---
id: book-5-chapter-01
title: "OF THE EXPENSES OF THE SOVEREIGN OR COMMONWEALTH."
book: "5"
chapter: 1
artifact_type: content
---

CHAPTER I.
OF THE EXPENSES OF THE SOVEREIGN OR COMMONWEALTH.



      PART I. Of the Expense of Defence.

      The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the
      violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed
      only by means of a military force. But the expense both of preparing this
      military force in time of peace, and of employing it in time of war, is
      very different in the different states of society, in the different
      periods of improvement.

      Among nations of hunters, the lowest and rudest state of society, such as
      we find it among the native tribes of North America, every man is a
      warrior, as well as a hunter. When he goes to war, either to defend his
      society, or to revenge the injuries which have been done to it by other
      societies, he maintains himself by his own labour, in the same manner as
      when he lives at home. His society (for in this state of things there is
      properly neither sovereign nor commonwealth) is at no sort of expense,
      either to prepare him for the field, or to maintain him while he is in it.

      Among nations of shepherds, a more advanced state of society, such as we
      find it among the Tartars and Arabs, every man is, in the same manner, a
      warrior. Such nations have commonly no fixed habitation, but live either
      in tents, or in a sort of covered waggons, which are easily transported
      from place to place. The whole tribe, or nation, changes its situation
      according to the different seasons of the year, as well as according to
      other accidents. When its herds and flocks have consumed the forage of one
      part of the country, it removes to another, and from that to a third. In
      the dry season, it comes down to the banks of the rivers; in the wet
      season, it retires to the upper country. When such a nation goes to war,
      the warriors will not trust their herds and flocks to the feeble defence
      of their old men, their women and children; and their old men, their women
      and children, will not be left behind without defence, and without
      subsistence. The whole nation, besides, being accustomed to a wandering
      life, even in time of peace, easily takes the field in time of war.
      Whether it marches as an army, or moves about as a company of herdsmen,
      the way of life is nearly the same, though the object proposed by it be
      very different. They all go to war together, therefore, and everyone does
      as well as he can. Among the Tartars, even the women have been frequently
      known to engage in battle. If they conquer, whatever belongs to the
      hostile tribe is the recompence of the victory; but if they are
      vanquished, all is lost; and not only their herds and flocks, but their
      women and children become the booty of the conqueror. Even the greater
      part of those who survive the action are obliged to submit to him for the
      sake of immediate subsistence. The rest are commonly dissipated and
      dispersed in the desert.

      The ordinary life, the ordinary exercise of a Tartar or Arab, prepares him
      sufficiently for war. Running, wrestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the
      javelin, drawing the bow, etc. are the common pastimes of those who live
      in the open air, and are all of them the images of war. When a Tartar or
      Arab actually goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds and flocks,
      which he carries with him, in the same manner as in peace. His chief or
      sovereign (for those nations have all chiefs or sovereigns) is at no sort
      of expense in preparing him for the field; and when he is in it, the
      chance of plunder is the only pay which he either expects or requires.

      An army of hunters can seldom exceed two or three hundred men. The
      precarious subsistence which the chace affords, could seldom allow a
      greater number to keep together for any considerable time. An army of
      shepherds, on the contrary, may sometimes amount to two or three hundred
      thousand. As long as nothing stops their progress, as long as they can go
      on from one district, of which they have consumed the forage, to another,
      which is yet entire; there seems to be scarce any limit to the number who
      can march on together. A nation of hunters can never be formidable to the
      civilized nations in their neighbourhood; a nation of shepherds may.
      Nothing can be more contemptible than an Indian war in North America;
      nothing, on the contrary, can be more dreadful than a Tartar invasion has
      frequently been in Asia. The judgment of Thucydides, that both Europe and
      Asia could not resist the Scythians united, has been verified by the
      experience of all ages. The inhabitants of the extensive, but defenceless
      plains of Scythia or Tartary, have been frequently united under the
      dominion of the chief of some conquering horde or clan; and the havock and
      devastation of Asia have always signalized their union. The inhabitants of
      the inhospitable deserts of Arabia, the other great nation of shepherds,
      have never been united but once, under Mahomet and his immediate
      successors. Their union, which was more the effect of religious enthusiasm
      than of conquest, was signalized in the same manner. If the hunting
      nations of America should ever become shepherds, their neighbourhood would
      be much more dangerous to the European colonies than it is at present.

      In a yet more advanced state of society, among those nations of husbandmen
      who have little foreign commerce, and no other manufactures but those
      coarse and household ones, which almost every private family prepares for
      its own use, every man, in the same manner, either is a warrior, or easily
      becomes such. Those who live by agriculture generally pass the whole day
      in the open air, exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. The
      hardiness of their ordinary life prepares them for the fatigues of war, to
      some of which their necessary occupations bear a great analogy. The
      necessary occupation of a ditcher prepares him to work in the trenches,
      and to fortify a camp, as well as to inclose a field. The ordinary
      pastimes of such husbandmen are the same as those of shepherds, and are in
      the same manner the images of war. But as husbandmen have less leisure
      than shepherds, they are not so frequently employed in those pastimes.
      They are soldiers but soldiers not quite so much masters of their
      exercise. Such as they are, however, it seldom costs the sovereign or
      commonwealth any expense to prepare them for the field.

      Agriculture, even in its rudest and lowest state, supposes a settlement,
      some sort of fixed habitation, which cannot be abandoned without great
      loss. When a nation of mere husbandmen, therefore, goes to war, the whole
      people cannot take the field together. The old men, the women and
      children, at least, must remain at home, to take care of the habitation.
      All the men of the military age, however, may take the field, and in small
      nations of this kind, have frequently done so. In every nation, the men of
      the military age are supposed to amount to about a fourth or a fifth part
      of the whole body of the people. If the campaign, too, should begin after
      seedtime, and end before harvest, both the husbandman and his principal
      labourers can be spared from the farm without much loss. He trusts that
      the work which must be done in the mean time, can be well enough executed
      by the old men, the women, and the children. He is not unwilling,
      therefore, to serve without pay during a short campaign; and it frequently
      costs the sovereign or commonwealth as little to maintain him in the field
      as to prepare him for it. The citizens of all the different states of
      ancient Greece seem to have served in this manner till after the second
      Persian war; and the people of Peloponnesus till after the Peloponnesian
      war. The Peloponnesians, Thucydides observes, generally left the field in
      the summer, and returned home to reap the harvest. The Roman people, under
      their kings, and during the first ages of the republic, served in the same
      manner. It was not till the seige of Veii, that they who staid at home
      began to contribute something towards maintaining those who went to war.
      In the European monarchies, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman
      empire, both before, and for some time after, the establishment of what is
      properly called the feudal law, the great lords, with all their immediate
      dependents, used to serve the crown at their own expense. In the field, in
      the same manner as at home, they maintained themselves by their own
      revenue, and not by any stipend or pay which they received from the king
      upon that particular occasion.

      In a more advanced state of society, two different causes contribute to
      render it altogether impossible that they who take the field should
      maintain themselves at their own expense. Those two causes are, the
      progress of manufactures, and the improvement in the art of war.

      Though a husbandman should be employed in an expedition, provided it
      begins after seedtime, and ends before harvest, the interruption of his
      business will not always occasion any considerable diminution of his
      revenue. Without the intervention of his labour, Nature does herself the
      greater part of the work which remains to be done. But the moment that an
      artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example, quits his
      workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is completely dried up. Nature
      does nothing for him; he does all for himself. When he takes the field,
      therefore, in defence of the public, as he has no revenue to maintain
      himself, he must necessarily be maintained by the public. But in a
      country, of which a great part of the inhabitants are artificers and
      manufacturers, a great part of the people who go to war must be drawn from
      those classes, and must, therefore, be maintained by the public as long as
      they are employed in its service.

      When the art of war, too, has gradually grown up to be a very intricate
      and complicated science; when the event of war ceases to be determined, as
      in the first ages of society, by a single irregular skirmish or battle;
      but when the contest is generally spun out through several different
      campaigns, each of which lasts during the greater part of the year; it
      becomes universally necessary that the public should maintain those who
      serve the public in war, at least while they are employed in that service.
      Whatever, in time of peace, might be the ordinary occupation of those who
      go to war, so very tedious and expensive a service would otherwise be by
      far too heavy a burden upon them. After the second Persian war,
      accordingly, the armies of Athens seem to have been generally composed of
      mercenary troops, consisting, indeed, partly of citizens, but partly, too,
      of foreigners; and all of them equally hired and paid at the expense of
      the state. From the time of the siege of Veii, the armies of Rome received
      pay for their service during the time which they remained in the field.
      Under the feudal governments, the military service, both of the great
      lords, and of their immediate dependents, was, after a certain period,
      universally exchanged for a payment in money, which was employed to
      maintain those who served in their stead.

      The number of those who can go to war, in proportion to the whole number
      of the people, is necessarily much smaller in a civilized than in a rude
      state of society. In a civilized society, as the soldiers are maintained
      altogether by the labour of those who are not soldiers, the number of the
      former can never exceed what the latter can maintain, over and above
      maintaining, in a manner suitable to their respective stations, both
      themselves and the other officers of government and law, whom they are
      obliged to maintain. In the little agrarian states of ancient Greece, a
      fourth or a fifth part of the whole body of the people considered the
      themselves as soldiers, and would sometimes, it is said, take the field.
      Among the civilized nations of modern Europe, it is commonly computed,
      that not more than the one hundredth part of the inhabitants of any
      country can be employed as soldiers, without ruin to the country which
      pays the expense of their service.

      The expense of preparing the army for the field seems not to have become
      considerable in any nation, till long after that of maintaining it in the
      field had devolved entirely upon the sovereign or commonwealth. In all the
      different republics of ancient Greece, to learn his military exercises,
      was a necessary part of education imposed by the state upon every free
      citizen. In every city there seems to have been a public field, in which,
      under the protection of the public magistrate, the young people were
      taught their different exercises by different masters. In this very simple
      institution consisted the whole expense which any Grecian state seems ever
      to have been at, in preparing its citizens for war. In ancient Rome, the
      exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same purpose with those of
      the Gymnasium in ancient Greece. Under the feudal governments, the many
      public ordinances, that the citizens of every district should practise
      archery, as well as several other military exercises, were intended for
      promoting the same purpose, but do not seem to have promoted it so well.
      Either from want of interest in the officers entrusted with the execution
      of those ordinances, or from some other cause, they appear to have been
      universally neglected; and in the progress of all those governments,
      military exercises seem to have gone gradually into disuse among the great
      body of the people.

      In the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, during the whole period of
      their existence, and under the feudal governments, for a considerable time
      after their first establishment, the trade of a soldier was not a
      separate, distinct trade, which constituted the sole or principal
      occupation of a particular class of citizens; every subject of the state,
      whatever might be the ordinary trade or occupation by which he gained his
      livelihood, considered himself, upon all ordinary occasions, as fit
      likewise to exercise the trade of a soldier, and, upon many extraordinary
      occasions, as bound to exercise it.

      The art of war, however, as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so,
      in the progress of improvement, it necessarily becomes one of the most
      complicated among them. The state of the mechanical, as well as some other
      arts, with which it is necessarily connected, determines the degree of
      perfection to which it is capable of being carried at any particular time.
      But in order to carry it to this degree of perfection, it is necessary
      that it should become the sole or principal occupation of a particular
      class of citizens; and the division of labour is as necessary for the
      improvement of this, as of every other art. Into other arts, the division
      of labour is naturally introduced by the prudence of individuals, who find
      that they promote their private interest better by confining themselves to
      a particular trade, than by exercising a great number. But it is the
      wisdom of the state only, which can render the trade of a soldier a
      particular trade, separate and distinct from all others. A private
      citizen, who, in time of profound peace, and without any particular
      encouragement from the public, should spend the greater part of his time
      in military exercises, might, no doubt, both improve himself very much in
      them, and amuse himself very well; but he certainly would not promote his
      own interest. It is the wisdom of the state only, which can render it for
      his interest to give up the greater part of his time to this peculiar
      occupation; and states have not always had this wisdom, even when their
      circumstances had become such, that the preservation of their existence
      required that they should have it.

      A shepherd has a great deal of leisure; a husbandman, in the rude state of
      husbandry, has some; an artificer or manufacturer has none at all. The
      first may, without any loss, employ a great deal of his time in martial
      exercises; the second may employ some part of it; but the last cannot
      employ a single hour in them without some loss, and his attention to his
      own interest naturally leads him to neglect them altogether. Those
      improvements in husbandry, too, which the progress of arts and
      manufactures necessarily introduces, leave the husbandman as little
      leisure as the artificer. Military exercises come to be as much neglected
      by the inhabitants of the country as by those of the town, and the great
      body of the people becomes altogether unwarlike. That wealth, at the same
      time, which always follows the improvements of agriculture and
      manufactures, and which, in reality, is no more than the accumulated
      produce of those improvements, provokes the invasion of all their
      neighbours. An industrious, and, upon that account, a wealthy nation, is
      of all nations the most likely to be attacked; and unless the state takes
      some new measure for the public defence, the natural habits of the people
      render them altogether incapable of defending themselves.

      In these circumstances, there seem to be but two methods by which the
      state can make any tolerable provision for the public defence.

      It may either, first, by means of a very rigorous police, and in spite of
      the whole bent of the interest, genius, and inclinations of the people,
      enforce the practice of military exercises, and oblige either all the
      citizens of the military age, or a certain number of them, to join in some
      measure the trade of a soldier to whatever other trade or profession they
      may happen to carry on.

      Or, secondly, by maintaining and employing a certain number of citizens in
      the constant practice of military exercises, it may render the trade of a
      soldier a particular trade, separate and distinct from all others.

      If the state has recourse to the first of those two expedients, its
      military force is said to consist in a militia; if to the second, it is
      said to consist in a standing army. The practice of military exercises is
      the sole or principal occupation of the soldiers of a standing army, and
      the maintenance or pay which the state affords them is the principal and
      ordinary fund of their subsistence. The practice of military exercises is
      only the occasional occupation of the soldiers of a militia, and they
      derive the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence from some
      other occupation. In a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer,
      or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier; in a standing army,
      that of the soldier predominates over every other character; and in this
      distinction seems to consist the essential difference between those two
      different species of military force.

      Militias have been of several different kinds. In some countries, the
      citizens destined for defending the state seem to have been exercised
      only, without being, if I may say so, regimented; that is, without being
      divided into separate and distinct bodies of troops, each of which
      performed its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers. In
      the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, each citizen, as long as he
      remained at home, seems to have practised his exercises, either separately
      and independently, or with such of his equals as he liked best; and not to
      have been attached to any particular body of troops, till he was actually
      called upon to take the field. In other countries, the militia has not
      only been exercised, but regimented. In England, in Switzerland, and, I
      believe, in every other country of modern Europe, where any imperfect
      military force of this kind has been established, every militiaman is,
      even in time of peace, attached to a particular body of troops, which
      performs its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers.

      Before the invention of fire-arms, that army was superior in which the
      soldiers had, each individually, the greatest skill and dexterity in the
      use of their arms. Strength and agility of body were of the highest
      consequence, and commonly determined the fate of battles. But this skill
      and dexterity in the use of their arms could be acquired only, in the same
      manner as fencing is at present, by practising, not in great bodies, but
      each man separately, in a particular school, under a particular master, or
      with his own particular equals and companions. Since the invention of
      fire-arms, strength and agility of body, or even extraordinary dexterity
      and skill in the use of arms, though they are far from being of no
      consequence, are, however, of less consequence. The nature of the weapon,
      though it by no means puts the awkward upon a level with the skilful, puts
      him more nearly so than he ever was before. All the dexterity and skill,
      it is supposed, which are necessary for using it, can be well enough
      acquired by practising in great bodies.

      Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command, are qualities which,
      in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of
      battles, than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their
      arms. But the noise of fire-arms, the smoke, and the invisible death to
      which every man feels himself every moment exposed, as soon as he comes
      within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be
      well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any
      considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even
      in the beginning of a modern battle. In an ancient battle, there was no
      noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was
      no invisible cause of wounds or death. Every man, till some mortal weapon
      actually did approach him, saw clearly that no such weapon was near him.
      In these circumstances, and among troops who had some confidence in their
      own skill and dexterity in the use of their arms, it must have been a good
      deal less difficult to preserve some degree of regularity and order, not
      only in the beginning, but through the whole progress of an ancient
      battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly defeated. But the habits
      of regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command, can be acquired
      only by troops which are exercised in great bodies.

      A militia, however, in whatever manner it may be either disciplined or
      exercised, must always be much inferior to a well disciplined and well
      exercised standing army.

      The soldiers who are exercised only once a week, or once a-month, can
      never be so expert in the use of their arms, as those who are exercised
      every day, or every other day; and though this circumstance may not be of
      so much consequence in modern, as it was in ancient times, yet the
      acknowledged superiority of the Prussian troops, owing, it is said, very
      much to their superior expertness in their exercise, may satisfy us that
      it is, even at this day, of very considerable consequence.

      The soldiers, who are bound to obey their officer only once a-week, or
      once a-month, and who are at all other times at liberty to manage their
      own affairs their own way, without being, in any respect, accountable to
      him, can never be under the same awe in his presence, can never have the
      same disposition to ready obedience, with those whose whole life and
      conduct are every day directed by him, and who every day even rise and go
      to bed, or at least retire to their quarters, according to his orders. In
      what is called discipline, or in the habit of ready obedience, a militia
      must always be still more inferior to a standing army, than it may
      sometimes be in what is called the manual exercise, or in the management
      and use of its arms. But, in modern war, the habit of ready and instant
      obedience is of much greater consequence than a considerable superiority
      in the management of arms.

      Those militias which, like the Tartar or Arab militia, go to war under the
      same chieftains whom they are accustomed to obey in peace, are by far the
      best. In respect for their officers, in the habit of ready obedience, they
      approach nearest to standing armies. The Highland militia, when it served
      under its own chieftains, had some advantage of the same kind. As the
      Highlanders, however, were not wandering, but stationary shepherds, as
      they had all a fixed habitation, and were not, in peaceable times,
      accustomed to follow their chieftain from place to place; so, in time of
      war, they were less willing to follow him to any considerable distance, or
      to continue for any long time in the field. When they had acquired any
      booty, they were eager to return home, and his authority was seldom
      sufficient to detain them. In point of obedience, they were always much
      inferior to what is reported of the Tartars and Arabs. As the Highlanders,
      too, from their stationary life, spend less of their time in the open air,
      they were always less accustomed to military exercises, and were less
      expert in the use of their arms than the Tartars and Arabs are said to be.

      A militia of any kind, it must be observed, however, which has served for
      several successive campaigns in the field, becomes in every respect a
      standing army. The soldiers are every day exercised in the use of their
      arms, and, being constantly under the command of their officers, are
      habituated to the same prompt obedience which takes place in standing
      armies. What they were before they took the field, is of little
      importance. They necessarily become in every respect a standing army,
      after they have passed a few campaigns in it. Should the war in America
      drag out through another campaign, the American militia may become, in
      every respect, a match for that standing army, of which the valour
      appeared, in the last war at least, not inferior to that of the hardiest
      veterans of France and Spain.

      This distinction being well understood, the history of all ages, it will
      be found, hears testimony to the irresistible superiority which a well
      regulated standing army has over a militia.

