History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

359

The change from the time when every layman was a soldier, is very remarkable. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. p. 291) says, ‘Among the civilized nations of modern Europe, it is commonly computed, that not more than the one-hundredth part of the inhabitants of any country can be employed as soldiers, without ruin to the country which pays the expense of their service.’ The same proportion is given in Sadler's Law of Population, vol. i. p. 292; and in Grandeur et Décadence des Romains, chap. iii. —Œuvres de Montesquieu, p. 130: also in Sharpe's History of Egypt, vol. i. p. 105; and in Alison's History of Europe, vol. xii. p. 318.

360

The pacific tendencies of political economy are touched on very briefly in Blanqui, Histoire de l'Economie Politique, vol. ii. p. 207; and in Twiss's Progress of Political Economy, p. 240.

361

This favourite doctrine is illustrated in a curious ‘Discourse,’ written in 1578, and printed in Stow's London, in which it is laid down, that if our exports exceed our imports, we gain by the trade; but that, if they are less, we lose. Stow's London, edit. Thoms, 1842, p. 205. Whenever this balance was disturbed, politicians were thrown into an agony of fear. In 1620, James I. said, in one of his long speeches, ‘It's strange that my Mint hath not gone this eight or nine years; but I think the fault of the want of money is the uneven balancing of trade.’ Parl. History, vol. i. p. 1179; see also the debate ‘On the Scarcity of Money,’ pp. 1194–1196. In 1620, the House of Commons, in a state of great alarm, passed a resolution, ‘That the importation of tobacco out of Spain is one reason of the scarcity of money in this kingdom.’ Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 1198. In 1627, it was actually argued in the House of Commons that the Netherlands were being weakened by their trade with the East Indies, because it carried money out of the country! Parl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 220. Half a century later, the same principle was advocated by Sir William Temple in his Letters, and also in his Observations upon the United Provinces. Temple's Works, vol. i. p. 175, vol. ii. pp. 117, 118.

362

In 1672, the celebrated Earl of Shaftesbury, then Lord Chancellor, announced that the time had come when the English must go to war with the Dutch; for that it was ‘impossible both should stand upon a balance; and that, if we do not master their trade, they will ours. They or we must truckle. One must and will give the law to the other. There is no compounding, where the contest is for the trade of the whole world.’ Somers' Tracts, vol. viii. p. 39. A few months later, still insisting on the propriety of the war, he gave as one of his reasons that it ‘was necessary to the trade of England that there should be a fair adjustment of commerce in the East Indies.’ Parl. Hist. vol. iv. p. 587. In 1701, Stepney, a diplomatist and one of the lords of trade, published an essay, strongly insisting on the benefits which would accrue to English commerce by a war with France. Somers' Tracts, vol. xi. pp. 199, 217; and he says, p. 205, that one of the consequences of peace with France would be ‘the utter ruin and destruction of our trade.’ See also, in vol. xiii. p. 688, the remarks on the policy of William III. In 1743, Lord Hardwicke, one of the most eminent men of his time, said, in the House of Lords, ‘If our wealth is diminished, it is time to ruin the commerce of that nation which has driven us from the markets of the Continent – by sweeping the seas of their ships, and by blockading their ports.’ Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. p. 89.

363

In regard to the seventeenth century, see Mill's History of India, vol. i. pp. 41, 42. To this I may add, that even Locke had very confused notions respecting the use of money in trade. See Essay on Money, in Locke's Works, vol. iv.; and in particular pp. 9, 10, 12, 20, 21, 49–52. Berkeley, profound thinker as he was, fell into the same errors, and assumes the necessity of maintaining the balance of trade, and lessening our imports in proportion as we lessen our exports. See the Querist, Nos. xcix. clxi., in Berkeley's Works, vol. ii. pp. 246, 250: see also his proposal for a sumptuary law, in Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain, in Works, vol. ii. p. 190. The economical views of Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois, livre xx. chap. xii. in Œuvres, p. 353) are as hopelessly wrong; while Vattel (Droit des Gens, vol. i. pp. 111, 117, 118, 206) goes out of his way to praise the mischievous interference of the English government, which he recommends as a pattern to other states.

