are to look in any quarter for a systematic and exhaustive statement of the principles of a given science, it must certainly be from its Professor at Cambridge.
Take the last edition of Professor Fawcett's Manual of Political Economy, and forming, first clearly in your mind these three following questions, see if you can find an answer to them.
I. Does expenditure of capital on the production of luxurious dress and furniture tend to make a nation rich or poor?
II. Does the payment, by the nation, of a tax on its land, or on the produce of it, to a certain number of private persons, to be expended by them as they please, tend to make the nation rich or poor?
III. Does the payment, by the nation, for an indefinite period, of interest on money borrowed from private persons, tend to make the nation rich or poor?
These three questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, and primarily vital. Determine these, and you have at once a basis for national conduct in all important particulars. Leave them undetermined, and there is no limit to the distress which may be brought upon the people by the cunning of its knaves, and the folly of its multitudes.
I will take the three in their order.
I. Dress. The general impression on the public mind at this day is, that the luxury of the rich in dress and furniture is a benefit to the poor. Probably not even the blindest of our political economists would venture to assert this in so many words. But where do they assert the contrary? During the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was assumed in France, as the first principle of fiscal government, that a large portion of the funds received as rent from the provincial labourer should be expended in the manufacture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where is the political economist in France, or England, who ventured to assert the conclusions of his science as adverse to this system? As early as the year 1857 I had done my best to show the nature of the error, and to give warning of its danger;7 but not one of the men who had the foolish ears of the people intent on their words, dared to follow me in speaking what would have been an offence to the powers of trade; and the powers of trade in Paris had their full way for fourteen years more,—with this result, to-day,—as told us in precise and curt terms by the Minister of Public Instruction,—8
"We have replaced glory by gold, work by speculation, faith and honour by scepticism. To absolve or glorify immorality; to make much of loose women; to gratify our eyes with luxury, our ears with the tales of orgies; to aid in the manœuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them; to laugh at morality, and only believe in success; to love nothing but pleasure, adore nothing but force; to replace work with a fecundity of fancies; to speak without thinking; to prefer noise to glory; to erect sneering into a system, and lying into an institution—is this the spectacle that we have seen?—is this the society that we have been?"
Of course, other causes, besides the desire of luxury in furniture and dress, have been at work to produce such consequences; but the most active cause of all has been the passion for these; passion unrebuked by the clergy, and, for the most part, provoked by economists, as advantageous to commerce; nor need we think that such results have been arrived at in France only; we are ourselves following rapidly on the same road. France, in her old wars with us, never was so fatally our enemy as she has been in the fellowship of fashion, and the freedom of trade: nor, to my mind, is any fact recorded of Assyrian or Roman luxury more ominous, or ghastly, than one which came to my knowledge a few weeks ago, in England; a respectable and well-to-do father and mother, in a quiet north country town, being turned into the streets in their old age, at the suit of their only daughter's milliner.
II. Rent. The following account of the real nature of rent is given, quite accurately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 of the last edition of his Political Economy:—
"Every country has probably been subjugated, and grants of vanquished territory were the ordinary rewards which the conquering chief bestowed upon his more distinguished followers. Lands obtained by force had to be defended by force; and before law had asserted her supremacy, and property was made secure, no baron was able to retain his possessions, unless those who lived on his estates were prepared to defend them....9 As property became secure, and landlords felt that the power of the State would protect them in all the rights of property, every vestige of these feudal tenures was abolished, and the relation between landlord and tenant has thus become purely commercial. A landlord offers his land to any one who is willing to take it; he is anxious to receive the highest rent he can obtain. What are the principles which regulate the rent which may thus be paid?"
These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first principle in the whole business—the maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by any human mind. It is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day to discover how far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary theft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and farther, what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are the just conditions of the possession of land.
III. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, I used to sit silently listening to the conversation of the London merchants who, all of them good and sound men of business, were wont occasionally to meet round my father's dining-table; nothing used to surprise me more than the conviction openly expressed by some of the soundest and most cautious of them, that "if there were no National debt they would not know what to do with their money, or where to place it safely." At the 399th page of his Manual, you will find Professor Fawcett giving exactly the same statement.
"In our own country, this certainty against risk of loss is provided by the public funds;"
and again, as on the question of rent, the Professor proceeds, without appearing for an instant to be troubled by any misgiving that there may be an essential difference between the effects on national prosperity of a Government paying interest on money which it spent in fire works fifty years ago, and of a Government paying interest on money to be employed to-day on productive labour.
That difference, which the reader will find stated and examined at length, in §§ 127-129 of this volume, it is the business of economists, before approaching any other question relating to government, fully to explain. And the paragraphs to which I refer, contain, I believe, the only definite statement of it hitherto made.
The practical result of the absence of any such statement is, that capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade the peasants, in various countries, that the said peasants want guns to shoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which the capitalists get a per-centage, and men of science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homes down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers, arsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party put also some ragged flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both, annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call "knowing what to do with their money;" and what commercial men in general call "practical" as opposed to "sentimental" Political Economy.
Eleven years ago, in the summer of 1860, perceiving then fully, (as Carlyle had done long before), what distress was about to come on the said populace of Europe through these errors of their teachers, I began to do the best I might, to combat them, in the series of papers for the Cornhill Magazine, since published under the title of Unto this Last. The editor of the Magazine was my friend, and ventured the insertion of the three first essays; but the outcry against them became then too strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote to me, with great discomfort to himself, and many apologies to me, that the Magazine must only admit one Economical
See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in
The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement; they in no wise modify it.
