Visionary anticipations of Xenophon, financial and commercial.
But we must of course discuss Xenophon’s scheme as a whole: the aggregate enlargement of revenue, from his various visionary new ways and means, on one side — against the new mode and increased amount of expenditure, on the other side. He would not have proposed such an expenditure, if he had not thoroughly believed in the correctness of his own anticipations, both as to the profits of the mining scheme, and as to the increase of receipts from other sources: such as the multiplication of tax-paying Metics, the rent paid by them for the new houses to be built by the city, the increase of the harbour dues from expanded foreign trade. But of these anticipations, even the least unpromising are vague and uncertain: while the prospects of the mining scheme appear thoroughly chimerical. Nothing is clear or certain except the disbursement. We scarcely understand how Xenophon could seriously have imagined, either that voluntary contributors could have been found to subscribe the aggregate fund as he proposes — or that, if subscribed, it could have yielded the prodigious return upon which he reckons. We must, however, recollect that he had no familiarity with finance, or with the conditions and liabilities of commerce, or with the raising of money from voluntary contributors for any collective purpose. He would not have indulged in similar fancies if the question had been about getting together supplies for an army. Practical Athenian financiers would probably say, in criticising his financial project — what Heraldus[106] observes upon some views of his opponent Salmasius, about the relations of capital and interest in Attica — “Somnium est hominis harum rerum, etiam cum vigilat, nihil scientis”.[107] The financial management of Athens was doubtless defective in many ways: but it would not have been improved in the hands of Xenophon — any more than the administrative and judiciary department of Athens would have become better under the severe regimen of Plato.[108] The merits of the Sokratic companions — and great merits they were — lay in the region of instructive theory.
[106] This passage of Heraldus is cited by M. Boeckh in his Public Economy of Athens, B. iv. ch. 21, p. 606, Eng. Trans. In that chapter of M. Boeckh’s work (pp. 600-610) some very instructive pages will be found about the Xenophontic scheme here noticed.
I will however mention one or two points on which my understanding of the scheme differs from his. He says (p. 605):—“The author supposes that the profit upon this speculation would amount to three oboli per day, so that the subscribers would obtain a very high per centage on their shares. Xenophon supposes unequal contributions, according to the different amounts of property, agreeable to the principles of a property-tax, but an equal distribution of the receipts for the purpose of favouring and aiding the poor. What Xenophon is speaking of is an income annually arising upon each share, either equal to or exceeding the interest of the loans on bottomry. Where, however, is the security that the undertaking would produce three oboli a day to each subscriber?”
I concur in most of what is here said; but M. Boeckh states the matter too much as if the three oboli per diem were a real return arising from the scheme, and payable to each shareholder upon each share as he calls it. This is an accident of the case, not the essential feature. The poorest citizens — for whose benefit, more than for any other object, the scheme is contrived — would not be shareholders at all: they would be too poor to contribute anything, yet each of them would receive his triobolon like the rest. Moreover, many citizens, even though able to pay, might hold back, and decline to pay: yet still each would receive as much. And again, the foreigners, kings, satraps, &c., would be contributors, but would receive nothing at all. The distribution of the triobolon would be made to citizens only. Xenophon does indeed state the proportion of receipt to payments in the cases of some rich contributors, as an auxiliary motive to conciliate them. But we ought not to treat this receipt as if it were a real return yielded by the public mining speculation, or as profit actually brought in.
As I conceive the scheme, the daily triobolon, and the respective contributions furnished, have no premeditated ratio, no essential connection with each other. The daily payment of the triobolon to every citizen indiscriminately, is a new and heavy burden which Xenophon imposes upon the city. But this is only one among many other burdens, as we may see by cap. 6. In order to augment the wealth of the city, so as to defray these large expenses, he proposes several new financial measures. Of these the most considerable was the public mining speculation; but it did not stand alone. The financial scheme of Xenophon, both as to receipts and as to expenditure, is more general than M. Boeckh allows for.
[107] It is truly surprising to read in one of Hume’s Essays the following sentence. Essay XII. on Civil Liberty, p. 107 ed. of Hume’s Philosophical Works, 1825.
“The Athenians, though governed by a Republic, paid near two hundred per cent for those sums of money which any emergence made it necessary for them to borrow, as we learn from Xenophon.”
In the note Hume quotes the following passage from this discourse, De Vectigalibus:—Κτῆσιν δὲ ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἂν οὕτω καλὴν κτήσαιντο, ὥσπερ ἀφ’ οὖ ἂν προτελέσωσιν εἰς τὴν ἀφορμήν. Οἱ δέ γε πλεῖστοι Ἀθηναίων πλείονα λήψονται κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἢ ὅσα ἂν εἰσενέγκωσιν. Οἱ γὰρ μνᾶν προτελέσαντες, ἐγγὺς δυοῖν μνᾷν πρόσοδον ἔξουσι. Ὃ δοκεῖ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἀσφαλέστατόν τε καὶ πολυχρονιώτατον εἶναι.
Hume has been misled by dwelling upon one or two separate sentences. If he had taken into consideration the whole discourse and its declared scope, he would have seen that it affords no warrant for any inference as to the rate of interest paid by the Athenian public when they wanted to borrow. In Xenophon’s scheme there is no fixed proportion between what a contributor to the fund would pay and what he would receive. The triobolon received is a fixed sum to each citizen, whereas the contributions of each would be different. Moreover the foreigners and metics would contribute without receiving anything, while the poor citizens would receive their triobolon per head, without having contributed anything.