The increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns contributed to
the improvement and cultivation of the countries to which they belonged in
three different ways.
First, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the
country, they gave encouragement to its cultivation and further improvement.
This benefit was not even confined to the countries in which they were situated,
but extended more or less to all those with which they had any dealings.
To all of them they afforded a market for some part either of their rude
or manufactured produce, and consequently gave some encouragement to the
industry and improvement of all. Their own country, however, on account of
its neighbourhood, necessarily derived the greatest benefit from this market.
Its rude produce being charged with less carriage, the traders could pay
the growers a better price for it, and yet afford it as cheap to the consumers
as that of more distant countries.
Secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was frequently
employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of which a great part
would frequently be uncultivated. Merchants are commonly ambitious of becoming
country gentlemen, and when they do, they are generally the best of all improvers.
A merchant is accustomed to employ his money chiefly in profitable projects,
whereas a mere country gentleman is accustomed to employ it chiefly in expense.
The one often sees his money go from him and return to him again with a profit;
the other, when once he parts with it, very seldom expects to see any more
of it. Those different habits naturally affect their temper and disposition
in every sort of business. A merchant is commonly a bold, a country gentleman
a timid undertaker. The one is not afraid to lay out at once a large capital
upon the improvement of his land when he has a probable prospect of raising
the value of it in proportion to the expense. The other, if he has any capital,
which is not always the case, seldom ventures to employ it in this manner.
If he improves at all, it is commonly not with a capital, but with what he
can save out of his annual revenue. Whoever has had the fortune to live in
a mercantile town situated in an unimproved country must have frequently
observed how much more spirited the operations of merchants were in this
way than those of mere country gentlemen. The habits, besides, of order,
economy, and attention, to which mercantile business naturally forms a merchant,
render him much fitter to execute, with profit and success, any project of
improvement.
Thirdly, and lastly, commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order
and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals,
among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual
state of war with their neighbours and of servile dependency upon their superiors.
This, though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important
of all their effects. Mr. Hume is the only writer who, so far as I know,
has hitherto taken notice of it.
In a country which has neither foreign
commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great proprietor, having
nothing for which he can exchange the greater
part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance
of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home. If
this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a thousand men,
he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a hundred or a
thousand men. He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude
of retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give in return
for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him,
for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them. Before
the extension of commerce and manufacture in Europe, the hospitality of the
rich, and the great, from the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded
everything which in the present times we can easily form a notion of. Westminster
Hall was the dining-room of William Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps,
not be too large for his company. It was reckoned a piece of magnificence
in Thomas Becket that he strewed the floor of his hall with clean hay or
rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires who could not
get seats might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on the floor
to eat their dinner. The great Earl of Warwick is said to have entertained
every day at his different manors thirty thousand people, and though the
number here may have been exaggerated, it must, however, have been very great
to admit of such exaggeration. A hospitality nearly of the same kind was
exercised not many years ago in many different parts of the highlands of
Scotland. It seems to be common in all nations to whom commerce and manufactures
are little known. "I have seen," says Doctor Pocock, "an Arabian chief dine
in the streets of a town where he had come to sell his cattle, and invite
all passengers, even common beggars, to sit down with him and partake of
his banquet."
The occupiers of land were in every respect as dependent upon the great
proprietor as his retainers. Even such of them as were not in a state of
villanage were tenants at will, who paid a rent in no respect equivalent
to the subsistence which the land afforded them. A crown, half a crown, a
sheep, a lamb, was some years ago in the highlands of Scotland a common rent
for lands which maintained a family. In some places it is so at this day;
nor will money at present purchase a greater quantity of commodities there
than in other places. In a country where the surplus produce of a large estate
must be consumed upon the estate itself, it will frequently be more convenient
for the proprietor that part of it be consumed at a distance from his own
house provided they who consume it are as dependent upon him as either his
retainers or his menial servants. He is thereby saved from the embarrassment
of either too large a company or too large a family. A tenant at will, who
possesses land sufficient to maintain his family for little more than a quit-rent,
is as dependent upon the proprietor as any servant or retainer whatever and
must obey him with as little reserve. Such a proprietor, as he feeds his
servants and retainers at his own house, so he feeds his tenants at their
houses. The subsistence of both is derived from his bounty, and its continuance
depends upon his good pleasure.
