Of Our Actions, Chapter XIII.: Conclusion.

We are now arrived at a remarkable point on the road over which I had proposed to travel. I ask permission to stop here for a moment. I will again repeat to the reader, that what he has just read is not properly a treatise on political economy. It is the first part of a treatise on the will, which ought to have two other parts; and which is itself but the sequel of a treatise on the understanding. Every thing here then ought to be co-ordinate with what precedes, and what will follow. Thus it ought not to excite surprize that I have not entered into the details of political economy; but it should have done so if I had not ascended to the origin of our wants and of our means, if I had not endeavoured to show how these wants and means arise from our faculty of willing. and if I had neglected to point out the relations of our physical with our moral wants.

It is that I may not merit these reproaches that I have commenced by a very general introduction, which no more belongs to economy than to morality or to legislation; but in which I have endeavoured clearly to explain what are the ideas for which we are indebted to our faculty of willing, and without which these three sciences would not exist for us. I shall be told that this introduction is too metaphysical. I answer that it could not be otherwise, and that it is precisely because it is very metaphysical that there is no bad metaphysics in the rest of the work. For nothing can so effectually preserve us from sophisms and illusions, as to begin by well elucidating the principal ideas. We have not been long without proofs of this.

In fact after having well observed the manner in which we know our wants, our original weakness, and our propensity to sympathy, we were no longer in any doubt on the nature of society. We have seen clearly that it is our natural and necessary state, that it is founded on personality and property, that it consists in conventions, that these conventions are all exchanges, that the essence of exchange consists in being useful to both the contracting parties, sad that the general advantages of exchanges (which constitute the social state) are to produce a concurrence of force, the increase and preservation of knowledge, and the division of labour.

After having examined in like manner our means of providing for our wants, we have also seen that our individual force is our only primitive riches; that the employment of this force, our labour, has a necessary value, which is the only cause of all the other values; that all our industry consists in fabrication and transportation; and that the effect of this industry is always and solely to add a degree of utility to the things on which it is exercised, and to furnish objects of consumption and means of existence.

Ascending always to the observation of our faculties, since personality and property are necessary it is evident that inequality is inevitable. But it is an evil. We have seen what are the causes of its exaggerated increase, and what its fatal effects.

These have explained to us in a very precise manner what has commonly been said very vaguely of the different states through which the same people successively pass.

Since we all have means, we are all proprietors; since we all have wants, we are all consumers. These two great interests always re-unite us. But we are naturally unequal; from whence it happens, in process of time, that some have property in advance, and many others have not. These latter can only live on the funds of the former. From thence two great classes of men, the hired and the hirers, opposed in interest in the respect, that the one selling their labor wishes to sell dear, and the other buying it wishes to buy cheap.

Amongst those who buy labour, some (the idle rich) employ it only in their personal satisfaction; its value is destroyed. The others (these are the undertakers of industry) employ it in a useful manner, which reproduces what it has cost. These alone preserve and increase the riches already acquired; these alone furnish to the other capitalists the revenues which they consume, since doing nothing, they can derive no benefit from their capitals, whether moveable or immoveable, but by hiring them to industrious men in consideration of a rent, which the latter pay out of their profits. The more the industry of the latter is perfected the more our means of existence are augmented.

In fine, we have remarked that the fecundity of the human species is such, that the number of men is always proportionate to their means of existence; and that wheresoever this number does not continually and rapidly augment, it is because many individuals daily perish for want of the means of life.

Such are the principal truths which follow so immediately from the observation of our faculties, that it is impossible to dispute them. They lead us to consequences no less certain.

After having seen what society is, it is impossible not to reject the idea of foregoing it absolutely, or of founding it on an entire renunciation of one's self, and on a chimerical equality.

After having well unraveled the effects of our industry, it is impossible not to see that there is nothing more mysterious in agricultural industry than in any other, but we discover the inconveniences which are proper to it, and which are the cause of the different forms which it takes according to times and places.

When we have recognized the necessary cause of all values, we must conclude that it is absurd to pretend that money is but a sign; and odious to undertake to give it an arbitrary value, or forcibly to replace it by an imaginary value; and that every establishment which tends towards this end is dangerous and pernicious.

When we have seen how the formation of our riches is operated and their continual renovation, which we call circulation, we necessarily see that consumption in itself can never be useful, and that the exaggerated consumption, called luxury, is always hurtful: and we cannot otherwise than find rediculous, the importance ascribed to men who have no other merit but of being consumers, as if that were a very rare talent.

