater part of universities; both
of those which embraced, and of those which rejected, the doctrines of the
reformation. The Greek language was connected with every part of that
classical learning, which, though at first principally cultivated by
catholics and Italians, happened to come into fashion much about the same
time that the doctrines of the reformation were set on foot. In the
greater part of universities, therefore, that language was taught previous
to the study of philosophy, and as soon as the student had made some
progress in the Latin. The Hebrew language having no connection with
classical learning, and, except the Holy Scriptures, being the language of
not a single book in any esteem the study of it did not commonly commence
till after that of philosophy, and when the student had entered upon the
study of theology.
Originally, the first rudiments, both of the Greek and Latin languages,
were taught in universities; and in some universities they still continue
to be so. In others, it is expected that the student should have
previously acquired, at least, the rudiments of one or both of those
languages, of which the study continues to make everywhere a very
considerable part of university education.
The ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three great branches;
physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic.
This general division seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things.
The great phenomena of nature, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies,
eclipses, comets; thunder and lightning, and other extraordinary meteors;
the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals;
are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they
naturally call forth the curiosity of mankind to inquire into their
causes. Superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by
referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the
gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more
familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with, than
the agency of the gods. As those great phenomena are the first objects of
human curiosity, so the science which pretends to explain them must
naturally have been the first branch of philosophy that was cultivated.
The first philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any
account, appear to have been natural philosophers.
In every age and country of the world, men must have attended to the
characters, designs, and actions of one another; and many reputable rules
and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and
approved of by common consent. As soon as writing came into fashion, wise
men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to
increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to
express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct,
sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called
the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms
or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and
Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod. They might continue in
this manner, for a long time, merely to multiply the number of those
maxims of prudence and morality, without even attempting to arrange them
in any very distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them
together by one or more general principles, from which they were all
deducible, like effects from their natural causes. The beauty of a
systematical arrangement of different observations, connected by a few
common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient
times towards a system of natural philosophy. Something of the same kind
was afterwards attempted in morals. The maxims of common life were
arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common
principles, in the same manner as they had attempted to arrange and
connect the phenomena of nature. The science which pretends to investigate
and explain those connecting principles, is what is properly called Moral
Philosophy.
Different authors gave different systems, both of natural and moral
philosophy. But the arguments by which they supported those different
systems, far from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but
very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no
other foundation but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language.
Speculative systems, have, in all ages of the world, been adopted for
reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common
sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has
scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in
matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had
the greatest. The patrons of each system of natural and moral philosophy,
naturally endeavoured to expose the weakness of the arguments adduced to
support the systems which were opposite to their own. In examining those
arguments, they were necessarily led to consider the difference between a
probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a
conclusive one; and logic, or the science of the general principles of
good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of the observations which a
scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to; though, in its origin, posterior
both to physics and to ethics, it was commonly taught, not indeed in all,
but in the greater part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously
to either of those sciences. The student, it seems to have been thought,
ought to understand well the difference between good and bad reasoning,
before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great importance.
This ancient division of philosophy into three parts was, in the greater
part of the universities of Europe, changed for another into five.
In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the nature
either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of the system of
physics. Those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to
consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too,
productive of the most important effects. Whatever human reason could
either conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two
chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science which
pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great
system of the universe. But in the universities of Europe, where
philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to
dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science.
They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many
inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so
little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of
philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The
doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two
distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in
opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime,
but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful
science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a
subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful
discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a
very few simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can
discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently
produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.
When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another,
the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was
called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and
attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two
sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the
metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this
cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called
metaphysics.
Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not
only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of
the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral
philosophy proposed to investigate. In that philosophy, the duties of
human life were treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection
of human life, But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be
taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were
treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. In
the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as
necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most
perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was
frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always,
inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to
be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and
abasement of a monk, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of
a man. Casuistry, and an ascetic morality, made up, in most cases, the
greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. By far the most
important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this
manner by far the most corrupted.
Such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education in the
greater part of the universities in Europe. Logic was taught first;
ontology came in the second place; pneumatology, comprehending the
doctrine concerning the nature of the human soul and of the Deity, in the
third; in the fourth followed a debased system of moral philosophy, which
was considered as immediately connected with the doctrines of
pneumatology, with the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards
and punishments which, from the justice of the Deity, were to be expected
in a life to come: a short and superficial system of physics usually
concluded the course.
The alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced into the
ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the education of
ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper introduction to the study of
theology. But the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the
casuistry and ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it,
certainly did not render it more for the education of gentlemen or men of
the world, or more likely either to improve the understanding or to mend
the heart.
This course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the
greater part of the universities of Europe, with more or less diligence,
according as the constitution of each particular university happens to
render diligence more or less necessary to the teachers. In some of the
richest and best endowed universities, the tutors content themselves with
teaching a few unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course;
and even these they commonly teach very negligently and superficially.
The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several
different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been
made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of
universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements
after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen
to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and
obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been
hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and
best endowed universities have been slowest in adopting those
improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the
established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily
introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers,
depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence,
were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world.
But though the public schools and universities of Europe were originally
intended only for the education of a particular profession, that of
churchmen; and though they were not always very diligent in instructing
their pupils, even in the sciences which were supposed necessary for that
profession; yet they gradually drew to themselves the education of almost
all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune.
No better method, it seems, could be fallen upon, of spending, with any
advantage, the long interval between infancy and that period of life at
which men begin to apply in good earnest to the real business of the
world, the business which is to employ them during the remainder of their
days. The greater part of what is taught in schools and universities,
however, does not seem to be the most proper preparation for that
business.
In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young
people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving
school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it
is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young
man, who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at
one-and-twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went
abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in
three or four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires
some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however,
which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them
with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more
conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any
serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well
have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very
young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious
years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his
parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier parts of his
education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being
riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced.
Nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing
themselves to fall, could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a
practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending
his son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so
disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going
to ruin before his eyes.
Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for
education.
Different plans and different institutions for education seem to have
taken place in other ages and nations.
In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen was instructed,
under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and
in music. By gymnastic exercises, it was intended to harden his body, to
sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of
war; and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that
ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have
answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. By the other
part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers and historians,
who have given us an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind,
to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all the social and
moral duties of public and private life.
In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same
purpose as those of the Gymnasium in ancient Greece, and they seem to have
answered it equally well. But among the Romans there was nothing which
corresponded to the musical education of the Greeks. The morals of the
Romans, however, both in private and public life, seem to have been, not
only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal superior to those of the
Greeks. That they were superior in private life, we have the express
testimony of Polybius, and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, two authors well
acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor of the Greek and Roman
history bears witness to the superiority of the public morals of the
Romans. The good temper and moderation of contending factions seem to be
the most essential circumstances in the public morals of a free people.
But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary;
whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any
Roman faction; and from the time of the Gracchi, the Roman republic may be
considered as in reality dissolved. Notwithstanding, therefore, the very
respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius, and
notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by which Mr Montesquieu
endeavours to support that authority, it seems probable that the musical
education of the Greeks had no great effect in mending their morals,
since, without any such education, those of the Romans were, upon the
whole, superior. The respect of those ancient sages for the institutions
of their ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political
wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued, without
interruption, from the earliest period of those societies, to the times in
which they had arrived at a considerable degree of refinement. Music and
dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the
great accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for entertaining
his society. It is so at this day among the negroes on the coast of
Africa. It was so among the ancient Celtes, among the ancient
Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, among the ancient Greeks,
in the times preceding the Trojan war. When the Greek tribes had formed
themselves into little republics, it was natural that the study of those
accomplishments should for a long time make a part of the public and
common education of the people.
The masters who instructed the young people, either in music or in
military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed by
the state, either in Rome or even at Athens, the Greek republic of whose
laws and customs we are the best informed. The state required that every
free citizen should fit himself for defending it in war, and should upon
that account, learn his military exercises. But it left him to learn them
of such masters as he could find; and it seems to have advanced nothing
for this purpose, but a public field or place of exercise, in which he
should practise and perform them.
In the early ages, both of the Greek and Roman republics, the other parts
of education seem to have consisted in learning to read, write, and
account, according to the arithmetic of the times. These accomplishments
the richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired at home, by the
assistance of some domestic pedagogue, who was, generally, either a slave
or a freedman; and the poorer citizens in the schools of such masters as
made a trade of teaching for hire. Such parts of education, however, were
abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians of each
individual. It does not appear that the state ever assumed any inspection
or direction of them. By a law of Solon, indeed, the children were
acquitted from maintaining those parents who had neglected to instruct
them in some profitable trade or business.