364

The Earl of Bristol, a man of some ability, told the House of Lords, in 1642, that it was a great advantage to England for other countries to go to war with each other; because by that means we should get their money, or, as he called it, their ‘wealth.’ See his speech, in Parl. History, vol. ii. pp. 1274–1279.

365

Serra, who wrote in 1613, is said to have been the first to prove the absurdity of discouraging the exportation of the precious metals. See Twiss on the Progress of Political Economy, pp. 8, 12, 13. But I believe that the earliest approach towards modern economical discoveries is a striking essay published in 1581, and ascribed to William Stafford. It will be found in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. ix. pp. 139–192, edit. Park, 1812; and the title, Brief Conceipt of English Policy, gives an inadequate idea of what is, on the whole, the most important work on the theory of politics which had then appeared: since the author not only displays an insight into the nature of price and value, such as no previous thinker possessed, but he points out clearly the causes of that system of enclosures which is the leading economical fact in the reign of Elizabeth, and is intimately connected with the rise of the poor-laws. Some account of this essay is given by Dr. Twiss; but the original is easily accessible, and should be read by every student of English history. Among other heretical propositions, it recommends free trade in corn.

366

In regard to the interference of the English legislature, it is stated by Mr. M'Culloch (Polit. Econ. p. 269), on the authority of a committee of the House of Commons, that before the year 1820, ‘no fewer than two thousand laws with respect to commerce had been passed at different periods.’ It may be confidently asserted, that every one of those laws was an unmitigated evil, since no trade, and indeed no interest of any kind, can be protected by government without inflicting immeasurably greater loss upon the unprotected interests and trades; while, if the protection is universal, the loss will be universal. Some striking instances of the absurd laws which have been passed respecting trade, are collected in Barrington's Observations on the Statutes, pp. 279–285. Indeed, it was considered necessary that every parliament should do something in this way; and Charles II., in one of his speeches, says, ‘I pray, contrive any good short bills which may improve the industry of the nation … and so God bles your councils.’ Parl. History, vol. iv. p. 291. Compare the remarks on the fishery-trade, in Somers' Tracts, vol. xii. p. 33.

367

To this the only exception of any moment is the view taken of the usury-laws, which Jeremy Bentham has the honour of demolishing.

368

Before Adam Smith, the principal merit is due to Hume; but the works of that profound thinker were too fragmentary to produce much effect. Indeed, Hume, notwithstanding his vast powers, was inferior to Smith in comprehensiveness as well as in industry.

369

The first notice I have observed of the Wealth of Nations in Parliament is in 1783; and between then and the end of the century it is referred to several times, and latterly with increasing frequency. See Parliamentary History, vol. xxiii. p. 1152, vol. xxvi. pp. 481, 1035, vol. xxvii. p. 385, vol. xxix. pp. 834, 905, 982, 1065, vol. xxx. pp. 330, 333, vol. xxxii. p. 2, vol. xxxiii. pp. 353, 386, 522, 548, 549, 563, 774, 777, 778, 822, 823, 824, 825, 827, 1249, vol. xxxiv. pp. 11, 97, 98, 141, 142, 304, 473, 850, 901, 902, 903. It is possible that one or two passages may have been overlooked; but I believe that these are the only instances of Adam Smith being referred to during seventeen years. From a passage in Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, vol. i. p. 51, it appears that even Addington was studying Adam Smith in 1787.

370

In 1797, Pulteney, in one of his financial speeches, appealed to ‘the authority of Dr. Smith, who, it was well said, would persuade the present generation and govern the next.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxiii. p. 778. In 1813, Dugald Stewart (Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 472) announced that the doctrine of free trade ‘has now, I believe, become the prevailing creed of thinking men all over Europe.’ And in 1816, Ricardo said, ‘The reasoning by which the liberty of trade is supported is so powerful, that it is daily obtaining converts. It is with pleasure that I see the progress which this great principle is making amongst those whom we should have expected to cling the longest to old prejudices.’ Proposals for an Economical Currency, in Ricardo's Works, p. 407.