      One of the first standing armies, of which we have any distinct account in
      any well authenticated history, is that of Philip of Macedon. His frequent
      wars with the Thracians, Illyrians, Thessalians, and some of the Greek
      cities in the neighbourhood of Macedon, gradually formed his troops, which
      in the beginning were probably militia, to the exact discipline of a
      standing army. When he was at peace, which he was very seldom, and never
      for any long time together, he was careful not to disband that army. It
      vanquished and subdued, after a long and violent struggle, indeed, the
      gallant and well exercised militias of the principal republics of ancient
      Greece; and afterwards, with very little struggle, the effeminate and ill
      exercised militia of the great Persian empire. The fall of the Greek
      republics, and of the Persian empire was the effect of the irresistible
      superiority which a standing arm has over every other sort of militia. It
      is the first great revolution in the affairs of mankind of which history
      has preserved any distinct and circumstantial account.

      The fall of Carthage, and the consequent elevation of Rome, is the second.
      All the varieties in the fortune of those two famous republics may very
      well be accounted for from the same cause.

      From the end of the first to the beginning of the second Carthaginian war,
      the armies of Carthage were continually in the field, and employed under
      three great generals, who succeeded one another in the command; Amilcar,
      his son-in-law Asdrubal, and his son Annibal: first in chastising their
      own rebellious slaves, afterwards in subduing the revolted nations of
      Africa; and lastly, in conquering the great kingdom of Spain. The army
      which Annibal led from Spain into Italy must necessarily, in those
      different wars, have been gradually formed to the exact discipline of a
      standing army. The Romans, in the meantime, though they had not been
      altogether at peace, yet they had not, during this period, been engaged in
      any war of very great consequence; and their military discipline, it is
      generally said, was a good deal relaxed. The Roman armies which Annibal
      encountered at Trebi, Thrasymenus, and Cannae, were militia opposed to a
      standing army. This circumstance, it is probable, contributed more than
      any other to determine the fate of those battles.

      The standing army which Annibal left behind him in Spain had the like
      superiority over the militia which the Romans sent to oppose it; and, in a
      few years, under the command of his brother, the younger Asdrubal,
      expelled them almost entirely from that country.

      Annibal was ill supplied from home. The Roman militia, being continually
      in the field, became, in the progress of the war, a well disciplined and
      well exercised standing army; and the superiority of Annibal grew every
      day less and less. Asdrubal judged it necessary to lead the whole, or
      almost the whole, of the standing army which he commanded in Spain, to the
      assistance of his brother in Italy. In this march, he is said to have been
      misled by his guides; and in a country which he did not know, was
      surprised and attacked, by another standing army, in every respect equal
      or superior to his own, and was entirely defeated.

      When Asdrubal had left Spain, the great Scipio found nothing to oppose him
      but a militia inferior to his own. He conquered and subdued that militia,
      and, in the course of the war, his own militia necessarily became a well
      disciplined and well exercised standing army. That standing army was
      afterwards carried to Africa, where it found nothing but a militia to
      oppose it. In order to defend Carthage, it became necessary to recal the
      standing army of Annibal. The disheartened and frequently defeated African
      militia joined it, and, at the battle of Zama, composed the greater part
      of the troops of Annibal. The event of that day determined the fate of the
      two rival republics.

      From the end of the second Carthaginian war till the fall of the Roman
      republic, the armies of Rome were in every respect standing armies. The
      standing army of Macedon made some resistance to their arms. In the height
      of their grandeur, it cost them two great wars, and three great battles,
      to subdue that little kingdom, of which the conquest would probably have
      been still more difficult, had it not been for the cowardice of its last
      king. The militias of all the civilized nations of the ancient world, of
      Greece, of Syria, and of Egypt, made but a feeble resistance to the
      standing armies of Rome. The militias of some barbarous nations defended
      themselves much better. The Scythian or Tartar militia, which Mithridates
      drew from the countries north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, were the
      most formidable enemies whom the Romans had to encounter after the second
      Carthaginian war. The Parthian and German militias, too, were always
      respectable, and upon several occasions, gained very considerable
      advantages over the Roman armies. In general, however, and when the Roman
      armies were well commanded, they appear to have been very much superior;
      and if the Romans did not pursue the final conquest either of Parthia or
      Germany, it was probably because they judged that it was not worth while
      to add those two barbarous countries to an empire which was already too
      large. The ancient Parthians appear to have been a nation of Scythian or
      Tartar extraction, and to have always retained a good deal of the manners
      of their ancestors. The ancient Germans were, like the Scythians or
      Tartars, a nation of wandering shepherds, who went to war under the same
      chiefs whom they were accustomed to follow in peace. ‘Their militia was
      exactly of the same kind with that of the Scythians or Tartars, from whom,
      too, they were probably descended.’

      Many different causes contributed to relax the discipline of the Roman
      armies. Its extreme severity was, perhaps, one of those causes. In the
      days of their grandeur, when no enemy appeared capable of opposing them,
      their heavy armour was laid aside as unnecessarily burdensome, their
      laborious exercises were neglected, as unnecessarily toilsome. Under the
      Roman emperors, besides, the standing armies of Rome, those particularly
      which guarded the German and Pannonian frontiers, became dangerous to
      their masters, against whom they used frequently to set up their own
      generals. In order to render them less formidable, according to some
      authors, Dioclesian, according to others, Constantine, first withdrew them
      from the frontier, where they had always before been encamped in great
      bodies, generally of two or three legions each, and dispersed them in
      small bodies through the different provincial towns, from whence they were
      scarce ever removed, but when it became necessary to repel an invasion.
      Small bodies of soldiers, quartered in trading and manufacturing towns,
      and seldom removed from those quarters, became themselves trades men,
      artificers, and manufacturers. The civil came to predominate over the
      military character; and the standing armies of Rome gradually degenerated
      into a corrupt, neglected, and undisciplined militia, incapable of
      resisting the attack of the German and Scythian militias, which soon
      afterwards invaded the western empire. It was only by hiring the militia
      of some of those nations to oppose to that of others, that the emperors
      were for some time able to defend themselves. The fall of the western
      empire is the third great revolution in the affairs of mankind, of which
      ancient history has preserved any distinct or circumstantial account. It
      was brought about by the irresistible superiority which the militia of a
      barbarous has over that of a civilized nation; which the militia of a
      nation of shepherds has over that of a nation of husbandmen, artificers,
      and manufacturers. The victories which have been gained by militias have
      generally been, not over standing armies, but over other militias, in
      exercise and discipline inferior to themselves. Such were the victories
      which the Greek militia gained over that of the Persian empire; and such,
      too, were those which, in later times, the Swiss militia gained over that
      of the Austrians and Burgundians.

      The military force of the German and Scythian nations, who established
      themselves upon ruins of the western empire, continued for some time to be
      of the same kind in their new settlements, as it had been in their
      original country. It was a militia of shepherds and husbandmen, which, in
      time of war, took the field under the command of the same chieftains whom
      it was accustomed to obey in peace. It was, therefore, tolerably well
      exercised, and tolerably well disciplined. As arts and industry advanced,
      however, the authority of the chieftains gradually decayed, and the great
      body of the people had less time to spare for military exercises. Both the
      discipline and the exercise of the feudal militia, therefore, went
      gradually to ruin, and standing armies were gradually introduced to supply
      the place of it. When the expedient of a standing army, besides, had once
      been adopted by one civilized nation, it became necessary that all its
      neighbours should follow the example. They soon found that their safety
      depended upon their doing so, and that their own militia was altogether
      incapable of resisting the attack of such an army.

      The soldiers of a standing army, though they may never have seen an enemy,
      yet have frequently appeared to possess all the courage of veteran troops,
      and, the very moment that they took the field, to have been fit to face
      the hardiest and most experienced veterans. In 1756, when the Russian army
      marched into Poland, the valour of the Russian soldiers did not appear
      inferior to that of the Prussians, at that time supposed to be the
      hardiest and most experienced veterans in Europe. The Russian empire,
      however, had enjoyed a profound peace for near twenty years before, and
      could at that time have very few soldiers who had ever seen an enemy. When
      the Spanish war broke out in 1739, England had enjoyed a profound peace
      for about eight-and-twenty years. The valour of her soldiers, however, far
      from being corrupted by that long peace, was never more distinguished than
      in the attempt upon Carthagena, the first unfortunate exploit of that
      unfortunate war. In a long peace, the generals, perhaps, may sometimes
      forget their skill; but where a well regulated standing army has been kept
      up, the soldiers seem never to forget their valour.

      When a civilized nation depends for its defence upon a militia, it is at
      all times exposed to be conquered by any barbarous nation which happens to
      be in its neighbourhood. The frequent conquests of all the civilized
      countries in Asia by the Tartars, sufficiently demonstrates the natural
      superiority which the militia of a barbarous has over that of a civilized
      nation. A well regulated standing army is superior to every militia. Such
      an army, as it can best be maintained by an opulent and civilized nation,
      so it can alone defend such a nation against the invasion of a poor and
      barbarous neighbour. It is only by means of a standing army, therefore,
      that the civilization of any country can be perpetuated, or even
      preserved, for any considerable time.

      As it is only by means of a well regulated standing army, that a civilized
      country can be defended, so it is only by means of it that a barbarous
      country can be suddenly and tolerably civilized. A standing army
      establishes, with an irresistible force, the law of the sovereign through
      the remotest provinces of the empire, and maintains some degree of regular
      government in countries which could not otherwise admit of any. Whoever
      examines with attention, the improvements which Peter the Great introduced
      into the Russian empire, will find that they almost all resolve themselves
      into the establishment of a well regulated standing army. It is the
      instrument which executes and maintains all his other regulations. That
      degree of order and internal peace, which that empire has ever since
      enjoyed, is altogether owing to the influence of that army.

      Men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army, as
      dangerous to liberty. It certainly is so, wherever the interest of the
      general, and that of the principal officers, are not necessarily connected
      with the support of the constitution of the state. The standing army of
      Caesar destroyed the Roman republic. The standing army of Cromwell turned
      the long parliament out of doors. But where the sovereign is himself the
      general, and the principal nobility and gentry of the country the chief
      officers of the army; where the military force is placed under the command
      of those who have the greatest interest in the support of the civil
      authority, because they have themselves the greatest share of that
      authority, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. On the
      contrary, it may, in some cases, be favourable to liberty. The security
      which it gives to the sovereign renders unnecessary that troublesome
      jealousy, which, in some modern republics, seems to watch over the
      minutest actions, and to be at all times ready to disturb the peace of
      every citizen. Where the security of the magistrate, though supported by
      the principal people of the country, is endangered by every popular
      discontent; where a small tumult is capable of bringing about in a few
      hours a great revolution, the whole authority of government must be
      employed to suppress and punish every murmur and complaint against it. To
      a sovereign, on the contrary, who feels himself supported, not only by the
      natural aristocracy of the country, but by a well regulated standing army,
      the rudest, the most groundless, and the most licentious remonstrances,
      can give little disturbance. He can safely pardon or neglect them, and his
      consciousness of his own superiority naturally disposes him to do so. That
      degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness, can be tolerated
      only in countries where the sovereign is secured by a well regulated
      standing army. It is in such countries only, that the public safety does
      not require that the sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary
      power, for suppressing even the impertinent wantonness of this licentious
      liberty.

      The first duty of the sovereign, therefore, that of defending the society
      from the violence and injustice of other independent societies, grows
      gradually more and more expensive, as the society advances in
      civilization. The military force of the society, which originally cost the
      sovereign no expense, either in time of peace, or in time of war, must, in
      the progress of improvement, first be maintained by him in time of war,
      and afterwards even in time of peace.

      The great change introduced into the art of war by the invention of
      fire-arms, has enhanced still further both the expense of exercising and
      disciplining any particular number of soldiers in time of peace, and that
      of employing them in time of war. Both their arms and their ammunition are
      become more expensive. A musket is a more expensive machine than a javelin
      or a bow and arrows; a cannon or a mortar, than a balista or a catapulta.
      The powder which is spent in a modern review is lost irrecoverably, and
      occasions a very considerable expense. The javelins and arrows which were
      thrown or shot in an ancient one, could easily be picked up again, and
      were, besides, of very little value. The cannon and the mortar are not
      only much dearer, but much heavier machines than the balista or catapulta;
      and require a greater expense, not only to prepare them for the field, but
      to carry them to it. As the superiority of the modern artillery, too, over
      that of the ancients, is very great; it has become much more difficult,
      and consequently much more expensive, to fortify a town, so as to resist,
      even for a few weeks, the attack of that superior artillery. In modern
      times, many different causes contribute to render the defence of the
      society more expensive. The unavoidable effects of the natural progress of
      improvement have, in this respect, been a good deal enhanced by a great
      revolution in the art of war, to which a mere accident, the invention of
      gunpowder, seems to have given occasion.

      In modern war, the great expense of firearms gives an evident advantage to
      the nation which can best afford that expense; and, consequently, to an
      opulent and civilized, over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient times,
      the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend themselves against
      the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times, the poor and barbarous
      find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilized.
      The invention of fire-arms, an invention which at first sight appears to
      be so pernicious, is certainly favourable, both to the permanency and to
      the extension of civilization.




      PART II. Of the Expense of Justice

      The second duty of the sovereign, that of protecting, as far as possible,
      every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every
      other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of
      justice, requires two very different degrees of expense in the different
      periods of society.

      Among nations of hunters, as there is scarce any property, or at least
      none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour; so there is
      seldom any established magistrate, or any regular administration of
      justice. Men who have no property, can injure one another only in their
      persons or reputations. But when one man kills, wounds, beats, or defames
      another, though he to whom the injury is done suffers, he who does it
      receives no benefit. It is otherwise with the injuries to property. The
      benefit of the person who does the injury is often equal to the loss of
      him who suffers it. Envy, malice, or resentment, are the only passions
      which can prompt one man to injure another in his person or reputation.
      But the greater part of men are not very frequently under the influence of
      those passions; and the very worst men are so only occasionally. As their
      gratification, too, how agreeable soever it may be to certain characters,
      is not attended with any real or permanent advantage, it is, in the
      greater part of men, commonly restrained by prudential considerations. Men
      may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security,
      though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of
      those passions. But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the
      hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the
      passions which prompt to invade property; passions much more steady in
      their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever
      there is a great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich
      man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the
      few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites
      the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and
      prompted by envy to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter
      of the civil magistrate, that the owner of that valuable property, which
      is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive
      generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times
      surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can
      never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the
      powerful arm of the civil magistrate, continually held up to chastise it.
      The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily
      requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no
      property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days
      labour, civil government is not so necessary.

      Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as the necessity of
      civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable
      property; so the principal causes, which naturally introduce
      subordination, gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable
      property.

      The causes or circumstances which naturally introduce subordination, or
      which naturally and antecedent to any civil institution, give some men
      some superiority over the greater part of their brethren, seem to be four
      in number.

      The first of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of personal
      qualifications, of strength, beauty, and agility of body; of wisdom and
      virtue; of prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation of mind. The
      qualifications of the body, unless supported by those of the mind, can
      give little authority in any period of society. He is a very strong man,
      who, by mere strength of body, can force two weak ones to obey him. The
      qualifications of the mind can alone give very great authority. They are
      however, invisible qualities; always disputable, and generally disputed.
      No society, whether barbarous or civilized, has ever found it convenient
      to settle the rules of precedency of rank and subordination, according to
      those invisible qualities; but according to something that is more plain
      and palpable.

      The second of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of age. An
      old man, provided his age is not so far advanced as to give suspicion of
      dotage, is everywhere more respected than a young man of equal rank,
      fortune, and abilities. Among nations of hunters, such as the native
      tribes of North America, age is the sole foundation of rank and
      precedency. Among them, father is the appellation of a superior; brother,
      of an equal; and son, of an inferior. In the most opulent and civilized
      nations, age regulates rank among those who are in every other respect
      equal; and among whom, therefore, there is nothing else to regulate it.
      Among brothers and among sisters, the eldest always takes place; and in
      the succession of the paternal estate, every thing which cannot be
      divided, but must go entire to one person, such as a title of honour, is
      in most cases given to the eldest. Age is a plain and palpable quality,
      which admits of no dispute.

      The third of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of fortune.
      The authority of riches, however, though great in every age of society,
      is, perhaps, greatest in the rudest ages of society, which admits of any
      considerable inequality of fortune. A Tartar chief, the increase of whose
      flocks and herds is sufficient to maintain a thousand men, cannot well
      employ that increase in any other way than in maintaining a thousand men.
      The rude state of his society does not afford him any manufactured produce
      any trinkets or baubles of any kind, for which he can exchange that part
      of his rude produce which is over and above his own consumption. The
      thousand men whom he thus maintains, depending entirely upon him for their
      subsistence, must both obey his orders in war, and submit to his
      jurisdiction in peace. He is necessarily both their general and their
      judge, and his chieftainship is the necessary effect of the superiority of
      his fortune. In an opulent and civilized society, a man may possess a much
      greater fortune, and yet not be able to command a dozen of people. Though
      the produce of his estate may be sufficient to maintain, and may, perhaps,
      actually maintain, more than a thousand people, yet, as those people pay
      for every thing which they get from him, as he gives scarce any thing to
      any body but in exchange for an equivalent, there is scarce anybody who
      considers himself as entirely dependent upon him, and his authority
      extends only over a few menial servants. The authority of fortune,
      however, is very great, even in an opulent and civilized society. That it
      is much greater than that either of age or of personal qualities, has been
      the constant complaint of every period of society which admitted of any
      considerable inequality of fortune. The first period of society, that of
      hunters, admits of no such inequality. Universal poverty establishes their
      universal equality; and the superiority, either of age or of personal
      qualities, are the feeble, but the sole foundations of authority and
      subordination. There is, therefore, little or no authority or
      subordination in this period of society. The second period of society,
      that of shepherds, admits of very great inequalities of fortune, and there
      is no period in which the superiority of fortune gives so great authority
      to those who possess it. There is no period, accordingly, in which
      authority and subordination are more perfectly established. The authority
      of an Arabian scherif is very great; that of a Tartar khan altogether
      despotical.

      The fourth of those causes or circumstances, is the superiority of birth.
      Superiority of birth supposes an ancient superiority of fortune in the
      family of the person who claims it. All families are equally ancient; and
      the ancestors of the prince, though they may be better known, cannot well
      be more numerous than those of the beggar. Antiquity of family means
      everywhere the antiquity either of wealth, or of that greatness which is
      commonly either founded upon wealth, or accompanied with it. Upstart
      greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness. The hatred
      of usurpers, the love of the family of an ancient monarch, are in a great
      measure founded upon the contempt which men naturally have for the former,
      and upon their veneration for the latter. As a military officer submits,
      without reluctance, to the authority of a superior by whom he has always
      been commanded, but cannot bear that his inferior should be set over his
      head; so men easily submit to a family to whom they and their ancestors
      have always submitted; but are fired with indignation when another family,
      in whom they had never acknowledged any such superiority, assumes a
      dominion over them.

      The distinction of birth, being subsequent to the inequality of fortune,
      can have no place in nations of hunters, among whom all men, being equal
      in fortune, must likewise be very nearly equal in birth. The son of a wise
      and brave man may, indeed, even among them, be somewhat more respected
      than a man of equal merit, who has the misfortune to be the son of a fool
      or a coward. The difference, however will not be very great; and there
      never was, I believe, a great family in the world, whose illustration was
      entirely derived from the inheritance of wisdom and virtue.

