Part 11 (1/2)
So that here seems a majority of the people, whose chief dependence and subsistence is from the other part, which majority is much greater, in respect of the number of families, because 500,000 families contribute to the support of 850,000 families. In contemplation of which, great care should be taken not to lay new duties upon the home consumption, unless upon the extremest necessities of the State; for though such impositions cannot be said to fall directly upon the lower rank, whose poverty hinders them from consuming such materials (though there are few excises to which the meanest person does not pay something), yet indirectly, and by unavoidable consequences, they are rather more affected by high duties upon our home-consumption than the wealthier degree of people, and so we shall find the case to be, if we look carefully into all the distinct ranks of men there enumerated.
First, as to the n.o.bility and gentry, they must of necessity retrench their families and expenses, if excessive impositions are laid upon all sorts of materials for consumption, from whence follows, that the degree below them of merchants, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and artisans, must want employment.
Secondly, as to the manufactures, high excises in time of peace are utterly destructive to that princ.i.p.al part of England's wealth; for if malt, coals, salt, leather, and other things, bear a great price, the wages of servants, workmen, and artificers, will consequently rise, for the income must bear some proportion with the expense; and if such as set the poor to work find wages for labour or manufacture advance upon them, they must rise in the price of their commodity, or they cannot live, all which would signify little, if nothing but our own dealings among one another were thereby affected; but it has a consequence far more pernicious in relation to our foreign trade, for it is the exportation of our own product that must make England rich; to be gainers in the balance of trade, we must carry out of our own product what will purchase the things of foreign growth that are needful for our own consumption, with some overplus either in bullion or goods to be sold in other countries, which overplus is the profit a nation makes by trade, and it is more or less according to the natural frugality of the people that export, or as from the low price of labour and manufacture they can afford the commodity cheap, and at a rate not to be undersold in foreign markets. The Dutch, whose labour and manufactures are dear by reason of home excises, can notwithstanding sell cheap abroad, because this disadvantage they labour under is balanced by the parsimonious temper of their people; but in England, where this frugality is hardly to be introduced, if the duties upon our home consumption are so large as to raise considerably the price of labour and manufacture, all our commodities for exportation must by degrees so advance in the prime value, that they cannot be sold at a rate which will give them vent in foreign markets, and we must be everywhere undersold by our wiser neighbours. But the consequence of such duties in times of peace will fall most heavily upon our woollen manufactures, of which most have more value from the workmans.h.i.+p than the material; and if the price of this workmans.h.i.+p be enhanced, it will in a short course of time put a necessity upon those we deal with of setting up manufactures of their own, such as they can, or of buying goods of the like kind and use from nations that can afford them cheaper. And in this point we are to consider, that the bulk of our woollen exports does not consist in draperies made of the fine wool, peculiar to our soil, but is composed of coa.r.s.e broad cloths, such as Yorks.h.i.+re cloths, kerseys, which make a great part of our exports, and may be, and are made of a coa.r.s.er wool, which is to be had in other countries. So that we are not singly to value ourselves upon the material, but also upon the manufacture, which we should make as easy as we can, by not laying over-heavy burdens upon the manufacturer. And our woollen goods being two-thirds of our foreign exports, it ought to be the chief object of the public care, if we expect to be gainers in the balance of trade, which is what we hunt after in these inquiries.
Thirdly, as to the lower rank of all, which we compute at 2,825,000 heads, a majority of the whole people, their princ.i.p.al subsistence is upon the degrees above them, and if those are rendered uneasy these must share in the calamity, but even of this inferior sort no small proportion contribute largely to excises, as labourers and out-servants, which likewise affect the common seamen, who must thereupon raise their wages or they will not have wherewithal to keep their families left at home, and the high wages of seamen is another burden upon our foreign traffic. As to the cottagers, who are about a fifth part of the whole people, some duties reach even them, as those upon malt, leather, and salt, but not much because of their slender consumption, but if the gentry, upon whose woods and gleanings they live, and who employ them in day labour, and if the manufacturers, for whom they card and spin, are overburdened with duties, they cannot afford to give them so much for their labour and handiwork, nor to yield them those other reliefs which are their princ.i.p.al subsistence, for want of which these miserable wretches must perish with cold and hunger.
Thus we see excises either directly or indirectly fall upon the whole body of the people, but we do not take notice of these matters as receding from our former opinion. On the contrary, we still think them the most easy and equal way of taxing a nation, and perhaps it is demonstrable that if we had fallen into this method at the beginning of the war of raising the year's expense within the year by excises, England had not been now indebted so many millions, but what was advisable under such a necessity and danger is not to be pursued in times of peace, especially in a country depending so much upon trade and manufactures.
