Knowledge Is Power. Charles Knight
400l. a-year, and devoted all the remaining portion of his revenues to the construction of a magnificent work of the highest public utility. The one supported a train of cooks and valets and horse-jockeys: the other called into action the labour of thousands, and employed in the direction of that labour the skill of Brindley, one of the greatest engineers that any country has produced. The one died without a penny, loaded with debt, leaving no trace behind him but the ruin which his waste had produced: the other bequeathed almost the largest property in Europe to his descendants, and opened a channel for industry which afforded, and still affords, employment to thousands.
When a mob amused themselves by breaking windows, as was once a common recreation on an illumination night, by way of showing the amount of popular intelligence, some were apt to say they have "made good for trade." Is it not evident that the capital which was represented by the unbroken windows was really so much destroyed of the national riches when the windows were broken?—for if the windows had remained unbroken, the capital would have remained to stimulate the production of some new object of utility. The glaziers, indeed, replaced the windows; but there having been a destruction of windows, there must have been a necessary retrenchment in some other outlay, that would have afforded benefit to the consumer. Doubtless, when the glazier is called into activity by a mob breaking windows, some other trade suffers; for the man who has to pay for the broken windows must retrench somewhere, and, if he has less to lay out, some other person has less to lay out. The glass-maker, probably, makes more glass at the moment; but he does so to exchange with the capital that would otherwise have gone to the maker of clothes or of furniture: and, there being an absolute destruction of the funds for the maintenance of labour, by an unnecessary destruction of what former labour has produced, trade generally is injured to the extent of the destruction. Some now say that a fire makes good for trade. The only difference of evil between the fire which destroys a house, and the mob which breaks the windows, is, that the fire absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a hundred to one when compared with the mob. Some say that war makes good for trade. The only difference of pecuniary evil (the moral evils admit of no comparison) between the fire and the war is, that the war absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a million to a hundred when compared with the fire. If the incessant energy of production were constantly repressed by mobs, and fires, and wars, the end would be that consumption would altogether exceed production; and that then the producers and the consumers would both be starved into wiser courses, and perceive that nothing makes good for trade but profitable industry and judicious expenditure. Prodigality devotes itself too much to the satisfaction of present wants: avarice postpones too much the present wants to the possible wants of the future. Real economy is the happy measure between the two extremes; and that only "makes good for trade," because, while it carries on a steady demand for industry, it accumulates a portion of the production of a country to stimulate new production. That judicious expenditure consists in
"The sense to value riches, with the art T' enjoy them."
The fashion of "making good for trade" by unprofitable consumption is a relic of the barbarous ages. In the twelfth century a count of France commanded his vassals to plough up the soil round his castle, and he sowed the ground with coins of gold, to the amount of fifteen hundred guineas, that he might have all men talk of his magnificence. Piqued at the lordly prodigality of his neighbour, another noble ordered thirty of his most valuable horses to be tied to a stake and burnt alive, that he might exhibit a more striking instance of contempt for accumulation. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, a Scotch noble, Colin Campbell, on receiving a visit from the O'Neiles of Ireland, ostentatiously burnt down his house at Inverary upon their departure; and an Earl of Athol pursued the same course in 1528, after having entertained the papal legate, upon the pretence that it was "the constant habitude of the high-landers to set on fire in the morning the place which had lodged them the night before." When the feudal lords had so little respect for their own property, it was not likely that they would have much regard for the accumulation of others. The Jews, who were the great capitalists of the middle ages, and who really merit the gratitude of Europeans for their avarice, as that almost alone enabled any accumulation to go forward, and any production to increase, were, as it is well known, persecuted in every direction by the crown, by the nobles, by the people. When a solitary farmer or abbot attempted to accumulate corn, which accumulation could alone prevent the dreadful famines invariably resulting from having no stock that might be available upon a bad harvest, the people burnt the ricks of the provident men, by way of lessening the evils of scarcity. The consequence was, that no person thought of accumulating at all, and that the price of wheat often rose, just before the harvest, from five shillings a quarter to five pounds.
We are accustomed to read and talk of "merry England," but we sometimes fail to think how much real suffering lay beneath the surface of the merriment. Herrick, one of our charming old lyric poets, has sung the glories of the hock-cart—the cart that bore the full sheaves to the empty barn:—
"The harvest swains and wenches bound For joy, to see the hock-cart crown'd; About the cart hear how the rout Of rural younglings raise the shout, Pressing before, some coming after, Those with a shout, and these with laughter. Some bless the cart, some kiss the sheaves, Some prank them up with oaken leaves; Some cross the fill-horse, some with great Devotion stroke the home-borne wheat."
Assuredly there was joy and there was devotion; for the laden cart made the difference between plenty and starvation. Before that harvest-home came there had been many an aching heart in the village hovels, for there was no store to equalize prices, and no communication to make the abundance of one district—much less of one country—mitigate the scarcity of another. It was not a question of the rise or the fall of a penny or two in the price of a loaf of bread; it was a question of bread or no bread.
During those dark periods the crown carried on the war against capital with an industry that could not be exceeded by that of the nobles or the people. Before the great charter the Commons complained that King Henry seized upon whatever was suited to his royal pleasure—horses, implements, food, anything that presented itself in the shape of accumulated labour. In the reign of Henry III. a statute was passed to remedy excessive distresses; from which it appeared that it was no unfrequent practice for the king's officers to take the opportunity of seizing the farmer's oxen at the moment when they were employed in ploughing, or, as the statute says, "winning the earth,"—taking them off, and starving them to death, or only restoring them with new and enormous exactions for their keep. Previous to the Charter of the Forest no man could dig a marl-pit on his own ground, lest the king's horses should fall into it when he was hunting. As late as the time of James I. we find, from a speech of the great Lord Bacon, that it was a pretty constant practice of the king's purveyors to extort large sums of money by threatening to cut down favourite trees which grew near a mansion-house or in avenues. Despotism, in all ages, has depopulated the finest countries, by rendering capital insecure, and therefore unproductive; insomuch that Montesquieu lays it down as a maxim, that lands are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but in proportion to their freedom. In the fifteenth century, in England, we find sums of money voted for the restoration of decayed towns and villages. Just laws would have restored them much more quickly and effectually. The state of agriculture was so low that the most absurd enactments were made to compel farmers to till and sow their own lands, and calling upon every man to plant at least forty beans. All the laws for the regulation of labourers, at the same period, assumed that they should be compelled to work, and not wander about the country—just in the same way that farmers should be compelled to sow and till. It is perfectly clear that the towns would not have been depopulated, and gone to decay, if the accumulation of capital had not been obstructed by insecurity and wasted by ignorance, and that the same insecurity and the same waste rendered it necessary to assume that the farmer would not till and sow, and the labourer would not labour, without compulsion. The natural stimulus to industry was wanting, and therefore there was no industry, or only unprofitable industry. The towns decayed, the country was uncultivated—production languished—the people were all