371

Sir Theodore Janson, in his General Maxims of Trade, published in 1713, lays it down as a principle universally recognized, that ‘All the nations of Europe seem to strive who shall outwit one another in point of trade; and they concur in this maxim, that the less they consume of foreign commodities, the better it is for them.’ Somers' Tracts, vol. xiii. p. 292. Thus, too, in a Dialogue between an Englishman and a Dutchman, published in 1700, the Dutchman is represented as boasting that his government had ‘forced treaties of commerce exclusive to all other nations.’ Somers' Tracts, vol. xi. p. 376. This is the system of ‘narrow selfishness’ denounced by Dr. Story, in his noble work, Conflict of Laws, 1841, p. 32.

372

‘It cannot, indeed, be denied that mistaken views of commerce, like those so frequently entertained of religion, have been the cause of many wars and of much bloodshed.’ M'Culloch's Principles of Political Economy, p. 140. See also pp. 37, 38: ‘It has made each nation regard the welfare of its neighbours as incompatible with its own: hence the reciprocal desire of injuring and impoverishing each other; and hence that spirit of commercial rivalry, which has been the immediate or remote cause of the greater number of modern wars.’

373

On the rapid diffusion during the present century of the principles worked out by the economists, compare Laing's Sweden, pp. 356–358, with a note to the last edition of Malthus on Population, 1826, vol. ii. pp. 354, 355.

374

‘The feelings of rival tradesmen, prevailing among nations, overruled for centuries all sense of the general community of advantage which commercial countries derive from the prosperity of one another; and that commercial spirit, which is now one of the strongest obstacles to wars, was during a certain period of European history their principal cause.’ Mill's Political Economy, 1849, vol. ii. p. 221. This great change in the feelings of the commercial classes did not begin before the present century, and has not been visible to ordinary observers until the last five-and-twenty or thirty years; but it was foretold in a remarkable passage written by Herder in 1787; see his Ideen zur Geschichte, vol. iii. pp. 292, 293.

375

That there are more suicides in gloomy weather than in fine weather used always to be taken for granted, and was a favourite topic with the French wits, who were never weary of expatiating on our love of self-murder, and on the relation between it and our murky climate. Unfortunately for such speculations, the fact is exactly opposite to what is generally supposed, and we have decisive evidence that there are more suicides in summer than in winter. See Quetelet sur l'Homme, vol. ii. pp. 152, 158; Tissot de la Manie du Suicide, Paris, 1840, pp. 50, 149, 150; Journal of Statistical Society, vol. i. p. 102; Winslow's Anatomy of Suicide, 1840, pp. 131, 132; Hawkins's Medical Statistics, p. 170.

376

Respecting which I will only mention one fact, in regard to our own country. By the returns of the Board of Trade, it appears that the passengers annually travelling by railway amounted in 1842 to nineteen millions; but in 1852 they had increased to more than eighty-six millions. Journal of Statistical Society, vol. xvi. p. 292.

377

Of this, Mr. Stephens (in his valuable work, Central America, vol. i. pp. 247–8) relates an interesting instance in the case of that remarkable man Carrera: ‘Indeed, in no particular had he changed more than in his opinion of foreigners; a happy illustration of the effect of personal intercourse in breaking down prejudices against individuals or classes.’ Mr. Elphinstone (History of India, p. 195) says, ‘Those who have known the Indians longest have always the best opinion of them: but this is rather a compliment to human nature than to them, since it is true of every other people.’ Compare an instructive passage in Darwin's Journal of Researches, p. 421, with Burdach, Traité de Physiologie comme Science d'Observation, vol. ii. p. 61.