Our study now ought to be how those debts may be speedily cleared off, for which these new revenues are the funds, that trade may again move freely as it did heretofore, without such a heavy clog; but this point we shall more amply handle when we come to speak of our payments to the public.
Mr. King divides the whole body of the people into two princ.i.p.al cla.s.ses, viz.:-
Increasing the wealth of the kingdom 2,675,520 heads.
Decreasing the wealth of the kingdom 2,825,000 heads.
By which he means that the first cla.s.s of the people from land, arts, and industry maintain themselves, and add every year something to the nation's general stock, and besides this, out of their superfluity, contribute every year so much to the maintenance of others.
That of the second cla.s.s some partly maintain themselves by labour (as the heads of the cottage families), but that the rest, as most of the wives and children of these, sick and impotent people, idle beggars and vagrants, are nourished at the cost of others, and are a yearly burden to the public, consuming annually so much as would be otherwise added to the nation's general stock.
The bodies of men are, without doubt, the most valuable treasure of a country, and in their sphere the ordinary people are as serviceable to the commonwealth as the rich if they are employed in honest labour and useful arts, and such being more in number do more contribute to increase the nation's wealth than the higher rank.
But a country may be populous and yet poor (as were the ancient Gauls and Scythians), so that numbers, unless they are well employed, make the body politic big but unwieldy, strong but unactive, as to any uses of good government.
Theirs is a wrong opinion who think all mouths profit a country that consume its produce, and it may be more truly affirmed, that he who does not some way serve the commonwealth, either by being employed or by employing others, is not only a useless, but a hurtful member to it.
As it is charity, and what we indeed owe to human kind, to make provision for the aged, the lame, the sick, blind, and impotent, so it is a justice we owe to the commonwealth not to suffer such as have health, and who might maintain themselves, to be drones and live upon the labour of others.
The bulk of such as are a burden to the public consists in the cottagers and paupers, beggars in great cities and towns, and vagrants.
Upon a survey of the hearth books, made in Michaelmas, 1685, it was found that of the 1,300,000 houses in the whole kingdom, those of one chimney amounted to 554,631, but some of these having land about them, in all our calculations, we have computed the cottagers but at 500,000 families; but of these, a large number may get their own livelihood, and are no charge to the parish, for which reason Mr.
King very judiciously computes his cottagers and paupers, decreasing the wealth of the nation but at 400,000 families, in which account he includes the poor-houses in cities, towns, and villages, besides which he reckons 30,000 vagrants, and all these together to make up 1,330,000 heads.
This is a very great proportion of the people to be a burden upon the other part, and is a weight upon the land interest, of which the landed gentlemen must certainly be very sensible.
If this vast body of men, instead of being expensive, could be rendered beneficial to the commonwealth, it were a work, no doubt, highly to be promoted by all who love their country.
It seems evident, to such as have considered these matters, and who have observed how they are ordered in nations under a good polity, that the number of such who through age or impotence stand in real need of relief, is but small and might be maintained for very little, and that the poor rates are swelled to the extravagant degree we now see them at by two sorts of people, one of which, by reason of our slack administration, is suffered to remain in sloth, and the other, through a defect in our const.i.tution, continue in wretched poverty for want of employment, though willing enough to undertake it.
All this seems capable of a remedy, the laws may be armed against voluntary idleness, so as to prevent it, and a way may probably be found out to set those to work who are desirous to support themselves by their own labour; and if this could be brought about, it would not only put a stop to the course of that vice which is the consequence of an idle life, but it would greatly tend to enrich the commonwealth, for if the industry of not half the people maintain in some degree the other part, and, besides, in times of peace did add every year near two million and a half to the general stock of England, to what pitch of wealth and greatness might we not be brought, if one limb were not suffered to draw away the nourishment of the other, and if all the members of the body politic were rendered useful to it?
Nature, in her contrivances, has made every part of a living creature either for ornament or use; the same should be in a politic inst.i.tution rightly governed.
It may be laid down for an undeniable truth, that where all work n.o.body will want, and to promote this would be a greater charity and more meritorious than to build hospitals, which very often are but so many monuments of ill-gotten riches attended with late repentance.
To make as many as possible of these 1,330,000 persons (whereof not above 330,000 are children too young to work) who now live chiefly upon others get themselves a large share of their maintenance would be the opening a new vein of treasure of some millions sterling per annum; it would be a present ease to every particular man of substance, and a lasting benefit to the whole body of the kingdom, for it would not only nourish but increase the numbers of the people, of which many thousands perish every year by those diseases contracted under a slothful poverty.
Our laws relating to the poor are very numerous, and this matter has employed the care of every age for a long time, though but with little success, partly through the ill execution, and partly through some defect in the very laws.