History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3

671

See an admirable passage, p. 156, too long to quote, beginning, ‘If human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations,’ &c.

672

‘That insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs.’ Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. ii. p. 190.

673

‘That security which the laws in Great Britain give to every man, that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour, is alone sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce.’ Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. v. p. 221.

674

‘In all countries where there is a tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command, in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.’ Wealth of Nations, book ii. chap. i. p. 115.

675

‘The consideration of his own private profit is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in some particular branch of the wholesale or retail trade.’ Wealth of Nations, book ii. chap. v. p. 154.

676

‘By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.’ Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. ii. p. 184.

677

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. i. p. 21, he says that mankind are ‘naturally sympathetic.’

678

‘Nay, it is chiefly for this regard to the sentiments of mankind, that we pursue riches and avoid poverty.’ Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. i. p. 66. ‘To become the natural object of the joyous congratulations and sympathetic attentions of mankind, is, in this manner, the circumstance which gives to prosperity all its dazzling splendour.’ p. 78.

679

‘The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property, such a resolution could never have been agreed to.’ Wealth of Nations, book iii. chap. ii. p. 159.

680

‘In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally revered and admired by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal, or loose system, luxury, wanton, and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes, provided they are not accompanied with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, these excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single week's thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people, therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years, on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion; and people of that rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of excess, as one of the advantages of their fortune; and the liberty of doing so without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and censure them either very slightly or not at all.

‘Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom they have generally drawn their earliest as well as their most numerous proselytes. The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend themselves to that order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them, perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently recommended them, more than any thing else, to the respect and veneration of the common people.’ … ‘In little religious sects, accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the established church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.’ Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. pp. 332, 333.

681

‘Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may, no doubt, be carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection, by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him to follow.’ Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. p. 340.

682

Besides the evidence supplied by economical treatises, the laws in our statute-book, respecting wages, show the general conviction, that their rate could be fixed by the upper classes.

683

‘We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and, one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. viii. p. 28.

684

‘First, in almost every part of Great Britain, there is a distinction, even in the lowest species of labour, between summer and winter wages. Summer wages are always highest. But, on account of the extraordinary expense of fuel, the maintenance of a family is most expensive in winter. Wages, therefore, being highest when this expense is lowest, it seems evident that they are not regulated by what is necessary for this expense, but by the quantity and supposed value of the work.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. viii. p. 31.

685

‘In years of scarcity, the difficulty and uncertainty of subsistence make all such people eager to return to service. But the high price of provisions, by diminishing the funds destined for the maintenance of servants, disposes masters rather to diminish than to increase the number of those they have.’ … ‘Masters of all sorts, therefore, frequently make better bargains with their servants in dear than in cheap years, and find them more humble and dependent in the former than in the latter. They naturally, therefore, commend the former as more favourable to industry.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. viii. p. 35.

686

‘The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.’ Wealth of Nations, b. i. c. viii. p. 27.

687

‘It seems absurd at first sight, that we should despise their persons, and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other. Should the public opinion, or prejudice, ever alter with regard to such occupation, their pecuniary recompense would quickly diminish. More people would apply to them, and the competition would quickly reduce the price of their labour. Such talents, though far from being common, are by no means so rare as imagined. Many people possess them in great perfection, who disdain to make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if any thing could be made honourably by them.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. ch. x. p. 44.

688

‘Over and above the rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe. The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, &c. The quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality and the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very great.’ … ‘The hospitality and charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and almost all occasionally, fed by them.’ Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. p. 336.

689

Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i. p. 354.

690

See Mr. Burton's valuable Life of Hume, Edinburgh, 1846, vol. i. pp. 58, 267, vol. ii. pp. 14, 134.

691

What confirms me in this view, is the fact, that the older Hume grew, and the more he read on history, the more he became imbued with these errors; which would not have been the case if the errors had, as many of his critics say, been the result of an insufficient acquaintance with the evidence. Mr. Burton, by comparing the different editions of his History of England, has shown that he gradually became less favourable to popular liberty; softening, or erasing, in later editions, those expressions which seemed favourable to freedom. Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. pp. 74–77. See also pp. 144, 434. In his Own Life, p. xi (in vol. i. of Hume's Works Edinb. 1826), he says: ‘In a hundred alterations, which farther study, reading, or reflection engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably the Tory side.’ In one of his essays, he observes (Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 172) that ‘there is no enthusiasm among philosophers;’ a remark perfectly true, so far as he was concerned, but very unjust towards the class of men to whom it refers.