Upon the authority which the great proprietor necessarily had in such a
state of things over their tenants and retainers was founded the power of
the ancient barons. They necessarily became the judges in peace, and the
leaders in war, of all who dwelt upon their estates. They could maintain
order and execute the law within their respective demesnes, because each
of them could there turn the whole force of all the inhabitants against the
injustice of any one. No other persons had sufficient authority to do this.
The king in particular had not. In those ancient times he was little more
than the greatest proprietor in his dominions, to whom, for the sake of common
defence against their common enemies, the other great proprietors paid certain
respects. To have enforced payment of a small debt within the lands of a
great proprietor, where all the inhabitants were armed and accustomed to
stand by one another, would have cost the king, had he attempted it by his
own authority, almost the same effort as to extinguish a civil war. He was,
therefore, obliged to abandon the administration of justice through the greater
part of the country to those who were capable of administering it; and for
the same reason to leave the command of the country militia to those whom
that militia would obey.
It is a mistake to imagine that those territorial jurisdictions took their
origin from the feudal law. Not only the highest jurisdictions both civil
and criminal, but the power of levying troops, of coining money, and even
that of making bye-laws for the government of their own people, were all
rights possessed allodially by the great proprietors of land several centuries
before even the name of the feudal law was known in Europe. The authority
and jurisdiction of the Saxon lords in England appear to have been as great
before the Conquest as that of any of the Norman lords after it. But the
feudal law is not supposed to have become the common law of England till
after the Conquest. That the most extensive authority and jurisdictions were
possessed by the great lords in France allodially long before the feudal
law was introduced into that country is a matter of fact that admits of no
doubt. That authority and those jurisdictions all necessarily flowed from
the state of property and manners just now described. Without remounting
to the remote antiquities of either the French or English monarchies, we
may find in much later times many proofs that such effects must always flow
from such causes. It is not thirty years ago since Mr. Cameron of Lochiel,
a gentleman of Lochabar in Scotland, without any legal warrant whatever,
not being what was then called a lord of regality, nor even a tenant in chief,
but a vassal of the Duke of Argyle, and without being so much as a justice
of peace, used, notwithstanding, to exercise the highest criminal jurisdiction
over his own people. He is said to have done so with great equity, though
without any of the formalities of justice; and it is not improbable that
the state of that part of the country at that time made it necessary for
him to assume this authority in order to maintain the public peace. That
gentleman, whose rent never exceeded five hundred pounds a year, carried,
in 1745, eight hundred of his own people into the rebellion with him.
The introduction of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be regarded
as an attempt to moderate the authority of the great allodial lords. It established
a regular subordination, accompanied with a long train of services and duties,
from the king down to the smallest proprietor. During the minority of the
proprietor, the rent, together with the management of his lands, fell into
the hands of his immediate superior, and, consequently, those of all great
proprietors into the hands of the king, who was charged with the maintenance
and education of the pupil, and who, from his authority as guardian, was
supposed to have a right of disposing of him in marriage, provided it was
in a manner not unsuitable to his rank. But though this institution necessarily
tended to strengthen the authority of the king, and to weaken that of the
great proprietors, it could not do either sufficiently for establishing order
and good government among the inhabitants of the country, because it could
not alter sufficiently that state of property and manners from which the
disorders arose. The authority of government still continued to be, as before,
too weak in the head and too strong in the inferior members, and the excessive
strength of the inferior members was the cause of the weakness of the head.
After the institution of feudal subordination, the king was as incapable
of restraining the violence of the great lords as before. They still continued
to make war according to their own discretion, almost continually upon one
another, and very frequently upon the king; and the open country still continued
to be a scene of violence, rapine, and disorder.
But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected,
the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures
gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the great proprietors
with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of
their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either
with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves and nothing for other people,
seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters
of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming
the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share
them with any other persons. For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for
something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what
is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year,
and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them. The
buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was
to have any share of them; whereas in the more ancient method of expense
they must have shared with at least a thousand people. With the judges that
were to determine the preference this difference was perfectly decisive;
and thus, for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest, and the
most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and
authority.
