Section II.: Of the principal Objects of National Expenditure.

In the preceding section, it has been endeavoured to show, that, since all consumption by the public is in itself a sacrifice of value, an evil balanced only by such benefit, as may result to the community from the satisfaction of any of its wants, a good administration will never spend for the mere sake of spending, but take care to ascertain that the public benefit, resulting, in such instance, from the satisfaction of a public want, shall exceed the sacrifice incurred in its acquirement.

A comprehensive view of the principal public wants of a civilized community, can alone qualify us to estimate with tolerable accuracy the sacrifice it is worth while for the community to make for their gratification.

The public consumes little else, but what have been denominated Immaterial products, that is to say, products destroyed as soon as created; in other words, the services or agency, either of human beings, or of other objects, animate or inanimate.

It consumes the personal service of all its functionaries, civil, judicial, military, or ecclesiastical. It consumes the agency of land and capital. The navigation of rivers and seas, utility of roads and ground open to the public, are so much agency derived by the public from land, of which either the absolute property, or the beneficial enjoyment, is vested in the public. Where capital has been vested in the land, in the shape of buildings, bridges, artificial harbours, causeways, dikes, canals, &c. the public then consumes the agency, or the rent of the land, plus the agency, or the interest, of the capital so vested.

Sometimes the public maintains establishments of productive industry for instance, the porcelain manufacture of Sevres, the Gobelin tapestry, the salt-works of Lorraine and of the Jura, &c., in France. When concerns of this kind bring more than their expenditure, which is but rarely the case, they furnish part of the national revenue, and must by no means be classed among the items of national charge.