CHAPTER II
WEALTH
Comparative Wealth of England and France.
The Revenue.
England and France are the richest countries in Europe, and, of the two, England is generally believed to be the richer. I believe the same, and yet am unable to give evidence of an entirely satisfactory character. Considering each country as a vast estate, composed of land and house property, we meet with our first difficulty in the uncertainty of the estimates. The French Government is at the present time (1888) employing its agents in a new and elaborate valuation. External trade is not a certain guide, as the two populations are differently situated, the French living much more on home produce than the English. The revenue is sometimes taken as an indication of national wealth, and it is so no doubt when nations are extremely unequal; for example, the vast difference between the revenues of France and of Greece is good evidence that France is the wealthier of the two countries. When, however, we make a financial comparison between two states as nearly equal as France and England, the revenue ceases to be a criterion. It is true that the French people pay more money into the national treasury than the English; but they may be doing it only to their own impoverishment. What we call “revenue” is not like a private income, it is a burden or a charge, proving only the power to bear the burden, and such a power may be but temporary. It is only the most foolish Frenchmen who are proud of the enormous taxation that afflicts the Republic as a consequence of monarchical errors and of its own.
Newness of Everything in France and England.
Industrial Plant.
War-ships.
Exhibitions.
The wealth, both of England and France, has been vastly increased by the prodigious creation of new things which has taken place in the present century. They are both of them very old countries, yet almost everything in them is new. A man of sixty, travelling about, is constantly seeing and using things that did not exist when he was born. The railways he travels upon, the hotels where he stays, the great industrial buildings, the shipping, are of his own time. The towns are either recent or in great part reconstructed. The industrial activity of the present age is so enormous that in the course of a single generation it has done more in public and private works than all the previous generations had left behind them. Then there is the industrial plant; both nations have increased their producing powers by multiplying tools of all kinds, from colossal steam-engines down to sewing-machines. England took the lead in this direction, but France has followed. In some things France has been the leader, notably in the construction of warships with defensive armour, and in the manufacture of breech-loading cannon. England set the example of huge industrial exhibitions, and here again, as in railways, France has been a successful imitator.
Excess of the Producing Power.