Just views of consumption give necessarily just ideas on that greatest of consumers, government; on the effects of its expenses, its debts, and the different imposts which compose its revenues, and lead us clearly to trace the different reflections, of these assessments, and to estimate the greater or less evil they do, according to the different classes of men on which they fall.

All these consequences are rigorous. They will not be the less contested. It was necessary then, to arrive at them methodically. But those above all, which will experience the greatest opposition, are what lead us to determine the degrees of importance of the different classes of society. How persuade the great rural proprietors, so much cried up, that they are but lenders of money, burdensome to agriculture and strangers to all its interests? How convince these idle rich, so much respected, that they are absolutely good for nothing; and that their existence is an evil, inasmuch as it diminishes the number of useful labourers? How obtain acknowledgement from all those who hire labour, that the dearness of workmanship is a desirable thing; and that, in general, all the true interests of the poor are exactly the same as the true interest of the whole society. It is not merely their interests, well or ill understood, which oppose these truths, it is their passion; and among these passions, the most violent and antisocial of all, vanity. With them demonstration, or at least conviction is no longer possible; for the passions know how to obscure and entangle every thing; and it is with as much reason as ingenuity, that Hobbes has said, that if men had a lively desire not to believe that two and two make four, they would have succeeded in rendering this truth doubtful; we might produce proofs of it.

On many occasions, then, it is still more difficult to conciliate to truth than to discover it. This observation discovers to us a new relation between the subject we have treated of and that which is next to occupy us, between the study of our actions and that of our sentiments. We have perceived, and said, that we should know well the consequences of our actions, to appreciate justly, the merit or demerit of the sentiments which urge us to this or that action; and now we see that it is necessary to analyze our sentiments themselves, submit them to a rigorous examination, distinguish those which being founded on just judgments always direct us well, and those which having their source in illusions, and rising from the obliquities of our minds, cannot fail to lead us astray and form within us a false and blind conscience, which always removes us further from the road of reason, the only one leading to happiness. This is what we shall next investigate, and if we have well exposed the results of the actions of men, and the effects of their passions, it seems that it will be easy to indicate the rules which they ought to prescribe to themselves. This would be the true spirit of laws and the best conclusion of a treatise on the will

I have employed the form of aphorisms, observations and corollaries, in order to say the most in the fewest words.

See page 183 of the preliminary discourse to the essay on the application of analysis to the probability of decisions, given by a plurality of votes, in 4 to 1785, al'imprimerie royal.

This discourse, the elements of the same author which I have already cited, and the excellent lesson of M. Delaplace, which are to be found in the collection of the Normal schools, are, in my opinion, the three works in which we are best able to see the general spirit and process of the calculation of probabilities, and where we can the most easily discover the causes of its advantages and inconveniences, although they are not yet there completely developed.

We may say as much of all animated beings which we know, and even of all those we imagine.

See vol. 1st. chap. 13th, page 295, second edition.

See vol. 3d, chap. 5, p. 27.

See on this subject, vol. 1st. chap. 16th, page 339, second edition, and different parts of the 2d and 3d volumes.

It is in consequence of a confused notion of this truth that people have never imagined expressions more tender, than to call one my life, my heart, my soul; it is as though one should call him myself. There is always something hyperbolical in these expressions.

I conclude from hence that the expression of the one or the other of these precepts, and perhaps of both, has been altered by men, who did not really understand either. I shall often have occasion to make reflections of this kind, because they are applicable to many of these maxims which pass from age to age.

The first is from Leviticus, chap. xix. The other is from the gospel of St. John, chap. xiii. See the remark in the questions on the miracles, Voltaire vol. 60, page 186. You will be astonished to see that Voltaire considered these two maxims as identical.

See logic, vol. 3d, chap. 6th. page 315, and following.

See vol. 1st, chap. 10th, page 187, and following 2d edition; and vol. 3d, chap. 9th, page 463.

See vol. 3d, chap. 9th, page 500, and following.

See vol. 1st, chap. 13th, page 269, 2d edition.

Always perhaps with a degree of energy proportionate to the perfection of the organization.

We must however admit that nature, or the order of things, such as they are, in creating the rights of every animated individual, equal and opposed to those of another, has virtually and indirectly created the state of war; and that it is art which has caused it to cease, or at least has frequently suspended it amongst us, by conventions. This still agrees with our general principle, that we create nothing; were there not natural and necessary wars, there never would have been any conventional and artificial ones. The invincibly permanent state of the relations of man with animals of other species, is what disposes him most to treat his fellow beings in an hostile manner.