692

Brown, in his great work, – one of the greatest which this century has produced, – candidly confesses that his own book is ‘chiefly reflective of the lights, which he’ (Hume) ‘has given.’ Brown's Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, London, 1835, p. 253. See also p. vii.

693

While the politicians of his own time despised his views, the politicians of our time seem inclined to overrate them. Lord Brougham, for instance, in his Life of Hume, says, of his political economy, ‘Mr. Hume is, beyond all doubt, the author of the modern doctrines which now rule the world of science.’ Brougham's Works, Glasgow, 1856, vol. ii. p. 176. But so far from this being the case, the science of political economy has, since the time of Hume, received such additions, that if that illustrious philosopher were to rise from the dead, he would hardly be able to recognize it. To him, many of its largest and most fundamental principles were entirely unknown. Hume knew nothing of the causes which govern the accumulation of wealth, and compel that accumulation to proceed with different speed in different states of society; a fruitful and important study almost entirely neglected until entered upon by Rae. Neither did Hume know anything of the law of the ratio between population and wages; nor of the ratio between wages and profits. He even supposes (Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 299, Edinburgh, 1826) that it is possible for the labouring classes by combination ‘to heighten their wages;’ and again (p. 319) that the richer a nation is, and the more trade it has, the easier it will be for a poor country to undersell its manufactures, because the poor nation enjoys the advantage of a ‘low price of labour.’ Elsewhere, he asserts that coin can be depreciated without raising prices, and that a country, by taxing a foreign commodity, could increase its own population. ‘Were all our money, for instance, recoined, and a penny's worth of silver taken from every shilling, the new shilling would probably purchase every thing that could have been bought by the old; the prices of every thing would thereby be insensibly diminished; foreign trade enlivened; and domestic industry, by the circulation of a great number of pounds and shillings, would receive some increase and encouragement.’ Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 324. ‘A tax on German linen encourages home manufactures, and thereby multiplies our people and industry.’ p. 365. These are cardinal errors, which go to the very root of political economy; and when we fairly estimate what has been done by Malthus and Ricardo, it will be evident that Hume's doctrines do not ‘rule the world of science.’ This is no disparagement of Hume, who, on the contrary, effected wonderful things, considering the then state of knowledge. The mistake is, in imagining that such a rapidly advancing science as political economy can be governed by doctrines propounded more than a century ago.

694

‘Every thing in the world is purchased by labour, and our passions are the only causes of labour.’ Essay I. on Commerce, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 294. Hence, he saw the fallacy of the assertion of the French economists, ‘that all taxes fall ultimately upon land.’ p. 388.

695

‘Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of commerce, but only the instrument which men have agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of one commodity for another.’ Essay on Money in Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 317. ‘It is, indeed, evident that money is nothing but the representation of labour and commodities, and serves only as a method of rating or estimating them.’ p. 321.

696

See Essay V. on the Balance of Trade, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 348–367.

697

Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 333–335. Even now, a knowledge of this truth is so little diffused, that, lately, when Australia and California began to yield immense quantities of gold, a notion was widely circulated that the interest of money would consequently fall; although nothing can be more certain than that if gold were to become as plentiful as iron, the interest of money would be unaffected. The whole effect would fall upon price. The remarks on this subject in Ritchie's Life of Hume, London, 1807, pp. 332, 333, are interesting, as illustrating the slow progress of opinion, and the difficulty which minds, not specially trained, experience when they attempt to investigate these subjects.

698

‘Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advance in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to flourish, but at their expense. In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert, that the increase of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours.’ … ‘I go farther, and observe, that where an open communication is preserved among nations, it is impossible but the domestic industry of every one must receive an increase from the improvements of the others.’ Essay on the Jealousy of Trade, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 368, 369.

699

This letter, which I have referred to in my first volume, p. 229, was published, for, I believe, the first time, in 1846, in Burton's Life and Correspondence of Hume, vol. ii. p. 486. It is, however, very difficult to determine what Adam Smith's opinion really was upon this subject, and how far he was aware that rent did not enter into price. In one passage in the Wealth of Nations (book i. chap. vi. p. 21) he says of wages, profit, and rent, ‘in every society, the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter, more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities.’ But in book i. chap. xi. p. 61, he says, ‘High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.’ This latter opinion we now know to be the true one; it is, however, incompatible with that expressed in the first passage. For, if rent is the effect of price, it cannot be a component of it.

