Besides providing this daily pension of three pence three farthings a day for every citizen of Athens, rich and poor, he proposed to build, at the public charge, many trading vessels, a great many inns and houses of entertainment for all strangers in the sea ports, to erect shops, warehouses, exchanges, &c. the rents of which would increase the revenue, and add great beauty and magnificence to the city. In short, Xenophon recommends to the state to perform, by the hands of their slaves and strangers, what a free people in our days are constantly employed in doing in every country of industry. While the Athenian citizens continued to receive their daily pensions, proportioned to the value of their pure physical-necessary, their business being confined to their service in the army in time of war, their attendance in public assemblies, and the theatres in times of peace, clothed like a parcel of capucins, they, as became freemen, were taught to despise industrious labour, and to glory in the austerity and simplicity of their manners. The pomp and magnificence of the Persian Emperors were a subject of ridicule in Greece, and a proof of their barbarity, and of the slavery of their subjects. From this plain representation of Xenophon’s plan, I hope, the characteristic difference between antient and modern oeconomy is manifest; and for such readers as take a particular delight in comparing the systems of simplicity and luxury, I recommend the perusal of this most valuable discourse.
Combining, therefore, all these circumstances, and comparing them with the contrast which is found as to every particular, in our times, I think it is but doing justice to the moderns, to allow, that the extensive luxury which daily diffuses itself through every class of a people, is more owing to the abolishing of slavery, the equal distribution of riches, and the circulation of an adequate equivalent for every service, than to any greater corruption of our manners, than what prevailed among the antients.
In order to have industry directed towards the object of public utility, the public, not individuals, must have the equivalent to give. Must not the employment be adapted to the taste of him who purchases it? Now, in antient times, most public works were performed either by slaves, or at the price of the pure physical-necessary of free men. We find the price of a pyramid, recorded to us by Herodotus, in the quantity of turnips, onions, and garlic, consumed by the builders of it. Those who made the via appia, I apprehend, were just as poor when it was finished as the day it was begun; and this must always be the case, when the work requires no peculiar dexterity in the workmen. If, on the other hand, examples can be brought where workmen gained high wages, then the consequences must have been the same as in our days.
So long, therefore, as industry is not directed to such objects as require a particular address, which, by the principles laid down in the twenty first chapter, raise profits above the physical-necessary, the industrious never can become rich; and if they are paid in money, this money must return into the hands of those who feed them: and if no superfluity be found any where, but in the hands of the state, such industry may consume a surplus of subsistence, but never can draw one penny into circulation. This I apprehend to be a just application of our principles, to the state of industry under the Roman republic, and that species of industry which we call labour. We are not therefore to ascribe the taste for employment in those days to the virtue of the times. A man who had riches, and who spent them, spent them no doubt then, as at present, to gratify his desires; and if the simplicity of the times furnished no assistance to his own invention, in diversifying them, the consequence was, that the money was not spent, but locked up. I have heard many a man say, had I so much money I should not know how to spend it. The thing is certainly true; for people do not commonly take it into their head to lay it out for the public.
No body, I believe, will deny that money is better employed in building a house, or in producing something useful and permanent, than in providing articles of mere transitory superfluity. But what principle of politics can influence the taste of the proprietors of wealth? This being the case, a statesman is brought to a dilemma; either to allow industry to run into a channel little beneficial to the state, little permanent in its nature, or to deprive the poor of the advantage resulting from it. May I not farther suggest, that a statesman, who is at the head of a people, whose taste is directed towards a trifling species of expence, does very well to diminish the fund of their prodigality, by calling in, by means of taxes, a part of the circulating equivalent which they gave for it? When once he is enriched by these contributions, he comes to be in the same situation with antient statesmen, with this difference, that they had their slaves at their command, whom they fed and provided for; and that he has the free, for the sake of an equivalent with which they feed and provide for themselves. He then can set public works on foot, and inspire, by his example, a taste for industry of a more rational kind, which may advance the public good, and procure a lasting benefit to the nation.
I have said above, that the acquisition of money, by the sale of industry to strangers, or in return for consumable commodities, was a way of augmenting the general worth of a nation. Now I say, that whoever can transform the most consumable commodities of a country into the most durable and most beneficial works, makes a high improvement. If therefore meat and drink, which are of all things the most consumable, can be turned into harbours, high roads, canals, and public buildings, is not the improvement inexpressible? This is in the power of every statesman to accomplish, who has subsistence at his disposal; and beyond the power of all those who have it not. There is no occasion for money to improve a country. All the magnificent buildings which ornament Italy, are a much more proper representation of a scanty subsistence, than of the gold and silver found in that country at the time they were executed. Let me now conclude with a few miscellaneous observations on what has been said.
Obser. 1. When I admire the magnificence and grandeur of publick works in any country, such as stupendous churches, amphitheatres, roads, dykes, canals; in a word, when I examine Holland, the greatest work perhaps ever done by man, I am never struck with the expence. I compare them with the numbers of men who have lived to perform them. When I see another country well inhabited, where no such works appear, the contrast suggests abundance of reflections.
As to the first, I conclude, that while these works were carried on, either slavery, or taxes must have been established; because it seldom happens, that a Prince will, out of his own patrimony, launch out into such expences, purely to serve the public. Public works are carried on by the public; and for this purpose, either the persons or purses of individuals, must be at its command. The first I call slavery; that is service: the second taxes; that is public contributions in money or in necessaries.
Obser. 2. I farther conclude, that nothing is to be gathered from those works, which should engage us to entertain a high opinion of the wealth, or other species of magnificence in the people who executed them. All that can be determined positively concerning their oeconomy as to this particular, is, that at the time they were performed, agriculture must have been exercised as a trade, in order to furnish a surplus sufficient to maintain the workmen; or that subsistence must have come from abroad, either as a return for other species of industry, or gratuitously, that is, by rapine, tribute, &c.
Obser. 3. That the consequence of such works, is, to make meat, drink, and necessaries circulate, from the hands of those who have a superfluity of them, into those who are employed to labour; or to oblige those who formerly worked for themselves only, to work also in part for others. To execute this, there must be a subordination: for who will increase his labour, voluntarily, in order to feed people who do not work for him, but for the public? This combination was neglected throughout the first book; because we there left mankind at liberty to follow the bent of their inclinations. This was necessary to give a right idea of the subject we then intended to treat, and to point out the different effects of slavery and liberty; but now, that we have formed trading nations, and riveted a multitude of reciprocal dependencies, which tie the members together, there is less danger of introducing restraints; because the advantages which people find, from a well ordered society, make them put up the better with the inconveniencies of supporting and improving it. It is an universal principle, that instruction must be given with gentleness. A young horse is to be caressed when the saddle is first put upon his back: any thing that appears harsh, let it be ever so useful or necessary, must be suspended in the beginning, in order to captivate the inclination of the creature which we incline to instruct.