378

Coleridge well says, ‘it is the chief of many blessings derived from the insular character and circumstances of our country, that our social institutions have formed themselves out of our proper needs and interests.’ Coleridge on the Constitution of the Church and State, 8vo. 1830, pp. 20, 21. The political consequences of this were much noticed at the time of the French Revolution. See Mémoires de La Fayette, vol. i. p. 404, Bruxelles, 1837.

379

In another place, I shall collect the evidence of the rapidly increasing love of travelling in the sixteenth century; but it is interesting to observe, that during the latter half of the century there was first established the custom of appointing travelling tutors. Compare Barrington's Observations on the Statutes, p. 218, with a letter from Beza, written in 1598, in Mémoires et Correspondence de Du Plessis Mornay, vol. ix. p. 81.

380

In regard to the society of women, this was still more observable, even at a much later period; and when the Countess de Boufflers visited England, at the beginning of the reign of George III., ‘on lui faisoit un mérite de sa curiosité de voir l'Angleterre; car on remarquoit qu'elle étoit la seule dame françoise de qualité qui fût venue en voyageuse depuis deux cents ans: on ne comprenoit point, dans cette classe, les ambassadrices, ni la duchesse de Mazarin, qui y étoient venues par nécessité.’ Dutens, Mémoires d'un Voyageur, vol. i. p. 217. Compare Mémoires de Madame de Genlis, vol. viii. p. 241.

381

Orme's Life of Owen, p. 288; Mahon's History of England, vol. ii. p. 211; and many other writers.

382

The only Englishman of genius who, during this period, was influenced by the French mind, was Dryden; but this is chiefly apparent in his plays, the whole of which are now deservedly forgotten. His great works, and, above all, those wonderful satires, in which he distances every competitor, except Juvenal, are thoroughly national, and, as mere specimens of English, are, if I may express my own judgment, to be ranked immediately after Shakspeare. In Dryden's writings there are unquestionably many Gallicisms of expression, but few Gallicisms of thought; and it is by these last that we must estimate the real amount of foreign influence. Sir Walter Scott goes so far as to say, ‘It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been naturalized upon the sole authority of Dryden.’ Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 523, 8vo. 1808. Rather a bold assertion. As to the opinion of Fox, see Lord Holland's preface to Fox's James II., 4to. 1808, p. xxxii.

383

Another circumstance which has maintained the independence, and therefore increased the value, of our literature, is, that in no great country have literary men been so little connected with the government, or rewarded by it. That this is the true policy, and that to protect literature is to injure it, are propositions for the proof of which I must refer to chap. xi. of this volume – on the system of Louis XIV. In the mean time, I will quote the following words from a learned and, what is much better, a thoughtful writer: ‘Nor must he who will understand the English institutions leave out of view the character of the enduring works which had sprung from the salient energy of the English mind. Literature had been left to develop itself. William of Orange was foreign to it; Anne cared not for it; the first George knew no English; the second not much.’ Bancroft's History of the American Revolution, vol. ii. p. 48. Compare Forster's Life of Goldsmith, 1854, vol. i. pp. 93–96, vol. ii. p. 480.

384

See, for evidence of this influence of England, chap. v. of the second volume.

385

The history of this remarkable, though short-lived, union between the French and German intellects will be traced in the next volume; but its first great effect, in stimulating, or rather in creating, the German literature, is noticed by one of the most learned of their own writers: ‘Denn einestheils war zu diesen Gegenständen immer die lateinische Sprache gebraucht und die Muttersprache zu wenig cultivirt worden, anderntheils wurden diese Schriften auch meistentheils nur von Gelehrten, und zwar Universitätsgelehrten, für welche sie auch hauptsächlich bestimmt waren, gelesen. Gegen die Mitte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, als mehrere englische und französische Werke gelesen und übersetzt wurden, und durch die Vorliebe des Königs von Preussen Friedrichs II., der von Franzosen gebildet worden war, französische Gelehrte besonders geehrt und angestellt wurden, entstand ein Wetteifer der Deutschen, auch in dem schriftlichen Vortrage nicht zurück zu bleiben, und die Sprache hob sich bald zu einem hohen Grade von Vollkommenheit.’ Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. xi. pp. 286, 287.