      The distinction of birth not only may, but always does, take place among
      nations of shepherds. Such nations are always strangers to every sort of
      luxury, and great wealth can scarce ever be dissipated among them by
      improvident profusion. There are no nations, accordingly, who abound more
      in families revered and honoured on account of their descent from a long
      race of great and illustrious ancestors; because there are no nations
      among whom wealth is likely to continue longer in the same families.

      Birth and fortune are evidently the two circumstances which principally
      set one man above another. They are the two great sources of personal
      distinction, and are, therefore, the principal causes which naturally
      establish authority and subordination among men. Among nations of
      shepherds, both those causes operate with their full force. The great
      shepherd or herdsman, respected on account of his great wealth, and of the
      great number of those who depend upon him for subsistence, and revered on
      account of the nobleness of his birth, and of the immemorial antiquity or
      his illustrious family, has a natural authority over all the inferior
      shepherds or herdsmen of his horde or clan. He can command the united
      force of a greater number of people than any of them. His military power
      is greater than that of any of them. In time of war, they are all of them
      naturally disposed to muster themselves under his banner, rather than
      under that of any other person; and his birth and fortune thus naturally
      procure to him some sort of executive power. By commanding, too, the
      united force of a greater number of people than any of them, he is best
      able to compel any one of them, who may have injured another, to
      compensate the wrong. He is the person, therefore, to whom all those who
      are too weak to defend themselves naturally look up for protection. It is
      to him that they naturally complain of the injuries which they imagine
      have been done to them; and his interposition, in such cases, is more
      easily submitted to, even by the person complained of, than that of any
      other person would be. His birth and fortune thus naturally procure him
      some sort of judicial authority.

      It is in the age of shepherds, in the second period of society, that the
      inequality of fortune first begins to take place, and introduces among men
      a degree of authority and subordination, which could not possibly exist
      before. It thereby introduces some degree of that civil government which
      is indispensably necessary for its own preservation; and it seems to do
      this naturally, and even independent of the consideration of that
      necessity. The consideration of that necessity comes, no doubt,
      afterwards, to contribute very much to maintain and secure that authority
      and subordination. The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to
      support that order of things, which can alone secure them in the
      possession of their own advantages. Men of inferior wealth combine to
      defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in
      order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the
      possession of theirs. All the inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel, that
      the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of
      those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their
      lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority; and that upon
      their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in
      subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel
      themselves interested to defend the property, and to support the
      authority, of their own little sovereign, in order that he may be able to
      defend their property, and to support their authority. Civil government,
      so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality,
      instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who
      have some property against those who have none at all.

      The judicial authority of such a sovereign, however, far from being a
      cause of expense, was, for a long time, a source of revenue to him. The
      persons who applied to him for justice were always willing to pay for it,
      and a present never failed to accompany a petition. After the authority of
      the sovereign, too, was thoroughly established, the person found guilty,
      over and above the satisfaction which he was obliged to make to the party,
      was like-wise forced to pay an amercement to the sovereign. He had given
      trouble, he had disturbed, he had broke the peace of his lord the king,
      and for those offences an amercement was thought due. In the Tartar
      governments of Asia, in the governments of Europe which were founded by
      the German and Scythian nations who overturned the Roman empire, the
      administration of justice was a considerable source of revenue, both to
      the sovereign, and to all the lesser chiefs or lords who exercised under
      him any particular jurisdiction, either over some particular tribe or
      clan, or over some particular territory or district. Originally, both the
      sovereign and the inferior chiefs used to exercise this jurisdiction in
      their own persons. Afterwards, they universally found it convenient to
      delegate it to some substitute, bailiff, or judge. This substitute,
      however, was still obliged to account to his principal or constituent for
      the profits of the jurisdiction. Whoever reads the instructions (They are
      to be found in Tyrol’s History of England) which were given to the judges
      of the circuit in the time of Henry II will see clearly that those judges
      were a sort of itinerant factors, sent round the country for the purpose
      of levying certain branches of the king’s revenue. In those days, the
      administration of justice not only afforded a certain revenue to the
      sovereign, but, to procure this revenue, seems to have been one of the
      principal advantages which he proposed to obtain by the administration of
      justice.

      This scheme of making the administration of justice subservient to the
      purposes of revenue, could scarce fail to be productive of several very
      gross abuses. The person who applied for justice with a large present in
      his hand, was likely to get something more than justice; while he who
      applied for it with a small one was likely to get something less. Justice,
      too, might frequently be delayed, in order that this present might be
      repeated. The amercement, besides, of the person complained of, might
      frequently suggest a very strong reason for finding him in the wrong, even
      when he had not really been so. That such abuses were far from being
      uncommon, the ancient history of every country in Europe bears witness.

      When the sovereign or chief exercises his judicial authority in his own
      person, how much soever he might abuse it, it must have been scarce
      possible to get any redress; because there could seldom be any body
      powerful enough to call him to account. When he exercised it by a bailiff,
      indeed, redress might sometimes be had. If it was for his own benefit
      only, that the bailiff had been guilty of an act of injustice, the
      sovereign himself might not always be unwilling to punish him, or to
      oblige him to repair the wrong. But if it was for the benefit of his
      sovereign; if it was in order to make court to the person who appointed
      him, and who might prefer him, that he had committed any act of
      oppression; redress would, upon most occasions, be as impossible as if the
      sovereign had committed it himself. In all barbarous governments,
      accordingly, in all those ancient governments of Europe in particular,
      which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the administration
      of justice appears for a long time to have been extremely corrupt; far
      from being quite equal and impartial, even under the best monarchs, and
      altogether profligate under the worst.

      Among nations of shepherds, where the sovereign or chief is only the
      greatest shepherd or herdsman of the horde or clan, he is maintained in
      the same manner as any of his vassals or subjects, by the increase of his
      own herds or flocks. Among those nations of husbandmen, who are but just
      come out of the shepherd state, and who are not much advanced beyond that
      state, such as the Greek tribes appear to have been about the time of the
      Trojan war, and our German and Scythian ancestors, when they first settled
      upon the ruins of the western empire; the sovereign or chief is, in the
      same manner, only the greatest landlord of the country, and is maintained
      in the same manner as any other landlord, by a revenue derived from his
      own private estate, or from what, in modern Europe, was called the demesne
      of the crown. His subjects, upon ordinary occasions, contribute nothing to
      his support, except when, in order to protect them from the oppression of
      some of their fellow-subjects, they stand in need of his authority. The
      presents which they make him upon such occasions constitute the whole
      ordinary revenue, the whole of the emoluments which, except, perhaps, upon
      some very extraordinary emergencies, he derives from his dominion over
      them. When Agamemnon, in Homer, offers to Achilles, for his friendship,
      the sovereignty of seven Greek cities, the sole advantage which he
      mentions as likely to be derived from it was, that the people would honour
      him with presents. As long as such presents, as long as the emoluments of
      justice, or what may be called the fees of court, constituted, in this
      manner, the whole ordinary revenue which the sovereign derived from his
      sovereignty, it could not well be expected, it could not even decently be
      proposed, that he should give them up altogether. It might, and it
      frequently was proposed, that he should regulate and ascertain them. But
      after they had been so regulated and ascertained, how to hinder a person
      who was all-powerful from extending them beyond those regulations, was
      still very difficult, not to say impossible. During the continuance of
      this state of things, therefore, the corruption of justice, naturally
      resulting from the arbitrary and uncertain nature of those presents,
      scarce admitted of any effectual remedy.

      But when, from different causes, chiefly from the continually increasing
      expense of defending the nation against the invasion of other nations, the
      private estate of the sovereign had become altogether insufficient for
      defraying the expense of the sovereignty; and when it had become necessary
      that the people should, for their own security, contribute towards this
      expense by taxes of different kinds; it seems to have been very commonly
      stipulated, that no present for the administration of justice should,
      under any pretence, be accepted either by the sovereign, or by his
      bailiffs and substitutes, the judges. Those presents, it seems to have
      been supposed, could more easily be abolished altogether, than effectually
      regulated and ascertained. Fixed salaries were appointed to the judges,
      which were supposed to compensate to them the loss of whatever might have
      been their share of the ancient emoluments of justice; as the taxes more
      than compensated to the sovereign the loss of his. Justice was then said
      to be administered gratis.

      Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country.
      Lawyers and attorneys, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and
      if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they
      actually perform it. The fees annually paid to lawyers and attorneys,
      amount, in every court, to a much greater sum than the salaries of the
      judges. The circumstance of those salaries being paid by the crown, can
      nowhere much diminish the necessary expense of a law-suit. But it was not
      so much to diminish the expense, as to prevent the corruption of justice,
      that the judges were prohibited from receiving my present or fee from the
      parties.

      The office of judge is in itself so very honourable, that men are willing
      to accept of it, though accompanied with very small emoluments. The
      inferior office of justice of peace, though attended with a good deal of
      trouble, and in most cases with no emoluments at all, is an object of
      ambition to the greater part of our country gentlemen. The salaries of all
      the different judges, high and low, together with the whole expense of the
      administration and execution of justice, even where it is not managed with
      very good economy, makes, in any civilized country, but a very
      inconsiderable part of the whole expense of government.

      The whole expense of justice, too, might easily be defrayed by the fees of
      court; and, without exposing the administration of justice to any real
      hazard of corruption, the public revenue might thus be entirely discharged
      from a certain, though perhaps but a small incumbrance. It is difficult to
      regulate the fees of court effectually, where a person so powerful as the
      sovereign is to share in them and to derive any considerable part of his
      revenue from them. It is very easy, where the judge is the principal
      person who can reap any benefit from them. The law can very easily oblige
      the judge to respect the regulation though it might not always be able to
      make the sovereign respect it. Where the fees of court are precisely
      regulated and ascertained where they are paid all at once, at a certain
      period of every process, into the hands of a cashier or receiver, to be by
      him distributed in certain known proportions among the different judges
      after the process is decided and not till it is decided; there seems to be
      no more danger of corruption than when such fees are prohibited
      altogether. Those fees, without occasioning any considerable increase in
      the expense of a law-suit, might be rendered fully sufficient for
      defraying the whole expense of justice. But not being paid to the judges
      till the process was determined, they might be some incitement to the
      diligence of the court in examining and deciding it. In courts which
      consisted of a considerable number of judges, by proportioning the share
      of each judge to the number of hours and days which he had employed in
      examining the process, either in the court, or in a committee, by order of
      the court, those fees might give some encouragement to the diligence of
      each particular judge. Public services are never better performed, than
      when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and
      is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them. In the
      different parliaments of France, the fees of court (called epices and
      vacations) constitute the far greater part of the emoluments of the
      judges. After all deductions are made, the neat salary paid by the crown
      to a counsellor or judge in the parliament of Thoulouse, in rank and
      dignity the second parliament of the kingdom, amounts only to 150 livres,
      about £6:11s. sterling a-year. About seven years ago, that sum was in the
      same place the ordinary yearly wages of a common footman. The distribution
      of these epices, too, is according to the diligence of the judges. A
      diligent judge gains a comfortable, though moderate revenue, by his
      office; an idle one gets little more than his salary. Those parliaments
      are, perhaps, in many respects, not very convenient courts of justice; but
      they have never been accused; they seem never even to have been suspected
      of corruption.

      The fees of court seem originally to have been the principal support of
      the different courts of justice in England. Each court endeavoured to draw
      to itself as much business as it could, and was, upon that account,
      willing to take cognizance of many suits which were not originally
      intended to fall under its jurisdiction. The court of king’s bench,
      instituted for the trial of criminal causes only, took cognizance of civil
      suits; the plaintiff pretending that the defendant, in not doing him
      justice, had been guilty of some trespass or misdemeanour. The court of
      exchequer, instituted for the levying of the king’s revenue, and for
      enforcing the payment of such debts only as were due to the king, took
      cognizance of all other contract debts; the planitiff alleging that he
      could not pay the king, because the defendant would not pay him. In
      consequence of such fictions, it came, in many cases, to depend altogether
      upon the parties, before what court they would choose to have their cause
      tried, and each court endeavoured, by superior dispatch and impartiality,
      to draw to itself as many causes as it could. The present admirable
      constitution of the courts of justice in England was, perhaps, originally,
      in a great measure, formed by this emulation, which anciently took place
      between their respective judges: each judge endeavouring to give, in his
      own court, the speediest and most effectual remedy which the law would
      admit, for every sort of injustice. Originally, the courts of law gave
      damages only for breach of contract. The court of chancery, as a court of
      conscience, first took upon it to enforce the specific performance of
      agreements. When the breach of contract consisted in the non-payment of
      money, the damage sustained could be compensated in no other way than by
      ordering payment, which was equivalent to a specific performance of the
      agreement. In such cases, therefore, the remedy of the courts of law was
      sufficient. It was not so in others. When the tenant sued his lord for
      having unjustly outed him of his lease, the damages which he recovered
      were by no means equivalent to the possession of the land. Such causes,
      therefore, for some time, went all to the court of chancery, to the no
      small loss of the courts of law. It was to draw back such causes to
      themselves, that the courts of law are said to have invented the
      artificial and fictitious writ of ejectment, the most effectual remedy for
      an unjust outer or dispossession of land.

      A stamp-duty upon the law proceedings of each particular court, to be
      levied by that court, and applied towards the maintenance of the judges,
      and other officers belonging to it, might in the same manner, afford a
      revenue sufficient for defraying the expense of the administration of
      justice, without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the
      society. The judges, indeed, might in this case, be under the temptation
      of multiplying unnecessarily the proceedings upon every cause, in order to
      increase, as much as possible, the produce of such a stamp-duty. It has
      been the custom in modern Europe to regulate, upon most occasions, the
      payment of the attorneys and clerks of court according to the number of
      pages which they had occasion to write; the court, however, requiring that
      each page should contain so many lines, and each line so many words. In
      order to increase their payment, the attorneys and clerks have contrived
      to multiply words beyond all necessity, to the corruption of the law
      language of, I believe, every court of justice in Europe. A like
      temptation might, perhaps, occasion a like corruption in the form of law
      proceedings.

      But whether the administration of justice be so contrived as to defray its
      own expense, or whether the judges be maintained by fixed salaries paid to
      them from some other fund, it does not seen necessary that the person or
      persons entrusted with the executive power should be charged with the
      management of that fund, or with the payment of those salaries. That fund
      might arise from the rent of landed estates, the management of each estate
      being entrusted to the particular court which was to be maintained by it.
      That fund might arise even from the interest of a sum of money, the
      lending out of which might, in the same manner, be entrusted to the court
      which was to be maintained by it. A part, though indeed but a small part
      of the salary of the judges of the court of session in Scotland, arises
      from the interest of a sum of money. The necessary instability of such a
      fund seems, however, to render it an improper one for the maintenance of
      an institution which ought to last for ever.

      The separation of the judicial from the executive power, seems originally
      to have arisen from the increasing business of the society, in consequence
      of its increasing improvement. The administration of justice became so
      laborious and so complicated a duty, as to require the undivided attention
      of the person to whom it was entrusted. The person entrusted with the
      executive power, not having leisure to attend to the decision of private
      causes himself, a deputy was appointed to decide them in his stead. In the
      progress of the Roman greatness, the consul was too much occupied with the
      political affairs of the state, to attend to the administration of
      justice. A praetor, therefore, was appointed to administer it in his
      stead. In the progress of the European monarchies, which were founded upon
      the ruins of the Roman empire, the sovereigns and the great lords came
      universally to consider the administration of justice as an office both
      too laborious and too ignoble for them to execute in their own persons.
      They universally, therefore, discharged themselves of it, by appointing a
      deputy, bailiff or judge.

      When the judicial is united to the executive power, it is scarce possible
      that justice should not frequently be sacrificed to what is vulgarly
      called politics. The persons entrusted with the great interests of the
      state may even without any corrupt views, sometimes imagine it necessary
      to sacrifice to those interests the rights of a private man. But upon the
      impartial administration of justice depends the liberty of every
      individual, the sense which he has of his own security. In order to make
      every individual feel himself perfectly secure in the possession of every
      right which belongs to him, it is not only necessary that the judicial
      should be separated from the executive power, but that it should be
      rendered as much as possible independent of that power. The judge should
      not be liable to be removed from his office according to the caprice of
      that power. The regular payment of his salary should not depend upon the
      good will, or even upon the good economy of that power.




      PART III. Of the Expense of public Works and public Institutions.

      The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth, is that of
      erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works,
      which though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great
      society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay
      the expense to any individual, or small number of individuals; and which
      it, therefore, cannot be expected that any individual, or small number of
      individuals, should erect or maintain. The performance of this duty
      requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods
      of society.

      After the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence
      of the society, and for the administration of justice, both of which have
      already been mentioned, the other works and institutions of this kind are
      chiefly for facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for
      promoting the instruction of the people. The institutions for instruction
      are of two kinds: those for the education of the youth, and those for the
      instruction of people of all ages. The consideration of the manner in
      which the expense of those different sorts of public works and
      institutions may be most properly defrayed will divide this third part of
      the present chapter into three different articles.

      ARTICLE I.—Of the public Works and Institutions for facilitating the
      Commerce of the Society.

      And, first, of those which are necessary for facilitating Commerce in
      general.

      That the erection and maintenance of the public works which facilitate the
      commerce of any country, such as good roads, bridges, navigable canals,
      harbours, etc. must require very different degrees of expense in the
      different periods of society, is evident without any proof. The expense of
      making and maintaining the public roads of any country must evidently
      increase with the annual produce of the land and labour of that country,
      or with the quantity and weight of the goods which it becomes necessary to
      fetch and carry upon those roads. The strength of a bridge must be suited
      to the number and weight of the carriages which are likely to pass over
      it. The depth and the supply of water for a navigable canal must be
      proportioned to the number and tonnage of the lighters which are likely to
      carry goods upon it; the extent of a harbour, to the number of the
      shipping which are likely to take shelter in it.

      It does not seem necessary that the expense of those public works should
      be defrayed from that public revenue, as it is commonly called, of which
      the collection and application are in most countries, assigned to the
      executive power. The greater part of such public works may easily be so
      managed, as to afford a particular revenue, sufficient for defraying their
      own expense without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the
      society.

      A highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may, in most cases,
      be both made add maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make
      use of them; a harbour, by a moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the
      shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage, another institution for
      facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own
      expense, but affords a small revenue or a seignorage to the sovereign. The
      post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above
      defraying its own expense, affords, in almost all countries, a very
      considerable revenue to the sovereign.

      When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters
      which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight
      or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works
      exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. It
      seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such
      works. This tax or toll, too, though it is advanced by the carrier, is
      finally paid by the consumer, to whom it must always be charged in the
      price of the goods. As the expense of carriage, however, is very much
      reduced by means of such public works, the goods, notwithstanding the
      toll, come cheaper to the consumer than they could otherwise have done,
      their price not being so much raised by the toll, as it is lowered by the
      cheapness of the carriage. The person who finally pays this tax,
      therefore, gains by the application more than he loses by the payment of
      it. His payment is exactly in proportion to his gain. It is, in reality,
      no more than a part of that gain which he is obliged to give up, in order
      to get the rest. It seems impossible to imagine a more equitable method of
      raising a tax. When the toll upon carriages of luxury, upon coaches,
      post-chaises, etc. is made somewhat higher in proportion to their weight,
      than upon carriages of necessary use, such as carts, waggons, etc. the
      indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute, in a very easy
      manner, to the relief of the poor, by rendering cheaper the transportation
      of heavy goods to all the different parts of the country.

