An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations Part 22

Besides our having facts to furnish proofs that there are no very great fortunes, except landed fortunes; it can scarcely have escaped the notice of any one, that no other gives such umbrage, or shews the inferiority men =sic= who have none so much. {108}

That there is a perpetual tendency to the acc.u.mulation of property, in the hands of individuals, is certain; for, amongst the nations

{108} If a man has wealth, in any other form, it is only known by the expenditure he makes, and it is quickly diminished by mismanagement; but the great landed estate, which is seldom well attended to, is mismanaged to the public detriment without ruin to the proprietor.

[end of page #129]

of Europe, those who are the most ancient, exhibit the most striking contrasts of poverty and riches.

Nations obtaining wealth by commerce are less liable to this danger than any others; at least we are led to believe so, from the present situation of things: we are, perhaps, however, not altogether right in the conclusion.

In France there were, and in Germany, Russia, and Poland, there are some immense fortunes, though general wealth is not nearly equal to that of England: so much for a comparison between nations of the present day. Again, it is certain, there were some fortunes in England, in the times of the Plantagenets and Tudors, much greater than any of the present times. {109} England was not then near so wealthy as it is now, and had very little commerce: it would then appear, that whether we compare England with what it was before it became a wealthy and commercial nation, or with other nations, at the present time, which are not wealthy, commerce and riches appear to have operated in dividing riches, and making that division more equal, rather than in rendering their acc.u.mulation great in particular hands, and their distribution unequal.

Before we are too positive about the cause, though we admit this effect, let us inquire whether there are not some other circ.u.mstances that are peculiar to the present situation of England, that may, if not wholly, at least in part, account for it.

The form of government in England is different from that of any of those countries. It is also different in its nature, though not in its form, from what it was under the Plantagenets and Tudors. Court favour cannot enrich a family in this country, and the operation of the law is tolerably equal. As neither protection, nor rank, in this country, raise a man above the rest of society, so the richest subject is obliged to obtain, by his expenditure, that consideration which he would ob-

{109} Two centuries ago, land was sold for twelve years purchase, and the rents are five times as great as they were then; 10,000 L.

employed in buying land then would now produce 5000 L. a year. Had the same money been lent, at interest, it would but produce 500 L. The land, too, would sell for 140,000 L. The monied capital would remain what it was.

[end of page #130]

tain by other means, under another form of government, {110} and he is as much compelled to pay his debts as any other man.

It is not, however, the great wealth of one individual, or even of a few individuals, that is an object of consideration. It will be found that the great number of persons, who live upon revenues, sufficiently abundant to exempt them from care and attention, and to enable them to injure the manners of the people, (being above the necessity of economy, feeling none of its wants, and contributing nothing by their own exertion to its wealth or strength,) is a very great evil, and one that tends constantly to increase.

But if this progress goes on, while a nation is acquiring wealth, how much faster does it not proceed when it approaches towards its decline? It is, then, indeed, that the extremes of poverty and riches are to be seen in the most striking degree.

The higher cla.s.ses can never be made to contribute their share towards the prosperity of a state; where there are no middling cla.s.ses to connect the higher and lower orders, and to protect the lower orders from the power of the higher, a state must gradually decline.

It is in the middling cla.s.ses that the freedom, the intelligence, and the industry of a country reside. The higher cla.s.s may be very intelligent, but can never be very numerous; and being above the feeling of want, except in a few instances, (where nature has endowed the wealthy with innate good qualities,) there is nothing to be expected or obtained of them, {111} towards the general good.

From the working and laborious cla.s.ses, again, little is to be expected.

They fill the part a.s.signed to them when they perform their duty to themselves and families; and they have neither leisure, nor other means of contributing to general prosperity as public men;

{110} In France, the richest subject under the crown was a prince of the blood, &c.

{111} In this case, the English form of government is good, because, it not only hinders any man from forgetting that he is a man, but whenever there is any ambition, no one in this country can rise above the necessity of acting with, and feeling for, their inferiors, of whom they sometimes have to ask favours, which they never do under a pure monarchy.

[end of page #131]

they, indeed, pay more than their share of taxes in almost every country; {112} but they cannot directly, even by election, partic.i.p.ate in the government of the country.

If any number of persons engross the whole of the lands of a nation, then the labourers that live on those lands must be in a degraded situation; they then become less sound and less important members of the state than they would otherwise be.

Necessity does not act with that favourable impulse on people, where property is very unequally divided, that it does where the gradation from the state of poverty to that of riches is more regular.

As the action of the body is brought on by the effect produced on the mind; and as there is no hope of obtaining wealth where it appears very unequally divided, so also there is no exertion where there is no hope. {113}

Where there is no regular gradation of rank and division of property, emulation, which is the spur to action, when absolute necessity ceases to operate, is entirely destroyed; thus the lower cla.s.ses become degraded and discouraged, as is universally found to be the case in nations that have pa.s.sed their meridian; the contrary being as regularly and constantly the case with rising nations.

Besides the degradation and listlessness occasioned in the lower ranks, by an unequal distribution of property, the most agreeable, and the strongest bond of society is thereby broken. The bond that

{112} This is less the case in England than in any other country.

