of the community were to be relieved from the burden of taxation-to throw off these conditions, and declare that in future the expenses of the government in peace and war should be supplied by taxes on the poor, was to reduce the bulk of the community to the condition of a people like the Dutch; who, as they had little land to pay rent to the State, must, if they aimed at being a considerable nation, or even at defending themselves from their more powerful neighbours, have' recourse to excises and other taxes, and even to loans.

For a government and a legislature to set about deliberately to substitute for the land-rent, which had maintained the expenses of the government for six hundred years, a vast number of taxes on industry and commercial enterprise, was to reduce a country like England to the condition of a country like Holland. When it is added, that the example of Holland was followed so far as to introduce the funding system, and even the system of raising money by lotteries, and to leave nothing untaxed -from the salt that was necessary to the poorest labourer, to the French wine which the tax rendered no longer accessible to the middle class, or to any but the landholding legislator, whose means were increased by that system which destroyed the well-being and the comforts of all the other classes—we fear we must say, that to do all this was to do precisely what Lord Bacon describes

the ants as doing in an orchard or garden. And it partakes of the nature of those "extreme self-lovers," who, as Bacon says, "will set a house on fire and it were but to roast their eggs. It is the wisdom of rats-it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for him—it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour."

By the political constitution of England, as well as by its physical form and structure, the expenses of the government were to be paid without taxing the inhabitants. They were to be paid in part from the lands that belonged entirely to the State, and in part from the rent reserved on those the usufruct of which had been granted to individuals. What, then, shall be said of that policy which, in order that a few might revel in wealth and luxury, deprived the people of England of nearly all the natural advantages of soil and climate which Providence had bestowed upon them? The result was precisely as if the landholders had put into their own pockets the difference between the quantity of land in England and the quantity in Holland, making the people of England supply from their hard-won earnings the deficiency thus caused.

"Taxes upon the necessaries of life," says Adam Smith," have nearly the same effect upon the circumstances of the people as a poor soil and a bad climate. Provisions are thereby rendered dearer, in

the same manner as if it required extraordinary labour and expense to raise them. . . . Such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse, equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder. As the strongest bodies only can live and enjoy health under an unwholesome regimen, so the nations only that in every sort of industry have the greatest natural and acquired advantages, can subsist and prosper under such taxes. Holland is the country in Europe in which they abound most, and which, from peculiar circumstances, continues to prosper; not by means of them, as has been most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them.”*

The question of the difference between the ancient and modern national defences of England may be shortly stated thus:

:

By the fundamental laws of England, the condition on which the land was granted to be held as private property was, that the landholders should have 60,000 men always ready, thoroughly armed and disciplined, and of such military excellence as to be a sufficient protection against any force that Europe could bring against England, at a time when the population of England and of Europe

* Wealth of Nations, bk. iv. ch. ii.

may be estimated at about a tenth of what it now is. If the fundamental part of the English constitution remained now in force, England, instead of having a debt of more than 800 millions, would, allowing for the increased population, and the increased value of the land, have the power of raising, at twenty-four hours' or twelve hours' notice, an army of 600,000 of the best soldiers, and a navy in proportion, of the best sailors in the world. We should not then, I think, have to hear of Frenchmen talking of invading England as if such an enterprise were a promising speculation. At the same time it concerns the people of England most nearly to attend to the fact that, in the present condition of their government, it is a promising speculation.

A certain orator of the last century said, with all the confidence of incapacity,-" I believe that I can save this country, and that no one else can." What is urgently needed now is, some public man who can look somewhat farther than orators usually look, and can see somewhat more clearly than orators usually see, how to save this nation from the fate to which the system of the last 200 years has been hurrying it, and on which it is now drifting with a constantly increasing velocity.

P

CHAPTER X.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

I HAVE said, in the first chapter of this work, that the subject might be more satisfactorily elucidated from the negative than the positive aspect of it: that is, from observing the principal causes that have led to the decline of the strength, and ultimately to the ruin, of nations. I propose to devote this chapter to an attempt to discover whether there are any such causes at present in active operation in this country.

It may, I believe, be stated as a general fact, that men employed in agriculture, or as herdsmen and shepherds, make better soldiers than men employed in the more delicate kinds of commerce and manufactures." It is certain," to borrow the apt words of Lord Bacon," that sedentary and within-door arts and delicate manufactures (that require rather the finger than the arm) have in their nature a contrariety to a military disposition ;"* while, on the other hand, he observes, that tillers of the ground and handicraftsmen of strong and manly arts, as smiths,

* Bacon's Essay on the true Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates.