of the king, and to weaken that of the
great proprietors, it could not do either sufficiently
for establishing order and good government
among the inhabitants of the country;
because it could not alter sufficiently
that state of property and manners from which
the disorders arose. The authority of government
still continued to be, as before, too weak
in the head, and too strong in the inferior
members; and the excessive strength of the
inferior members was the cause of the weakness
of the head. After the institution of feudal
subordination, the king was as incapable
of restraining the violence of the great lords
as before. They still continued to make war
according to their own discretion, almost continually
upon one another, and very frequently
upon the king; and the open country still
continued to be a scene of violence, rapine,
and disorder.
But what all the violence of the feudal institutions
could never have effected, the silent
and insensible operation of foreign commerce
and manufactures gradually brought about.
These gradually furnished the great proprietors
with something for which they could exchange
the whole surplus produce of their
lands, and which they could consume themselves,
without sharing it either with tenants
or retainers. All for ourselves, and nothing
for other people, seems, in every age of the
world, to have been the vile maxim of the
masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as
they could find a method of consuming the
whole value of their rents themselves, they
had no disposition to share them with any
other persons. For a pair of diamond buckles,
perhaps, or for something as frivolous and
useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or,
what in the same thing, the price of the maintenance
of 1000 men for a year, and with it
the whole weight and authority which it could
give them. The buckles, however, were to be
all their own, and no other human creature
was to have any share of them; whereas, in
the more ancient method of expense, they
must have shared with at least 1000 people.
With the judges that were to determine the
preference, this difference was perfectly decisive;
and thus, for the gratification of the
most childish, the meanest, and the most sordid
of all vanities they gradually bartered
their whole power and authority.
In a country where there is no foreign commerce,
nor any of the finer manufactures, a man
of L.10,000 a-year cannot well employ his revenue
in any other way than in maintaining,
perhaps, 1000 families, who are all of them
necessarily at his command. In the present
state of Europe, a man of L.10,000 a-year
can spend his whole revenue, and he generally
does so, without directly maintaining twenty
people, or being able to command more than
ten footmen, not worth the commanding. Indirectly,
perhaps, he maintains as great, or
even a greater number of people, than he
could have done by the ancient method of expense.
For though the quantity of precious
productions for which he exchanges his whole
revenue be very small, the number of workmen
employed in collecting and preparing it
must necessarily have been very great. Its
great price generally arises from the wages of
their labour, and the profits of all their immediate
employers. By paying that price, he
indirectly pays all those wages and profits,
and thus indirectly contributes to the maintenance
of all the workmen and their employers.
He generally contributes, however, but a very
small proportion to that of each; to a very
few, perhaps, not a tenth, to many not a hundredth,
and to some not a thousandth, or even
a ten thousandth part of their whole annual
maintenance. Though he contributes, therefore,
to the maintenance of them all, they are
all more or less independent of him, because
generally they can all be maintained without
him.
When the great proprietors of land spend
their rents in maintaining their tenants and
retainers, each of them maintains entirely all
his own tenants and all his own retainers.
But when they spend them in maintaining
tradesmen and artificers, they may, all of them
taken together, perhaps maintain as great, or,
on account of the waste which attends rustic
hospitality, a greater number of people than
before. Each of them, however, taken singly,
contributes often but a very small share to the
maintenance of any individual of this greater
number. Each tradesman or artificer derives
his subsistence from the employment, not of
one, but of a hundred or a thousand different
customers. Though in some measure obliged
to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely dependent
upon any one of them.
The personal expense of the great proprietors
having in this manner gradually increased,
it was impossible that the number of their
retainers should not as gradually diminish,
till they were at last dismissed altogether.
The same cause gradually led them to dismiss
the unnecessary part of their tenants. Farms
were enlarged, and the occupiers of land, notwithstanding
the complaints of depopulation,
reduced to the number necessary for cultivating
it, according to the imperfect state of
cultivation and improvement in those times.
By the removal of the unnecessary mouths,
and by exacting from the farmer the full value
of the farm, a greater surplus, or, what is
the same thing, the price of a greater surplus,
was obtained for the proprietor, which the
merchants and manufacturers soon furnished
him with a method of spending upon his own
person, in the same manner as he had done
the rest. The cause continuing to operate,
he was desirous to raise his rents above what
his lands, in the actual state of their improvement,
could afford. His tenants could agree