Was impartial reason to be judge between real good and real evil, and a catalogue made accordingly, of the several delights and vexations differently to be met with in both stations; I question whether the condition of kings would be at all preferable to that of peasants, even as ignorant and laborious as I seem to require the latter to be. The reason why the generality of people would rather be kings than peasants, is first owing to pride and ambition, that is deeply riveted in human nature, and which to gratify, we daily see men undergo and despise the greatest hazards and difficulties. Secondly, to the difference there is in the force with which our affection is wrought upon, as the objects are either material or spiritual. Things that immediately strike our outward senses, act more violently upon our passions than what is the result of thought, and the dictates of the most demonstrative reason; and there is a much stronger bias to gain our liking or aversion in the first, than there is in the latter.
Having thus demonstrated that what I urge could be no injury, or the least diminution of happiness to the poor, I leave it to the judicious reader, whether it is not more probable we should increase our exports by the methods I hint at, than by sitting still and damning and sinking our neighbours, for beating us at our own weapons; some of them out-selling us in manufactures made of our own product, which they dearly purchased, others growing rich in spite of distance and trouble, by the same fish which we neglect, though it is ready to jump into our mouths.
As by discouraging idleness with art and steadiness, you may compel the poor to labour without force; so, by bringing them up in ignorance, you may inure them to real hardships, without being ever sensible themselves that they are such. By bringing them up in ignorance, I mean no more, as I have hinted long ago, than that, as to worldly affairs, their knowledge should be confined within the verge of their own occupations, at least that we should not take pains to extend it beyond those limits. When by these two engines we shall have made provisions, and consequently labour cheap, we must infallibly outsell our neighbours; and at the same time increase our numbers. This is the noble and manly way of encountering the rivals of our trade, and by dint of merit outdoing them at foreign markets.
To allure the poor, we make use of policy in some cases with success. Why should we be neglectful of it in the most important point, when they make their boast that they will not live as the poor of other nations? If we cannot alter their resolution, why should we applaud the justness of their sentiments against the common interest? I have often wondered formerly how an Englishman that pretended to have the honour and glory, as well as the welfare of his country at heart, could take delight in the evening to hear an idle tenant that owed him above a year’s rent, ridicule the French for wearing wooden shoes, when in the morning he had had the mortification of hearing the great King William, that ambitious monarch, as well as able statesman, openly own to the world, and with grief and anger in his looks, complain of the exorbitant power of France. Yet I do not recommend wooden shoes, nor do the maxims I would introduce require arbitrary power in one person. Liberty and property I hope may remain secured, and yet the poor be better employed than they are, though their children should wear out their clothes by useful labour, and blacken them with country dirt for something, instead of tearing them off their backs at play, and daubing them with ink for nothing.
There is above three or four hundred years work, for a hundred thousand poor more than we have in this island. To make every part of it useful, and the whole thoroughly inhabited, many rivers are to be made navigable; canals to be cut in hundreds of places. Some lands are to be drained and secured from inundations for the future: abundance of barren soil is to be made fertile, and thousands of acres rendered more beneficial, by being made more accessible. Dii laboribus omnia vendunt. There is no difficulty of this nature, that labour and patience cannot surmount. The highest mountains may be thrown into their valleys that stand ready to receive them; and bridges might be laid where now we would not dare to think of it. Let us look back on the stupendous works of the Romans, more especially their highways and aqueducts. Let us consider in one view the vast extent of several of their roads, how substantial they made them, and what duration they have been of; and in another a poor traveller that at every ten miles end is stopped by a turnpike, and dunned for a penny for mending the roads in the summer, with what every body knows will be dirt before the winter that succeeds is expired.
The conveniency of the public ought ever to be the public care, and no private interest of a town, or a whole country, should ever hinder the execution of a project or contrivance that would manifestly tend to the improvement of the whole; and every member of the legislature, who knows his duty. and would choose rather to act like a wise man, than curry favour with his neighbours, will prefer the least benefit accruing to the whole kingdom, to the most visible advantage of the place he serves for.
We have materials of our own, and want neither stone nor timber to do any thing; and was the money that people give uncompelled to beggars, who do not deserve it, and what every housekeeper is obliged to pay to the poor of his parish, that is other wise employed or ill-applied, to be put together every year, it would make a sufficient fund to keep a great many thousands at work. I do not say this because I think it practicable, but only to show that we have money enough to spare, to employ vast multitudes of labourers; neither should we want so much for it as we perhaps might imagine. When it is taken for granted, that a soldier, whose strength and vigour is to be kept up at least as much as any body’s, can live upon sixpence a-day, I cannot conceive the necessity of giving the greatest part of the year, sixteen and eighteen pence to a day-labourer.
The fearful and cautious people, that are ever jealous of their liberty, I know will cry out, that where the multitudes I speak of should be kept in constant pay, property and privileges would be precarious. But they might be answered, that sure means might be found out, and such regulations made, as to the hands in which to trust the management and direction of these labourers, that it would be impossible for the prince, or any body else, to make an ill use of their numbers.
What I have said in the four or five last paragraphs, I foresee, will, with abundance of scorn, be laughed at by many of my readers, and at best be called building castles in the air; but whether that is my fault or theirs is a question. When the public spirit has left a nation, they not only lose their patience with it, and all thoughts of perseverance, but become likewise so narrow-souled, that it is a pain for them even to think of things that are of uncommon extent, or require great length of time; and whatever is noble or sublime in such conjectures, is counted chimerical. Where deep ignorance is entirely routed and expelled, and low learning promiscuously scattered on all the people, self-love turns knowledge into cunning; and the more this last qualification prevails in any country, the more the people will fix all their cares, concern, and application, on the time present, without regard of what is to come after them, or hardly ever thinking beyond the next generation.
But as cunning, according to my Lord Verulam, is but left-handed wisdom; so a prudent legislator ought to provide against this disorder of the society, as soon as the symptoms of it appear, among which the following are the most obvious. Imaginary rewards are generally despised; every body is for turning the penny, and short bargains; he that is diffident of every thing and believes nothing but what he sees with his own eyes, is counted the most prudent; and in all their dealings, men seem to act from no other principle than that of the devil take the hindmost. Instead of planting oaks, that will require a hundred and fifty years before they are fit to be cut down, they build houses with a design that they shall not stand above twelve or fourteen years. All heads run upon the uncertainty of things, and the vicissitudes of human affairs. The mathematics become the only valuable study, and are made use of in every thing, even where it is ridiculous, and men seem to repose no greater trust in Providence than they would in a broken merchant.