The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume V Part 20

The present war is, above all others of which we have heard or read, a war against landed property. That description of property is in its nature the firm base of every stable government,--and has been so considered by all the wisest writers of the old philosophy, from the time of the Stagyrite, who observes that the agricultural cla.s.s of all others is the least inclined to sedition. We find it to have been so regarded in the practical politics of antiquity, where they are brought more directly h.o.m.o to our understandings and bosoms in the history of Borne, and above all, in the writings of Cicero. The country tribes were always thought more respectable than those of the city. And if in our own history there is any one circ.u.mstance to which, under G.o.d, are to be attributed the steady resistance, the fortunate issue, and sober settlement of all our struggles for liberty, it is, that, while the landed interest, instead of forming a separate body, as in other countries, has at all times been in close connection and union with the other great interests of the country, it has been spontaneously allowed to lead and direct and moderate all the rest. I cannot, therefore, but see with singular gratification, that, during a war which has been eminently made for the destruction of the lauded proprietors, as well as of priests and kings, as much has been done by public works for the permanent benefit of their stake in this country as in all the rest of the current century, which now touches to its close. Perhaps after this it may not be necessary to refer to private observation; but I am satisfied that in general the rents of lands have been considerably increased: they are increased very considerably, indeed, if I may draw any conclusion from my own little property of that kind. I am not ignorant, however, where our public burdens are most galling. But all of this cla.s.s will consider who they are that are princ.i.p.ally menaced,--how little the men of their description in other countries, where this revolutionary fury has but touched, have been found equal to their own protection,--how tardy and unprovided and full of anguish is their flight, chained down as they are by every tie to the soil,--how helpless they are, above all other men, in exile, in poverty, in need, in all the varieties of wretchedness; and then let them well weigh what are the burdens to which they ought not to submit for their own salvation.

Many of the authorities which I have already adduced, or to which I have referred, may convey a competent notion of some of our princ.i.p.al manufactures. Their general state will be clear from that of our external and internal commerce, through which they circulate, and of which they are at once the cause and effect. But the communication of the several parts of the kingdom with each other and with foreign countries has always been regarded as one of the most certain tests to evince the prosperous or adverse state of our trade in all its branches.

Recourse has usually been had to the revenue of the Post-Office with this view. I shall include the product of the tax which was laid in the last war, and which will make the evidence more conclusive, if it shall afford the same inference: I allude to the Post-Horse duty, which shows the personal intercourse within the kingdom, as the Post-Office shows the intercourse by letters both within and without. The first of these standards, then, exhibits an increase, according to my former schemes of comparison, from an eleventh to a twentieth part of the whole duty.[50]

The Post-Office gives still less consolation to those who are miserable in proportion as the country feels no misery. From the commencement of the war to the month of April, 1796, the gross produce had increased by nearly one sixth of the whole sum which the state now derives from that fund. I find that the year ending 5th of April, 1793, gave 627,592_l._, and the year ending at the same quarter in 1796, 750,637_l._, after a fair deduction having been made for the alteration (which, you know, on grounds of policy I never approved) in your privilege of franking. I have seen no formal doc.u.ment subsequent to that period, but I have been credibly informed there is very good ground to believe that the revenue of the Post-Office[51] still continues to be regularly and largely upon the rise.

What is the true inference to be drawn from the annual number of bankruptcies has been the occasion of much dispute. On one side it has been confidently urged as a sure symptom of a decaying trade: on the other side it has been insisted that it is a circ.u.mstance attendant upon a thriving trade; for that the greater is the whole quant.i.ty of trade, the greater of course must be the positive number of failures, while the aggregate success is still in the same proportion. In truth, the increase of the number may arise from either of those causes. But all must agree in one conclusion,--that, if the number diminishes, and at the same time every other sort of evidence tends to show an augmentation of trade, there can be no better indication. We have already had very ample means of gathering that the year 1796 was a very favorable year of trade, and in that year the number of bankruptcies was at least one fifth below the usual average. I take this from the declaration of the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords.[52] He professed to speak from the records of Chancery; and he added another very striking fact,--that on the property actually paid into his court (a very small part, indeed, of the whole property of the kingdom) there had accrued in that year a net surplus of eight hundred thousand pounds, which was so much new capital.