In the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came into
fashion, the better sort of people used to send their children to the
schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in order to be instructed in
these fashionable sciences. But those schools were not supported by the
public. They were, for a long time, barely tolerated by it. The demand for
philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first
professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one
city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In this manner
lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many others. As the
demand increased, the school, both of philosophy and rhetoric, became
stationary, first in Athens, and afterwards in several other cities. The
state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further, than by
assigning to some of them a particular place to teach in, which was
sometimes done, too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned
the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of
Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed his gardens to
his own school. Till about the time of Marcus Antoninus, however, no
teacher appears to have had any salary from the public, or to have had any
other emoluments, but what arose from the honoraries or fees of his
scholars. The bounty which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from
Lucian, bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted
no longer than his own life. There was nothing equivalent to the
privileges of graduation; and to have attended any of those schools was
not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise any particular trade
or profession. If the opinion of their own utility could not draw scholars
to them, the law neither forced anybody to go to them, nor rewarded
anybody for having gone to them. The teachers had no jurisdiction over
their pupils, nor any other authority besides that natural authority which
superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people
towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education.
At Rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education, not of
the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular families. The
young people, however, who wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had no
public school to go to, and had no other method of studying it, than by
frequenting the company of such of their relations and friends as were
supposed to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that
though the laws of the twelve tables were many of them copied from those
of some ancient Greek republics, yet law never seems to have grown up to
be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. In Rome it became a
science very early, and gave a considerable degree of illustration to
those citizens who had the reputation of understanding it. In the
republics of ancient Greece, particularly in Athens, the ordinary courts
of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of
people, who frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction,
and party-spirit, happened to determine. The ignominy of an unjust
decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, or
fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts were so very numerous),
could not fall very heavy upon any individual. At Rome, on the contrary,
the principal courts of justice consisted either of a single judge, or of
a small number of judges, whose characters, especially as they deliberated
always in public, could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or
unjust decision. In doubtful cases such courts, from their anxiety to
avoid blame, would naturally endeavour to shelter themselves under the
example or precedent of the judges who had sat before them, either in the
same or in some other court. This attention to practice and precedent,
necessarily formed the Roman law into that regular and orderly system in
which it has been delivered down to us; and the like attention has had the
like effects upon the laws of every other country where such attention has
taken place. The superiority of character in the Romans over that of the
Greeks, so much remarked by Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was
probably more owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice,
than to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it. The
Romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for their superior
respect to an oath. But the people who were accustomed to make oath only
before some diligent and well informed court of justice, would naturally
be much more attentive to what they swore, than they who were accustomed
to do the same thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies.
The abilities, both civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans, will
readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern
nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. But except in
what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no
pains to form those great abilities; for I cannot be induced to believe
that the musical education of the Greeks could be of much consequence in
forming them. Masters, however, had been found, it seems, for instructing
the better sort of people among those nations, in every art and science in
which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or
convenient for them to be instructed. The demand for such instruction
produced, what it always produces, the talent for giving it; and the
emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite, appears
to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection. In the
attention which the ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they
acquired over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the
faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and character to the
conduct and conversation of those auditors, they appear to have been much
superior to any modern teachers. In modern times, the diligence of public
teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them
more or less independent of their success and reputation in their
particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who
would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a
merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in competition with those
who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the
same price, he cannot have the same profit; and poverty and beggary at
least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he
attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers,
that his circumstances will not be much mended. The privileges of
graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least
extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that is, to the
far greater part of those who have occasion for a learned education. But
those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the
public teachers. The most careful attendance upon the ablest instructions
of any private teacher cannot always give any title to demand them. It is
from these different causes that the private teacher of any of the
sciences, which are commonly taught in universities, is, in modern times,
generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of letters. A man
of real abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or a more
unprofitable employment to turn them to. The endowments of schools and
colleges have in this manner not only corrupted the diligence of public
teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private
ones.
Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science,
would be taught, for which there was not some demand, or which the
circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary or
convenient, or at least fashionable to learn. A private teacher could
never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated
system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally
believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense.
Such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated
societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a great
measure independent of their industry. Were there no public institutions
for education, a gentleman, after going through, with application and
abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances
of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world
completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of
conversation among gentlemen and men of the world.
There are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is
accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in the common course
of their education. They are taught what their parents or guardians judge
it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing
else. Every part of their education tends evidently to some useful
purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to
form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to
render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and to
behave properly when they have become such. In every part of her life, a
woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her
education. It seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, derives
any conveniency or advantage from some of the most laborious and
troublesome parts of his education.
Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the
education of the people? Or, if it ought to give any, what are the
different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different
orders of the people? and in what manner ought it to attend to them?
In some cases, the state of society necessarily places the greater part of
individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any
attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that
state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases, the state of the
society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations;
and some attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the
almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people.
In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far
greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of
the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations;
frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of
men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose
whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the
effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no
occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in
finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He
naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally
becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing
or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any
generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just
judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of
the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether
incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to
render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in
war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage
of his mind, and makes him regard, with abhorrence, the irregular,
uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the
activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength
with vigour and perseverance in any other employment, than that to which
he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this
manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and
martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the
state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the
people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to
prevent it.
It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called,
of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of
husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the
extension of foreign commerce. In such societies, the varied occupations
of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent
expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring.
Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that
drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the
understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those
barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been
observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman,
and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society,
and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good
judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of
almost every single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can
well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men
sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude society
there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual,
there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does,
or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is
capable of being. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge,
ingenuity, and invention but scarce any man has a great degree. The
degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for
conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state,
on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the
greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those
of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite
variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached
to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to
examine the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a
variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless
comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an
extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few,
however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their
great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very
little to the good government or happiness of their society.
Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of
the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and
extinguished in the great body of the people.
The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and
commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people
of some rank and fortune. People of some rank and fortune are generally
eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter upon that particular
business, profession, or trade, by which they propose to distinguish
themselves in the world. They have, before that, full time to acquire, or
at least to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment
which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them worthy of
it. Their parents or guardians are generally sufficiently anxious that
they should be so accomplished, and are in most cases, willing enough to
lay out the expense which is necessary for that purpose. If they are not
always properly educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out
upon their education, but from the improper application of that expense.
It is seldom from the want of masters, but from the negligence and
incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and from the difficulty, or
rather from the impossibility, which there is, in the present state of
things, of finding any better. The employments, too, in which people of
some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like
those of the common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of
them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the
hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments,
can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The employments of people of
some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from
morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which
they may perfect themselves in every branch, either of useful or
ornamental knowledge, of which they may have laid the foundation, or for
which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life.
It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for
education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them, even in
infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade,
by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so
simple and uniform, as to give little exercise to the understanding;
while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe,
that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or
even to think of any thing else.
But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well
instructed as people of some rank and fortune; the most essential parts of
education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so
early a period of life, that the greater part, even of those who are to be
bred to the lowest occupations, have time to acquire them before they can
be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense, the public can
facilitate, can encourage and can even impose upon almost the whole body
of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of
education.
The public can facilitate this acquisition, by establishing in every
parish or district a little school, where children maybe taught for a
reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master
being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public; because, if he was
wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect
his business. In Scotland, the establishment of such parish schools has
taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion
of them to write and account. In England, the establishment of charity
schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally,
because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little
schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little
more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little
smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes
taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were
instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary
education of this rank of people would, perhaps, be as complete as can be.
There is scarce a common trade, which does not afford some opportunities
of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which
would not, therefore, gradually exercise and improve the common people in
those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime, as well
as to the most useful sciences.
The public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of
education, by giving small premiums, and little badges of distinction, to
the children of the common people who excel in them.
The public can impose upon almost the whole body of the people the
necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education, by obliging
every man to undergo an examination or probation in them, before he can
obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade,
either in a village or town corporate.
It was in this manner, by facilitating the acquisition of their military
and gymnastic exercises, by encouraging it, and even by imposing upon the
whole body of the people the necessity of learning those exercises, that
the Greek and Roman republics maintained the martial spirit of their
respective citizens. They facilitated the acquisition of those exercises,
by appointing a certain place for learning and practising them, and by
granting to certain masters the privilege of teaching in that place. Those
masters do not appear to have had either salaries or exclusive privileges
of any kind. Their reward consisted altogether in what they got from their
scholars; and a citizen, who had learnt his exercises in the public
gymnasia, had no sort of legal advantage over one who had learnt them
privately, provided the latter had learned them equally well. Those
republics encouraged the acquisition of those exercises, by bestowing
little premiums and badges of distinction upon those who excelled in them.
To have gained a prize in the Olympic, Isthmian, or Nemaean games, gave
illustration, not only to the person who gained it, but to his whole
family and kindred. The obligation which every citizen was under, to serve
a certain number of years, if called upon, in the armies of the republic,
sufficiently imposed the necessity of learning those exercises, without
which he could not be fit for that service.