This latter error of Hobbes has not, however, been produced in his excellent head, but by the too energetic impression made by the unhappiness of his country; which unhappiness was caused by efforts, the object of which in their origin was resistance to oppression.

This truth has been developed vol. 1st. chapter of existence, and in different parts of the two other volumes.

In developing and exciting sympathy.

It is very just. I shall believe in the possibility of a creation, when any body shall show me one, or even an annihilation.

Merchants know well that to prosper there is no other mean, but to render the merchandise agreeable, and to be within reach of the rich? Why do not nations think the same? They would rivalise industry only, and would never think of desiring the impoverishment of their neighbours;—they would be happy.

I abstract the price of the machine, and the interest it ought to yield.

One of these circumstances, the most extraordinary, is, without contradiction, the discovery of the advantages of the propagation of Spanish sheep, instead of those of the country. This is the immortal glory of M. D'Aubenton, and the fruit of thirty years perseverance. Well! What has happened since this has been established? Even before the cultivator could procure these animals, and before he well knew the manner of deriving advantage from them, he gives already a much higher rent for lands on which he hoped to be able to raise them: That is to say, a part of the profits is taken from him in advance; the remainder will not fail to be taken from him at the next lease.

It will be matter of astonishment to hear me say rent money, as we say rent lands, or a house; but I am more justly surprised, that when they say lend money, they do not also say to lend land—for it, is the same thing. The truth is, we ought not to say lend but in cases of gratuitous loans.

When we have a property whatsoever, there are but six ways of using it. To preserve or destroy it, to give or sell it, to lend or rent it. They do not precisely destroy lands, but they keep them or give them, or sell them, or lend them, or rent them. As they do every thing else. There is the same difference between a lending and renting, as between giving and selling.

If it is in considering them as men in general, enlightened and independent, it is just; but if in their quality of proprietors of land, it is absurd.

The lenders of land have even a great advantage over the others, because when they have found a mean of obtaining a higher rent, they have by this circumstance augmented their capital: land is sold according to its rents. This does not happen to the lenders of money.

If he takes it, it will be to under-rent and divide it. Then he will be a parasite being a speculator and not a cultivator. This is done by the principal farmers of large farms where they are let on halfstocks. Their object is traffic.

See what is the difference of the employment of funds. This man, who cultivates on a small scale, has perhaps an estate on which he could raise thirty thousand francs. If he would sell it he would have wherewithal to take a great farm in a good country; he would be much better, and would gain more: But perhaps he does not not know that this possibility exists far from him. Were he to know it he would fear the risks and his own inexperience: and, besides, man holds to his habits, and to the pleasure of property.

If I dare to affirm this, it is not because I have travelled much; but I have had property for about forty years, in a country of great farms, a country of vineyards, and of bad half-shares. I have always followed their progress with attention; and more with a view to the general effect than to any particular interest. I have effected sensible ameliorations in the two latter and I am persuaded that when we have thus a sufficient field of observation we gain more by thoroughly examining than by multiplying them.

Billion is a mixture of a great deal of copper, and so little silver, that the extraction of the latter would not be worth the expense.

Several of these denominations have been originally names of real monies, Louis, Crowns and Ducats.

It is for this reason that Law himself, when the Abbey Terrasson proposed to him to reimburse the Catholic Church with his paper, answered—the Roman Clergy are not such fools.

We have seen them even for five sous. You may judge whether it be possible to superintend them, and if three-fourths of them were not false.

It is true that these mandats were the end of all; that they lasted but a few days; and that they never had a real currency: for no fear of punishment could determine any one to take them at any price.

Agriculture is no where so flourishing and advancing as in those countries where the rents of land are as yet nothing; because there are still lands belonging to nobody; for then all the produce of these lands is for him who cultivates them. See the western part of the United States of America.

This should teach us to appreciate the sagacity of those profound politicians, who pretend that it is highly advantageous to a nation that its landed property should sell very high; because, say they, it follows that its soil, which is a large part of its capital, has a great value. They have no doubts on the subject.

However there are two ways of understanding the expression, very dear. Do they wish to say, that it is desirable that land should be sold high, in proportion to the rent which may be drawn from it? that is true; for this proves that the interest of money is low, and that the idle take but little from the laborer.

