When any one interest becomes too predominant, the prosperity of the state stands upon a precarious footing. Every interest should be encouraged, protected, and kept within due bounds. The following speculations are intended for the application of principles to new and unexperienced combinations; where natural causes may work their direct and immediate effects, and thereby prove prejudicial to the general welfare, unless they be foreseen in some degree, and proper remedies be prepared against them.
Europe was possessed by our ancestors free from taxes; our fathers saw them imposed, and we see how fast they become mortgaged for our debts. We can as little judge of the extent of our credit, as they could of the possibility of contributing so large a fund for the support of it.
As the plan of imposing taxes has been extended, we see the public coffers every day receiving a vast flux of money, and like the heart in the human body, throwing it out again into circulation. Happy state, could it be lasting, and were this flux and reflux preserved in a due proportion to all the uses for which it is intended! But states have their vices, as well as private people. Public opulence should be proportioned to public exigencies: but how often do we see ambition putting on the face of public spirit, and animating the resentment of a nation, under colour of providing for her security? Hence wars, from wars expence: recourse is had to credit, money is borrowed, debts are contracted, taxes are augmented; all this increases circulation, which demands a supply of currency: this is procured by melting down the solid property. These operations performed, the public money is either sent abroad, or remains at home. If sent abroad, more property must be melted down, in order to fill up the void. If it remains at home, it will animate every branch of circulation; and when the exigency, which required this additional quantity of money, is over, what circulation finds superfluous, will stagnate in the hands of the monied interest, and will either form a new fund for contracting more debts, or it will be laid out in the purchase of the property formerly melted down, which produced it; and thereby will be consolidated a-new.
Every interest in a state must influence the government of it, in proportion to its consequence and weight; and every government must influence the spirit of the people who live under it.
Now, as we have seen how industry creates wealth; how wealth and confidence create credit; how credit creates debts and taxes; how these again occasion an augmentation of money, by the melting down of property; and how this property is transferred to a new set of men, who were once the monied interest, and who afterwards acquire the lands, and consolidate this additional circulation; does not this chain of consequences represent a kind of circle, returning into itself? And is it not plain, that without the intervention of this engine, the money created in proportion to the demand for it, the chain would be cut off, before it could reach the link from which it first set out? Will not this conversion of a monied interest into a landed interest, insensibly inspire the bulk of the landlords with sentiments analogous to a monied interest? Is not that evidently more and more the case every day in England? And from this may we not prognosticate the solidity of public credit in that nation?
If on the other hand we find, as in France, industry in times of peace drawing wealth from other nations, and thereby increasing the coin, upon which alone credit is circulated through the kingdom; and then foreign expence sending it away in times of war; must not circulation keep pace with the coin, that is to say, be circumscribed within the proportion of it?
If the solidity and extent of the French King’s free revenue should afford credit to borrow this coin; and if, instead of providing a proportional supply of currency to fill up this new loan, the coin borrowed be sent out of France; how will the ordinary circulation be carried on?
Let us here recal to mind what was said in the 22d chapter, upon banks, where we distinguished voluntary circulation, which is buying, from involuntary circulation, which is paying: we there observed how paying must always take place of buying; consequently, we may here determine that taxes must be paid before buying, that is consumption, can go on. The deficiency therefore of coin for circulation, will, first, proportionally affect the trade, manufactures, and consumption of France, and afterwards the revenue which arises from them. Is not this the constant complaint in France, when war carries off their coin? The remonstrances of all their parliaments are filled with it.
In times of peace, the amount of what comes from the people is greater than in time of war: but then there is coin sufficient for all the payments; and when they are made to the royal treasury, they immediately return into circulation, and no hurt is felt.
I insist the more upon this principle, and I introduce it in so many different ways, and under such a variety of views, because I take it to be one of the most important considerations in the whole doctrine of credit, and one which I have never seen suggested by any French, or English writer upon this subject. Many are the complaints for want of money; but no method have I ever seen proposed for obtaining it from solid property; the easiest and safest of all operations, when conducted with honesty, and according to principles.