But the real situation of our trade, during the whole of this war, deserves more minute investigation. I shall begin with that which, though the least in consequence, makes perhaps the most impression on our senses, because it meets our eyes in our daily walks: I mean our retail trade. The exuberant display of wealth in our shops was the sight which most amazed a learned foreigner of distinction who lately resided among us: his expression, I remember, was, that "_they seemed to be bursting with opulence into the streets_." The doc.u.ments which throw light on this subject are not many, but they all meet in the same point: all concur in exhibiting an increase. The most material are the general licenses[53] which the law requires to be taken out by all dealers in excisable commodities. These seem to be subject to considerable fluctuations. They have not been so low in any year of the war as in the years 1788 and 1789, nor ever so high in peace as in the first year of the war. I should next state the licenses to dealers in spirits and wine; but the change in them which took place in 1789 would give an unfair advantage to my argument. I shall therefore content myself with remarking, that from the date of that change the spirit licenses kept nearly the same level till the stoppage of the distilleries in 1795. If they dropped a little, (and it was but little,) the wine licenses, during the same time, more than countervailed that loss to the revenue; and it is remarkable with regard to the latter, that in the year 1796, which was the lowest in the excise duties on wine itself, as well as in the quant.i.ty imported, more dealers in wine appear to have been licensed than in any former year, excepting the first year of the war. This fact may raise some doubt whether the consumption has been lessened so much as, I believe, is commonly imagined. The only other retail-traders whom I found so entered as to admit of being selected are tea-dealers and sellers of gold and silver plate, both of whom seem to have multiplied very much in proportion to their aggregate number.[54] I have kept apart one set of licensed sellers, because I am aware that our antagonists may be inclined to triumph a little, when I name auctioneers and auctions.

They may be disposed to consider it as a sort of trade which thrives by the distress of others. But if they will look at it a little more attentively, they will find their gloomy comfort vanish. The public income from these licenses has risen with very great regularity through a series of years which all must admit to have been years of prosperity.

It is remarkable, too, that in the year 1793, which was the great year of bankruptcies, these duties on auctioneers and auctions[55] fell below the mark of 1791; and in 1796, which year had one fifth less than the accustomed average of bankruptcies, they mounted at once beyond all former examples. In concluding this general head, will you permit me, my dear Sir, to bring to your notice an humble, but industrious and laborious set of chapmen, against whom the vengeance of your House has sometimes been levelled, with what policy I need not stay to inquire, as they have escaped without much injury? The hawkers and peddlers,[56] I am a.s.sured, are still doing well, though, from some new arrangements respecting them made in 1789, it would be difficult to trace their proceedings in any satisfactory manner.

When such is the vigor of our traffic in its minutest ramifications, we may be persuaded that the root and the trunk are sound. When we see the life-blood of the state circulate so freely through the capillary vessels of the System, we scarcely need inquire if the heart performs its functions aright. But let us approach it; let us lay it bare, and watch the systole and diastole, as it now receives and now pours forth the vital stream through all the members. The port of London has always supplied the main evidence of the state of our commerce. I know, that, amidst all the difficulties and embarra.s.sments of the year 1793, from causes unconnected with and prior to the war, the tonnage of ships in the Thames actually rose. But I shall not go through a detail of official papers on this point. There is evidence, which has appeared this very session before your House, infinitely more forcible and impressive to my apprehension than all the journals and ledgers of all the Inspectors-General from the days of Davenant. It is such as cannot carry with it any sort of fallacy. It comes, not from one set, but from many opposite sets of witnesses, who all agree in nothing else: witnesses of the gravest and most unexceptionable character, and who confirm what they say, in the surest manner, by their conduct. Two different bills have been brought in for improving the port of London. I have it from very good intelligence, that, when the project was first suggested from necessity, there were no less than eight different plans, supported by eight different bodies of subscribers. The cost of the least was estimated at two hundred thousand pounds, and of the most extensive at twelve hundred thousand. The two between which the contest now lies substantially agree (as all the others must have done) in the motives and reasons of the preamble; but I shall confine myself to that bill which is proposed on the part of the mayor, aldermen, and common council, because I regard them as the best authority, and their language in itself is fuller and more precise. I certainly see them complain of the "great delays, accidents, damages, losses, and extraordinary expenses, which are almost continually sustained, to the hindrance and discouragement of commerce, and the great injury of the public revenue."

But what are the causes to which they attribute their complaints? The first is, "THAT, FROM THE VERY GREAT AND PROGRESSIVE INCREASE OF THE NUMBER AND SIZE OF SHIPS AND OTHER VESSELS TRADING TO THE PORT OF LONDON, the river Thames, in and near the said port, is in general so much crowded with shipping, lighters, and other craft, that the navigation of a considerable part of the river is thereby rendered tedious and dangerous; and there is great want of room in the said port for the safe and convenient mooring of vessels, and constant access to them." The second is of the same nature. It is the want of regulations and arrangements, never before found necessary, for expedition and facility. The third is of another kind, but to the same effect: That the legal quays are too confined, and there is not sufficient accommodation for the landing and shipping of cargoes. And the fourth and last is still different: they describe the avenues to the legal quays (which, little more than a century since, the great fire of London opened and dilated beyond the measure of our then circ.u.mstances) to be now "incommodious, and much too narrow for the great concourse of carts and other carriages usually pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing therein." Thus our trade has grown too big for the ancient limits of Art and Nature. Our streets, our lanes, our sh.o.r.es, the river itself, which has so long been our pride, are impeded and obstructed and choked up by our riches. They are, like our shops, "bursting with opulence." To these misfortunes, to these distresses and grievances alone, we are told, it is to be imputed that still more of our capital has not been pushed into the channel of our commerce, to roll back in its reflux still more abundant capital, and fructify the national treasury in its course. Indeed, my dear Sir, when I have before my eyes this consentient testimony of the corporation of the city of London, the West India merchants, and all the other merchants who promoted the other plans, struggling and contending which of them shall be permitted to lay out their money in consonance with their testimony, I cannot turn aside to examine what one or two violent pet.i.tions, tumultuously voted by real or pretended liverymen of London, may have said of the utter destruction and annihilation of trade.