That in the progress of improvement, the practice of military exercises,
unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to
decay, and, together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the
people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the
security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the
martial spirit of the great body of the people. In the present times,
indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined
standing army, would not, perhaps, be sufficient for the defence and
security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a
soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit,
besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty,
whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing
army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against
a foreign invader; so it would obstruct them as much, if unfortunately
they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state.
The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more
effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the
people, than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern
times. They were much more simple. When they were once established, they
executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from
government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. Whereas to
maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any
modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of
government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect
and disuse. The influence, besides, of the ancient institutions, was much
more universal. By means of them, the whole body of the people was
completely instructed in the use of arms; whereas it is but a very small
part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any
modern militia, except, perhaps, that of Switzerland. But a coward, a man
incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one
of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much
mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is
either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use
of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two;
because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must
necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated
or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the
martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the
society, yet, to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and
wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading
themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the
most serious attention of government; in the same manner as it would
deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other
loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from
spreading itself among them; though, perhaps, no other public good might
result from such attention, besides the prevention of so great a public
evil.
The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity which, in
a civilized society, seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of
all the inferior ranks of people. A man without the proper use of the
intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than
even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more
essential part of the character of human nature. Though the state was to
derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people,
it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether
uninstructed. The state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from
their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are
to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant
nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and
intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an
ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more
respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful
superiors, and they are, therefore, more disposed to respect those
superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing
through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition; and they are,
upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary
opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the
safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which
the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest
importance, that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or
capriciously concerning it.
Art. III.—Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Instruction of
People of all Ages.
The institutions for the instruction of people of all ages, are chiefly
those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction, of
which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this
world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in the life to
come. The teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the
same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their
subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may
derive it from some other fund, to which the law of their country may
entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tythe or land tax, an established
salary or stipend. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to
be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. In this
respect, the teachers of a new religion have always had a considerable
advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems, of which the
clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up
the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people; and
having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable
of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own
establishment. The clergy of an established and well endowed religion
frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the
virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of
gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and
bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of
people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and
establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of
popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel
themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full
fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the
active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the north. Such a clergy, upon such
an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil
magistrate to persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as
disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman catholic clergy
called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants, and the
church of England to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every
religious sect, when it has once enjoyed, for a century or two, the
security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making
any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its
doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions, the advantage, in point of
learning and good writing, may sometimes be on the side of the established
church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes,
are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England, those arts have
been long neglected by the well endowed clergy of the established church,
and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the
methodists. The independent provisions, however, which in many places have
been made for dissenting teachers, by means of voluntary subscriptions, of
trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated
the zeal and activity of those teachers. They have many of them become
very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general
ceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, without half the
learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue.
In the church of Rome the industry and zeal of the inferior clergy are
kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in
any established protestant church. The parochial clergy derive many of
them, a very considerable part of their subsistence from the voluntary
oblations of the people; a source of revenue, which confession gives them
many opportunities of improving. The mendicant orders derive their whole
subsistence from such oblations. It is with them as with the hussars and
light infantry of some armies; no plunder, no pay. The parochial clergy
are like those teachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, and
partly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from their pupils; and
these must always depend, more or less, upon their industry and
reputation. The mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence
depends altogether upon their industry. They are obliged, therefore, to
use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. The
establishment of the two great mendicant orders of St Dominic and St.
Francis, it is observed by Machiavel, revived, in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith and devotion of the catholic
church. In Roman catholic countries, the spirit of devotion is supported
altogether by the monks, and by the poorer parochial clergy. The great
dignitaries of the church, with all the accomplishments of gentlemen and
men of the world, and sometimes with those of men of learning, are careful
to maintain the necessary discipline over their inferiors, but seldom give
themselves any trouble about the instruction of the people.
“Most of the arts and professions in a state,” says by far the most
illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age, “are of such a
nature, that, while they promote the interests of the society, they are
also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and, in that case, the
constant rule of the magistrate, except, perhaps, on the first
introduction of any art, is, to leave the profession to itself, and trust
its encouragement to the individuals who reap the benefit of it. The
artizans, finding their profits to rise by the favour of their customers,
increase, as much as possible, their skill and industry; and as matters
are not disturbed by any injudicious tampering, the commodity is always
sure to be at all times nearly proportioned to the demand.
“But there are also some callings which, though useful and even necessary
in a state, bring no advantage or pleasure to any individual; and the
supreme power is obliged to alter its conduct with regard to the retainers
of those professions. It must give them public encouragement in order to
their subsistence; and it must provide against that negligence to which
they will naturally be subject, either by annexing particular honours to
profession, by establishing a long subordination of ranks, and a strict
dependence, or by some other expedient. The persons employed in the
finances, fleets, and magistracy, are instances of this order of men.
“It may naturally be thought, at first sight, that the ecclesiastics
belong to the first class, and that their encouragement, as well as that
of lawyers and physicians, may safely be entrusted to the liberality of
individuals, who are attached to their doctrines, and who find benefit or
consolation from their spiritual ministry and assistance. Their industry
and vigilance will, no doubt, be whetted by such an additional motive; and
their skill in the profession, as well as their address in governing the
minds of the people, must receive daily increase, from their increasing
practice, study, and attention.
“But if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find that this
interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will
study to prevent; because, in every religion except the true, it is highly
pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the truth, by
infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion.
Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and
sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most
violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some
novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be
paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every
tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the
human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry
and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace.
And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid
for his intended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the
priests; and that, in reality, the most decent and advantageous
composition, which he can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe
their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and
rendering it superfluous for them to be farther active, than merely to
prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastors. And in this
manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first
from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political
interests of society.”
But whatever may have been the good or bad effects of the independent
provision of the clergy, it has, perhaps, been very seldom bestowed upon
them from any view to those effects. Times of violent religious
controversy have generally been times of equally violent political
faction. Upon such occasions, each political party has either found it, or
imagined it, for his interest, to league itself with some one or other of
the contending religious sects. But this could be done only by adopting,
or, at least, by favouring the tenets of that particular sect. The sect
which had the good fortune to be leagued with the conquering party
necessarily shared in the victory of its ally, by whose favour and
protection it was soon enabled, in some degree, to silence and subdue all
its adversaries. Those adversaries had generally leagued themselves with
the enemies of the conquering party, and were, therefore the enemies of
that party. The clergy of this particular sect having thus become complete
masters of the field, and their influence and authority with the great
body of the people being in its highest vigour, they were powerful enough
to overawe the chiefs and leaders of their own party, and to oblige the
civil magistrate to respect their opinions and inclinations. Their first
demand was generally that he should silence and subdue all their
adversaries; and their second, that he should bestow an independent
provision on themselves. As they had generally contributed a good deal to
the victory, it seemed not unreasonable that they should have some share
in the spoil. They were weary, besides, of humouring the people, and of
depending upon their caprice for a subsistence. In making this demand,
therefore, they consulted their own ease and comfort, without troubling
themselves about the effect which it might have, in future times, upon the
influence and authority of their order. The civil magistrate, who could
comply with their demand only by giving them something which he would have
chosen much rather to take, or to keep to himself, was seldom very forward
to grant it. Necessity, however, always forced him to submit at last,
though frequently not till after many delays, evasions, and affected
excuses.
But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the
conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of
another, when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt
equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed
every man to choose his own priest, and his own religion, as he thought
proper. There would, and, in this case, no doubt, have been, a great
multitude of religious sects. Almost every different congregation might
probably have had a little sect by itself, or have entertained some
peculiar tenets of its own. Each teacher, would, no doubt, have felt
himself under the necessity of making the utmost exertion, and of using
every art, both to preserve and to increase the number of his disciples.
But as every other teacher would have felt himself under the same
necessity, the success of no one teacher, or sect of teachers, could have
been very great. The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can
be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but one sect
tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided
into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert, and
under a regular discipline and subordination. But that zeal must be
altogether innocent, where the society is divided into two or three
hundred, or, perhaps, into as many thousand small sects, of which no one
could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity. The
teachers of each sect, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more
adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that candour and
moderation which are so seldom to be found among the teachers of those
great sects, whose tenets, being supported by the civil magistrate, are
held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms and
empires, and who, therefore, see nothing round them but followers,
disciples, and humble admirers. The teachers of each little sect, finding
themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every
other sect; and the concessions which they would mutually find it both
convenient and agreeable to make one to another, might in time, probably
reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational
religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism,
such as wise men have, in all ages of the world, wished to see
established; but such as positive law has, perhaps, never yet established,
and probably never will establish in any country; because, with regard to
religion, positive law always has been, and probably always will be, more
or less influenced by popular superstition and enthusiasm. This plan of
ecclesiastical government, or, more properly, of no ecclesiastical
government, was what the sect called Independents (a sect, no doubt, of
very wild enthusiasts), proposed to establish in England towards the end
of the civil war. If it had been established, though of a very
unphilosophical origin, it would probably, by this time, have been
productive of the most philosophical good temper and moderation with
regard to every sort of religious principle. It has been established in
Pennsylvania, where, though the quakers happen to be the most numerous,
the law, in reality, favours no one sect more than another; and it is
there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and
moderation.