      When high-roads, bridges, canals, etc. are in this manner made and
      supported by the commerce which is carried on by means of them, they can
      be made only where that commerce requires them, and, consequently, where
      it is proper to make them. Their expense, too, their grandeur and
      magnificence, must be suited to what that commerce can afford to pay. They
      must be made, consequently, as it is proper to make them. A magnificent
      high-road cannot be made through a desert country, where there is little
      or no commerce, or merely because it happens to lead to the country villa
      of the intendant of the province, or to that of some great lord, to whom
      the intendant finds it convenient to make his court. A great bridge cannot
      be thrown over a river at a place where nobody passes, or merely to
      embellish the view from the windows of a neighbouring palace; things which
      sometimes happen in countries, where works of this kind are carried on by
      any other revenue than that which they themselves are capable of
      affording.

      In several different parts of Europe, the toll or lock-duty upon a canal
      is the property of private persons, whose private interest obliges them to
      keep up the canal. If it is not kept in tolerable order, the navigation
      necessarily ceases altogether, and, along with it, the whole profit which
      they can make by the tolls. If those tolls were put under the management
      of commissioners, who had themselves no interest in them, they might be
      less attentive to the maintenance of the works which produced them. The
      canal of Languedoc cost the king of France and the province upwards of
      thirteen millions of livres, which (at twenty-eight livres the mark of
      silver, the value of French money in the end of the last century) amounted
      to upwards of nine hundred thousand pounds sterling. When that great work
      was finished, the most likely method, it was found, of keeping it in
      constant repair, was to make a present of the tolls to Riquet, the
      engineer who planned and conducted the work. Those tolls constitute, at
      present, a very large estate to the different branches of the family of
      that gentleman, who have, therefore, a great interest to keep the work in
      constant repair. But had those tolls been put under the management of
      commissioners, who had no such interest, they might perhaps, have been
      dissipated in ornamental and unnecessary expenses, while the most
      essential parts of the works were allowed to go to ruin.

      The tolls for the maintenance of a highroad cannot, with any safety, be
      made the property of private persons. A high-road, though entirely
      neglected, does not become altogether impassable, though a canal does. The
      proprietors of the tolls upon a high-road, therefore, might neglect
      altogether the repair of the road, and yet continue to levy very nearly
      the same tolls. It is proper, therefore, that the tolls for the
      maintenance of such a work should be put under the management of
      commissioners or trustees.

      In Great Britain, the abuses which the trustees have committed in the
      management of those tolls, have, in many cases, been very justly
      complained of. At many turnpikes, it has been said, the money levied is
      more than double of what is necessary for executing, in the completest
      manner, the work, which is often executed in a very slovenly manner, and
      sometimes not executed at all. The system of repairing the high-roads by
      tolls of this kind, it must be observed, is not of very long standing. We
      should not wonder, therefore, if it has not yet been brought to that
      degree of perfection of which it seems capable. If mean and improper
      persons are frequently appointed trustees; and if proper courts of
      inspection and account have not yet been established for controlling their
      conduct, and for reducing the tolls to what is barely sufficient for
      executing the work to be done by them; the recency of the institution both
      accounts and apologizes for those defects, of which, by the wisdom of
      parliament, the greater part may, in due time, be gradually remedied.

      The money levied at the different turnpikes in Great Britain, is supposed
      to exceed so much what is necessary for repairing the roads, that the
      savings which, with proper economy, might be made from it, have been
      considered, even by some ministers, as a very great resource, which might,
      at some time or another, be applied to the exigencies of the state.
      Government, it has been said, by taking the management of the turnpikes
      into its own hands, and by employing the soldiers, who would work for a
      very small addition to their pay, could keep the roads in good order, at a
      much less expense than it can be done by trustees, who have no other
      workmen to employ, but such as derive their whole subsistence from their
      wages. A great revenue, half a million, perhaps {Since publishing the two
      first editions of this book, I have got good reasons to believe that all
      the turnpike tolls levied in Great Britain do not produce a neat revenue
      that amounts to half a million; a sum which, under the management of
      government, would not be sufficient to keep in repair five of the
      principal roads in the kingdom}, it has been pretended, might in this
      manner be gained, without laying any new burden upon the people; and the
      turnpike roads might be made to contribute to the general expense of the
      state, in the same manner as the post-office does at present.

      That a considerable revenue might be gained in this manner, I have no
      doubt, though probably not near so much as the projectors of this plan
      have supposed. The plan itself, however, seems liable to several very
      important objections.

      First, If the tolls which are levied at the turnpikes should ever be
      considered as one of the resources for supplying the exigencies of the
      state, they would certainly be augmented as those exigencies were supposed
      to require. According to the policy of Great Britain, therefore, they
      would probably he augmented very fast. The facility with which a great
      revenue could be drawn from them, would probably encourage administration
      to recur very frequently te this resource. Though it may, perhaps, be more
      than doubtful whether half a million could by any economy be saved out of
      the present tolls, it can scarcely be doubted, but that a million might be
      saved out of them, if they were doubled; and perhaps two millions, if they
      were tripled {I have now good reason to believe that all these conjectural
      sums are by much too large.}. This great revenue, too, might be levied
      without the appointment of a single new officer to collect and receive it.
      But the turnpike tolls, being continually augmented in this manner,
      instead of facilitating the inland commerce of the country, as at present,
      would soon become a very great incumbrance upon it. The expense of
      transporting all heavy goods from one part of the country to another,
      would soon be so much increased, the market for all such goods,
      consequently, would soon be so much narrowed, that their production would
      be in a great measure discouraged, and the most important branches of the
      domestic industry of the country annihilated altogether.

      Secondly, A tax upon carriages, in proportion to their weight, though a
      very equal tax when applied to the sole purpose of repairing the roads, is
      a very unequal one when applied to any other purpose, or to supply the
      common exigencies of the state. When it is applied to the sole purpose
      above mentioned, each carriage is supposed to pay exactly for the wear and
      tear which that carriage occasions of the roads. But when it is applied to
      any other purpose, each carriage is supposed to pay for more than that
      wear and tear, and contributes to the supply of some other exigency of the
      state. But as the turnpike toll raises the price of goods in proportion to
      their weight and not to their value, it is chiefly paid by the consumers
      of coarse and bulky, not by those of precious and light commodities.
      Whatever exigency of the state, therefore, this tax might be intended to
      supply, that exigency would be chiefly supplied at the expense of the
      poor, not of the rich; at the expense of those who are least able to
      supply it, not of those who are most able.

      Thirdly, If government should at any time neglect the reparation of the
      high-roads, it would be still more difficult, than it is at present, to
      compel the proper application of any part of the turnpike tolls. A large
      revenue might thus be levied upon the people, without any part of it being
      applied to the only purpose to which a revenue levied in this manner ought
      ever to be applied. If the meanness and poverty of the trustees of
      turnpike roads render it sometimes difficult, at present, to oblige them
      to repair their wrong; their wealth and greatness would render it ten
      times more so in the case which is here supposed.

      In France, the funds destined for the reparation of the high-roads are
      under the immediate direction of the executive power. Those funds consist,
      partly in a certain number of days labour, which the country people are in
      most parts of Europe obliged to give to the reparation of the highways;
      and partly in such a portion of the general revenue of the state as the
      king chooses to spare from his other expenses.

      By the ancient law of France, as well as by that of most other parts of
      Europe, the labour of the country people was under the direction of a
      local or provincial magistracy, which had no immediate dependency upon the
      king’s council. But, by the present practice, both the labour of the
      country people, and whatever other fund the king may choose to assign for
      the reparation of the high-roads in any particular province or generality,
      are entirely under the management of the intendant; an officer who is
      appointed and removed by the king’s council who receives his orders from
      it, and is in constant correspondence with it. In the progress of
      despotism, the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of
      every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of
      every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose. In
      France, however, the great post-roads, the roads which make the
      communication between the principal towns of the kingdom, are in general
      kept in good order; and, in some provinces, are even a good deal superior
      to the greater part of the turnpike roads of England. But what we call the
      cross roads, that is, the far greater part of the roads in the country,
      are entirely neglected, and are in many places absolutely impassable for
      any heavy carriage. In some places it is even dangerous to travel on
      horseback, and mules are the only conveyance which can safely be trusted.
      The proud minister of an ostentatious court, may frequently take pleasure
      in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great
      highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose
      applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his
      interest at court. But to execute a great number of little works, in which
      nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the
      smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have
      nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which
      appears, in every respect, too mean and paltry to merit the attention of
      so great a magistrate. Under such an administration therefore, such works
      are almost always entirely neglected.

      In China, and in several other governments of Asia, the executive power
      charges itself both with the reparation of the high-roads, and with the
      maintenance of the navigable canals. In the instructions which are given
      to the governor of each province, those objects, it is said, are
      constantly recommended to him, and the judgment which the court forms of
      his conduct is very much regulated by the attention which he appears to
      have paid to this part of his instructions. This branch of public police,
      accordingly, is said to be very much attended to in all those countries,
      but particularly in China, where the high-roads, and still more the
      navigable canals, it is pretended, exceed very much every thing of the
      same kind which is known in Europe. The accounts of those works, however,
      which have been transmitted to Europe, have generally been drawn up by
      weak and wondering travellers; frequently by stupid and lying
      missionaries. If they had been examined by more intelligent eyes, and if
      the accounts of them had been reported by more faithful witnesses, they
      would not, perhaps, appear to be so wonderful. The account which Bernier
      gives of some works of this kind in Indostan, falls very short of what had
      been reported of them by other travellers, more disposed to the marvellous
      than he was. It may too, perhaps, be in those countries, as it is in
      France, where the great roads, the great communications, which are likely
      to be the subjects of conversation at the court and in the capital, are
      attended to, and all the rest neglected. In China, besides, in Indostan,
      and in several other governments of Asia, the revenue of the sovereign
      arises almost altogether from a land tax or land rent, which rises or
      falls with the rise and fall of the annual produce of the land. The great
      interest of the sovereign, therefore, his revenue, is in such countries
      necessarily and immediately connected with the cultivation of the land,
      with the greatness of its produce, and with the value of its produce. But
      in order to render that produce both as great and as valuable as possible,
      it is necessary to procure to it as extensive a market as possible, and
      consequently to establish the freest, the easiest, and the least expensive
      communication between all the different parts of the country; which can be
      done only by means of the best roads and the best navigable canals. But
      the revenue of the sovereign does not, in any part of Europe, arise
      chiefly from a land tax or land rent. In all the great kingdoms of Europe,
      perhaps, the greater part of it may ultimately depend upon the produce of
      the land: but that dependency is neither so immediate nor so evident. In
      Europe, therefore, the sovereign does not feel himself so directly called
      upon to promote the increase, both in quantity and value of the produce of
      the land, or, by maintaining good roads and canals, to provide the most
      extensive market for that produce. Though it should be true, therefore,
      what I apprehend is not a little doubtful, that in some parts of Asia this
      department of the public police is very properly managed by the executive
      power, there is not the least probability that, during the present state
      of things, it could be tolerably managed by that power in any part of
      Europe.

      Even those public works, which are of such a nature that they cannot
      afford any revenue for maintaining themselves, but of which the
      conveniency is nearly confined to some particular place or district, are
      always better maintained by a local or provincial revenue, under the
      management of a local and provincial administration, than by the general
      revenue of the state, of which the executive power must always have the
      management. Were the streets of London to be lighted and paved at the
      expense of the treasury, is there any probability that they would be so
      well lighted and paved as they are at present, or even at so small an
      expense? The expense, besides, instead of being raised by a local tax upon
      the inhabitants of each particular street, parish, or district in London,
      would, in this case, be defrayed out of the general revenue of the state,
      and would consequently be raised by a tax upon all the inhabitants of the
      kingdom, of whom the greater part derive no sort of benefit from the
      lighting and paving of the streets of London.

      The abuses which sometimes creep into the local and provincial
      administration of a local and provincial revenue, how enormous soever they
      may appear, are in reality, however, almost always very trifling in
      comparison of those which commonly take place in the administration and
      expenditure of the revenue of a great empire. They are, besides, much more
      easily corrected. Under the local or provincial administration of the
      justices of the peace in Great Britain, the six days labour which the
      country people are obliged to give to the reparation of the highways, is
      not always, perhaps, very judiciously applied, but it is scarce ever
      exacted with any circumstance of cruelty or oppression. In France, under
      the administration of the intendants, the application is not always more
      judicious, and the exaction is frequently the most cruel and oppressive.
      Such corvees, as they are called, make one of the principal instruments of
      tyranny by which those officers chastise any parish or communeaute, which
      has had the misfortune to fall under their displeasure.

      Of the public Works and Institution which are necessary for facilitating
      particular Branches of Commerce.

      The object of the public works and institutions above mentioned, is to
      facilitate commerce in general. But in order to facilitate some particular
      branches of it, particular institutions are necessary, which again require
      a particular and extraordinary expense.

      Some particular branches of commerce which are carried on with barbarous
      and uncivilized nations, require extraordinary protection. An ordinary
      store or counting-house could give little security to the goods of the
      merchants who trade to the western coast of Africa. To defend them from
      the barbarous natives, it is necessary that the place where they are
      deposited should be in some measure fortified. The disorders in the
      government of Indostan have been supposed to render a like precaution
      necessary, even among that mild and gentle people; and it was under
      pretence of securing their persons and property from violence, that both
      the English and French East India companies were allowed to erect the
      first forts which they possessed in that country. Among other nations,
      whose vigorous government will suffer no strangers to possess any
      fortified place within their territory, it may be necessary to maintain
      some ambassador, minister, or consul, who may both decide, according to
      their own customs, the differences arising among his own countrymen, and,
      in their disputes with the natives, may by means of his public character,
      interfere with more authority and afford them a more powerful protection
      than they could expect from any private man. The interests of commerce
      have frequently made it necessary to maintain ministers in foreign
      countries, where the purposes either of war or alliance would not have
      required any. The commerce of the Turkey company first occasioned the
      establishment of an ordinary ambassador at Constantinople. The first
      English embassies to Russia arose altogether from commercial interests.
      The constant interference with those interests, necessarily occasioned
      between the subjects of the different states of Europe, has probably
      introduced the custom of keeping, in all neighbouring countries,
      ambassadors or ministers constantly resident, even in the time of peace.
      This custom, unknown to ancient times, seems not to be older than the end
      of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century; that is, than the
      time when commerce first began to extend itself to the greater part of the
      nations of Europe, and when they first began to attend to its interests.

      It seems not unreasonable, that the extraordinary expense which the
      protection of any particular branch of commerce may occasion, should be
      defrayed by a moderate tax upon that particular branch; by a moderate
      fine, for example, to be paid by the traders when they first enter into
      it; or, what is more equal, by a particular duty of so much per cent. upon
      the goods which they either import into, or export out of, the particular
      countries with which it is carried on. The protection of trade, in
      general, from pirates and freebooters, is said to have given occasion to
      the first institution of the duties of customs. But, if it was thought
      reasonable to lay a general tax upon trade, in order to defray the expense
      of protecting trade in general, it should seem equally reasonable to lay a
      particular tax upon a particular branch of trade, in order to defray the
      extraordinary expense of protecting that branch.

      The protection of trade, in general, has always been considered as
      essential to the defence of the commonwealth, and, upon that account, a
      necessary part of the duty of the executive power. The collection and
      application of the general duties of customs, therefore, have always been
      left to that power. But the protection of any particular branch of trade
      is a part of the general protection of trade; a part, therefore, of the
      duty of that power; and if nations always acted consistently, the
      particular duties levied for the purposes of such particular protection,
      should always have been left equally to its disposal. But in this respect,
      as well as in many others, nations have not always acted consistently; and
      in the greater part of the commercial states of Europe, particular
      companies of merchants have had the address to persuade the legislature to
      entrust to them the performance of this part of the duty of the sovereign,
      together with all the powers which are necessarily connected with it.

      These companies, though they may, perhaps, have been useful for the first
      introduction of some branches of commerce, by making, at their own
      expense, an experiment which the state might not think it prudent to make,
      have in the long-run proved, universally, either burdensome or useless,
      and have either mismanaged or confined the trade.

      When those companies do not trade upon a joint stock, but are obliged to
      admit any person, properly qualified, upon paying a certain fine, and
      agreeing to submit to the regulations of the company, each member trading
      upon his own stock, and at his own risk, they are called regulated
      companies. When they trade upon a joint stock, each member sharing in the
      common profit or loss, in proportion to his share in this stock, they are
      called joint-stock companies. Such companies, whether regulated or
      joint-stock, sometimes have, and sometimes have not, exclusive privileges.

      Regulated companies resemble, in every respect, the corporation of trades,
      so common in the cities and towns of all the different countries of
      Europe; and are a sort of enlarged monopolies of the same kind. As no
      inhabitant of a town can exercise an incorporated trade, without first
      obtaining his freedom in the incorporation, so, in most cases, no subject
      of the state can lawfully carry on any branch of foreign trade, for which
      a regulated company is established, without first becoming a member of
      that company. The monopoly is more or less strict, according as the terms
      of admission are more or less difficult, and according as the directors of
      the company have more or less authority, or have it more or less in their
      power to manage in such a manner as to confine the greater part of the
      trade to themselves and their particular friends. In the most ancient
      regulated companies, the privileges of apprenticeship were the same as in
      other corporations, and entitled the person who had served his time to a
      member of the company, to become himself a member, either without paying
      any fine, or upon paying a much smaller one than what was exacted of other
      people. The usual corporation spirit, wherever the law does not restrain
      it, prevails in all regulated companies. When they have been allowed to
      act according to their natural genius, they have always, in order to
      confine the competition to as small a number of persons as possible,
      endeavoured to subject the trade to many burdensome regulations. When the
      law has restrained them from doing this, they have become altogether
      useless and insignificant.

      The regulated companies for foreign commerce which at present subsist in
      Great Britain, are the ancient merchant-adventurers company, now commonly
      called the Hamburgh company, the Russia company, the Eastland company, the
      Turkey company, and the African company.

      The terms of admission into the Hamburgh company are now said to be quite
      easy; and the directors either have it not in their power to subject the
      trade to any troublesome restraint or regulations, or, at least, have not
      of late exercised that power. It has not always been so. About the middle
      of the last century, the fine for admission was fifty, and at one time one
      hundred pounds, and the conduct of the company was said to be extremely
      oppressive. In 1643, in 1645, and in 1661, the clothiers and free traders
      of the west of England complained of them to parliament, as of
      monopolists, who confined the trade, and oppressed the manufactures of the
      country. Though those complaints produced no act of parliament, they had
      probably intimidated the company so far, as to oblige them to reform their
      conduct. Since that time, at least, there have been no complaints against
      them. By the 10th and 11th of William III. c.6, the fine for admission
      into the Russia company was reduced to five pounds; and by the 25th of
      Charles II. c.7, that for admission into the Eastland company to forty
      shillings; while, at the same time, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, all the
      countries on the north side of the Baltic, were exempted from their
      exclusive charter. The conduct of those companies had probably given
      occasion to those two acts of parliament. Before that time, Sir Josiah
      Child had represented both these and the Hamburgh company as extremely
      oppressive, and imputed to their bad management the low state of the
      trade, which we at that time carried on to the countries comprehended
      within their respective charters. But though such companies may not, in
      the present times, be very oppressive, they are certainly altogether
      useless. To be merely useless, indeed, is perhaps, the highest eulogy
      which can ever justly be bestowed upon a regulated company; and all the
      three companies above mentioned seem, in their present state, to deserve
      this eulogy.

