The number of professional men in a State should be as few as possible; for they do not increase the property of the State, but liv on the property acquired by others.
There is little danger that the number of clergymen will be too great. In a few instances, religious parties may have multiplied their teachers to too great a number, and perhaps in some parts of the country, a few more ministers of the gospel would be very useful.
Physicians will multiply in proportion to the luxuries and idleness of men. They cannot be limited by law, for people will be as intemperate and as lazy as they please.
But an artful Legislature will take away some of the causes of litigation, and thus curtail the number of lawyers. We may always determin the degree of corruption, in commercial habits, by the number of civil suits in the courts of law. The multiplication of lawyers is a proof of private embarrassments in any State; it is a convincing proof that in America these embarrassments are numberless. The evil is of such magnitude in some States, as to suspend the operation of law, and in all it produces distrust among men, renders property unsafe, and perplexes our mutual intercourse. In this situation, with popular governments, and an unbounded rage for magnificent living, perhaps the only effectual remedy for a multitude of public evils, is the restraining of credit. It might even be useful to destroy all credit on the security of law, except debts of certain descriptions, where mortgages might be given. This would not check business, but it would oblige people to exercise a principle of honor, and to have recourse to industry, and ready payment for articles which their necessities or their fancies require. We should then be better able to determin, whether bucks and bloods, in high life, "who roll the thundering chariot o'er the ground," are sporting with their own property, or that of honest creditors.
I cannot close these remarks without observing how much this country owes to particular classes of people for the practice of the commercial virtues. To the Friends, the Germans and the Dutch, this country is indebted for that industry and provident economy, which enables them to subsist without anxiety, and to be honest and punctual, without embarrassment.
Happy would it be for this country, if these virtues were more generally practised. Paper money and foreign credit are mere temporary expedients to keep up the appearance of wealth and splendor; but they are miserable substitutes for solid property. The only way to become rich at home and respectable abroad, is to become industrious, and to throw off our slavish dependence on foreign manners, which obliges us to sacrifice our opinions, our taste, and our interest, to the policy and aggrandizement of other nations.
No. VIII.
ON PAPER MONEY.
[Published at Baltimore, August 9, 1785.]