386

A popular view of the system of national education established in Germany will be found in Kay's Social Condition and Education of the People of Europe, vol. ii. pp. 1–344. But Mr. Kay, like most literary men, overrates the advantages of literary acquirements, and underrates that education of the faculties which neither books nor schools can impart to a people who are debarred from the exercise of civil and political rights. In the history of the protective spirit (chaps. ix. and x. of the present volume), I shall return to this subject, in connexion with France; and in the next volume I shall examine it in regard to German civilization. In the mean time, I must be allowed to protest against the account Mr. Kay has given of the results of compulsory education; an agreeable picture, drawn by an amiable and intelligent writer, but of the inaccuracy of which I possess decisive evidence. Two points only I will now refer to: 1st. The notorious fact, that the German people, notwithstanding their so-called education, are unfit to take any share in political matters, and have no aptitude for the practical and administrative parts of government. 2nd. The fact, equally notorious to those who have studied the subject, that there are more popular superstitions in Prussia, the most educated part of Germany, than there are in England; and that the tenacity with which men cling to them is greater in Prussia than in England. For illustration of the practical working, in individual cases, of compulsory education, and of the hardship it causes, see a scandalous occurrence, related in Laing's Notes of a Traveller, 8vo. 1842, p. 165, first series; and on the physical evils produced by German education, see Phillips on Scrofula, London, 1846, pp. 253, 254, where there is some useful evidence of the consequences of ‘that great German sin of over-regulation.’

387

This is well stated by Mr. Laing, by far the ablest traveller who has published observations on European society: ‘German authors, both the philosophic and the poetic, address themselves to a public far more intellectual, and more highly cultivated, than our reading public… In our literature, the most obscure and abstruse of metaphysical or philosophical writers take the public mind in a far lower state, simply cognisant of the meaning of language, and possessed of the ordinary reasoning powers… The social influence of German literature is, consequently, confined within a narrower circle. It has no influence on the mind of the lower, or even of the middle classes in active life, who have not the opportunity or leisure to screw their faculties up to the pitch-note of their great writers. The reading public must devote much time to acquire the knowledge, tone of feeling, and of imagination, necessary to follow the writing public. The social economist finds accordingly in Germany the most extraordinary dulness, inertness of mind, and ignorance, below a certain level, with the most extraordinary intellectual development, learning, and genius, at or above it.’ Laing's Notes of a Traveller, first series, pp. 266, 267. The same acute observer says, in a later work (Notes, third series, 8vo. 1852, p. 12): ‘The two classes speak and think in different languages. The cultivated German language, the language of German literature, is not the language of the common man, nor even of the man far up in the middle ranks of society, – the farmer, tradesman, shopkeeper.’ See also pp. 351, 352, 354. It is singular that so clear and vigorous a thinker as Mr. Laing evidently is, should have failed in detecting the cause of this peculiar phenomenon.

388

‘Je ne pense pas qu'il y ait de pays dans le monde où, proportion gardée avec la population, il se trouve aussi peu d'ignorants et moins de savants qu'en Amérique.’ Tocqueville de la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. i. p. 91.

389

The causes of this exception I shall endeavour to trace in the next volume; but it is interesting to notice, that, as early as 1775, Burke was struck by the partiality of the Americans for works on law. See Burke's Speech, in Parliamentary History, vol. xviii. p. 495; or in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 188. He says: ‘In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read – and most do read – endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England.’ Of this state of society, the great works of Kent and Story were, at a later period, the natural result. On the respect at present felt for the legal profession, see Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, 1849, vol. i. p. 45; and as to the judges, Combe's N. America, vol. ii. p. 329.

390

Particularly Coleridge and Mr. John Mill. But, with the greatest possible respect for Mr. Mill's profound work on Logic, I must venture to think that he has ascribed too much to the influence of Bacon in encouraging the inductive spirit, and too little to those other circumstances which gave rise to the Baconian philosophy, and to which that philosophy owes its success.