But though this equality of treatment should not be productive of this
good temper and moderation in all, or even in the greater part of the
religious sects of a particular country; yet, provided those sects were
sufficiently numerous, and each of them consequently too small to disturb
the public tranquillity, the excessive zeal of each for its particular
tenets could not well be productive of any very hurtful effects, but, on
the contrary, of several good ones; and if the government was perfectly
decided, both to let them all alone, and to oblige them all to let alone
one another, there is little danger that they would not of their own
accord, subdivide themselves fast enough, so as soon to become
sufficiently numerous.
In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of
ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two
different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of
which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal,
or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and
revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and
adopted by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of
disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices
which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of
gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction
between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal or loose
system, luxury, wanton, and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure
to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of
the two sexes, etc. provided they are not accompanied with gross
indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are generally
treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or
pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those
excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The
vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single
week’s thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor
workman for ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the
most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people,
therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such
excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to
people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years,
on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion; and people of that
rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of
excess, as one of the advantages of their fortune; and the liberty of
doing so without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which
belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they
regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and
censure them either very slightly or not at all.
Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom
they have generally drawn their earliest, as well as their most numerous
proselytes. The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted
by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there
have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend
themselves to that order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan
of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them,
perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by
refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of
folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently
recommended them, more than any thing else, to the respect and veneration
of the common people.
A man of rank and fortune is, by his station, the distinguished member of
a great society, who attend to every part of his conduct, and who thereby
oblige him to attend to every part of it himself. His authority and
consideration depend very much upon the respect which this society bears
to him. He dares not do anything which would disgrace or discredit him in
it; and he is obliged to a very strict observation of that species of
morals, whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this
society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. A man of low
condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished member of
any great society. While he remains in a country village, his conduct may
be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself. In this
situation, and in this situation only, he may have what is called a
character to lose. But as soon as he comes into a great city, he is sunk
in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by
nobody; and he is, therefore, very likely to neglect it himself, and to
abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. He never emerges
so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct never excites so much the
attention of any respectable society, as by his becoming the member of a
small religious sect. He from that moment acquires a degree of
consideration which he never had before. All his brother sectaries are,
for the credit of the sect, interested to observe his conduct; and, if he
gives occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those austere
morals which they almost always require of one another, to punish him by
what is always a very severe punishment, even where no evil effects attend
it, expulsion or excommunication from the sect. In little religious sects,
accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always
remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the
established church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have
frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.
There are two very easy and effectual remedies, however, by whose joint
operation the state might, without violence, correct whatever was unsocial
or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of all the little sects into which
the country was divided.
The first of those remedies is the study of science and philosophy, which
the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or
more than middling rank and fortune; not by giving salaries to teachers in
order to make them negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of
probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone
by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal
profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any
honourable office, of trust or profit. If the state imposed upon this
order of men the necessity of learning, it would have no occasion to give
itself any trouble about providing them with proper teachers. They would
soon find better teachers for themselves, than any whom the state could
provide for them. Science is the great antidote to the poison of
enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people
were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.
The second of those remedies is the frequency and gaiety of public
diversions. The state, by encouraging, that is, by giving entire liberty
to all those who, from their own interest, would attempt, without scandal
or indecency, to amuse and divert the people by painting, poetry, music,
dancing; by all sorts of dramatic representations and exhibitions; would
easily dissipate, in the greater part of them, that melancholy and gloomy
humour which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and
enthusiasm. Public diversions have always been the objects of dread and
hatred to all the fanatical promoters of those popular frenzies. The
gaiety and good humour which those diversions inspire, were altogether
inconsistent with that temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose,
or which they could best work upon. Dramatic representations, besides,
frequently exposing their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even
to public execration, were, upon that account, more than all other
diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence.
In a country where the law favoured the teachers of no one religion more
than those of another, it would not be necessary that any of them should
have any particular or immediate dependency upon the sovereign or
executive power; or that he should have anything to do either in
appointing or in dismissing them from their offices. In such a situation,
he would have no occasion to give himself any concern about them, further
than to keep the peace among them, in the same manner as among the rest of
his subjects, that is, to hinder them from persecuting, abusing, or
oppressing one another. But it is quite otherwise in countries where there
is an established or governing religion. The sovereign can in this case
never be secure, unless he has the means of influencing in a considerable
degree the greater part of the teachers of that religion.
The clergy of every established church constitute a great incorporation.
They can act in concert, and pursue their interest upon one plan, and with
one spirit as much as if they were under the direction of one man; and
they are frequently, too, under such direction. Their interest as an
incorporated body is never the same with that of the sovereign, and is
sometimes directly opposite to it. Their great interest is to maintain
their authority with the people, and this authority depends upon the
supposed certainty and importance of the whole doctrine which they
inculcate, and upon the supposed necessity of adopting every part of it
with the most implicit faith, in order to avoid eternal misery. Should the
sovereign have the imprudence to appear either to deride, or doubt himself
of the most trifling part of their doctrine, or from humanity, attempt to
protect those who did either the one or the other, the punctilious honour
of a clergy, who have no sort of dependency upon him, is immediately
provoked to proscribe him as a profane person, and to employ all the
terrors of religion, in order to oblige the people to transfer their
allegiance to some more orthodox and obedient prince. Should he oppose any
of their pretensions or usurpations, the danger is equally great. The
princes who have dared in this manner to rebel against the church, over
and above this crime of rebellion, have generally been charged, too, with
the additional crime of heresy, notwithstanding their solemn protestations
of their faith, and humble submission to every tenet which she thought
proper to prescribe to them. But the authority of religion is superior to
every other authority. The fears which it suggests conquer all other
fears. When the authorized teachers of religion propagate through the
great body of the people, doctrines subversive of the authority of the
sovereign, it is by violence only, or by the force of a standing army,
that he can maintain his authority. Even a standing army cannot in this
case give him any lasting security; because if the soldiers are not
foreigners, which can seldom be the case, but drawn from the great body of
the people, which must almost always be the case, they are likely to be
soon corrupted by those very doctrines. The revolutions which the
turbulence of the Greek clergy was continually occasioning at
Constantinople, as long as the eastern empire subsisted; the convulsions
which, during the course of several centuries, the turbulence of the Roman
clergy was continually occasioning in every part of Europe, sufficiently
demonstrate how precarious and insecure must always be the situation of
the sovereign, who has no proper means of influencing the clergy of the
established and governing religion of his country.
Articles of faith, as well as all other spiritual matters, it is evident
enough, are not within the proper department of a temporal sovereign, who,
though he may be very well qualified for protecting, is seldom supposed to
be so for instructing the people. With regard to such matters, therefore,
his authority can seldom be sufficient to counterbalance the united
authority of the clergy of the established church. The public
tranquillity, however, and his own security, may frequently depend upon
the doctrines which they may think proper to propagate concerning such
matters. As he can seldom directly oppose their decision, therefore, with
proper weight and authority, it is necessary that he should be able to
influence it; and he can influence it only by the fears and expectations
which he may excite in the greater part of the individuals of the order.
Those fears and expectations may consist in the fear of deprivation or
other punishment, and in the expectation of further preferment.
In all Christian churches, the benefices of the clergy are a sort of
freeholds, which they enjoy, not during pleasure, but during life or good
behaviour. If they held them by a more precarious tenure, and were liable
to be turned out upon every slight disobligation either of the sovereign
or of his ministers, it would perhaps be impossible for them to maintain
their authority with the people, who would then consider them as mercenary
dependents upon the court, in the sincerity of whose instructions they
could no longer have any confidence. But should the sovereign attempt
irregularly, and by violence, to deprive any number of clergymen of their
freeholds, on account, perhaps, of their having propagated, with more than
ordinary zeal, some factious or seditious doctrine, he would only render,
by such persecution, both them and their doctrine ten times more popular,
and therefore ten times more troublesome and dangerous, than they had been
before. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of govermnent,
and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who
have the smallest pretensions to independency. To attempt to terrify them,
serves only to irritate their bad humour, and to confirm them in an
opposition, which more gentle usage, perhaps, might easily induce them
either to soften, or to lay aside altogether. The violence which the
French government usually employed in order to oblige all their
parliaments, or sovereign courts of justice, to enregister any unpopular
edict, very seldom succeeded. The means commonly employed, however, the
imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think, were forcible
enough. The princes of the house of Stuart sometimes employed the like
means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of
England, and they generally found them equally intractable. The parliament
of England is now managed in another manner; and a very small experiment,
which the duke of Choiseul made, about twelve years ago, upon the
parliament of Paris, demonstrated sufficiently that all the parliaments of
France might have been managed still more easily in the same manner. That
experiment was not pursued. For though management and persuasion are
always the easiest and safest instruments of government as force and
violence are the worst and the most dangerous; yet such, it seems, is the
natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good
instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. The French
government could and durst use force, and therefore disdained to use
management and persuasion. But there is no order of men, it appears I
believe, from the experience of all ages, upon whom it is so dangerous or
rather so perfectly ruinous, to employ force and violence, as upon the
respected clergy of an established church. The rights, the privileges, the
personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic, who is upon good terms
with his own order, are, even in the most despotic governments, more
respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank and fortune.