{113} It is strange how possibility, which is the mother of hope, acts upon, and controuls, the pa.s.sions. Envy is generally directed to those who are but a little raised above us. They are reckoned to be madmen who envy kings, or fall in love with princesses, and, in fact, they are such, unless when they belong to the same rank themselves.

Love, for example, which is not a voluntary pa.s.sion, or under the controul of reason, ought, according to the chances of things, sometimes to make a sensible and wise man become enamoured of a princess, but that never happens. It would appear, that, in order to become the object of desire, there must be a hope founded on a reasonable expectation of obtaining the object. This can be but very small in the lower cla.s.ses, when they look at the overgrown rich, and have no intermediate rank to envy or emulate.

[end of page #132]

consists, in the attachment of the inferior cla.s.ses, to those immediately above them. Where the distance is great, there is but little connection, and that connection is merely founded upon conveniency, not on a similarity of feeling, or an occasional interchange of good actions, or mutual services. By this means, the whole society becomes, as it were, disjointed, and if the chain is not entirely broken, it has at least lost that strength and pliability that is necessary, either for the raising a nation to greatness, or supporting it after it has risen to a superior degree of rank or power.

Amongst the causes of the decline of wealthy nations, this then is one.

The great lose sight of the origin of their wealth, and cease to consider, that all wealth originates in labour, and that, therefore, the industrious and productive cla.s.ses are the sinews of riches and power.

The French nation, to which we have had occasion to allude already, was in this situation before the revolution. Rome was so likewise before its fall. We are not, however, to expect to find this as a princ.i.p.al cause in the fall of all nations; many of them fell from exterior and not interior causes. Venice, Genoa, and all the places that flourished in the middle ages, fell from other causes. Whatever their internal energy might have been, their fate could not have been altered, nor their fall prevented. The case is different with nations of which the extent is sufficiently great to protect them against the attacks of their enemies; and where the local situation is such as to secure them from a change taking place in the channels of commerce, a cause of decline which is not to be resisted by any power inherent in a nation itself.

In Spain and Portugal the internal causes are the preponderating ones, and, in some measure, though not altogether so, in Holland. If England should ever fall, internal causes must have a great share in the catastrophe. In this inquiry, then, we must consider the interior state of the country as of great importance.

When property is very unequally divided, the monied capital of a nation, upon the employment of which, next to its industry, its wealth, or revenue, depend, begins to be applied less advantageously. A preference is given to employments, by which money is got with most ease and [end of page #133] certainty, though in less quant.i.ty. A preference also is given to lines of business that are reckoned the most n.o.ble and independent.

Manufacturers aspire to become merchants, and merchants to become mere lenders of money, or agents. The detail is done by brokers, by men who take the trouble, and understand the nature of the particular branches they undertake, but who furnish no capital.

The Dutch were the greatest example of this. Independent of those great political events, which have, as it were, completed the ruin of their country, they had long ceased to give that great encouragement to manufactures, which had, at first, raised them to wealth and power in so surprising a manner. They had, in the latter times, become agents for others, rather than merchants on their own account; so that the capital, which, at one time, brought in, probably, twenty or twenty- five per cent. annually, and which had, even at a late period, produced ten or fifteen, was employed in a way that scarcely produced three.

If it were possible to employ large capitals with as much advantage, and to make them set in motion and maintain as much industry as small ones are made to do, there would scarcely be any limit to the acc.u.mulation of money in a country; but a vast variety of causes operate on preventing this.

Whatever, therefore, tends to acc.u.mulate the capital of a nation in a few hands (thereby depriving the many) not only increases luxury, and corrupts manners and morals, but diminishes the activity of the capital and the industry of the country. {114}

In all the great places that are now in a state of decay, we find families living on the interest of money, that formerly were engaged in manufactures or commerce. Antwerp, Genoa, and Venice, were full

{114} It is a strange fact, that when this country was not nearly so far advanced as it is now, almost all the merchants traded on their own capitals; they purchased goods, paid for them, sold them, and waited for the returns; but now it is quite different. They purchase on credit, and draw bills on those to whom they sell, and are continually obliged to obtain discounts; or, in other words, to borrow money, till the regular time of payment comes round; they may, therefore, be said to be trading with the capital of money-lenders, who afford them discount.

[end of page #134]

of such, but those persons would not have ventured a single s.h.i.+lling in a new enterprise. The connection between industry and revenue was lost in their ideas. They knew nothing of it, and the remnants of the industrious, who still cultivated the ancient modes of procuring wealth, were considered as an inferior cla.s.s of persons, depending upon less certain means of existence, and generally greatly straitened for capital, which, as soon as they possessed in sufficient quant.i.ty, enabled them to follow the same example, and to retire to the less affluent, but more esteemed and idle practice of living upon interest.

In countries where there are n.o.bility, the capital of the commercial world is constantly going to them, either by marriage of daughters, or by the other means, which rich people take to become n.o.ble. Even where there are no n.o.bility, the cla.s.s of citizens living without any immediate connection with trade consider themselves as forming the highest order of society, and they become the envy of the others.