THE PROMPTER.—No. X.
It will do for the present.
Custom, with an iron rod, rules four-fifths of mankind. My father planted corn on a certain piece of land—it answered well—I do the same, though it does not answer well. My neighbour such a one tells me that I had better try a change of crops, deep ploughing, or sowing turnips or clover; it may be the land will recruit; but my neighbour is notional, and fond of new things. I do not like projects. My father did so before me, and it does for the present.
So says the Virginia planter; he has raised tobacco on a field, until the soil is exhausted; he knows not how to fertilize the land again; his only resource is to clear a new spot, and take the benefit of nature's manure. This does for the present. But when his land is all impoverished, what will he do? Go to Kentucky; as the New England men to Genesec. But when the western world is all peopled, what will our do for the present folks do for good land? The answer is easy; necessity will compel them to use common sense; and common sense will soon make old poor land rich again. When farmers learn to work it right, they will keep it good, for the Prompter ventures to assert, that a proper tillage will for ever keep land good. How does nature work it? Why nature covers land with herbage; that herbage withers and rots upon the land; and gradually forms a rich black mould. But farmers, when they have used land till it will bear no crops, let it lie without feeding it. No herbage grows on the land, till the weeds and a little grass creep in by chance; after three or four years, the farmer ploughs it for a crop, and has a job at killing weeds. Surely the man does not work it right; but he says, it will do for the present.
But no body is so apt to put off things with, it will do for the present, as corporate bodies. If the navigation of a river wants improvement, the public body, that is, any body, every body, and no body, immediately exclaims, "how did our fathers get along? The river did well enough for them—it must do for the present." If a bad law exists, by which the public money is to be collected in the worst manner that can be imagined; or if a constitution is defective, in permitting the same men to be makers and judges of a law; or the same men to rejudge a cause in a higher court, which they have before judged in a lower court; or which makes a legislature of two hundred men, a supreme court, to review the decisions of all inferior courts, and reverse their judgments; or if a constitution has no executive at all, and a judiciary power dependent on the annual votes of two hundred men, which is little better than none; I say, if a man proposes any reformation in those particulars, the public body says, away with your projects; let us go on in the good old way; it will do for the present. So in little public bodies, a town or a city, the poor must be provided for, bridges must be built, roads must be repaired—How? By a tax, or by labour. Is it best to raise money enough this year to pay the town debt? No, says the town. We will raise almost enough; this will do for the present. Let a little debt accrue every year, till the whole will make a shilling tax, and pay the whole at once. Put off, put off, says the town. And so says the sinner.
A bridge must be built. Is it best to build a good one; of stone, or some materials that will last? No, it will cost more, says the town; a wooden bridge will do for the present. The water may carry it away; it will decay, and somebody may break his neck by the fall; but no matter, it must do for the present.