It is so in every gradation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild
government of Paris, to that of the violent and furious government of
Constantinople. But though this order of men can scarce ever be forced,
they may be managed as easily as any other; and the security of the
sovereign, as well as the public tranquillity, seems to depend very much
upon the means which he has of managing them; and those means seem to
consist altogether in the preferment which he has to bestow upon them.
In the ancient constitution of the Christian church, the bishop of each
diocese was elected by the joint votes of the clergy and of the people of
the episcopal city. The people did not long retain their right of
election; and while they did retain it, they almost always acted under the
influence of the clergy, who, in such spiritual matters, appeared to be
their natural guides. The clergy, however, soon grew weary of the trouble
of managing them, and found it easier to elect their own bishops
themselves. The abbot, in the same manner, was elected by the monks of the
monastery, at least in the greater part of abbacies. All the inferior
ecclesiastical benefices comprehended within the diocese were collated by
the bishop, who bestowed them upon such ecclesiastics as he thought
proper. All church preferments were in this manner in the disposal of the
church. The sovereign, though he might have some indirect influence in
those elections, and though it was sometimes usual to ask both his consent
to elect, and his approbation of the election, yet had no direct or
sufficient means of managing the clergy. The ambition of every clergyman
naturally led him to pay court, not so much to his sovereign as to his own
order, from which only he could expect preferment.
Through the greater part of Europe, the pope gradually drew to himself,
first the collation of almost all bishoprics and abbacies, or of what were
called consistorial benefices, and afterwards, by various machinations and
pretences, of the greater part of inferior benefices comprehended within
each diocese, little more being left to the bishop than what was barely
necessary to give him a decent authority with his own clergy. By this
arrangement the condition of the sovereign was still worse than it had
been before. The clergy of all the different countries of Europe were thus
formed into a sort of spiritual army, dispersed in different quarters
indeed, but of which all the movements and operations could now be
directed by one head, and conducted upon one uniform plan. The clergy of
each particular country might be considered as a particular detachment of
that army, of which the operations could easily be supported and seconded
by all the other detachments quartered in the different countries round
about. Each detachment was not only independent of the sovereign of the
country in which it was quartered, and by which it was maintained, but
dependent upon a foreign sovereign, who could at any time turn its arms
against the sovereign of that particular country, and support them by the
arms of all the other detachments.
Those arms were the most formidable that can well be imagined. In the
ancient state of Europe, before the establishment of arts and
manufactures, the wealth of the clergy gave them the same sort of
influence over the common people which that of the great barons gave them
over their respective vassals, tenants, and retainers. In the great landed
estates, which the mistaken piety both of princes and private persons had
bestowed upon the church, jurisdictions were established, of the same kind
with those of the great barons, and for the same reason. In those great
landed estates, the clergy, or their bailiffs, could easily keep the
peace, without the support or assistance either of the king or of any
other person; and neither the king nor any other person could keep the
peace there without the support and assistance of the clergy. The
jurisdictions of the clergy, therefore, in their particular baronies or
manors, were equally independent, and equally exclusive of the authority
of the king’s courts, as those of the great temporal lords. The tenants of
the clergy were, like those of the great barons, almost all tenants at
will, entirely dependent upon their immediate lords, and, therefore,
liable to be called out at pleasure, in order to fight in any quarrel in
which the clergy might think proper to engage them. Over and above the
rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large
portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe.
The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater
part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, etc. The
quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and
there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they
could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this
immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons
employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse
hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality and
the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very
great. They not only maintained almost the whole poor of every kingdom,
but many knights and gentlemen had frequently no other means of
subsistence than by travelling about from monastery to monastery, under
pretence of devotion, but in reality to enjoy the hospitality of the
clergy. The retainers of some particular prelates were often as numerous
as those of the greatest lay-lords; and the retainers of all the clergy
taken together were, perhaps, more numerous than those of all the
lay-lords. There was always much more union among the clergy than among
the lay-lords. The former were under a regular discipline and
subordination to the papal authority. The latter were under no regular
discipline or subordination, but almost always equally jealous of one
another, and of the king. Though the tenants and retainers of the clergy,
therefore, had both together been less numerous than those of the great
lay-lords, and their tenants were probably much less numerous, yet their
union would have rendered them more formidable. The hospitality and
charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great
temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual
weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration
among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and
almost all occasionally, fed by them. Everything belonging or related to
so popular an order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines,
necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes of the common people; and every
violation of them, whether real or pretended, the highest act of
sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness. In this state of things, if the
sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few
of the great nobility, we cannot wonder that he should find it still more
so to resist the united force of the clergy of his own dominions,
supported by that of the clergy of all the neighbouring dominions. In such
circumstances, the wonder is, not that he was sometimes obliged to yield,
but that he ever was able to resist.
The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times (which to us, who live
in the present times, appear the most absurd), their total exemption from
the secular jurisdiction, for example, or what in England was called the
benefit of clergy, were the natural, or rather the necessary, consequences
of this state of things. How dangerous must it have been for the sovereign
to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime whatever, if his order were
disposed to protect him, and to represent either the proof as insufficient
for convicting so holy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be
inflicted upon one whose person had been rendered sacred by religion? The
sovereign could, in such circumstances, do no better than leave him to be
tried by the ecclesiastical courts, who, for the honour of their own
order, were interested to restrain, as much as possible, every member of
it from committing enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion to such
gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people.
In the state in which things were, through the greater part of Europe,
during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for
some time both before and after that period, the constitution of the
church of Rome may be considered as the most formidable combination that
ever was formed against the authority and security of civil government, as
well as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can
flourish only where civil government is able to protect them. In that
constitution, the grossest delusions of superstition were supported in
such a manner by the private interests of so great a number of people, as
put them out of all danger from any assault of human reason; because,
though human reason might, perhaps, have been able to unveil, even to the
eyes of the common people, some of the delusions of superstition, it could
never have dissolved the ties of private interest. Had this constitution
been attacked by no other enemies but the feeble efforts of human reason,
it must have endured for ever. But that immense and well-built fabric,
which all the wisdom and virtue of man could never have shaken, much less
have overturned, was, by the natural course of things, first weakened, and
afterwards in part destroyed; and is now likely, in the course of a few
centuries more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether.
The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the
same causes which destroyed the power of the great barons, destroyed,
in the same manner, through the greater part of Europe, the whole
temporal power of the clergy. In the produce of arts, manufactures, and
commerce, the clergy, like the great barons, found something for which
they could exchange their rude produce, and thereby discovered the
means of spending their whole revenues upon their own persons, without
giving any considerable share of them to other people. Their charity
became gradually less extensive, their hospitality less liberal, or
less profuse. Their retainers became consequently less numerous, and,
by degrees, dwindled away altogether. The clergy, too, like the great
barons, wished to get a better rent from their landed estates, in order
to spend it, in the same manner, upon the gratification of their own
private vanity and folly. But this increase of rent could be got only
by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became, in a great
measure, independent of them. The ties of interest, which bound the
inferior ranks of people to the clergy, were in this manner gradually
broken and dissolved. They were even broken and dissolved sooner than
those which bound the same ranks of people to the great barons; because
the benefices of the church being, the greater part of them, much smaller
than the estates of the great barons, the possessor of each benefice was
much sooner able to spend the whole of its revenue upon his own person.
During the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the
power of the great barons was, through the greater part of Europe, in
full vigour. But the temporal power of the clergy, the absolute command
which they had once had over the great body of the people was very much
decayed. The power of the church was, by that time, very nearly reduced,
through the greater part of Europe, to what arose from their spiritual
authority; and even that spiritual authority was much weakened, when it
ceased to be supported by the charity and hospitality of the clergy. The
inferior ranks of people no longer looked upon that order as they had
done before; as the comforters of their distress, and the relievers of
their indigence. On the contrary, they were provoked and disgusted by the
vanity, luxury, and expense of the richer clergy, who appeared to spend
upon their own pleasures what had always before been regarded as the
patrimony of the poor.