This opens a subject on which every true lover of his country, and, at this crisis, every friend to the liberties of Europe, and of social order in every country, must dwell and expatiate with delight. I mean to wind up all my proofs of our astonishing and almost incredible prosperity with the valuable information given to the Secret Committee of the Lords by the Inspector-General. And here I am happy that I can administer an antidote to all despondence from the same dispensary from which the first dose of poison was supposed to have come. The report of that committee is generally believed to have derived much benefit from the labors of the same n.o.ble lord who was said, as the author of the pamphlet of 1795, to have led the way in teaching us to place all our hope on that very experiment which he afterwards declared in his place to have been from the beginning utterly without hope. We have now his authority to say, that, as far as our resources were concerned, the experiment was equally without necessity.

"It appears," as the committee has very justly and satisfactorily observed, "by the accounts of the value of the imports and exports for the last twenty years, produced by Mr. Irving, Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, that the demands for cash to be sent abroad"

(which, by the way, including the loan to the Emperor, was nearly one third less sent to the Continent of Europe than in the Seven Years' War) ... "was greatly compensated by a very large balance of commerce in favor of this kingdom,--greater than was ever known in any preceding period. The value of the exports of the last year amounted, according to the valuation on which the accounts of the Inspector-General are founded, to 30,424,184_l._, which is more than double what it was in any year of the American war, and one third more than it was on an average during the last peace, previous to the year 1792; and though the value of the imports to this country has during the same period greatly increased, the excess of the value of the exports above that of the imports, which const.i.tutes the balance of trade, has augmented even in a greater proportion." These observations might perhaps be branched out into other points of view, but I shall leave them to your own active and ingenious mind. There is another and still more important light in which, the Inspector-General's information may be seen,--and that is, as affording a comparison of some circ.u.mstances in this war with the commercial history of all our other wars in the present century.

In all former hostilities, our exports gradually declined in value, and then (with one single exception) ascended again, till they reached and pa.s.sed the level of the preceding peace. But this was a work of time, sometimes more, sometimes less slow. In Queen Anne's war, which began in 1702, it was an interval of ten years before this was effected. Nine years only were necessary, in the war of 1739, for the same operation.

The Seven Years' War saw the period much shortened: hostilities began in 1755; and in 1758, the fourth year of the war, the exports mounted above the peace-mark. There was, however, a distinguishing feature of that war,--that our tonnage, to the very last moment, was in a state of great depression, while our commerce was chiefly carried on by foreign vessels. The American war was darkened with singular and peculiar adversity. Our exports never came near to their peaceful elevation, and our tonnage continued, with very little fluctuation, to subside lower and lower.[57] On the other hand, the present war, with regard to our commerce, has the white mark of as singular felicity. If, from internal causes, as well as the consequence of hostilities, the tide ebbed in 1793, it rushed back again with a bore in the following year, and from that time has continued to swell and run every successive year higher and higher into all our ports. The value of our exports last year above the year 1792 (the mere increase of our commerce during the war) is equal to the average value of all the exports during the wars of William and Anne.

It has been already pointed out, that our imports have not kept pace with our exports: of course, on the face of the account, the balance of trade, both positively and comparatively considered, must have been much more than ever in our favor. In that early little tract of mine, to which I have already more than once referred, I made many observations on the usual method of computing that balance, as well as the usual objection to it, that the entries at the Custom-House were not always true. As you probably remember them, I shall not repeat them here. On the one hand, I am not surprised that the same trite objection is perpetually renewed by the detractors of our national affluence; and on the other hand, I am gratified in perceiving that the balance of trade seems to be now computed in a manner much clearer than it used to be from those errors which I formerly noticed. The Inspector-General appears to have made his estimate with every possible guard and caution.

His opinion is ent.i.tled to the greatest respect. It was in substance, (I shall again use the words of the Report, as much better than my own,) "that the true balance of our trade amounted, on a medium of the four years preceding January, 1796, to upwards of 6,500,00_l._ per annum, exclusive of the profits arising from our East and West India trade, which he estimates at upwards of 4,000,000_l._ per annum, exclusive of the profits derived from our fisheries." So that, including the fisheries, and making a moderate allowance for the exceedings, which Mr.