      The fine for admission into the Turkey company was formerly twenty-five
      pounds for all persons under twenty-six years of age, and fifty pounds for
      all persons above that age. Nobody but mere merchants could be admitted; a
      restriction which excluded all shop-keepers and retailers. By a bye-law,
      no British manufactures could be exported to Turkey but in the general
      ships of the company; and as those ships sailed always from the port of
      London, this restriction confined the trade to that expensive port, and
      the traders to those who lived in London and in its neighbourhood. By
      another bye-law, no person living within twenty miles of London, and not
      free of the city, could be admitted a member; another restriction which,
      joined to the foregoing, necessarily excluded all but the freemen of
      London. As the time for the loading and sailing of those general ships
      depended altogether upon the directors, they could easily fill them with
      their own goods, and those of their particular friends, to the exclusion
      of others, who, they might pretend, had made their proposals too late. In
      this state of things, therefore, this company was, in every respect, a
      strict and oppressive monopoly. Those abuses gave occasion to the act of
      the 26th of George II. c. 18, reducing the fine for admission to twenty
      pounds for all persons, without any distinction of ages, or any
      restriction, either to mere merchants, or to the freemen of London; and
      granting to all such persons the liberty of exporting, from all the ports
      of Great Britain, to any port in Turkey, all British goods, of which the
      exportation was not prohibited, upon paying both the general duties of
      customs, and the particular duties assessed for defraying the necessary
      expenses of the company; and submitting, at the same time, to the lawful
      authority of the British ambassador and consuls resident in Turkey, and to
      the bye-laws of the company duly enacted. To prevent any oppression by
      those bye-laws, it was by the same act ordained, that if any seven members
      of the company conceived themselves aggrieved by any bye-law which should
      be enacted after the passing of this act, they might appeal to the board
      of trade and plantations (to the authority of which a committee of the
      privy council has now succeeded), provided such appeal was brought within
      twelve months after the bye-law was enacted; and that, if any seven
      members conceived themselves aggrieved by any bye-law which had been
      enacted before the passing of this act, they might bring a like appeal,
      provided it was within twelve months after the day on which this act was
      to take place. The experience of one year, however, may not always be
      sufficient to discover to all the members of a great company the
      pernicious tendency of a particular bye-law; and if several of them should
      afterwards discover it, neither the board of trade, nor the committee of
      council, can afford them any redress. The object, besides, of the greater
      part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other
      corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as
      to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a
      high fine, but by many other contrivances. The constant view of such
      companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they
      can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for
      those which they import, as much understocked as they can; which can be
      done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new
      adventurers from entering into the trade. A fine, even of twenty pounds,
      besides, though it may not, perhaps, be sufficient to discourage any man
      from entering into the Turkey trade, with an intention to continue in it,
      may be enough to discourage a speculative merchant from hazarding a single
      adventure in it. In all trades, the regular established traders, even
      though not incorporated, naturally combine to raise profits, which are
      noway so likely to be kept, at all times, down to their proper level, as
      by the occasional competition of speculative adventurers. The Turkey
      trade, though in some measure laid open by this act of parliament, is
      still considered by many people as very far from being altogether free.
      The Turkey company contribute to maintain an ambassador and two or three
      consuls, who, like other public ministers, ought to be maintained
      altogether by the state, and the trade laid open to all his majesty’s
      subjects. The different taxes levied by the company, for this and other
      corporation purposes, might afford a revenue much more than sufficient to
      enable a state to maintain such ministers.

      Regulated companies, it was observed by Sir Josiah Child, though they had
      frequently supported public ministers, had never maintained any forts or
      garrisons in the countries to which they traded; whereas joint-stock
      companies frequently had. And, in reality, the former seem to be much more
      unfit for this sort of service than the latter. First, the directors of a
      regulated company have no particular interest in the prosperity of the
      general trade of the company, for the sake of which such forts and
      garrisons are maintained. The decay of that general trade may even
      frequently contribute to the advantage of their own private trade; as, by
      diminishing the number of their competitors, it may enable them both to
      buy cheaper, and to sell dearer. The directors of a joint-stock company,
      on the contrary, having only their share in the profits which are made
      upon the common stock committed to their management, have no private trade
      of their own, of which the interest can be separated from that of the
      general trade of the company. Their private interest is connected with the
      prosperity of the general trade of the company, and with the maintenance
      of the forts and garrisons which are necessary for its defence. They are
      more likely, therefore, to have that continual and careful attention which
      that maintenance necessarily requires. Secondly, The directors of a
      joint-stock company have always the management of a large capital, the
      joint stock of the company, a part of which they may frequently employ,
      with propriety, in building, repairing, and maintaining such necessary
      forts and garrisons. But the directors of a regulated company, having the
      management of no common capital, have no other fund to employ in this way,
      but the casual revenue arising from the admission fines, and from the
      corporation duties imposed upon the trade of the company. Though they had
      the same interest, therefore, to attend to the maintenance of such forts
      and garrisons, they can seldom have the same ability to render that
      attention effectual. The maintenance of a public minister, requiring
      scarce any attention, and but a moderate and limited expense, is a
      business much more suitable both to the temper and abilities of a
      regulated company.

      Long after the time of Sir Josiah Child, however, in 1750, a regulated
      company was established, the present company of merchants trading to
      Africa; which was expressly charged at first with the maintenance of all
      the British forts and garrisons that lie between Cape Blanc and the Cape
      of Good Hope, and afterwards with that of those only which lie between
      Cape Rouge and the Cape of Good Hope. The act which establishes this
      company (the 23rd of George II. c.51 ), seems to have had two distinct
      objects in view; first, to restrain effectually the oppressive and
      monopolizing spirit which is natural to the directors of a regulated
      company; and, secondly, to force them, as much as possible, to give an
      attention, which is not natural to them, towards the maintenance of forts
      and garrisons.

      For the first of these purposes, the fine for admission is limited to
      forty shillings. The company is prohibited from trading in their corporate
      capacity, or upon a joint stock; from borrowing money upon common seal, or
      from laying any restraints upon the trade, which may be carried on freely
      from all places, and by all persons being British subjects, and paying the
      fine. The government is in a committee of nine persons, who meet at
      London, but who are chosen annually by the freemen of the company at
      London, Bristol, and Liverpool; three from each place. No committeeman can
      be continued in office for more than three years together. Any
      committee-man might be removed by the board of trade and plantations, now
      by a committee of council, after being heard in his own defence. The
      committee are forbid to export negroes from Africa, or to import any
      African goods into Great Britain. But as they are charged with the
      maintenance of forts and garrisons, they may, for that purpose export from
      Great Britain to Africa goods and stores of different kinds. Out of the
      moneys which they shall receive from the company, they are allowed a sum,
      not exceeding eight hundred pounds, for the salaries of their clerks and
      agents at London, Bristol, and Liverpool, the house-rent of their offices
      at London, and all other expenses of management, commission, and agency,
      in England. What remains of this sum, after defraying these different
      expenses, they may divide among themselves, as compensation for their
      trouble, in what manner they think proper. By this constitution, it might
      have been expected, that the spirit of monopoly would have been
      effectually restrained, and the first of these purposes sufficiently
      answered. It would seem, however, that it had not. Though by the 4th of
      George III. c.20, the fort of Senegal, with all its dependencies, had been
      invested in the company of merchants trading to Africa, yet, in the year
      following (by the 5th of George III. c.44), not only Senegal and its
      dependencies, but the whole coast, from the port of Sallee, in South
      Barbary, to Cape Rouge, was exempted from the jurisdiction of that
      company, was vested in the crown, and the trade to it declared free to all
      his majesty’s subjects. The company had been suspected of restraining the
      trade and of establishing some sort of improper monopoly. It is not,
      however, very easy to conceive how, under the regulations of the 23d
      George II. they could do so. In the printed debates of the house of
      commons, not always the most authentic records of truth, I observe,
      however, that they have been accused of this. The members of the committee
      of nine being all merchants, and the governors and factors in their
      different forts and settlements being all dependent upon them, it is not
      unlikely that the latter might have given peculiar attention to the
      consignments and commissions of the former, which would establish a real
      monopoly.

      For the second of these purposes, the maintenance of the forts and
      garrisons, an annual sum has been allotted to them by parliament,
      generally about £13,000. For the proper application of this sum, the
      committee is obliged to account annually to the cursitor baron of
      exchequer; which account is afterwards to be laid before parliament. But
      parliament, which gives so little attention to the application of
      millions, is not likely to give much to that of £13,000 a-year; and the
      cursitor baron of exchequer, from his profession and education, is not
      likely to be profoundly skilled in the proper expense of forts and
      garrisons. The captains of his majesty’s navy, indeed, or any other
      commissioned officers, appointed by the board of admiralty, may inquire
      into the condition of the forts and garrisons, and report their
      observations to that board. But that board seems to have no direct
      jurisdiction over the committee, nor any authority to correct those whose
      conduct it may thus inquire into; and the captains of his majesty’s navy,
      besides, are not supposed to be always deeply learned in the science of
      fortification. Removal from an office, which can be enjoyed only for the
      term of three years, and of which the lawful emoluments, even during that
      term, are so very small, seems to be the utmost punishment to which any
      committee-man is liable, for any fault, except direct malversation, or
      embezzlement, either of the public money, or of that of the company; and
      the fear of the punishment can never be a motive of sufficient weight to
      force a continual and careful attention to a business to which he has no
      other interest to attend. The committee are accused of having sent out
      bricks and stones from England for the reparation of Cape Coast Castle, on
      the coast of Guinea; a business for which parliament had several times
      granted an extraordinary sum of money. These bricks and stones, too, which
      had thus been sent upon so long a voyage, were said to have been of so bad
      a quality, that it was necessary to rebuild, from the foundation, the
      walls which had been repaired with them. The forts and garrisons which lie
      north of Cape Rouge, are not only maintained at the expense of the state,
      but are under the immediate government of the executive power; and why
      those which lie south of that cape, and which, too, are, in part at least,
      maintained at the expense of the state, should be under a different
      government, it seems not very easy even to imagine a good reason. The
      protection of the Mediterranean trade was the original purpose or pretence
      of the garrisons of Gibraltar and Minorca; and the maintenance and
      government of those garrisons have always been, very properly, committed,
      not to the Turkey company, but to the executive power. In the extent of
      its dominion consists, in a great measure, the pride and dignity of that
      power; and it is not very likely to fail in attention to what is necessary
      for the defence of that dominion. The garrisons at Gibraltar and Minorca,
      accordingly, have never been neglected. Though Minorca has been twice
      taken, and is now probably lost for ever, that disaster has never been
      imputed to any neglect in the executive power. I would not, however, be
      understood to insinuate, that either of those expensive garrisons was
      ever, even in the smallest degree, necessary for the purpose for which
      they were originally dismembered from the Spanish monarchy. That
      dismemberment, perhaps, never served any other real purpose than to
      alienate from England her natural ally the king of Spain, and to unite the
      two principal branches of the house of Bourbon in a much stricter and more
      permanent alliance than the ties of blood could ever have united them.

      Joint-stock companies, established either by royal charter, or by act of
      parliament, are different in several respects, not only from regulated
      companies, but from private copartneries.

      First, In a private copartnery, no partner without the consent of the
      company, can transfer his share to another person, or introduce a new
      member into the company. Each member, however, may, upon proper warning,
      withdraw from the copartnery, and demand payment from them of his share of
      the common stock. In a joint-stock company, on the contrary, no member can
      demand payment of his share from the company; but each member can, without
      their consent, transfer his share to another person, and thereby introduce
      a new member. The value of a share in a joint stock is always the price
      which it will bring in the market; and this may be either greater or less
      in any proportion, than the sum which its owner stands credited for in the
      stock of the company.

      Secondly, In a private copartnery, each partner is bound for the debts
      contracted by the company, to the whole extent of his fortune. In a
      joint-stock company, on the contrary, each partner is bound only to the
      extent of his share.

      The trade of a joint-stock company is always managed by a court of
      directors. This court, indeed, is frequently subject, in many respects, to
      the control of a general court of proprietors. But the greater part of
      these proprietors seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business
      of the company; and when the spirit of faction happens not to prevail
      among them, give themselves no trouble about it, but receive contentedly
      such halfyearly or yearly dividend as the directors think proper to make
      to them. This total exemption front trouble and front risk, beyond a
      limited sum, encourages many people to become adventurers in joint-stock
      companies, who would, upon no account, hazard their fortunes in any
      private copartnery. Such companies, therefore, commonly draw to themselves
      much greater stocks, than any private copartnery can boast of. The trading
      stock of the South Sea company at one time amounted to upwards of
      thirty-three millions eight hundred thousand pounds. The divided capital
      of the Bank of England amounts, at present, to ten millions seven hundred
      and eighty thousand pounds. The directors of such companies, however,
      being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it
      cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same
      anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery
      frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are
      apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master’s
      honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it.
      Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in
      the management of the affairs of such a company. It is upon this account,
      that joint-stock companies for foreign trade have seldom been able to
      maintain the competition against private adventurers. They have,
      accordingly, very seldom succeeded without an exclusive privilege; and
      frequently have not succeeded with one. Without an exclusive privilege,
      they have commonly mismanaged the trade. With an exclusive privilege, they
      have both mismanaged and confined it.

      The Royal African company, the predecessors of the present African
      company, had an exclusive privilege by charter; but as that charter had
      not been confirmed by act of parliament, the trade, in consequence of the
      declaration of rights, was, soon after the Revolution, laid open to all
      his majesty’s subjects. The Hudson’s Bay company are, as to their legal
      rights, in the same situation as the Royal African company. Their
      exclusive charter has not been confirmed by act of parliament. The South
      Sea company, as long as they continued to be a trading company, had an
      exclusive privilege confirmed by act of parliament; as have likewise the
      present united company of merchants trading to the East Indies.

      The Royal African company soon found that they could not maintain the
      competition against private adventurers, whom, notwithstanding the
      declaration of rights, they continued for some time to call interlopers,
      and to persecute as such. In 1698, however, the private adventurers were
      subjected to a duty of ten per cent. upon almost all the different
      branches of their trade, to be employed by the company in the maintenance
      of their forts and garrisons. But, notwithstanding this heavy tax, the
      company were still unable to maintain the competition. Their stock and
      credit gradually declined. In 1712, their debts had become so great, that
      a particular act of parliament was thought necessary, both for their
      security and for that of their creditors. It was enacted, that the
      resolution of two-thirds of these creditors in number and value should
      bind the rust, both with regard to the time which should be allowed to the
      company for the payment of their debts, and with regard to any other
      agreement which it might be thought proper to make with them concerning
      those debts. In 1730, their affairs were in so great disorder, that they
      were altogether incapable of maintaining their forts and garrisons, the
      sole purpose and pretext of their institution. From that year till their
      final dissolution, the parliament judged it necessary to allow the annual
      sum of £10,000 for that purpose. In 1732, after having been for many years
      losers by the trade of carrying negroes to the West Indies, they at last
      resolved to give it up altogether; to sell to the private traders to
      America the negroes which they purchased upon the coast; and to employ
      their servants in a trade to the inland parts of Africa for gold dust,
      elephants teeth, dyeing drugs, etc. But their success in this more
      confined trade was not greater than in their former extensive one. Their
      affairs continued to go gradually to decline, till at last, being in every
      respect a bankrupt company, they were dissolved by act of parliament, and
      their forts and garrisons vested in the present regulated company of
      merchants trading to Africa. Before the erection of the Royal African
      company, there had been three other joint-stock companies successively
      established, one after another, for the African trade. They were all
      equally unsuccessful. They all, however, had exclusive charters, which,
      though not confirmed by act of parliament, were in those days supposed to
      convey a real exclusive privilege.

      The Hudson’s Bay company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had
      been much more fortunate than the Royal African company. Their necessary
      expense is much smaller. The whole number of people whom they maintain in
      their different settlements and habitations, which they have honoured with
      the name of forts, is said not to exceed a hundred and twenty persons.
      This number, however, is sufficient to prepare beforehand the cargo of
      furs and other goods necessary for loading their ships, which, on account
      of the ice, can seldom remain above six or eight weeks in those seas. This
      advantage of having a cargo ready prepared, could not, for several years,
      be acquired by private adventurers; and without it there seems to be no
      possibility of trading to Hudson’s Bay. The moderate capital of the
      company, which, it is said, does not exceed one hundred and ten thousand
      pounds, may, besides, be sufficient to enable them to engross the whole,
      or almost the whole trade and surplus produce, of the miserable though
      extensive country comprehended within their charter. No private
      adventurers, accordingly, have ever attempted to trade to that country in
      competition with them. This company, therefore, have always enjoyed an
      exclusive trade, in fact, though they may have no right to it in law. Over
      and above all this, the moderate capital of this company is said to be
      divided among a very small number of proprietors. But a joint-stock
      company, consisting of a small number of proprietors, with a moderate
      capital, approaches very nearly to the nature of a private copartnery, and
      may be capable of nearly the same degree of vigilance and attention. It is
      not to be wondered at, therefore, if, in consequence of these different
      advantages, the Hudson’s Bay company had, before the late war, been able
      to carry on their trade with a considerable degree of success. It does not
      seem probable, however, that their profits ever approached to what the
      late Mr Dobbs imagined them. A much more sober and judicious writer, Mr
      Anderson, author of the Historical and Chronological Deduction of
      Commerce, very justly observes, that upon examining the accounts which Mr
      Dobbs himself has given for several years together, of their exports and
      imports, and upon making proper allowances for their extraordinary risk
      and expense, it does not appear that their profits deserve to be envied,
      or that they can much, if at all, exceed the ordinary profits of trade.

      The South Sea company never had any forts or garrisons to maintain, and
      therefore were entirely exempted from one great expense, to which other
      joint-stock companies for foreign trade are subject; but they had an
      immense capital divided among an immense number of proprietors. It was
      naturally to be expected, therefore, that folly, negligence, and
      profusion, should prevail in the whole management of their affairs. The
      knavery and extravagance of their stock-jobbing projects are sufficiently
      known, and the explication of them would be foreign to the present
      subject. Their mercantile projects were not much better conducted. The
      first trade which they engaged in, was that of supplying the Spanish West
      Indies with negroes, of which (in consequence of what was called the
      Assiento Contract granted them by the treaty of Utrecht) they had the
      exclusive privilege. But as it was not expected that much profit could be
      made by this trade, both the Portuguese and French companies, who had
      enjoyed it upon the same terms before them, having been ruined by it, they
      were allowed, as compensation, to send annually a ship of a certain
      burden, to trade directly to the Spanish West Indies. Of the ten voyages
      which this annual ship was allowed to make, they are said to have gained
      considerably by one, that of the Royal Caroline, in 1731; and to have been
      losers, more or less, by almost all the rest. Their ill success was
      imputed, by their factors and agents, to the extortion and oppression of
      the Spanish government; but was, perhaps, principally owing to the
      profusion and depredations of those very factors and agents; some of whom
      are said to have acquired great fortunes, even in one year. In 1734, the
      company petitioned the king, that they might be allowed to dispose of the
      trade and tonnage of their annual ship, on account of the little profit
      which they made by it, and to accept of such equivalent as they could
      obtain from the king of Spain.