In this situation of things, the sovereigns in the different states of
Europe endeavoured to recover the influence which they had once had in the
disposal of the great benefices of the church; by procuring to the deans
and chapters of each diocese the restoration of their ancient right of
electing the bishop; and to the monks of each abbacy that of electing the
abbot. The re-establishing this ancient order was the object of several
statutes enacted in England during the course of the fourteenth century,
particularly of what is called the statute of provisors; and of the
pragmatic sanction, established in France in the fifteenth century. In
order to render the election valid, it was necessary that the sovereign
should both consent to it before hand, and afterwards approve of the
person elected; and though the election was still supposed to be free, he
had, however all the indirect means which his situation necessarily
afforded him, of influencing the clergy in his own dominions. Other
regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other parts of
Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of the great benefices
of the church, seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so
effectually and so universally restrained as in France and England. The
concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of
France the absolute right of presenting to all the great, or what are
called the consistorial, benefices of the Gallican church.
Since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and of the concordat,
the clergy of France have in general shewn less respect to the decrees of
the papal court, than the clergy of any other catholic country. In all the
disputes which their sovereign has had with the pope, they have almost
constantly taken part with the former. This independency of the clergy of
France upon the court of Rome seems to be principally founded upon the
pragmatic sanction and the concordat. In the earlier periods of the
monarchy, the clergy of France appear to have been as much devoted to the
pope as those of any other country. When Robert, the second prince of the
Capetian race, was most unjustly excommunicated by the court of Rome, his
own servants, it is said, threw the victuals which came from his table to
the dogs, and refused to taste any thing themselves which had been
polluted by the contact of a person in his situation. They were taught to
do so, it may very safely be presumed, by the clergy of his own dominions.
The claim of collating to the great benefices of the church, a claim in
defence of which the court of Rome had frequently shaken, and sometimes
overturned, the thrones of some of the greatest sovereigns in Christendom,
was in this manner either restrained or modified, or given up altogether,
in many different parts of Europe, even before the time of the
reformation. As the clergy had now less influence over the people, so the
state had more influence over the clergy. The clergy, therefore, had both
less power, and less inclination, to disturb the state.
The authority of the church of Rome was in this state of declension, when
the disputes which gave birth to the reformation began in Germany, and
soon spread themselves through every part of Europe. The new doctrines
were everywhere received with a high degree of popular favour. They were
propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the
spirit of party, when it attacks established authority. The teachers of
those doctrines, though perhaps, in other respects, not more learned than
many of the divines who defended the established church, seem in general
to have been better acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and with the
origin and progress of that system of opinions upon which the authority of
the church was established; and they had thereby the advantage in almost
every dispute. The austerity of their manners gave them authority with the
common people, who contrasted the strict regularity of their conduct with
the disorderly lives of the greater part of their own clergy. They
possessed, too, in a much higher degree than their adversaries, all the
arts of popularity and of gaining proselytes; arts which the lofty and
dignified sons of the church had long neglected, as being to them in a
great measure useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to
some, their novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established
clergy to a still greater number: but the zealous, passionate, and
fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic eloquence, with which they
were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended them to by far the greatest
number.
The success of the new doctrines was almost everywhere so great, that the
princes, who at that time happened to be on bad terms with the court of
Rome, were, by means of them, easily enabled, in their own dominions, to
overturn the church, which having lost the respect and veneration of the
inferior ranks of people, could make scarce any resistance. The court of
Rome had disobliged some of the smaller princes in the northern parts of
Germany, whom it had probably considered as too insignificant to be worth
the managing. They universally, therefore, established the reformation in
their own dominions. The tyranny of Christiern II., and of Troll
archbishop of Upsal, enabled Gustavus Vasa to expel them both from Sweden.
The pope favoured the tyrant and the archbishop, and Gustavus Vasa found
no difficulty in establishing the reformation in Sweden. Christiern II.
was afterwards deposed from the throne of Denmark, where his conduct had
rendered him as odious as in Sweden. The pope, however, was still disposed
to favour him; and Frederic of Holstein, who had mounted the throne in his
stead, revenged himself, by following the example of Gustavus Vasa. The
magistrates of Berne and Zurich, who had no particular quarrel with the
pope, established with great ease the reformation in their respective
cantons, where just before some of the clergy had, by an imposture
somewhat grosser than ordinary, rendered the whole order both odious and
contemptible.
In this critical situation of its affairs the papal court was at
sufficient pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful sovereigns of
France and Spain, of whom the latter was at that time emperor of Germany.
With their assistance, it was enabled, though not without great
difficulty, and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether, or to
obstruct very much, the progress of the reformation in their dominions. It
was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of England.
But from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving
offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and
emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, though he did not embrace
himself the greater part of the doctrines of the reformation, was yet
enabled, by their general prevalence, to suppress all the monasteries, and
to abolish the authority of the church of Rome in his dominions. That he
should go so far, though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the
patrons of the reformation, who, having got possession of the government
in the reign of his son and successor completed, without any difficulty,
the work which Henry VIII. had begun.
In some countries, as in Scotland, where the government was weak,
unpopular, and not very firmly established, the reformation was strong
enough to overturn, not only the church, but the state likewise, for
attempting to support the church.
Among the followers of the reformation, dispersed in all the different
countries of Europe, there was no general tribunal, which, like that of
the court of Rome, or an oecumenical council, could settle all disputes
among them, and, with irresistible authority, prescribe to all of them the
precise limits of orthodoxy. When the followers of the reformation in one
country, therefore, happened to differ from their brethren in another, as
they had no common judge to appeal to, the dispute could never be decided;
and many such disputes arose among them. Those concerning the government
of the church, and the right of conferring ecclesiastical benefices, were
perhaps the most interesting to the peace and welfare of civil society.
They gave birth, accordingly, to the two principal parties or sects among
the followers of the reformation, the Lutheran and Calvinistic sects, the
only sects among them, of which the doctrine and discipline have ever yet
been established by law in any part of Europe.
The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church of
England, preserved more or less of the episcopal government, established
subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign the disposal of all the
bishoprics, and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, and
thereby rendered him the real head of the church; and without depriving
the bishop of the right of collating to the smaller benefices within his
diocese, they, even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured
the right of presentation, both in the sovereign and in all other lay
patrons. This system of church government was, from the beginning,
favourable to peace and good order, and to submission to the civil
sovereign. It has never, accordingly, been the occasion of any tumult or
civil commotion in any country in which it has once been established. The
church of England, in particular, has always valued herself, with great
reason, upon the unexceptionable loyalty of her principles. Under such a
government, the clergy naturally endeavour to recommend themselves to the
sovereign, to the court, and to the nobility and gentry of the country, by
whose influence they chiefly expect to obtain preferment. They pay court
to those patrons, sometimes, no doubt, by the vilest flattery and
assentation; but frequently, too, by cultivating all those arts which best
deserve, and which are therefore most likely to gain them, the esteem of
people of rank and fortune; by their knowledge in all the different
branches of useful and ornamental learning, by the decent liberality of
their manners, by the social good humour of their conversation, and by
their avowed contempt of those absurd and hypocritical austerities which
fanatics inculcate and pretend to practise, in order to draw upon
themselves the veneration, and upon the greater part of men of rank and
fortune, who avow that they do not practise them, the abhorrence of the
common people. Such a clergy, however, while they pay their court in this
manner to the higher ranks of life, are very apt to neglect altogether the
means of maintaining their influence and authority with the lower. They
are listened to, esteemed, and respected by their superiors; but before
their inferiors they are frequently incapable of defending, effectually,
and to the conviction of such hearers, their own sober and moderate
doctrines, against the most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack
them.
The followers of Zuinglius, or more properly those of Calvin, on the
contrary, bestowed upon the people of each parish, whenever the church
became vacant, the right of electing their own pastor; and established, at
the same time, the most perfect equality among the clergy. The former part
of this institution, as long as it remained in vigour, seems to have been
productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended
equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people. The
latter part seems never to have had any effects but what were perfectly
agreeable.
As long as the people of each parish preserved the right of electing their
own pastors, they acted almost always under the influence of the clergy,
and generally of the most factious and fanatical of the order. The clergy,
in order to preserve their influence in those popular elections, became,
or affected to become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged
fanaticism among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the
most fanatical candidate. So small a matter as the appointment of a parish
priest, occasioned almost always a violent contest, not only in one
parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes who seldom failed to take
part in the quarrel. When the parish happened to be situated in a great
city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city
happened, either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head
and capital of a little republic, as in the case with many of the
considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry dispute of
this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other
factions, threatened to leave behind it, both a new schism in the church,
and a new faction in the state. In those small republics, therefore, the
magistrate very soon found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the
public peace, to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant
benefices. In Scotland, the most extensive country in which this
presbyterian form of church government has ever been established, the
rights of patronage were in effect abolished by the act which established
presbytery in the beginning of the reign of William III. That act, at
least, put in the power of certain classes of people in each parish to
purchase, for a very small price, the right of electing their own pastor.