In a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures,
a man of ten thousand a year cannot well employ his revenue in any other
way than in maintaining, perhaps, a thousand families, who are all of them
necessarily at his command. In the present state of Europe, a man of ten
thousand a year can spend his whole revenue, and he generally does so, without
directly maintaining twenty people, or being able to command more than ten
footmen not worth the commanding. Indirectly, perhaps, he maintains as great
or even a greater number of people than he could have done by the ancient
method of expense. For though the quantity of precious productions for which
he exchanges his whole revenue be very small, the number of workmen employed
in collecting and preparing it must necessarily have been very great. Its
great price generally arises from the wages of their labour, and the profits
of all their immediate employers. By paying that price he indirectly pays
all those wages and profits and thus indirectly contributes to the maintenance
of all the workmen and their employers. He generally contributes, however,
but a very small proportion to that of each, to very few perhaps a tenth,
to many not a hundredth, and to some not a thousandth, nor even a ten-thousandth
part of their whole annual maintenance. Though he contributes, therefore,
to the maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of
him, because generally they can all be maintained without him.
When the great proprietors of land spend their rents in maintaining their
tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely all his own tenants
and all his own retainers. But when they spend them in maintaining tradesmen
and artificers, they may, all of them taken together, perhaps, maintain as
great, or, on account of the waste which attends rustic hospitality, a greater
number of people than before. Each of them, however, taken singly, contributes
often but a very small share to the maintenance of any individual of this
greater number. Each tradesman or artificer derives his subsistence from
the employment, not of one, but of a hundred or a thousand different customers.
Though in some measure obliged to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely
dependent upon any one of them.
The personal expense of the great proprietors having in this manner gradually
increased, it was impossible that the number of their retainers should not
as gradually diminish till they were at last dismissed altogether. The same
cause gradually led them to dismiss the unnecessary part of their tenants.
Farms were enlarged, and the occupiers of land, notwithstanding the complaints
of depopulation, reduced to the number necessary for cultivating it, according
to the imperfect state of cultivation and improvement in those times. By
the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the
full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the
price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which the merchants
and manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of spending upon his own
person in the same manner as he had done the rest. The same cause continuing
to operate, he was desirous to raise his rents above what his lands, in the
actual state of their improvement, could afford. His tenants could agree
to this upon one condition only, that they should be secured in their possession
for such a term of years as might give them time to recover with profit whatever
they should lay out in the further improvement of the land. The expensive
vanity of the landlord made him willing to accept of this condition; and
hence the origin of long leases.
Even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not altogether
dependent upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages which they receive
from one another are mutual and equal, and such a tenant will expose neither
his life nor his fortune in the service of the proprietor. But if he has
a lease for a long term of years, he is altogether independent; and his landlord
must not expect from him the most trifling service beyond what is either
expressly stipulated in the lease or imposed upon him by the common and known
law of the country.
The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers
being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting
the regular execution of justice or of disturbing the peace of the country.
Having sold their birthright, not like Esau for a mess of pottage in time
of hunger and necessity, but in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and
baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits
of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman
in a city. A regular government was established in the country as well as
in the city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb its operations in
the one any more than in the other.
It does not, perhaps, relate to the present subject, but I cannot help remarking
it, that very old families, such as have possessed some considerable estate
from father to son for many successive generations are very rare in commercial
countries. In countries which have little commerce, on the contrary, such
as Wales or the highlands of Scotland, they are very common. The Arabian
histories seem to be all full of genealogies, and there is a history written
by a Tartar Khan, which has been translated into several European languages,
and which contains scarce anything else; a proof that ancient families are
very common among those nations. In countries where a rich man can spend
his revenue in no other way than by maintaining as many people as it can
maintain, he is not apt to run out, and his benevolence it seems is seldom
so violent as to attempt to maintain more than he can afford. But where he
can spend the greatest revenue upon his own person, he frequently has no
bounds to his expense, because he frequently has no bounds to his vanity
or to his affection for his own person. In commercial countries, therefore,
riches, in spite of the most violent regulations of law to prevent their
dissipation, very seldom remain long in the same family. Among simple nations,
on the contrary, they frequently do without any regulations of law, for among
nations of shepherds, such as the Tartars and Arabs, the consumable nature
of their property necessarily renders all such regulations impossible.
