PREFACE
BY THE
EDITOR.
It is not a treatise that the Author announces; it is nothing more than Thoughts on the Mechanism of Societies. Such a title does not confine a Writer to a regular plan; it saves him even the risk of preparing his Readers for a chain of ideas which cannot escape their sagacity if it exist, and on which they cannot be deceived if it do not. But in a picture consecrated to the world at large as well as to his own Country, to the People as well as to their Rulers, it was necessary that the most striking object, the object to which their first attention was called, should be of so general an interest, as to entice them progressively to an investigation of all those details which deserve most to be scrutinised, and of which the different relations are either little known, or greatly mistaken.
The object which at present fixes the attention of all the States in Europe, (all of them either debtors or creditors), is the National Debt of England, and the measures which will be taken on that subject by the Assembly the most clear-sighted of any in the world to every thing that concerns the interests of the people, the most jealous of its rights, and the most free, at least in its debates. It is by considering that formidable debt, and its influence on the wealth of the State and the ease of the People, that the Author dares to begin. But before he proceeds to unfold the mechanism of the national debt, the result of which developement presents some ideas too opposite to the received opinion, he endeavours by degrees to familiarise his Readers with his own, by some general reflexions on the present situation of England: these reflexions leave him no room to doubt, that England was in 1779, notwithstanding the national debt, richer than she was at the beginning of this century;—richer, either in a fourfold, or in a double proportion, as the Reader is disposed to adopt the one or the other rate of population: whence it appears that the Author, in respect to his plan, does not affix any importance to the difference of opinions on this article.
A more particular view of the subject furnishes him with fresh reasons, which seem to him sufficient to quiet the mind of the most suspicious creditor. It is, indeed, only by means of the savings made, or daily to be made, upon eight pence (the exact proportion each individual is entitled to in the general revenue), that it has been possible to reach the summit of opulence, and that it is possible to be fixed there: but the Author seeks for such savings in agriculture and industry, as cannot be misunderstood; he observes that the savings made in agriculture, have proved sufficient, in the course of a century, not only to discharge all the public burdens, but even to double the landed revenue; and he then enters into a detail of several objects, (all easy to be ascertained,) which seem to demonstrate a similar progress in industry.
Here our Author, beginning to feel himself on ground sufficiently firm, confesses that he sees nothing in the present situation of England, tending to justify the idea of a national bankruptcy, although the public news-papers often hint at the convenience of such a measure. The author even so far forgets himself, as to examine seriously, whether it would be profitable or unprofitable to effect the so much recommended reimbursement, even on the supposition that the 238 millions which have been borrowed, and have disappeared, could find their way back to the Exchequer.
After having presented the question under several points of view, our Author hesitates not to declare for the negative, and then endeavours to prove that a previous thesaurisation which might have enabled the nation to go through the last war without laying any additional tax, would have done more harm than the new taxes can possibly have done.
The Author, become bolder because he meets with no contradiction when he is alone, (and indeed he is alone very often) undertakes to reconcile mankind to the taxes by means of a first decomposition of the impost; he gives up, it is true, one part of it as burdensome, (it is truly to be lamented that this part cannot be dispensed with; luckily it is the least); but he contends boldly for the other part, as a very precious resource for that portion of the people which best deserves to engage the cares of Government.