The constitution which this act established, was allowed to subsist for
about two-and-twenty years, but was abolished by the 10th of queen Anne,
ch.12, on account of the confusions and disorders which this more popular
mode of election had almost everywhere occasioned. In so extensive a
country as Scotland, however, a tumult in a remote parish was not so
likely to give disturbance to government as in a smaller state. The 10th
of queen Anne restored the rights of patronage. But though, in Scotland,
the law gives the benefice, without any exception to the person presented
by the patron; yet the church requires sometimes (for she has not in this
respect been very uniform in her decisions) a certain concurrence of the
people, before she will confer upon the presentee what is called the cure
of souls, or the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the parish. She sometimes,
at least, from an affected concern for the peace of the parish, delays the
settlement till this concurrence can be procured. The private tampering of
some of the neighbouring clergy, sometimes to procure, but more frequently
to prevent this concurrence, and the popular arts which they cultivate, in
order to enable them upon such occasions to tamper more effectually, are
perhaps the causes which principally keep up whatever remains of the old
fanatical spirit, either in the clergy or in the people of Scotland.
The equality which the presbyterian form of church government establishes
among the clergy, consists, first, in the equality of authority or
ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, secondly, in the equality of benefice.
In all presbyterian churches, the equality of authority is perfect; that
of benefice is not so. The difference, however, between one benefice and
another, is seldom so considerable, as commonly to tempt the possessor
even of the small one to pay court to his patron, by the vile arts of
flattery and assentation, in order to get a better. In all the
presbyterian churches, where the rights of patronage are thoroughly
established, it is by nobler and better arts, that the established clergy
in general endeavour to gain the favour of their superiors; by their
learning, by the irreproachable regularity of their life, and by the
faithful and diligent discharge of their duty. Their patrons even
frequently complain of the independency of their spirit, which they are
apt to construe into ingratitude for past favours, but which, at worse,
perhaps, is seldom anymore than that indifference which naturally arises
from the consciousness that no further favours of the kind are ever to be
expected. There is scarce, perhaps, to be found anywhere in Europe, a more
learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men, than the greater
part of the presbyterian clergy of Holland, Geneva, Switzerland, and
Scotland.
Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very
great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may be, no doubt,
carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but
exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of
levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides,
almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own
conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which
the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection,
by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him
to follow. The common people look upon him with that kindness with which
we naturally regard one who approaches somewhat to our own condition, but
who, we think, ought to be in a higher. Their kindness naturally provokes
his kindness. He becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive to assist
and relieve them. He does not even despise the prejudices of people who
are disposed to be so favourable to him, and never treats them with those
contemptuous and arrogant airs, which we so often meet with in the proud
dignitaries of opulent and well endowed churches. The presbyterian clergy,
accordingly, have more influence over the minds of the common people, than
perhaps the clergy of any other established church. It is, accordingly, in
presbyterian countries only, that we ever find the common people
converted, without persecution completely, and almost to a man, to the
established church.
In countries where church benefices are, the greater part of them, very
moderate, a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than
a church benefice. The universities have, in this case, the picking and
chusing of their members from all the churchmen of the country, who, in
every country, constitute by far the most numerous class of men of
letters. Where church benefices, on the contrary, are many of them very
considerable, the church naturally draws from the universities the greater
part of their eminent men of letters; who generally find some patron, who
does himself honour by procuring them church preferment. In the former
situation, we are likely to find the universities filled with the most
eminent men of letters that are to be found in the country. In the latter,
we are likely to find few eminent men among them, and those few among the
youngest members of the society, who are likely, too, to be drained away
from it, before they can have acquired experience and knowledge enough to
be of much use to it. It is observed by Mr de Voltaire, that father
Porée, a jesuit of no great eminence in the republic of letters, was the
only professor they had ever had in France, whose works were worth the
reading. In a country which has produced so many eminent men of letters,
it must appear somewhat singular, that scarce one of them should have been
a professor in a university. The famous Cassendi was, in the beginning of
his life, a professor in the university of Aix. Upon the first dawning of
his genius, it was represented to him, that by going into the church he
could easily find a much more quiet and comfortable subsistence, as well
as a better situation for pursuing his studies; and he immediately
followed the advice. The observation of Mr de Voltaire may be applied, I
believe, not only to France, but to all other Roman Catholic countries. We
very rarely find in any of them an eminent man of letters, who is a
professor in a university, except, perhaps, in the professions of law and
physic; professions from which the church is not so likely to draw them.
After the church of Rome, that of England is by far the richest and best
endowed church in Christendom. In England, accordingly, the church is
continually draining the universities of all their best and ablest
members; and an old college tutor who is known and distinguished in Europe
as an eminent man of letters, is as rarely to be found there as in any
Roman catholic country. In Geneva, on the contrary, in the protestant
cantons of Switzerland, in the protestant countries of Germany, in
Holland, in Scotland, in Sweden, and Denmark, the most eminent men of
letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the
far greater part of them, been professors in universities. In those
countries, the universities are continually draining the church of all its
most eminent men of letters.
It may, perhaps, be worth while to remark, that, if we except the poets, a
few orators, and a few historians, the far greater part of the other
eminent men of letters, both of Greece and Rome, appear to have been
either public or private teachers; generally either of philosophy or of
rhetoric. This remark will be found to hold true, from the days of Lysias
and Isocrates, of Plato and Aristotle, down to those of Plutarch and
Epictetus, Suetonius, and Quintilian. To impose upon any man the necessity
of teaching, year after year, in any particular branch of science seems in
reality to be the most effectual method for rendering him completely
master of it himself. By being obliged to go every year over the same
ground, if he is good for any thing, he necessarily becomes, in a few
years, well acquainted with every part of it, and if, upon any particular
point, he should form too hasty an opinion one year, when he comes, in the
course of his lectures to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter,
he is very likely to correct it. As to be a teacher of science is
certainly the natural employment of a mere man of letters; so is it
likewise, perhaps, the education which is most likely to render him a man
of solid learning and knowledge. The mediocrity of church benefices
naturally tends to draw the greater part of men of letters in the country
where it takes place, to the employment in which they can be the most
useful to the public, and at the same time to give them the best
education, perhaps, they are capable of receiving. It tends to render
their learning both as solid as possible, and as useful as possible.
The revenue of every established church, such parts of it excepted as may
arise from particular lands or manors, is a branch, it ought to be
observed, of the general revenue of the state, which is thus diverted to a
purpose very different from the defence of the state. The tithe, for
example, is a real land tax, which puts it out of the power of the
proprietors of land to contribute so largely towards the defence of the
state as they otherwise might be able to do. The rent of land, however,
is, according to some, the sole fund; and, according to others, the
principal fund, from which, in all great monarchies, the exigencies of the
state must be ultimately supplied. The more of this fund that is given to
the church, the less, it is evident, can be spared to the state. It may be
laid down as a certain maxim, that all other things being supposed equal,
the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be, either the
sovereign on the one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases,
the less able must the state be to defend itself. In several protestant
countries, particularly in all the protestant cantons of Switzerland, the
revenue which anciently belonged to the Roman catholic church, the tithes
and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford
competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little
or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. The magistrates of
the powerful canton of Berne, in particular, have accumulated, out of the
savings from this fund, a very large sum, supposed to amount to several
millions; part of which is deposited in a public treasure, and part is
placed at interest in what are called the public funds of the different
indebted nations of Europe; chiefly in those of France and Great Britain.
What may be the amount of the whole expense which the church, either of
Berne, or of any other protestant canton, costs the state, I do not
pretend to know. By a very exact account it appears, that, in 1755, the
whole revenue of the clergy of the church of Scotland, including their
glebe or church lands, and the rent of their manses or dwelling-houses,
estimated according to a reasonable valuation, amounted only to
£68,514:1:5 ¹⁄₁₂d. This very moderate revenue affords a decent subsistence
to nine hundred and forty-four ministers. The whole expense of the church,
including what is occasionally laid out for the building and reparation of
churches, and of the manses of ministers, cannot well be supposed to
exceed eighty or eighty-five thousand pounds a-year. The most opulent
church in Christendom does not maintain better the uniformity of faith,
the fervour of devotion, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere
morals, in the great body of the people, than this very poorly endowed
church of Scotland. All the good effects, both civil and religious, which
an established church can be supposed to produce, are produced by it as
completely as by any other. The greater part of the protestant churches of
Switzerland, which, in general, are not better endowed than the church of
Scotland, produce those effects in a still higher degree. In the greater
part of the protestant cantons, there is not a single person to be found,
who does not profess himself to be of the established church. If he
professes himself to be of any other, indeed, the law obliges him to leave
the canton. But so severe, or, rather, indeed, so oppressive a law, could
never have been executed in such free countries, had not the diligence of
the clergy beforehand converted to the established church the whole body
of the people, with the exception of, perhaps, a few individuals only. In
some parts of Switzerland, accordingly, where, from the accidental union
of a protestant and Roman catholic country, the conversion has not been so
complete, both religions are not only tolerated, but established by law.