But do they wish to say that it is good that an acre of land should sell dear in proportion to what it will produce? that is false; for this price is so much taken from him who is going to work this acre, thus it is to say, that it is advantageous to take from this useful man a part of his means, and often to render his enterprize impossible by augmenting its expenses. Experience and reason declare equally against this mistake.

When less than a hundred francs are sufficient to pay an hundred elsewhere, it is said that the exchange is low. This is the case with the city which, compensation being made, still remains creditor, because apparently it has sent to the other more merchandise than it has received. This low exchange gives it an advantage in importation, for it can pay for the same things with less silver. But for the same reason it is disadvantageous if it continues to export, for it will require more money to pay them for the same quantity of merchandise. This is equivalent to a rise of price, and diminishes the demand.

This sole consideration, independently of many others, shows how ridiculous it is to believe that a country can always and constantly export more than it imports. It would be quickly arrested merely by the course of exchange. But we are not yet come to the examination of the reveries on the pretended balance of commerce; it suffices to have made this observation.

A bank existing at Paris at the commencement of the revolution.

Once more I repeat, that hired labourers are not solely in the pay of the proprietors of land, but in that of all those who have capitals with which to pay their wages.

How very desirable it would be in such a case, that the superior class of society should be sufficiently enlightened to give to the inferior ideas completely sound of the social order, during this happy and necessarily transient period, in which it is the most susceptible of instruction. If the United States of America do not profit of it, their tranquility and even safety will be much exposed, when interior and exterior obstacles, and inconveniences, shall have multiplied. This will be called their decline and corruption. It will be the slow but necessary effect of their anterior improvidence and carelessness.

We might say with nerves and muscles, for it goes to that.

This is very doubtful, if we take into consideration the difference in the number of individuals.

The examples of the ancients prove nothing, because their political economy was entirely founded on force. The inland people were brigands, the maritime people pirates.—All wished to be conquerors. Then chance determines the destiny of a nation.

To judge of the exaggeration of certain fortunes, consider their proportions: for there may be Englishmen near as rich, or richer than the greatest Russian or Polish lords; but they live in the midst of a people generally in much more easy circumstances,—consequently the disproportion, though real, is much less.

This is so striking, that I imagine there is no one who does not regret that America was discovered three hundred years too soon, and who does not even doubt whether it would yet be a proper time for discovering it. It is true that these events, however deplorable, have promoted our ulterior progress; but it is buying them very dear. It appears that such is our destiny.

He says of it many other things. See his 18th book of laws, in the relation they have with the nature of the soil.

And those famous delights of Capua! and all those armies suddenly effeminated, by having found themselves in abundance! Ask of all the generals if their soldiers have been the worse for having plentifully enjoyed the means of life for some time, unless they have suffered them to become pillagers, and undisciplined, by setting them the example; or the chiefs, having made their fortune, are no longer ambitious. If it is this which has happened to the Carthaginians, and others, this is what should have been said, and not in vain rhetorical phrases.

Idle capitalists, sometimes rent houses and money to the idle capitalists: But the latter pay the rent only with their own revenues; and to find the formation of these revenues we must always remount to industrious capitalists. As to lands they almost always rent them to undertakers of culture, for what would the idle make of them?

And why is it circular and continual? Because consumption continually destroys that which has been produced. If reproduction did not incessantly establish it, all would be finished after the first turn.

In fact we here see clearly, why production is arrested, when the fruitful consumption of industry can no longer be augmented, and why the number and case of men increase or decrease as the industry, &c. &c.

Montesquieu was a very great man, but the science was not built in his time; it is quite recent.

See M. Germain Garnier, in his elementary principles of political economy abridged. Paris printed by Agasse, 1796. Page xii of his advertisement, he says, formally, “The principles which serve as guides in the administration of a private fortune, and those by which the public fortune should be directed, not only differ between themselves, but are often in direct opposition to each other.” And page xiii, “The fortune of an individual is increased by saving; the public fortune, on the contrary, receives its increase from the augmentation of consumption.” Page 130, in the chapter on circulation, he likewise says, “The annual production ought naturally to be regulated by the annual consumption.” Also, in the chapter on public debt, page 240, he adds, “The amendment and extension of culture, and consequently the progress of industry and commerce, have no other cause than the extension of artificial wants;” and concludes from this that public debts are good things, inasmuch as they augment these wants. The same doctrine, joined to the idea that culture is alone productive, runs through his whole work, and his notes on Smith. All this is very superficial and very loose.