      In 1724, this company had undertaken the whale fishery. Of this, indeed,
      they had no monopoly; but as long as they carried it on, no other British
      subjects appear to have engaged in it. Of the eight voyages which their
      ships made to Greenland, they were gainers by one, and losers by all the
      rest. After their eighth and last voyage, when they had sold their ships,
      stores, and utensils, they found that their whole loss upon this branch,
      capital and interest included, amounted to upwards of £237,000.

      In 1722, this company petitioned the parliament to be allowed to divide
      their immense capital of more than thirty-three millions eight hundred
      thousand pounds, the whole of which had been lent to government, into two
      equal parts; the one half, or upwards of £16,900,000, to be put upon the
      same footing with other government annuities, and not to be subject to the
      debts contracted, or losses incurred, by the directors of the company, in
      the prosecution of their mercantile projects; the other half to remain as
      before, a trading stock, and to be subject to those debts and losses. The
      petition was too reasonable not to be granted. In 1733, they again
      petitioned the parliament, that three-fourths of their trading stock might
      be turned into annuity stock, and only one-fourth remain as trading stock,
      or exposed to the hazards arising from the bad management of their
      directors. Both their annuity and trading stocks had, by this time, been
      reduced more than two millions each, by several different payments from
      government; so that this fourth amounted only to £3,662,784:8:6. In 1748,
      all the demands of the company upon the king of Spain, in consequence of
      the assiento contract, were, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, given up
      for what was supposed an equivalent. An end was put to their trade with
      the Spanish West Indies; the remainder of their trading stock was turned
      into an annuity stock; and the company ceased, in every respect, to be a
      trading company.

      It ought to be observed, that in the trade which the South Sea company
      carried on by means of their annual ship, the only trade by which it ever
      was expected that they could make any considerable profit, they were not
      without competitors, either in the foreign or in the home market. At
      Carthagena, Porto Bello, and La Vera Cruz, they had to encounter the
      competition of the Spanish merchants, who brought from Cadiz to those
      markets European goods, of the same kind with the outward cargo of their
      ship; and in England they had to encounter that of the English merchants,
      who imported from Cadiz goods of the Spanish West Indies, of the same kind
      with the inward cargo. The goods, both of the Spanish and English
      merchants, indeed, were, perhaps, subject to higher duties. But the loss
      occasioned by the negligence, profusion, and malversation of the servants
      of the company, had probably been a tax much heavier than all those
      duties. That a joint-stock company should be able to carry on successfully
      any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any
      sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all
      experience.

      The old English East India company was established in 1600, by a charter
      from Queen Elizabeth. In the first twelve voyages which they fitted out
      for India, they appear to have traded as a regulated company, with
      separate stocks, though only in the general ships of the company. In 1612,
      they united into a joint stock. Their charter was exclusive, and, though
      not confirmed by act of parliament, was in those days supposed to convey a
      real exclusive privilege. For many years, therefore, they were not much
      disturbed by interlopers. Their capital, which never exceeded £744,000,
      and of which £50 was a share, was not so exorbitant, nor their dealings so
      extensive, as to afford either a pretext for gross negligence and
      profusion, or a cover to gross malversation. Notwithstanding some
      extraordinary losses, occasioned partly by the malice of the Dutch East
      India company, and partly by other accidents, they carried on for many
      years a successful trade. But in process of time, when the principles of
      liberty were better understood, it became every day more and more
      doubtful, how far a royal charter, not confirmed by act of parliament,
      could convey an exclusive privilege. Upon this question the decisions of
      the courts of justice were not uniform, but varied with the authority of
      government, and the humours of the times. Interlopers multiplied upon
      them; and towards the end of the reign of Charles II., through the whole
      of that of James II., and during a part of that of William III., reduced
      them to great distress. In 1698, a proposal was made to parliament, of
      advancing two millions to government, at eight per cent. provided the
      subscribers were erected into a new East India company, with exclusive
      privileges. The old East India company offered seven hundred thousand
      pounds, nearly the amount of their capital, at four per cent. upon the
      same conditions. But such was at that time the state of public credit,
      that it was more convenient for government to borrow two millions at eight
      per cent. than seven hundred thousand pounds at four. The proposal of the
      new subscribers was accepted, and a new East India company established in
      consequence. The old East India company, however, had a right to continue
      their trade till 1701. They had, at the same time, in the name of their
      treasurer, subscribed very artfully three hundred and fifteen thousand
      pounds into the stock of the new. By a negligence in the expression of the
      act of parliament, which vested the East India trade in the subscribers to
      this loan of two millions, it did not appear evident that they were all
      obliged to unite into a joint stock. A few private traders, whose
      subscriptions amounted only to seven thousand two hundred pounds, insisted
      upon the privilege of trading separately upon their own stocks, and at
      their own risks. The old East India company had a right to a separate
      trade upon their own stock till 1701; and they had likewise, both before
      and after that period, a right, like that or other private traders, to a
      separate trade upon the £315,000, which they had subscribed into the stock
      of the new company. The competition of the two companies with the private
      traders, and with one another, is said to have well nigh ruined both. Upon
      a subsequent occasion, in 1750, when a proposal was made to parliament for
      putting the trade under the management of a regulated company, and thereby
      laying it in some measure open, the East India company, in opposition to
      this proposal, represented, in very strong terms, what had been, at this
      time, the miserable effects, as they thought them, of this competition. In
      India, they said, it raised the price of goods so high, that they were not
      worth the buying; and in England, by overstocking the market, it sunk
      their price so low, that no profit could be made by them. That by a more
      plentiful supply, to the great advantage and conveniency of the public, it
      must have reduced very much the price of India goods in the English
      market, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have raised very much
      their price in the Indian market, seems not very probable, as all the
      extraordinary demand which that competition could occasion must have been
      but as a drop of water in the immense ocean of Indian commerce. The
      increase of demand, besides, though in the beginning it may sometimes
      raise the price of goods, never fails to lower it in the long-run. It
      encourages production, and thereby increases the competition of the
      producers, who, in order to undersell one another, have recourse to new
      divisions or labour and new improvements of art, which might never
      otherwise have been thought of. The miserable effects of which the company
      complained, were the cheapness of consumption, and the encouragement given
      to production; precisely the two effects which it is the great business of
      political economy to promote. The competition, however, of which they gave
      this doleful account, had not been allowed to be of long continuance. In
      1702, the two companies were, in some measure, united by an indenture
      tripartite, to which the queen was the third party; and in 1708, they were
      by act of parliament, perfectly consolidated into one company, by their
      present name of the United Company of Merchants trading to the East
      Indies. Into this act it was thought worth while to insert a clause,
      allowing the separate traders to continue their trade till Michaelmas
      1711; but at the same time empowering the directors, upon three years
      notice, to redeem their little capital of seven thousand two hundred
      pounds, and thereby to convert the whole stock of the company into a joint
      stock. By the same act, the capital of the company, in consequence of a
      new loan to government, was augmented from two millions to three millions
      two hundred thousand pounds. In 1743, the company advanced another million
      to government. But this million being raised, not by a call upon the
      proprietors, but by selling annuities and contracting bond-debts, it did
      not augment the stock upon which the proprietors could claim a dividend.
      It augmented, however, their trading stock, it being equally liable with
      the other three millions two hundred thousand pounds, to the losses
      sustained, and debts contracted by the company in prosecution of their
      mercantile projects. From 1708, or at least from 1711, this company, being
      delivered from all competitors, and fully established in the monopoly of
      the English commerce to the East Indies, carried on a successful trade,
      and from their profits, made annually a moderate dividend to their
      proprietors. During the French war, which began in 1741, the ambition of
      Mr Dupleix, the French governor of Pondicherry, involved them in the wars
      of the Carnatic, and in the politics of the Indian princes. After many
      signal successes, and equally signal losses, they at last lost Madras, at
      that time their principal settlement in India. It was restored to them by
      the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; and, about this time the spirit of war and
      conquest seems to have taken possession of their servants in India, and
      never since to have left them. During the French war, which began in 1755,
      their arms partook of the general good fortune of those of Great Britain.
      They defended Madras, took Pondicherry, recovered Calcutta, and acquired
      the revenues of a rich and extensive territory, amounting, it was then
      said, to upwards of three millions a-year. They remained for several years
      in quiet possession of this revenue; but in 1767, administration laid
      claim to their territorial acquisitions, and the revenue arising from
      them, as of right belonging to the crown; and the company, in compensation
      for this claim, agreed to pay to government £400,000 a-year. They had,
      before this, gradually augmented their dividend from about six to ten per
      cent.; that is, upon their capital of three millions two hundred thousand
      pounds, they had increased it by £128,000, or had raised it from one
      hundred and ninety-two thousand to three hundred and twenty thousand
      pounds a-year. They were attempting about this time to raise it still
      further, to twelve and a-half per cent., which would have made their
      annual payments to their proprietors equal to what they had agreed to pay
      annually to government, or to £400,000 a-year. But during the two years in
      which their agreement with government was to take place, they were
      restrained from any further increase of dividend by two successive acts of
      parliament, of which the object was to enable them to make a speedier
      progress in the payment of their debts, which were at this time estimated
      at upwards of six or seven millions sterling. In 1769, they renewed their
      agreement with government for five years more, and stipulated, that during
      the course of that period, they should be allowed gradually to increase
      their dividend to twelve and a-half per cent; never increasing it,
      however, more than one per cent. in one year. This increase of dividend,
      therefore, when it had risen to its utmost height, could augment their
      annual payments, to their proprietors and government together, but by
      £680,000, beyond what they had been before their late territorial
      acquisitions. What the gross revenue of those territorial acquisitions was
      supposed to amount to, has already been mentioned; and by an account
      brought by the Cruttenden East Indiaman in 1769, the neat revenue, clear
      of all deductions and military charges, was stated at two millions
      forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-seven pounds. They were said,
      at the same time, to possess another revenue, arising partly from lands,
      but chiefly from the customs established at their different settlements,
      amounting to £439,000. The profits of their trade, too, according to the
      evidence of their chairman before the house of commons, amounted, at this
      time, to at least £400,000 a-year; according to that of their accountant,
      to at least £500,000; according to the lowest account, at least equal to
      the highest dividend that was to be paid to their proprietors. So great a
      revenue might certainly have afforded an augmentation of £680,000 in their
      annual payments; and, at the same time, have left a large sinking fund,
      sufficient for the speedy reduction of their debt. In 1773, however, their
      debts, instead of being reduced, were augmented by an arrear to the
      treasury in the payment of the four hundred thousand pounds; by another to
      the custom-house for duties unpaid; by a large debt to the bank, for money
      borrowed; and by a fourth, for bills drawn upon them from India, and
      wantonly accepted, to the amount of upwards of twelve hundred thousand
      pounds. The distress which these accumulated claims brought upon them,
      obliged them not only to reduce all at once their dividend to six per
      cent. but to throw themselves upon the mercy of govermnent, and to
      supplicate, first, a release from the further payment of the stipulated
      £400,000 a-year; and, secondly, a loan of fourteen hundred thousand, to
      save them from immediate bankruptcy. The great increase of their fortune
      had, it seems, only served to furnish their servants with a pretext for
      greater profusion, and a cover for greater malversation, than in
      proportion even to that increase of fortune. The conduct of their servants
      in India, and the general state of their affairs both in India and in
      Europe, became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry: in consequence of
      which, several very important alterations were made in the constitution of
      their government, both at home and abroad. In India, their principal
      settlements or Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, which had before been
      altogether independent of one another, were subjected to a
      governor-general, assisted by a council of four assessors, parliament
      assuming to itself the first nomination of this governor and council, who
      were to reside at Calcutta; that city having now become, what Madras was
      before, the most important of the English settlements in India. The court
      of the Mayor of Calcutta, originally instituted for the trial of
      mercantile causes, which arose in the city and neighbourhood, had
      gradually extended its jurisdiction with the extension of the empire. It
      was now reduced and confined to the original purpose of its institution.
      Instead of it, a new supreme court of judicature was established,
      consisting of a chief justice and three judges, to be appointed by the
      crown. In Europe, the qualification necessary to entitle a proprietor to
      vote at their general courts was raised, from five hundred pounds, the
      original price of a share in the stock of the company, to a thousand
      pounds. In order to vote upon this qualification, too, it was declared
      necessary, that he should have possessed it, if acquired by his own
      purchase, and not by inheritance, for at least one year, instead of six
      months, the term requisite before. The court of twenty-four directors had
      before been chosen annually; but it was now enacted, that each director
      should, for the future, be chosen for four years; six of them, however, to
      go out of office by rotation every year, and not be capable of being
      re-chosen at the election of the six new directors for the ensuing year.
      In consequence of these alterations, the courts, both of the proprietors
      and directors, it was expected, would be likely to act with more dignity
      and steadiness than they had usually done before. But it seems impossible,
      by any alterations, to render those courts, in any respect, fit to govern,
      or even to share in the government of a great empire; because the greater
      part of their members must always have too little interest in the
      prosperity of that empire, to give any serious attention to what may
      promote it. Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small
      fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock,
      merely for the influence which he expects to aquire by a vote in the court
      of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in
      the appointment of the plunderers of India; the court of directors, though
      they make that appointment, being necessarily more or less under the
      influence of the proprietors, who not only elect those directors, but
      sometimes over-rule the appointments of their servants in India. Provided
      he can enjoy this influence for a few years, and thereby provide for a
      certain number of his friends, he frequently cares little about the
      dividend, or even about the value of the stock upon which his vote is
      founded. About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of
      which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other
      sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so
      perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the
      improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their
      administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of
      the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
      This indifference, too, was more likely to be increased than diminished by
      some of the new regulations which were made in consequence of the
      parliamentary inquiry. By a resolution of the house of commons, for
      example, it was declared, that when the £1,400,000 lent to the company by
      government, should be paid, and their bond-debts be reduced to £1,500,000,
      they might then, and not till then, divide eight per cent. upon their
      capital; and that whatever remained of their revenues and neat profits at
      home should be divided into four parts; three of them to be paid into the
      exchequer for the use of the public, and the fourth to be reserved as a
      fund, either for the further reduction of their bond-debts, or for the
      discharge of other contingent exigencies which the company might labour
      under. But if the company were bad stewards and bad sovereigns, when the
      whole of their neat revenue and profits belonged to themselves, and were
      at their own disposal, they were surely not likely to be better when
      three-fourths of them were to belong to other people, and the other
      fourth, though to be laid out for the benefit of the company, yet to be so
      under the inspection and with the approbation of other people.

      It might be more agreeable to the company, that their own servants and
      dependants should have either the pleasure of wasting, or the profit of
      embezzling, whatever surplus might remain, after paying the proposed
      dividend of eight per cent. than that it should come into the hands of a
      set of people with whom those resolutions could scarce fail to set them in
      some measure at variance. The interest of those servants and dependants
      might so far predominate in the court of proprietors, as sometimes to
      dispose it to support the authors of depredations which had been committed
      in direct violation of its own authority. With the majority of
      proprietors, the support even of the authority of their own court might
      sometimes be a matter of less consequence than the support of those who
      had set that authority at defiance.

      The regulations of 1773, accordingly, did not put an end to the disorder
      of the company’s government in India. Notwithstanding that, during a
      momentary fit of good conduct, they had at one time collected into the
      treasury of Calcutta more than £3,000,000 sterling; notwithstanding that
      they had afterwards extended either their dominion or their depredations
      over a vast accession of some of the richest and most fertile countries in
      India, all was wasted and destroyed. They found themselves altogether
      unprepared to stop or resist the incursion of Hyder Ali; and in
      consequence of those disorders, the company is now (1784) in greater
      distress than ever; and, in order to prevent immediate bankruptcy, is once
      more reduced to supplicate the assistance of government. Different plans
      have been proposed by the different parties in parliament for the better
      management of its affairs; and all those plans seem to agree in supposing,
      what was indeed always abundantly evident, that it is altogether unfit to
      govern its territorial possessions. Even the company itself seems to be
      convinced of its own incapacity so far, and seems, upon that account
      willing to give them up to government.

      With the right of possessing forts and garrisons in distant and barbarous
      countries is necessarily connected the right of making peace and war in
      those countries. The joint-stock companies, which have had the one right,
      have constantly exercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly
      conferred upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously, how cruelly, they
      have commonly exercised it, is too well known from recent experience.

      When a company of merchants undertake, at their own risk and expense, to
      establish a new trade with some remote and barbarous nation, it may not be
      unreasonable to incorporate them into a joint-stock company, and to grant
      them, in case of their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain
      number of years. It is the easiest and most natural way in which the state
      can recompense them for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment, of
      which the public is afterwards to reap the benefit. A temporary monopoly
      of this kind may be vindicated, upon the same principles upon which a like
      monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that of a new
      book to its author. But upon the expiration of the term, the monopoly
      ought certainly to determine; the forts and garrisons, if it was found
      necessary to establish any, to be taken into the hands of government,
      their value to be paid to the company, and the trade to be laid open to
      all the subjects of the state. By a perpetual monopoly, all the other
      subjects of the state are taxed very absurdly in two different ways:
      first, by the high price of goods, which, in the case of a free trade,
      they could buy much cheaper; and, secondly, by their total exclusion from
      a branch of business which it might be both convenient and profitable for
      many of them to carry on. It is for the most worthless of all purposes,
      too, that they are taxed in this manner. It is merely to enable the
      company to support the negligence, profusion, and malversation of their
      own servants, whose disorderly conduct seldom allows the dividend of the
      company to exceed the ordinary rate of profit in trades which are
      altogether free, and very frequently makes a fall even a good deal short
      of that rate. Without a monopoly, however, a joint-stock company, it would
      appear from experience, cannot long carry on any branch of foreign trade.
      To buy in one market, in order to sell with profit in another, when there
      are many competitors in both; to watch over, not only the occasional
      variations in the demand, but the much greater and more frequent
      variations in the competition, or in the supply which that demand is
      likely to get from other people; and to suit with dexterity and judgment
      both the quantity and quality of each assortment of goods to all these
      circumstances, is a species of warfare, of which the operations are
      continually changing, and which can scarce ever be conducted successfully,
      without such an unremitting exertion of vigilance and attention as cannot
      long be expected from the directors of a joint-stock company. The East
      India company, upon the redemption of their funds, and the expiration of
      their exclusive privilege, have a right, by act of parliament, to continue
      a corporation with a joint stock, and to trade in their corporate capacity
      to the East Indies, in common with the rest of their fellow subjects. But
      in this situation, the superior vigilance and attention of a private
      adventurer would, in all probability, soon make them weary of the trade.

      An eminent French author, of great knowledge in matters of political
      economy, the Abbe Morellet, gives a list of fifty-five joint-stock
      companies for foreign trade, which have been established in different
      parts of Europe since the year 1600, and which, according to him, have all
      failed from mismanagement, notwithstanding they had exclusive privileges.
      He has been misinformed with regard to the history of two or three of
      them, which were not joint-stock companies and have not failed. But, in
      compensation, there have been several joint-stock companies which have
      failed, and which he has omitted.

      The only trades which it seems possible for a joint-stock company to carry
      on successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those, of which all
      the operations are capable of being reduced to what is called a routine,
      or to such a uniformity of method as admits of little or no variation. Of
      this kind is, first, the banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance
      from fire and from sea risk, and capture in time of war; thirdly, the
      trade of making and maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and, fourthly,
      the similar trade of bringing water for the supply of a great city.

      Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse,
      the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon
      any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering
      speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous
      and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it. But the
      constitution of joint-stock companies renders them in general, more
      tenacious of established rules than any private copartnery. Such
      companies, therefore, seem extremely well fitted for this trade. The
      principal banking companies in Europe, accordingly, are joint-stock
      companies, many of which manage their trade very successfully without any
      exclusive privilege. The bank of England has no other exclusive privilege,
      except that no other banking company in England shall consist of more than
      six persons. The two banks of Edinburgh are joint-stock companies, without
      any exclusive privilege.

      The value of the risk, either from fire, or from loss by sea, or by
      capture, though it cannot, perhaps, be calculated very exactly, admits,
      however, of such a gross estimation, as renders it, in some degree,
      reducible to strict rule and method. The trade of insurance, therefore,
      may be carried on successfully by a joint-stock company, without any
      exclusive privilege. Neither the London Assurance, nor the Royal Exchange
      Assurance companies have any such privilege.

      When a navigable cut or canal has been once made, the management of it
      becomes quite simple and easy, and it is reducible to strict rule and
      method. Even the making of it is so, as it may be contracted for with
      undertakers, at so much a mile, and so much a lock. The same thing may be
      said of a canal, an aqueduct, or a great pipe for bringing water to supply
      a great city. Such under-takings, therefore, may be, and accordingly
      frequently are, very successfully managed by joint-stock companies,
      without any exclusive privilege.

      To establish a joint-stock company, however, for any undertaking, merely
      because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or,
      to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which
      take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might
      be capable of thriving, if they had such an exemption, would certainly not
      be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly reasonable, with
      the circumstance of being reducible to strict rule and method, two other
      circumstances ought to concur. First, it ought to appear with the clearest
      evidence, that the undertaking is of greater and more general utility than
      the greater part of common trades; and, secondly, that it requires a
      greater capital than can easily be collected into a private copartnery. If
      a moderate capital were sufficient, the great utility of the undertaking
      would not be a sufficient reason for establishing a joint-stock company;
      because, in this case, the demand for what it was to produce, would
      readily and easily be supplied by private adventurers. In the four trades
      above mentioned, both those circumstances concur.

      The great and general utility of the banking trade, when prudently
      managed, has been fully explained in the second book of this Inquiry. But
      a public bank, which is to support public credit, and, upon particular
      emergencies, to advance to government the whole produce of a tax, to the
      amount, perhaps, of several millions, a year or two before it comes in,
      requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into any private
      copartnery.

      The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private
      people, and, by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an
      individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society. In order
      to give this security, however, it is necessary that the insurers should
      have a very large capital. Before the establishment of the two joint-stock
      companies for insurance in London, a list, it is said, was laid before the
      attorney-general, of one hundred and fifty private usurers, who had failed
      in the course of a few years.

      That navigable cuts and canals, and the works which are sometimes
      necessary for supplying a great city with water, are of great and general
      utility, while, at the same time, they frequently require a greater
      expense than suits the fortunes of private people, is sufficiently
      obvious.

      Except the four trades above mentioned, I have not been able to recollect
      any other, in which all the three circumstances requisite for rendering
      reasonable the establishment of a joint-stock company concur. The English
      copper company of London, the lead-smelting company, the glass-grinding
      company, have not even the pretext of any great or singular utility in the
      object which they pursue; nor does the pursuit of that object seem to
      require any expense unsuitable to the fortunes of many private men.
      Whether the trade which those companies carry on, is reducible to such
      strict rule and method as to render it fit for the management of a
      joint-stock company, or whether they have any reason to boast of their
      extraordinary profits, I do not pretend to know. The mine-adventurers
      company has been long ago bankrupt. A share in the stock of the British
      Linen company of Edinburgh sells, at present, very much below par, though
      less so than it did some years ago. The joint-stock companies, which are
      established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting some particular
      manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the
      diminution of the general stock of the society, can, in other respects,
      scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most
      upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to
      particular branches of the manufacture, of which the undertakers mislead
      and impose upon them, is a real discouragement to the rest, and
      necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would
      otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and
      which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements
      the greatest and the most effectual.

      ART. II.—Of the Expense of the Institution for the Education of
      Youth.

      The institutions for the education of the youth may, in the same manner,
      furnish a revenue sufficient for defraying their own expense. The fee or
      honorary, which the scholar pays to the master, naturally constitutes a
      revenue of this kind.

      Even where the reward of the master does not arise altogether from this
      natural revenue, it still is not necessary that it should be derived from
      that general revenue of the society, of which the collection and
      application are, in most countries, assigned to the executive power.
      Through the greater part of Europe, accordingly, the endowment of schools
      and colleges makes either no charge upon that general revenue, or but a
      very small one. It everywhere arises chiefly from some local or provincial
      revenue, from the rent of some landed estate, or from the interest of some
      sum of money, allotted and put under the management of trustees for this
      particular purpose, sometimes by the sovereign himself, and sometimes by
      some private donor.

      Have those public endowments contributed in general, to promote the end of
      their institution? Have they contributed to encourage the diligence, and
      to improve the abilities, of the teachers? Have they directed the course
      of education towards objects more useful, both to the individual and to
      the public, than those to which it would naturally have gone of its own
      accord? It should not seem very difficult to give at least a probable
      answer to each of those questions.

      In every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who
      exercise it, is always in proportion to the necessity they are under of
      making that exertion. This necessity is greatest with those to whom the
      emoluments of their profession are the only source from which they expect
      their fortune, or even their ordinary revenue and subsistence. In order to
      acquire this fortune, or even to get this subsistence, they must, in the
      course of a year, execute a certain quantity of work of a known value;
      and, where the competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are
      all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every
      man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness.
      The greatness of the objects which are to be acquired by success in some
      particular professions may, no doubt, sometimes animate the exertions of a
      few men of extraordinary spirit and ambition. Great objects, however, are
      evidently not necessary, in order to occasion the greatest exertions.
      Rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an
      object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions.
      Great objects, on the contrary, alone and unsupported by the necessity of
      application, have seldom been sufficient to occasion any considerable
      exertion. In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some
      very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy
      fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession?

      The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished, more
      or less, the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence,
      so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund,
      altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular
      professions.

      In some universities, the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a
      small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part
      arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. The necessity of
      application, though always more or less diminished, is not, in this case,
      entirely taken away. Reputation in his profession is still of some
      importance to him, and he still has some dependency upon the affection,
      gratitude, and favourable report of those who have attended upon his
      instructions; and these favourable sentiments he is likely to gain in no
      way so well as by deserving them, that is, by the abilities and diligence
      with which he discharges every part of his duty.

      In other universities, the teacher is prohibited from receiving any
      honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of
      the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is, in this
      case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set
      it. It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can;
      and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or
      does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest,
      at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it
      altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer
      him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that
      authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it
      is his interest to employ that activity in any way from which he can
      derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from
      which he can derive none.

      If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the
      college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the
      greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either
      are, or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to
      be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his
      neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect
      his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public
      professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the
      pretence of teaching.

      If the authority to which he is subject resides, not so much in the body
      corporate, of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous persons,
      in the bishop of the diocese, for example, in the governor of the
      province, or, perhaps, in some minister of state, it is not, indeed, in
      this case, very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty
      altogether. All that such superiors, however, can force him to do, is to
      attend upon his pupils a certain number of hours, that is, to give a
      certain number of lectures in the week, or in the year. What those
      lectures shall be, must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher;
      and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he
      has for exerting it. An extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is
      liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. In its nature, it
      is arbitrary and discretionary; and the persons who exercise it, neither
      attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps
      understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom
      capable of exercising it with judgment. From the insolence of office, too,
      they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to
      censure or deprive him of his office wantonly and without any just cause.
      The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it,
      and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the
      meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. It is by powerful
      protection only, that he can effectually guard himself against the bad
      usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most
      likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by
      obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready, at all
      times, to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour
      of the body corporate, of which he is a member. Whoever has attended for
      any considerable time to the administration of a French university, must
      have had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an
      arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind.

      Whatever forces a certain number of students to any college or university,
      independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less
      to diminish the necessity of that merit or reputation.

      The privileges of graduates in arts, in law, physic, and divinity, when
      they can be obtained only by residing a certain number of years in certain
      universities, necessarily force a certain number of students to such
      universities, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers. The
      privileges of graduates are a sort of statutes of apprenticeship, which
      have contributed to the improvement of education just as the other
      statutes of apprenticeship have to that of arts and manufactures.

      The charitable foundations of scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc.
      necessarily attach a certain number of students to certain colleges,
      independent altogether of the merit of those particular colleges. Were the
      students upon such charitable foundations left free to choose what college
      they liked best, such liberty might perhaps contribute to excite some
      emulation among different colleges. A regulation, on the contrary, which
      prohibited even the independent members of every particular college from
      leaving it, and going to any other, without leave first asked and obtained
      of that which they meant to abandon, would tend very much to extinguish
      that emulation.

      If in each college, the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct each student
      in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily chosen by the student,
      but appointed by the head of the college; and if, in case of neglect,
      inability, or bad usage, the student should not be allowed to change him
      for another, without leave first asked and obtained; such a regulation
      would not only tend very much to extinguish all emulation among the
      different tutors of the same college, but to diminish very much, in all of
      them, the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective
      pupils. Such teachers, though very well paid by their students, might be
      as much disposed to neglect them, as those who are not paid by them at all
      or who have no other recompense but their salary.

      If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant
      thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing to his students, that
      he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better
      than nonsense. It must, too, be unpleasant to him to observe, that the
      greater part of his students desert his lectures; or perhaps, attend upon
      them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. If he is
      obliged, therefore, to give a certain number of lectures, these motives
      alone, without any other interest, might dispose him to take some pains to
      give tolerably good ones. Several different expedients, however, may be
      fallen upon, which will effectually blunt the edge of all those
      incitements to diligence. The teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils
      himself the science in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some
      book upon it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language,
      by interpreting it to them into their own, or, what would give him still
      less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and by now and then
      making an occasional remark upon it, he may flatter himself that he is
      giving a lecture. The slightest degree of knowledge and application will
      enable him to do this, without exposing himself to contempt or derision,
      by saying any thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The
      discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all
      his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham lecture, and to
      maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of
      the performance.

      The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not
      for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or, more properly
      speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to
      maintain the authority of the master, and, whether he neglects or performs
      his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he
      performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume
      perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and
      folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty,
      there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students
      ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance
      upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known
      wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint may, no doubt,
      be in some degree requisite, in order to oblige children, or very young
      boys, to attend to those parts of education, which it is thought necessary
      for them to acquire during that early period of life; but after twelve or
      thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or
      restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education.
      Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that so far from
      being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master,
      provided he shews some serious intention of being of use to them, they are
      generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the
      performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a
      good deal of gross negligence.

      Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for the teaching of which
      there are no public institutions, are generally the best taught. When a
      young man goes to a fencing or a dancing school, he does not, indeed,
      always learn to fence or to dance very well; but he seldom fails of
      learning to fence or to dance. The good effects of the riding school are
      not commonly so evident. The expense of a riding school is so great, that
      in most places it is a public institution. The three most essential parts
      of literary education, to read, write, and account, it still continues to
      be more common to acquire in private than in public schools; and it very
      seldom happens, that anybody fails of acquiring them to the degree in
      which it is necessary to acquire them.

      In England, the public schools are much less corrupted than the
      universities. In the schools, the youth are taught, or at least may be
      taught, Greek and Latin; that is, everything which the masters pretend to
      teach, or which it is expected they should teach. In the universities, the
      youth neither are taught, nor always can find any proper means of being
      taught the sciences, which it is the business of those incorporated bodies
      to teach. The reward of the schoolmaster, in most cases, depends
      principally, in some cases almost entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of
      his scholars. Schools have no exclusive privileges. In order to obtain the
      honours of graduation, it is not necessary that a person should bring a
      certificate of his having studied a certain number of years at a public
      school. If, upon examination, he appears to understand what is taught
      there, no questions are asked about the place where he learnt it.

      The parts of education which are commonly taught in universities, it may
      perhaps be said, are not very well taught. But had it not been for those
      institutions, they would not have been commonly taught at all; and both
      the individual and the public would have suffered a good deal from the
      want of those important parts of education.

      The present universities of Europe were originally, the greater part of
      them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of
      churchmen. They were founded by the authority of the pope; and were so
      entirely under his immediate protection, that their members, whether
      masters or students, had all of them what was then called the benefit of
      clergy, that is, were exempted from the civil jurisdiction of the
      countries in which their respective universities were situated, and were
      amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. What was taught in the
      greater part of those universities was suitable to the end of their
      institution, either theology, or something that was merely preparatory to
      theology.

      When Christianity was first established by law, a corrupted Latin had
      become the common language of all the western parts of Europe. The service
      of the church, accordingly, and the translation of the Bible which were
      read in churches, were both in that corrupted Latin; that is, in the
      common language of the country, After the irruption of the barbarous
      nations who overturned the Roman empire, Latin gradually ceased to be the
      language of any part of Europe. But the reverence of the people naturally
      preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the
      circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable, are no
      more. Though Latin, therefore, was no longer understood anywhere by the
      great body of the people, the whole service of the church still continued
      to be performed in that language. Two different languages were thus
      established in Europe, in the same manner as in ancient Egypt: a language
      of the priests, and a language of the people; a sacred and a profane, a
      learned and an unlearned language. But it was necessary that the priests
      should understand something of that sacred and learned language in which
      they were to officiate; and the study of the Latin language therefore
      made, from the beginning, an essential part of university education.

      It was not so with that either of the Greek or of the Hebrew language. The
      infallible decrees of the church had pronounced the Latin translation of
      the Bible, commonly called the Latin Vulgate, to have been equally
      dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore of equal authority with the
      Greek and Hebrew originals. The knowledge of those two languages,
      therefore, not being indispensably requisite to a churchman, the study of
      them did not for a long time make a necessary part of the common course of
      university education. There are some Spanish universities, I am assured,
      in which the study of the Greek language has never yet made any part of
      that course. The first reformers found the Greek text of the New
      Testament, and even the Hebrew text of the Old, more favourable to their
      opinions than the vulgate translation, which, as might naturally be
      supposed, had been gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of the
      Catholic Church. They set themselves, therefore, to expose the many errors
      of that translation, which the Roman catholic clergy were thus put under
      the necessity of defending or explaining. But this could not well be done
      without some knowledge of the original languages, of which the study was
      therefore gradually introduced into the greater part of universities; both
      of those which embraced, and of those which rejected, the doctrines of the
      reformation. The Greek language was connected with every part of that
      classical learning, which, though at first principally cultivated by
      catholics and Italians, happened to come into fashion much about the same
      time that the doctrines of the reformation were set on foot. In the
      greater part of universities, therefore, that language was taught previous
      to the study of philosophy, and as soon as the student had made some
      progress in the Latin. The Hebrew language having no connection with
      classical learning, and, except the Holy Scriptures, being the language of
      not a single book in any esteem the study of it did not commonly commence
      till after that of philosophy, and when the student had entered upon the
      study of theology.

      Originally, the first rudiments, both of the Greek and Latin languages,
      were taught in universities; and in some universities they still continue
      to be so. In others, it is expected that the student should have
      previously acquired, at least, the rudiments of one or both of those
      languages, of which the study continues to make everywhere a very
      considerable part of university education.

      The ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three great branches;
      physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic.
      This general division seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things.

      The great phenomena of nature, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies,
      eclipses, comets; thunder and lightning, and other extraordinary meteors;
      the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals;
      are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they
      naturally call forth the curiosity of mankind to inquire into their
      causes. Superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by
      referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the
      gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more
      familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with, than
      the agency of the gods. As those great phenomena are the first objects of
      human curiosity, so the science which pretends to explain them must
      naturally have been the first branch of philosophy that was cultivated.
      The first philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any
      account, appear to have been natural philosophers.

      In every age and country of the world, men must have attended to the
      characters, designs, and actions of one another; and many reputable rules
      and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and
      approved of by common consent. As soon as writing came into fashion, wise
      men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to
      increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to
      express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct,
      sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called
      the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms
      or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and
      Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod. They might continue in
      this manner, for a long time, merely to multiply the number of those
      maxims of prudence and morality, without even attempting to arrange them
      in any very distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them
      together by one or more general principles, from which they were all
      deducible, like effects from their natural causes. The beauty of a
      systematical arrangement of different observations, connected by a few
      common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient
      times towards a system of natural philosophy. Something of the same kind
      was afterwards attempted in morals. The maxims of common life were
      arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common
      principles, in the same manner as they had attempted to arrange and
      connect the phenomena of nature. The science which pretends to investigate
      and explain those connecting principles, is what is properly called Moral
      Philosophy.

      Different authors gave different systems, both of natural and moral
      philosophy. But the arguments by which they supported those different
      systems, far from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but
      very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no
      other foundation but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language.
      Speculative systems, have, in all ages of the world, been adopted for
      reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common
      sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has
      scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in
      matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had
      the greatest. The patrons of each system of natural and moral philosophy,
      naturally endeavoured to expose the weakness of the arguments adduced to
      support the systems which were opposite to their own. In examining those
      arguments, they were necessarily led to consider the difference between a
      probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a
      conclusive one; and logic, or the science of the general principles of
      good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of the observations which a
      scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to; though, in its origin, posterior
      both to physics and to ethics, it was commonly taught, not indeed in all,
      but in the greater part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously
      to either of those sciences. The student, it seems to have been thought,
      ought to understand well the difference between good and bad reasoning,
      before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great importance.

      This ancient division of philosophy into three parts was, in the greater
      part of the universities of Europe, changed for another into five.

      In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the nature
      either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of the system of
      physics. Those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to
      consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too,
      productive of the most important effects. Whatever human reason could
      either conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two
      chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science which
      pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great
      system of the universe. But in the universities of Europe, where
      philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to
      dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science.
      They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many
      inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so
      little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of
      philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The
      doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two
      distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in
      opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime,
      but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful
      science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a
      subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful
      discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a
      very few simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can
      discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently
      produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.

      When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another,
      the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was
      called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and
      attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two
      sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the
      metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this
      cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called
      metaphysics.

      Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not
      only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of
      the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral
      philosophy proposed to investigate. In that philosophy, the duties of
      human life were treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection
      of human life, But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be
      taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were
      treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. In
      the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as
      necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most
      perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was
      frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always,
      inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to
      be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and
      abasement of a monk, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of
      a man. Casuistry, and an ascetic morality, made up, in most cases, the
      greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. By far the most
      important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this
      manner by far the most corrupted.

      Such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education in the
      greater part of the universities in Europe. Logic was taught first;
      ontology came in the second place; pneumatology, comprehending the
      doctrine concerning the nature of the human soul and of the Deity, in the
      third; in the fourth followed a debased system of moral philosophy, which
      was considered as immediately connected with the doctrines of
      pneumatology, with the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards
      and punishments which, from the justice of the Deity, were to be expected
      in a life to come: a short and superficial system of physics usually
      concluded the course.

      The alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced into the
      ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the education of
      ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper introduction to the study of
      theology. But the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the
      casuistry and ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it,
      certainly did not render it more for the education of gentlemen or men of
      the world, or more likely either to improve the understanding or to mend
      the heart.

      This course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the
      greater part of the universities of Europe, with more or less diligence,
      according as the constitution of each particular university happens to
      render diligence more or less necessary to the teachers. In some of the
      richest and best endowed universities, the tutors content themselves with
      teaching a few unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course;
      and even these they commonly teach very negligently and superficially.