The proper performance of every service seems to require, that its pay or
recompence should be, as exactly as possible, proportioned to the nature
of the service. If any service is very much underpaid, it is very apt to
suffer by the meanness and incapacity of the greater part of those who are
employed in it. If it is very much overpaid, it is apt to suffer, perhaps
still more, by their negligence and idleness. A man of a large revenue,
whatever may be his profession, thinks he ought to live like other men of
large revenues; and to spend a great part of his time in festivity, in
vanity, and in dissipation. But in a clergyman, this train of life not
only consumes the time which ought to be employed in the duties of his
function, but in the eyes of the common people, destroys almost entirely
that sanctity of character, which can alone enable him to perform those
duties with proper weight and authority.
PART IV. Of the Expense of supporting the Dignity of the Sovereign.
Over and above the expenses necessary for enabling the sovereign to
perform his several duties, a certain expense is requisite for the support
of his dignity. This expense varies, both with the different periods of
improvement, and with the different forms of government.
In an opulent and improved society, where all the different orders of
people are growing every day more expensive in their houses, in their
furniture, in their tables, in their dress, and in their equipage; it
cannot well be expected that the sovereign should alone hold out against
the fashion. He naturally, therefore, or rather necessarily, becomes more
expensive in all those different articles too. His dignity even seems to
require that he should become so.
As, in point of dignity, a monarch is more raised above his subjects than
the chief magistrate of any republic is ever supposed to be above his
fellow-citizens; so a greater expense is necessary for supporting that
higher dignity. We naturally expect more splendour in the court of a king,
than in the mansion-house of a doge or burgo-master.
CONCLUSION.
The expense of defending the society, and that of supporting the dignity
of the chief magistrate, are both laid out for the general benefit of the
whole society. It is reasonable, therefore, that they should be defrayed
by the general contribution of the whole society; all the different
members contributing, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their
respective abilities.
The expense of the administration of justice, too, may no doubt be
considered as laid out for the benefit of the whole society. There is no
impropriety, therefore, in its being defrayed by the general contribution
of the whole society. The persons, however, who give occasion to this
expense, are those who, by their injustice in one way or another, make it
necessary to seek redress or protection from the courts of justice. The
persons, again, most immediately benefited by this expense, are those whom
the courts of justice either restore to their rights, or maintain in their
rights. The expense of the administration of justice, therefore, may very
properly be defrayed by the particular contribution of one or other, or
both, of those two different sets of persons, according as different
occasions may require, that is, by the fees of court. It cannot be
necessary to have recourse to the general contribution of the whole
society, except for the conviction of those criminals who have not
themselves any estate or fund sufficient for paying those fees.
Those local or provincial expenses, of which the benefit is local or
provincial (what is laid out, for example, upon the police of a particular
town or district), ought to be defrayed by a local or provincial revenue,
and ought to be no burden upon the general revenue of the society. It is
unjust that the whole society should contribute towards an expense, of
which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
The expense of maintaining good roads and communications is, no doubt,
beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without any
injustice, be defrayed by the general contributions of the whole society.
This expense, however, is most immediately and directly beneficial to
those who travel or carry goods from one place to another, and to those
who consume such goods. The turnpike tolls in England, and the duties
called peages in other countries, lay it altogether upon those two
different sets of people, and thereby discharge the general revenue of the
society from a very considerable burden.
The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction,
is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may,
therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of
the whole society. This expense, however, might, perhaps, with equal
propriety, and even with some advantage, be defrayed altogether by those
who receive the immediate benefit of such education and instruction, or by
the voluntary contribution of those who think they have occasion for
either the one or the other.
When the institutions, or public works, which are beneficial to the whole
society, either cannot be maintained altogether, or are not maintained
altogether, by the contribution of such particular members of the society
as are most immediately benefited by them; the deficiency must, in most
cases, be made up by the general contribution of the whole society. The
general revenue of the society, over and above defraying the expense of
defending the society, and of supporting the dignity of the chief
magistrate, must make up for the deficiency of many particular branches of
revenue. The sources of this general or public revenue, I shall endeavour
to explain in the following chapter.
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Let's Analyse the Pattern
When rewards disconnect from desired outcomes, even well-intentioned people deliver poor results because human behavior follows incentive structures, not stated intentions.
Why This Matters
Connect literature to life
This chapter teaches how to identify when someone's rewards don't match your needs, predicting poor service or conflicted advice.
Practice This Today
This week, notice when service feels off and ask: How is this person paid, and does that reward helping me or something else?
Now let's explore the literary elements.
Key Quotes & Analysis
"The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force."
Context: Smith opens his analysis of what governments must do to justify their existence
This establishes defense as the most basic government function - without security, nothing else matters. Smith is building his argument for what taxes should pay for by starting with what everyone agrees is necessary.
In Today's Words:
The government's most important job is keeping us safe from outside threats, and that requires having an army.
"Among nations of hunters, every man is a warrior, as well as a hunter."
Context: Describing the simplest form of society where military and economic roles overlap
Smith shows how economic development changes military needs. In simple societies, survival skills and fighting skills are the same, so defense costs nothing extra. This sets up his argument about why advanced societies need professional armies.
In Today's Words:
In the most basic societies, everyone who can hunt can also fight, so they don't need a separate military.
"His society is at no sort of expense, either to prepare him for the field, or to maintain him while he is in it."
Context: Explaining why hunter-gatherer societies have no military expenses
This highlights Smith's key insight about how specialization creates costs. Simple societies get defense for free because fighting and surviving use the same skills, but complex societies must pay specialists.
In Today's Words:
These simple communities don't have to spend money training soldiers or paying them during wars because their regular life skills are the same as fighting skills.
Thematic Threads
Class
In This Chapter
Smith shows how economic development creates class specialization—wealthy societies can afford professional armies and independent judges while poor societies cannot
Development
Building on earlier chapters about division of labor, now applied to government functions
In Your Life:
Your economic position determines which professional services you can access and trust
Power
In This Chapter
Government power requires proper institutional design—judges must be independent from those they judge, military must be professional to be effective
Development
Introduced here as institutional power rather than individual power
In Your Life:
Any authority figure whose income depends on pleasing you serves your interests better than one who's paid regardless
Identity
In This Chapter
Professional identity emerges from economic specialization—the shift from citizen-soldiers to professional armies reflects societal development
Development
Extends earlier themes about how work shapes identity to government roles
In Your Life:
Your professional incentives shape your behavior more than your personal values when the two conflict
Social Expectations
In This Chapter
Society expects government to provide defense, justice, and infrastructure, but these services only work when properly incentivized
Development
Introduced here as expectations requiring institutional solutions
In Your Life:
Your expectations of others should account for their actual incentives, not their stated intentions
You now have the context. Time to form your own thoughts.
Discussion Questions
- 1
According to Smith, what are the three main jobs of government that justify collecting taxes from citizens?
analysis • surface - 2
Why does Smith argue that judges should receive fixed salaries from the government rather than fees from the people appearing in their courts?
analysis • medium - 3
Where do you see examples today of people being paid in ways that don't reward good performance - and how does that affect the service you receive?
application • medium - 4
When evaluating a service provider (doctor, mechanic, financial advisor), how would you figure out what incentives drive their recommendations?
application • deep - 5
What does Smith's analysis reveal about the relationship between how we structure rewards and the behavior we actually get from people?
reflection • deep
Critical Thinking Exercise
Follow the Money Trail
Think of a recent interaction where you received poor service or felt someone wasn't acting in your best interest. Research or deduce how that person gets paid - salary, commission, tips, bonuses, etc. Map out what behaviors their payment system actually rewards versus what you needed from them.
Consider:
- •Consider both obvious payments (salary) and hidden incentives (bonuses, promotions, quotas)
- •Look for misalignment between what the organization claims to value and what it actually rewards
- •Think about how you could have better navigated the situation knowing their true incentives
Journaling Prompt
Write about a time when your own work incentives pushed you to act against your better judgment or customer interests. How did the payment structure shape your choices, and what would need to change to align your incentives with doing the right thing?
Coming Up Next...
Chapter 31: How Governments Fund Themselves
Having established what government should spend money on, Smith now turns to the thorny question of how to raise that money. The next chapter explores the sources of public revenue and the principles of fair taxation.