We have already seen, in the preceding chapter, how inequality of riches is established, or rather increases in society; and, when we shall treat of legislation, we will likewise show that the excess of inequality, and of luxury, is still more the effect of bad laws than of the natural cause of things.

It is incredible to what length of illusion self-love leads, and induces one to exaggerate to himself his personal importance. I have seen men obliged, by the troubles of the times, to quit their castles, who really believed that the whole village would want work—without perceiving that it was their farmer, and not themselves, who paid the greatest part of the wages; and sincerely persuade themselves that even if their peasants should divide their effects, or should buy them at a low price, they would only be the more miserable.

I do not pretend to say that it was well done either to drive them away, or to despoil them; nor even that such means can ever be the cause of a durable prosperity. I have made my profession of faith on the necessity of respect for property and justice in general. But it is not the less true, that the absence of an useless man makes no change in the course of things, or at most only changes the place of a part of his small personal expenses; and that the mere suppression of some feudal rights, produces more good to a country than all the benefits of him who levied them.

I desire it to be remembered, that I do not regard the augmentation of population as a good. It is but too often a multiplication of miserable beings. I should greatly prefer the augmentation of well being. I cite here the increase of the number of men as a symptom only, and not as a happiness. The abuse of competence is a proof of its existence.

The sole suppression of the feudal rights and tythes, partly to the profit of cultivators, and party of the state, enabled the one greatly to increase their industry, and the other to lay an enormous mass of new imposts; and these were but a small part of the revenues of the class of useless consumers.

If luxury is necessary in a monarchal state, it is for the security of the government, but not for the prosperity of the country.

The only idle who ought to be seen without reprobation, are those who devote themselves to study; and especially to the study of man. And these are the only ones who are persecuted: there is reason for this. They shew how useless the others are; and they are not the strongest.

This is in my opinion the best method of classing them, to give a clear account of their effects.

A note communicated to the Editor. Our author's classification of taxes being taken from those practised in France, will scarcely be intelligible to an American reader to whom the nature as well as names of some of them must be unknown. The taxes with which we are familiar class themselves readily according to the basis on which they rest. 1. Capital. 2. Income. 3. Consumption. These may be considered as commensurate: consumption being generally equal to income; and income the annual profit of capital, a government may select either of these basis for the establishment of its system of taxation, and so frame it as to reach the faculties of every member of the society, and to draw from him his equal proportion of the public contributions. And if this be correctly obtained, it is the perfection of the function of taxation. But when once a government has assumed its basis, to select and tax special articles from either of the other classes is double taxation. For example, if the system be established on the basis of income, and his just proportion on that scale has been already drawn from every one, to step into the field of consumption, and tax special articles in that, as broadcloth or homespun, wine or whiskey, a coach or a waggon, is doubly taxing the same article. For that portion of income, with which these articles are purchased, having already paid its tax as income, to pay another tax on the thing it purchased, is paying twice for the same thing. It is an aggrievance on the citizens who use these articles in exoneration of those who do not, contrary to the most sacred of the duties of a government, to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.

How far it may be the interest and the duty of all to submit to this sacrifice on other grounds, for instance, to pay for a time an impost on the importation of certain articles, in order to encourage their manufacture at home, or an excise on others injurious to the morals or health of the citizens, will depend on a series of considerations, of another order, and beyond the proper limits of this note. The reader, in deciding which basis of taxation is most eligible for the local circumstances of his country, will of course avail himself of the weighty observations of our author.

I do not avail myself against this impost of the pretentions of some economists, that the rent of houses ought not to be taxed, or at least but in proportion to the nett revenue which would be yielded by the cultivation of the land occupied by these houses, all the rest being only the interest of the capital employed in building, which according to them is not taxable.

This opinion is a consequence of that which considers agricultural labour as alone productive, and that the revenue of land is the only thing taxable, because there is in the produce of land a part purely gratuitous and entirely due to nature; which portion, according to these authors, is the only legitimate and reasonable subject of taxation.

I have shown that all this is false, therefore I cannot avail myself of it either against this or any of the following imposts; which are all not only reprobated in this system, but are declared illusory, as never being nor possible to be, any thing but an impost on the revenue of lands, disguised and additionally charged with useless expenses and losses, Such a theory is untenable when we know what is production.

He ought to have said, ‘it is frequent’.

Spirit of laws, book 13th. Chap.17.