This composition being the successive labour of many years spent in travelling, the reader will find some passages in which the unities of time and place have not been observed. These I could have corrected with ease, had I not been advised to leave them as characters to point out the circumstances under which I wrote, and thereby to confirm the authenticity of certain facts.
The modes of thinking, also, peculiar to the several countries where I have lived, have, no doubt, had an influence on what I have writ concerning their customs: the work, therefore, will not, in general, correspond to the meridian of national opinions any where; and of this it is proper the reader should be apprised, that he may not apply to the domestic circumstances of his own country what was intended to refer to those of other nations; nor impute what was the irresistible effect of my experience and conviction, to wilful prejudice.
I have read many authors on the subject of political oeconomy; and I have endeavoured to draw from them all the instruction I could. I have travelled, for many years, through different countries, and have examined them, constantly, with an eye to my own subject. I have attempted to draw information from every one with whom I have been acquainted: this, however, I found to be very difficult before I had attained to some previous knowledge of my subject. Such difficulties confirmed to me the justness of Lord Bacon’s remark, that he who knows how to draw information by forming proper questions, is already possessed of half the science[[A]].
[A]. Prudens interrogatio, dimidium scientiæ.
I could form no consistent plan from the various opinions I met with: hence I was engaged to compile the observations I had casually made, in the course of my travels, reading, and experience. From these I formed the following work, after expunging the numberless inconsistencies and contradictions which I found had arisen from my separate inquiries into every particular branch.
I had observed so many persons declining in knowledge as they advanced in years, that I resolved early to throw upon paper whatever I had learned; and to this I used to have recourse, as others have to their memories. The unity of the object of all my speculations, rendred this practice more useful to me than it would be to one whose researches are more extended.
Whoever is much accustomed to write for his own use merely, must contract a more careless stile than another who has made language his study, and who writes in hopes of acquiring a literary reputation. I never, till very lately, thought of appearing as an author; and in the frequent perusals of what I had writ, my corrections were chiefly in favour of perspicuity: add to this, that the language in which I now write was, for many years, foreign to those with whom I lived and conversed. When these circumstances are combined with the intricacy of my subject, which constantly carried off my attention from every ornament of language, I flatter myself that those of my readers, at least, who enter as heartily as I have done into the spirit of this work, will candidly overlook the want of that elegance which adorns the stile of some celebrated authors in this Augustan age. I present this inquiry to the public as nothing more than an essay which may serve as a canvass for better hands than mine to work upon.
It contains such observations only as the general view of the domestic policy of the countries I have seen, has suggested. It is a speculation, and no more. It is a rough drawing of a mighty plan, proportioned in correctness to my own sagacity, to my knowledge of the subject and to the extent of my combinations.
It goes little farther than to collect and arrange some elements upon the most interesting branches of modern policy, such as population, agriculture, trade, industry, money, coin, interest, circulation, banks, exchange, public credit, and taxes. The principles deduced from all these topics, appear tolerably consistent; and the whole is a train of reasoning, through which I have adhered to the connection of subjects as faithfully as I could: but the nature of the work being a deduction of principles, not a collection of institutions, I seized the opportunities which my reasoning threw in my way, to connect every principle, as I went along, with every part of the inquiry to which it could refer; and when I found the connexion sufficiently shewn, I broke off such disquisitions as would have led me from the object then present.
When principles thus casually applied in one part to matters intended to be afterwards treated of in another, came to be taken up a-new, they involved me in what may appear prolixity. This I found most unavoidable, when I was led to thoughts which were new to myself, and consequently such as must cost me the greatest labour to set in a clear and distinct point of view. Had I been master of my subject on setting out, the arrangement of the whole would have been rendered more concise: but had this been the case, I should never have been able to go through the painful deduction which forms the whole chain of my reasoning, and upon which, to many readers, slow in forming combinations, the conviction it carries along with it in a great measure depends: to the few, again, of a more penetrating genius, to whom the slightest hint is sufficient to lay open every consequence before it be drawn, in allusion to Horace, I offer this apology, Clarus esse laboro, prolixus fio.