700

Hence, when the Wealth of Nations appeared, one of our wise men gravely said that ‘Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject, any more than a lawyer upon physic.’ See Boswell's Life of Johnson, edit. Croker, 1848, p. 478, where this remark is ascribed to Sir John Pringle.

701

‘He was sent to a mercantile house at Bristol in 1734; but he found the drudgery of this employment intolerable, and he retired to Rheims.’ Brougham's Life of Hume, Glasgow, 1856, p. 169. See also Ritchie's Life of Hume, p. 6. In Roberts' Memoirs of Hannah More, 2d ed. 1834, vol. i. p. 16, it is said that ‘two years of his life were spent in a merchant's counting-house in Bristol, whence he was dismissed on account of the promptitude of his pen in the correction of the letters intrusted to him to copy.’ The latter part of this story is improbable; the former part is certainly incorrect; since Hume himself says, ‘In 1734, I went to Bristol, with some recommendations to eminent merchants, but in a few months found that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat.’ Own Life, p. v.

702

What Sir James Mackintosh says of him is only a faint echo of the general voice of his contemporaries. ‘His temper was calm, not to say cold; but though none of his feelings were ardent, all were engaged on the side of virtue. He was free from the slightest tincture of malignity or meanness; his conduct was uniformly excellent.’ Mackintosh's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 162. A greater than Mackintosh, and a man who knew Hume intimately, expresses himself in much warmer terms. ‘Upon the whole,’ writes Adam Smith, – ‘Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. xxv. Some notices of Hume will be found in an interesting work just published. Autobiography of Alexander Carlyle, Edinburgh, 1860, pp. 272–278. But Carlyle, though a man of considerable practical skill, was incapable of large views, and was, therefore, unable, I will not say to measure, but even to conceive, the size of such an understanding as that possessed by David Hume. Of his want of speculative power, a decisive instance appears in his remarks on Adam Smith. He gravely says (Autobiography, p. 281), ‘Smith's fine writing is chiefly displayed in his book on Moral Sentiments, which is the pleasantest and most eloquent book on the subject. His Wealth of Nations, from which he was judged to be an inventive genius of the first order, is tedious and full of repetition. His separate essays in the second volume have the air of being occasional pamphlets, without much force or determination. On political subjects, his opinions were not very sound.’ It is rather too much when a village-preacher writes in this strain of the greatest man his country has ever produced.

703

He speaks of him in the following extraordinary terms. ‘If we consider the variety of talents displayed by this man; as a public speaker, a man of business, a wit, a courtier, a companion, an author, a philosopher; he is justly the object of great admiration. If we consider him merely as an author and philosopher, the light in which we view him at present, though very estimable, he was yet inferior to his contemporary Galileo, perhaps even to Kepler.’ … ‘The national spirit which prevails among the English, and which forms their great happiness, is the cause why they bestow on all their eminent writers, and on Bacon among the rest, such praises and acclamations as may often appear partial and excessive.’ Hume's History of England, vol. vi. pp. 194, 195, London, 1789.

704

See the note in vol. i. p. 250, of Buckle's History of Civilization.

705

Thus, for instance, in his remarkable Essay on the Balance of Trade, he says (Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 349), ‘Every man who has ever reasoned on this subject, has always proved his theory, whatever it was, by facts and calculations, and by an enumeration of all the commodities sent to all foreign kingdoms;’ therefore (p. 350), ‘It may here be proper to form a general argument to prove the impossibility of this event, so long as we preserve our people and our industry.’

706

‘I have no great faith in political arithmetic.’ Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. v. p. 218.

707

Indeed, the only possible objection to them is that the language of their collectors is sometimes ambiguous; so that, by the same return, one statistician may mean one thing, and another statistician may mean something quite different. This is well exemplified in medical statistics; whence several writers, unacquainted with the philosophy of scientific proof, have supposed that medicine is incapable of mathematical treatment. In point of fact, however, the only real impediment is the shameful state of clinical and pathological terminology, which is in such confusion as to throw doubt upon all extensive numerical statements respecting disease.