A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness was in this
manner brought about by two different orders of people who had not the least
intention to serve the public. To gratify the most childish vanity was the
sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and artificers, much
less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in pursuit
of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to
be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of that great revolution
which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was gradually
bringing about.
It is thus that through the greater part of Europe the commerce and manufactures
of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion
of the improvement and cultivation of the country.
This order, however, being contrary to the natural course of things, is
necessarily both slow and uncertain. Compare the slow progress of those European
countries of which the wealth depends very much upon their commerce and manufactures
with the rapid advances of our North American colonies, of which the wealth
is founded altogether in agriculture. Through the greater part of Europe
the number of inhabitants is not supposed to double in less than five hundred
years. In several of our North American colonies, it is found to double in
twenty or five-and-twenty years. In Europe, the law of primogeniture and
perpetuities of different kinds prevent the division of great estates, and
thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. A small proprietor,
however, who knows every part of his little territory, who views it with
all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires,
and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating but in adorning
it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent,
and the most successful. The same regulations, besides, keep so much land
out of the market that there are always more capitals to buy than there is
land to sell, so that what is sold always sells at a monopoly price. The
rent never pays the interest of the purchase-money, and is, besides, burdened
with repairs and other occasional charges to which the interest of money
is not liable. To purchase land is everywhere in Europe a most unprofitable
employment of a small capital. For the sake of the superior security, indeed,
a man of moderate circumstances, when he retires from business, will sometimes
choose to lay out his little capital in land. A man of profession too, whose
revenue is derived from. another source, often loves to secure his savings
in the same way. But a young man, who, instead of applying to trade or to
some profession, should employ a capital of two or three thousand pounds
in the purchase and cultivation of a small piece of land, might indeed expect
to live very happily, and very independently, but must bid adieu forever
to all hope of either great fortune or great illustration, which by a different
employment of his stock he might have had the same chance of acquiring with
other people. Such a person too, though he cannot aspire at being a proprietor,
will often disdain to be a farmer. The small quantity of land, therefore,
which is brought to market, and the high price of what is brought thither,
prevents a great number of capitals from being employed in its cultivation
and improvement which would otherwise have taken that direction. In North
America, on the contrary, fifty or sixty pounds is often found a sufficient
stock to begin a plantation with. The purchase and improvement of uncultivated
land is there the most profitable employment of the smallest as well as of
the greatest capitals, and the most direct road to all the fortune and illustration
which can be acquired in that country. Such land, indeed, is in North America
to be had almost for nothing, or at a price much below the value of the natural
produce- a thing impossible in Europe, or, indeed, in any country where all
lands have long been private property. If landed estates, however, were divided
equally among all the children upon the death of any proprietor who left
a numerous family, the estate would generally be sold. So much land would
come to market that it could no longer sell at a monopoly price. The free
rent of the land would go nearer to pay the interest of the purchase-money,
and a small capital might be employed in purchasing land as profitably as
in any other way.
England, on account of the natural fertility of the soil, of the great extent
of the sea-coast in proportion to that of the whole country, and of the many
navigable rivers which run through it and afford the conveniency of water
carriage to some of the most inland parts of it, is perhaps as well fitted
by nature as any large country in Europe to be the seat of foreign commerce,
of manufactures for distant sale, and of all the improvements which these
can occasion. From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth too, the English
legislature has been peculiarly attentive to the interests of commerce and
manufactures, and in reality there is no country in Europe, Holland itself
not excepted, of which the law is, upon the whole, more favourable to this
sort of industry. Commerce and manufactures have accordingly been continually
advancing during all this period. The cultivation and improvement of the
country has, no doubt, been gradually advancing too; but it seems to have
followed slowly, and at a distance, the more rapid progress of commerce and
manufactures. The greater part of the country must probably have been cultivated
before the reign of Elizabeth; and a very great part of it still remains
uncultivated, and the cultivation of the far greater part much inferior to
what it might be. The law of England, however, favours agriculture not only
indirectly by the protection of commerce, but by several direct encouragements.