Irving himself supposes, beyond his calculation, without reckoning what the public creditors themselves pay to themselves, and without taking one shilling from the stock of the landed interest, our colonies, our Oriental possessions, our skill and industry, our commerce and navigation, at the commencement of this year, were pouring a new annual capital into the kingdom, hardly half a million short of the whole interest of that tremendous debt from which we are taught to shrink in dismay, as from an overwhelming and intolerable oppression.

If, then, the real state of this nation is such as I have described, (and I am only apprehensive that you may think I have taken too much pains to exclude all doubt on this question,)--if no cla.s.s is lessened in its numbers, or in its stock, or in its conveniences, or even its luxuries,--if they build as many habitations, and as elegant and as commodious as ever, and furnish them with every chargeable decoration and every prodigality of ingenious invention that can be thought of by those who even inc.u.mber their necessities with superfluous accommodation,--if they are as numerously attended,--if their equipages are as splendid,--if they regale at table with as much or more variety of plenty than ever,--if they are clad in as expensive and changeful a diversity, according to their tastes and modes,--if they are not deterred from the pleasures of the field by the charges which government has wisely turned from the culture to the sports of the field,--if the theatres are as rich and as well filled, and greater and at a higher price than ever,--and (what is more important than all) if it is plain, from the treasures which are spread over the soil or confided to the winds and the seas, that there are as many who are indulgent to their propensities of parsimony as others to their voluptuous desires, and that the pecuniary capital grows instead of diminishing,--on what ground are we authorized to say that a nation gambolling in an ocean of superfluity is undone by want? With what face can we pretend that they who have not denied any one gratification to any one appet.i.te have a right to plead poverty in order to famish their virtues and to put their duties on short allowance? that they are to take the law from an imperious enemy, and can contribute no longer to the honor of their king, to the support of the independence of their country, to the salvation of that Europe which, if it falls, must crush them with its gigantic ruins? How can they affect to sweat and stagger and groan under their burdens, to whom the mines of Newfoundland, richer than those of Mexico and Peru, are now thrown in as a make-weight in the scale of their exorbitant opulence? What excuse can they have to faint, and creep, and cringe, and prostrate themselves at the footstool of ambition and crime, who, during a short, though violent struggle, which they have never supported with the energy of men, have ama.s.sed more to their annual acc.u.mulation than all the well-husbanded capital that enabled their ancestors, by long and doubtful and obstinate conflicts, to defend and liberate and vindicate the civilized world? But I do not accuse the people of England. As to the great majority of the nation, they have done whatever, in their several ranks and conditions and descriptions, was required of them by their relative situations in society: and from those the great ma.s.s of mankind cannot depart, without the subversion of all public order. They look up to that government which they obey that they may be protected. They ask to be led and directed by those rulers whom Providence and the laws of their country have set over them, and under their guidance to walk in the ways of safety and honor. They have again delegated the greatest trust which they have to bestow to those faithful representatives who made their true voice heard against the disturbers and destroyers of Europe. They suffered, with unapproving acquiescence, solicitations, which they had in no shape desired, to an unjust and usurping power, whom they had never provoked, and whose hostile menaces they did not dread. When the exigencies of the public service could only be met by their voluntary zeal, they started forth with an ardor which outstripped the wishes of those who had injured them by doubting whether it might not be necessary to have recourse to compulsion. They have in all things reposed an enduring, but not an unreflecting confidence. That confidence demands a full return, and fixes a responsibility on the ministers entire and undivided. The people stands acquitted, if the war is not carried on in a manner suited to its objects. If the public honor is tarnished, if the public safety suffers any detriment, the ministers, not the people, are to answer it, and they alone. Its armies, its navies, are given to them without stint or restriction. Its treasures are poured out at their feet. Its constancy is ready to second all their efforts. They are not to fear a responsibility for acts of manly adventure. The responsibility which they are to dread is lest they should show themselves unequal to the expectation of a brave people. The more doubtful may be the const.i.tutional and economical questions upon which they have received so marked a support, the more loudly they are called upon to support this great war, for the success of which their country is willing to supersede considerations of no slight importance. Where I speak of responsibility, I do not mean to exclude that species of it which the legal powers of the country have a right finally to exact from those who abuse a public trust: but high as this is, there is a responsibility which attaches on them from which the whole legitimate power of the kingdom cannot absolve them; there is a responsibility to conscience and to glory, a responsibility to the existing world, and to that posterity which men of their eminence cannot avoid for glory or for shame,--a responsibility to a tribunal at which not only ministers, but kings and parliaments, but even nations themselves, must one day answer.

END OF VOL. V.