Part 21 (2/2)

find that the chance of being born half an hour sooner or later makes one man the proprietor of 50,000 acres and another little better than a beggar; when we consider that, by means of industry, he never may be able to purchase a garden to grow cabbages for his family, it loosens our attachment to the order of things we see before us, it hurts our ideas of moral equity. A man of reflection wishes the evil to be silently counteracted, and if he is violent, and has any disposition to try a change, it furnishes him with arguments and abettors.

When the Romans (with whose history we are tolerably well acquainted) {103} grew rich, the division of property became very unequal, and the attachment of the people for their government declined, the middle cla.s.ses lost their importance, and the lower orders of free citizens became a mere rabble. When Rome was poor, the people did not cry for bread, but when the brick buildings were turned into marble palaces, when a lamprey was sold for fifty-six pounds, {104} the people became a degraded populace, not much better, or less disorderly than the Lazzeroni of Naples. A donation of corn was a bribe to a Roman citizen; {105} though there is not, perhaps, an order of peasantry in the most remote corner of Europe, who would consider such a donation in ordinary times as an object either worthy of clamour or deserving of thanks. {106}

The Romans, at the time when Cincinatus held the plough, and the conquerors of nations roasted their own turnips, would have thought themselves degraded by eating bread obtained by such means; but it was different with the Romans after they had conquered the world.

In a more recent example, we may trace a similar effect, arising from a cause not very different.

{103} We know better about the laws and manners of the Romans 2000 years ago, in the time of the first Punic War, than about those of England, in the time of Henry the Fourth. They had fixed laws, their state was young, and the division of property tolerably equal.

{104} See Arbuthnot on Coins.

{105} Do not the soup-shops of late invention, and certainly well intended, bear some resemblance to these days of Roman wretchedness and magnificence.

{106} It is to be observed, these donations were not on account of scarcity, but to save the people from the trouble of working to earn the corn; they were become idle in body and degraded in mind.

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The unequal division of property in France was one of the chief causes of the revolution; the intention of which was, to overturn the then existing order of things. The ignorance of the great proprietors concerning of their true interests, and the smallness of their numbers, disabled them from protecting themselves. The middle orders were discontented, and wished for a change; and the lower orders were so degraded, that, at the first signal, they became as mutinous and as mean as the Plebians at Rome, in the days of its splendor. {107}

That this was not alone owing to the unequal division of property is certain, there were other causes, but that was a princ.i.p.al one. As a proof that this was so in England, where property is more equally divided than it was in France, the common people are more attached to government, and of a different spirit, though they are changing since the late great influx of wealth into this country, and since difficulties which have acc.u.mulated on the heads of the middle orders, while those who have large fortunes feel a greater facility of augmenting them than at any former period.

In those parts of this country, where wealth has made the least progress, the character of the people supports itself the best amongst the lower cla.s.ses; and the inverse progress of that character, and of the acquisition of wealth, is sufficiently striking to be noticed by one who is neither a very near, nor a very nice observer.

Discontent and envy rise arise from comparison; and, where they become prevalent, society can never stand long. They are enemies to fair industry.

Whatever may have been the delusive theories into which ill- intentioned, designing, and subtile men have sometimes deluded the great ma.s.s of the people, they have never been successful, except when they could fight under the appearance of justice, and thereby create discontent. The unequal division of property has frequently served them in this case.

{107} The Parisian populace were the instruments in the hand of those who destroyed the former government, as the regular army is in the hands of him who has erected that which now exists.

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while it increased the ignorance, and diminished the number of the enemies they had to encounter.

As this evil has arisen to a greater height in countries which have had less wealth in the aggregate than England, it is not the most dangerous thing we have to encounter; but, as the tendency to it increases very rapidly of late years, we must, by no means, overlook it. A future Chapter will be dedicated to the purpose of inquiring how this may be counteracted in some cases, in others modified and disguised, so as to prevent, in some degree, the evil effects that naturally arise from it.

Of all the ways in which property acc.u.mulates, in particular hands, the most dangerous is landed property; not only on account of entails, and the law of primogeniture, (which attach to land alone,) but because it is the property the most easily retained, the least liable to be alienated, and the only one that augments in value in a state that is growing rich.

An estate in land augments in value, without augmenting in extent, when a country becomes richer. A fortune, lent at interest, diminishes, as the value of money sinks. A fortune engaged in trade is liable to risks, and requires industry to preserve it: but industry, it has been observed, never is to be found for any great length of time in any single line of men; consequently, there are few great monied men, except such as have acquired their own fortunes, and those can never be very numerous nor overgrown.

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