Except in times of scarcity, the exportation of corn is not only free, but
encouraged by a bounty. In times of moderate plenty, the importation of foreign
corn is loaded with duties that amount to a prohibition. The importation
of live cattle, except from Ireland, is prohibited at all times, and it is
but of late that it was permitted from thence. Those who cultivate the land,
therefore, have a monopoly against their countrymen for the two greatest
and most important articles of land produce, bread and butcher's meat. These
encouragements, though at bottom, perhaps, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter,
altogether illusory, sufficiently demonstrate at least the good intention
of the legislature to favour agriculture. But what is of much more importance
than all of them, the yeomanry of England are rendered as secure, as independent,
and as respectable as law can make them. No country, therefore, in which
the right of primogeniture takes place, which pays tithes, and where perpetuities,
though contrary to the spirit of the law, are admitted in some cases, can
give more encouragement to agriculture than England. Such, however, notwithstanding,
is the state of its cultivation. What would it have been had the law given
no direct encouragement to agriculture besides what arises indirectly from
the progress of commerce, and had left the yeomanry in the same condition
as in most other countries of Europe? It is now more than two hundred years
since the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, a period as long as the course
of human prosperity usually endures.
France seems to have had a considerable share of foreign commerce near a
century before England was distinguished as a commercial country. The marine
of France was considerable, according to the notions of the times, before
the expedition of Charles VIII to Naples. The cultivation and improvement
of France, however, is, upon the whole, inferior to that of England. The
law of the country has never given the same direct encouragement to agriculture.
The foreign commerce of Spain and Portugal to the other parts of Europe,
though chiefly carried on in foreign ships, is very considerable. That to
their colonies is carried on in their own, and is much greater, on account
of the great riches and extent of those colonies. But it has never introduced
any considerable manufactures for distant sale into either of those countries,
and the greater part of both still remains uncultivated. The foreign commerce
of Portugal is of older standing than that of any great country in Europe,
except Italy.
Italy is the only great country of Europe which seems to have been cultivated
and improved in every part by means of foreign commerce and manufactures
for distant sale. Before the invasion of Charles VIII, Italy according to
Guicciardin, was cultivated not less in the most mountainous and barren parts
of the country than in the plainest and most fertile. The advantageous situation
of the country, and the great number of independent states which at that
time subsisted in it, probably contributed not a little to this general cultivation.
It is not impossible too, notwithstanding this general expression of one
of the most judicious and reserved of modern historians, that Italy was not
at that time better cultivated than England is at present.
The capital, however, that is acquired to any country by commerce and manufactures
is all a very precarious and uncertain possession till some part of it has
been secured and realized in the cultivation and improvement of its lands.
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen
of any particular country. It is in a great measure indifferent to him from
what place he carries on his trade; and a very trifling disgust will make
him remove his capital, and together with it all the industry which it supports,
from one country to another. No part of it can be said to belong to any particular
country, till it has been spread as it were over the face of that country,
either in buildings or in the lasting improvement of lands. No vestige now
remains of the great wealth said to have been possessed by the greater part
of the Hans towns except in the obscure histories of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. It is even uncertain where some of them were situated or to what
towns in Europe the Latin names given to some of them belong. But though
the misfortunes of Italy in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the
sixteenth centuries greatly diminished the commerce and manufactures of the
cities of Lombardy and Tuscany, those countries still continue to be among
the most populous and best cultivated in Europe. The civil wars of Flanders,
and the Spanish government which succeeded them, chased away the great commerce
of Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges. But Flanders still continues to be one of
the richest, best cultivated, and most populous provinces of Europe. The
ordinary revolutions of war and government easily dry up the sources of that
wealth which arises from commerce only. That which arises from the more solid
improvements of agriculture is much more durable and cannot be destroyed
but by those more violent convulsions occasioned by the depredations of hostile
and barbarous nations continued for a century or two together, such as those
that happened for some time before and after the fall of the Roman empire
in the western provinces of Europe.
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