      The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several
      different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been
      made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of
      universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements
      after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen
      to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and
      obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been
      hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and
      best endowed universities have been slowest in adopting those
      improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the
      established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily
      introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers,
      depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence,
      were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world.

      But though the public schools and universities of Europe were originally
      intended only for the education of a particular profession, that of
      churchmen; and though they were not always very diligent in instructing
      their pupils, even in the sciences which were supposed necessary for that
      profession; yet they gradually drew to themselves the education of almost
      all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune.
      No better method, it seems, could be fallen upon, of spending, with any
      advantage, the long interval between infancy and that period of life at
      which men begin to apply in good earnest to the real business of the
      world, the business which is to employ them during the remainder of their
      days. The greater part of what is taught in schools and universities,
      however, does not seem to be the most proper preparation for that
      business.

      In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young
      people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving
      school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it
      is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young
      man, who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at
      one-and-twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went
      abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in
      three or four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires
      some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however,
      which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them
      with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more
      conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any
      serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well
      have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very
      young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious
      years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his
      parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier parts of his
      education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being
      riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced.
      Nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing
      themselves to fall, could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a
      practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending
      his son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so
      disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going
      to ruin before his eyes.

      Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for
      education.

      Different plans and different institutions for education seem to have
      taken place in other ages and nations.

      In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen was instructed,
      under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and
      in music. By gymnastic exercises, it was intended to harden his body, to
      sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of
      war; and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that
      ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have
      answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. By the other
      part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers and historians,
      who have given us an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind,
      to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all the social and
      moral duties of public and private life.

      In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same
      purpose as those of the Gymnasium in ancient Greece, and they seem to have
      answered it equally well. But among the Romans there was nothing which
      corresponded to the musical education of the Greeks. The morals of the
      Romans, however, both in private and public life, seem to have been, not
      only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal superior to those of the
      Greeks. That they were superior in private life, we have the express
      testimony of Polybius, and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, two authors well
      acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor of the Greek and Roman
      history bears witness to the superiority of the public morals of the
      Romans. The good temper and moderation of contending factions seem to be
      the most essential circumstances in the public morals of a free people.
      But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary;
      whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any
      Roman faction; and from the time of the Gracchi, the Roman republic may be
      considered as in reality dissolved. Notwithstanding, therefore, the very
      respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius, and
      notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by which Mr Montesquieu
      endeavours to support that authority, it seems probable that the musical
      education of the Greeks had no great effect in mending their morals,
      since, without any such education, those of the Romans were, upon the
      whole, superior. The respect of those ancient sages for the institutions
      of their ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political
      wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued, without
      interruption, from the earliest period of those societies, to the times in
      which they had arrived at a considerable degree of refinement. Music and
      dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the
      great accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for entertaining
      his society. It is so at this day among the negroes on the coast of
      Africa. It was so among the ancient Celtes, among the ancient
      Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, among the ancient Greeks,
      in the times preceding the Trojan war. When the Greek tribes had formed
      themselves into little republics, it was natural that the study of those
      accomplishments should for a long time make a part of the public and
      common education of the people.

      The masters who instructed the young people, either in music or in
      military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed by
      the state, either in Rome or even at Athens, the Greek republic of whose
      laws and customs we are the best informed. The state required that every
      free citizen should fit himself for defending it in war, and should upon
      that account, learn his military exercises. But it left him to learn them
      of such masters as he could find; and it seems to have advanced nothing
      for this purpose, but a public field or place of exercise, in which he
      should practise and perform them.

      In the early ages, both of the Greek and Roman republics, the other parts
      of education seem to have consisted in learning to read, write, and
      account, according to the arithmetic of the times. These accomplishments
      the richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired at home, by the
      assistance of some domestic pedagogue, who was, generally, either a slave
      or a freedman; and the poorer citizens in the schools of such masters as
      made a trade of teaching for hire. Such parts of education, however, were
      abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians of each
      individual. It does not appear that the state ever assumed any inspection
      or direction of them. By a law of Solon, indeed, the children were
      acquitted from maintaining those parents who had neglected to instruct
      them in some profitable trade or business.

      In the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came into
      fashion, the better sort of people used to send their children to the
      schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in order to be instructed in
      these fashionable sciences. But those schools were not supported by the
      public. They were, for a long time, barely tolerated by it. The demand for
      philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first
      professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one
      city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In this manner
      lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many others. As the
      demand increased, the school, both of philosophy and rhetoric, became
      stationary, first in Athens, and afterwards in several other cities. The
      state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further, than by
      assigning to some of them a particular place to teach in, which was
      sometimes done, too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned
      the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of
      Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed his gardens to
      his own school. Till about the time of Marcus Antoninus, however, no
      teacher appears to have had any salary from the public, or to have had any
      other emoluments, but what arose from the honoraries or fees of his
      scholars. The bounty which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from
      Lucian, bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted
      no longer than his own life. There was nothing equivalent to the
      privileges of graduation; and to have attended any of those schools was
      not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise any particular trade
      or profession. If the opinion of their own utility could not draw scholars
      to them, the law neither forced anybody to go to them, nor rewarded
      anybody for having gone to them. The teachers had no jurisdiction over
      their pupils, nor any other authority besides that natural authority which
      superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people
      towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education.

      At Rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education, not of
      the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular families. The
      young people, however, who wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had no
      public school to go to, and had no other method of studying it, than by
      frequenting the company of such of their relations and friends as were
      supposed to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that
      though the laws of the twelve tables were many of them copied from those
      of some ancient Greek republics, yet law never seems to have grown up to
      be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. In Rome it became a
      science very early, and gave a considerable degree of illustration to
      those citizens who had the reputation of understanding it. In the
      republics of ancient Greece, particularly in Athens, the ordinary courts
      of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of
      people, who frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction,
      and party-spirit, happened to determine. The ignominy of an unjust
      decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, or
      fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts were so very numerous),
      could not fall very heavy upon any individual. At Rome, on the contrary,
      the principal courts of justice consisted either of a single judge, or of
      a small number of judges, whose characters, especially as they deliberated
      always in public, could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or
      unjust decision. In doubtful cases such courts, from their anxiety to
      avoid blame, would naturally endeavour to shelter themselves under the
      example or precedent of the judges who had sat before them, either in the
      same or in some other court. This attention to practice and precedent,
      necessarily formed the Roman law into that regular and orderly system in
      which it has been delivered down to us; and the like attention has had the
      like effects upon the laws of every other country where such attention has
      taken place. The superiority of character in the Romans over that of the
      Greeks, so much remarked by Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was
      probably more owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice,
      than to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it. The
      Romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for their superior
      respect to an oath. But the people who were accustomed to make oath only
      before some diligent and well informed court of justice, would naturally
      be much more attentive to what they swore, than they who were accustomed
      to do the same thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies.

      The abilities, both civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans, will
      readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern
      nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. But except in
      what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no
      pains to form those great abilities; for I cannot be induced to believe
      that the musical education of the Greeks could be of much consequence in
      forming them. Masters, however, had been found, it seems, for instructing
      the better sort of people among those nations, in every art and science in
      which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or
      convenient for them to be instructed. The demand for such instruction
      produced, what it always produces, the talent for giving it; and the
      emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite, appears
      to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection. In the
      attention which the ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they
      acquired over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the
      faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and character to the
      conduct and conversation of those auditors, they appear to have been much
      superior to any modern teachers. In modern times, the diligence of public
      teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them
      more or less independent of their success and reputation in their
      particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who
      would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a
      merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in competition with those
      who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the
      same price, he cannot have the same profit; and poverty and beggary at
      least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he
      attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers,
      that his circumstances will not be much mended. The privileges of
      graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least
      extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that is, to the
      far greater part of those who have occasion for a learned education. But
      those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the
      public teachers. The most careful attendance upon the ablest instructions
      of any private teacher cannot always give any title to demand them. It is
      from these different causes that the private teacher of any of the
      sciences, which are commonly taught in universities, is, in modern times,
      generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of letters. A man
      of real abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or a more
      unprofitable employment to turn them to. The endowments of schools and
      colleges have in this manner not only corrupted the diligence of public
      teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private
      ones.

      Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science,
      would be taught, for which there was not some demand, or which the
      circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary or
      convenient, or at least fashionable to learn. A private teacher could
      never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated
      system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally
      believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense.
      Such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated
      societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a great
      measure independent of their industry. Were there no public institutions
      for education, a gentleman, after going through, with application and
      abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances
      of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world
      completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of
      conversation among gentlemen and men of the world.

      There are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is
      accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in the common course
      of their education. They are taught what their parents or guardians judge
      it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing
      else. Every part of their education tends evidently to some useful
      purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to
      form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to
      render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and to
      behave properly when they have become such. In every part of her life, a
      woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her
      education. It seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, derives
      any conveniency or advantage from some of the most laborious and
      troublesome parts of his education.

      Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the
      education of the people? Or, if it ought to give any, what are the
      different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different
      orders of the people? and in what manner ought it to attend to them?

      In some cases, the state of society necessarily places the greater part of
      individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any
      attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that
      state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases, the state of the
      society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations;
      and some attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the
      almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people.

      In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far
      greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of
      the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations;
      frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of
      men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose
      whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the
      effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no
      occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in
      finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He
      naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally
      becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
      become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing
      or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any
      generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just
      judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of
      the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether
      incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to
      render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in
      war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage
      of his mind, and makes him regard, with abhorrence, the irregular,
      uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the
      activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength
      with vigour and perseverance in any other employment, than that to which
      he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this
      manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and
      martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the
      state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the
      people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to
      prevent it.

      It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called,
      of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of
      husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the
      extension of foreign commerce. In such societies, the varied occupations
      of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent
      expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring.
      Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that
      drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the
      understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those
      barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been
      observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman,
      and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society,
      and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good
      judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of
      almost every single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can
      well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men
      sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude society
      there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual,
      there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does,
      or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is
      capable of being. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge,
      ingenuity, and invention but scarce any man has a great degree. The
      degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for
      conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state,
      on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the
      greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those
      of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite
      variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached
      to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to
      examine the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a
      variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless
      comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an
      extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few,
      however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their
      great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very
      little to the good government or happiness of their society.
      Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of
      the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and
      extinguished in the great body of the people.

      The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and
      commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people
      of some rank and fortune. People of some rank and fortune are generally
      eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter upon that particular
      business, profession, or trade, by which they propose to distinguish
      themselves in the world. They have, before that, full time to acquire, or
      at least to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment
      which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them worthy of
      it. Their parents or guardians are generally sufficiently anxious that
      they should be so accomplished, and are in most cases, willing enough to
      lay out the expense which is necessary for that purpose. If they are not
      always properly educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out
      upon their education, but from the improper application of that expense.
      It is seldom from the want of masters, but from the negligence and
      incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and from the difficulty, or
      rather from the impossibility, which there is, in the present state of
      things, of finding any better. The employments, too, in which people of
      some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like
      those of the common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of
      them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the
      hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments,
      can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The employments of people of
      some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from
      morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which
      they may perfect themselves in every branch, either of useful or
      ornamental knowledge, of which they may have laid the foundation, or for
      which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life.

      It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for
      education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them, even in
      infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade,
      by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so
      simple and uniform, as to give little exercise to the understanding;
      while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe,
      that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or
      even to think of any thing else.

      But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well
      instructed as people of some rank and fortune; the most essential parts of
      education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so
      early a period of life, that the greater part, even of those who are to be
      bred to the lowest occupations, have time to acquire them before they can
      be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense, the public can
      facilitate, can encourage and can even impose upon almost the whole body
      of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of
      education.

      The public can facilitate this acquisition, by establishing in every
      parish or district a little school, where children maybe taught for a
      reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master
      being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public; because, if he was
      wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect
      his business. In Scotland, the establishment of such parish schools has
      taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion
      of them to write and account. In England, the establishment of charity
      schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally,
      because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little
      schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little
      more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little
      smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes
      taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were
      instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary
      education of this rank of people would, perhaps, be as complete as can be.
      There is scarce a common trade, which does not afford some opportunities
      of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which
      would not, therefore, gradually exercise and improve the common people in
      those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime, as well
      as to the most useful sciences.

      The public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of
      education, by giving small premiums, and little badges of distinction, to
      the children of the common people who excel in them.

      The public can impose upon almost the whole body of the people the
      necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education, by obliging
      every man to undergo an examination or probation in them, before he can
      obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade,
      either in a village or town corporate.

      It was in this manner, by facilitating the acquisition of their military
      and gymnastic exercises, by encouraging it, and even by imposing upon the
      whole body of the people the necessity of learning those exercises, that
      the Greek and Roman republics maintained the martial spirit of their
      respective citizens. They facilitated the acquisition of those exercises,
      by appointing a certain place for learning and practising them, and by
      granting to certain masters the privilege of teaching in that place. Those
      masters do not appear to have had either salaries or exclusive privileges
      of any kind. Their reward consisted altogether in what they got from their
      scholars; and a citizen, who had learnt his exercises in the public
      gymnasia, had no sort of legal advantage over one who had learnt them
      privately, provided the latter had learned them equally well. Those
      republics encouraged the acquisition of those exercises, by bestowing
      little premiums and badges of distinction upon those who excelled in them.
      To have gained a prize in the Olympic, Isthmian, or Nemaean games, gave
      illustration, not only to the person who gained it, but to his whole
      family and kindred. The obligation which every citizen was under, to serve
      a certain number of years, if called upon, in the armies of the republic,
      sufficiently imposed the necessity of learning those exercises, without
      which he could not be fit for that service.

      That in the progress of improvement, the practice of military exercises,
      unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to
      decay, and, together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the
      people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the
      security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the
      martial spirit of the great body of the people. In the present times,
      indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined
      standing army, would not, perhaps, be sufficient for the defence and
      security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a
      soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit,
      besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty,
      whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing
      army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against
      a foreign invader; so it would obstruct them as much, if unfortunately
      they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state.

      The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more
      effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the
      people, than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern
      times. They were much more simple. When they were once established, they
      executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from
      government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. Whereas to
      maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any
      modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of
      government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect
      and disuse. The influence, besides, of the ancient institutions, was much
      more universal. By means of them, the whole body of the people was
      completely instructed in the use of arms; whereas it is but a very small
      part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any
      modern militia, except, perhaps, that of Switzerland. But a coward, a man
      incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one
      of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much
      mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is
      either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use
      of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two;
      because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must
      necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated
      or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the
      martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the
      society, yet, to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and
      wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading
      themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the
      most serious attention of government; in the same manner as it would
      deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other
      loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from
      spreading itself among them; though, perhaps, no other public good might
      result from such attention, besides the prevention of so great a public
      evil.

      The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity which, in
      a civilized society, seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of
      all the inferior ranks of people. A man without the proper use of the
      intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than
      even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more
      essential part of the character of human nature. Though the state was to
      derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people,
      it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether
      uninstructed. The state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from
      their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are
      to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant
      nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and
      intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an
      ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more
      respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful
      superiors, and they are, therefore, more disposed to respect those
      superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing
      through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition; and they are,
      upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary
      opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the
      safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which
      the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest
      importance, that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or
      capriciously concerning it.

      Art. III.—Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Instruction of
      People of all Ages.

      The institutions for the instruction of people of all ages, are chiefly
      those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction, of
      which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this
      world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in the life to
      come. The teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the
      same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their
      subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may
      derive it from some other fund, to which the law of their country may
      entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tythe or land tax, an established
      salary or stipend. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to
      be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. In this
      respect, the teachers of a new religion have always had a considerable
      advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems, of which the
      clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up
      the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people; and
      having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable
      of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own
      establishment. The clergy of an established and well endowed religion
      frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the
      virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of
      gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and
      bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of
      people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and
      establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of
      popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel
      themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full
      fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the
      active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the north. Such a clergy, upon such
      an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil
      magistrate to persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as
      disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman catholic clergy
      called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants, and the
      church of England to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every
      religious sect, when it has once enjoyed, for a century or two, the
      security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making
      any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its
      doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions, the advantage, in point of
      learning and good writing, may sometimes be on the side of the established
      church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes,
      are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England, those arts have
      been long neglected by the well endowed clergy of the established church,
      and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the
      methodists. The independent provisions, however, which in many places have
      been made for dissenting teachers, by means of voluntary subscriptions, of
      trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated
      the zeal and activity of those teachers. They have many of them become
      very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general
      ceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, without half the
      learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue.

      In the church of Rome the industry and zeal of the inferior clergy are
      kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in
      any established protestant church. The parochial clergy derive many of
      them, a very considerable part of their subsistence from the voluntary
      oblations of the people; a source of revenue, which confession gives them
      many opportunities of improving. The mendicant orders derive their whole
      subsistence from such oblations. It is with them as with the hussars and
      light infantry of some armies; no plunder, no pay. The parochial clergy
      are like those teachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, and
      partly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from their pupils; and
      these must always depend, more or less, upon their industry and
      reputation. The mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence
      depends altogether upon their industry. They are obliged, therefore, to
      use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. The
      establishment of the two great mendicant orders of St Dominic and St.
      Francis, it is observed by Machiavel, revived, in the thirteenth and
      fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith and devotion of the catholic
      church. In Roman catholic countries, the spirit of devotion is supported
      altogether by the monks, and by the poorer parochial clergy. The great
      dignitaries of the church, with all the accomplishments of gentlemen and
      men of the world, and sometimes with those of men of learning, are careful
      to maintain the necessary discipline over their inferiors, but seldom give
      themselves any trouble about the instruction of the people.

      “Most of the arts and professions in a state,” says by far the most
      illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age, “are of such a
      nature, that, while they promote the interests of the society, they are
      also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and, in that case, the
      constant rule of the magistrate, except, perhaps, on the first
      introduction of any art, is, to leave the profession to itself, and trust
      its encouragement to the individuals who reap the benefit of it. The
      artizans, finding their profits to rise by the favour of their customers,
      increase, as much as possible, their skill and industry; and as matters
      are not disturbed by any injudicious tampering, the commodity is always
      sure to be at all times nearly proportioned to the demand.

      “But there are also some callings which, though useful and even necessary
      in a state, bring no advantage or pleasure to any individual; and the
      supreme power is obliged to alter its conduct with regard to the retainers
      of those professions. It must give them public encouragement in order to
      their subsistence; and it must provide against that negligence to which
      they will naturally be subject, either by annexing particular honours to
      profession, by establishing a long subordination of ranks, and a strict
      dependence, or by some other expedient. The persons employed in the
      finances, fleets, and magistracy, are instances of this order of men.

      “It may naturally be thought, at first sight, that the ecclesiastics
      belong to the first class, and that their encouragement, as well as that
      of lawyers and physicians, may safely be entrusted to the liberality of
      individuals, who are attached to their doctrines, and who find benefit or
      consolation from their spiritual ministry and assistance. Their industry
      and vigilance will, no doubt, be whetted by such an additional motive; and
      their skill in the profession, as well as their address in governing the
      minds of the people, must receive daily increase, from their increasing
      practice, study, and attention.

      “But if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find that this
      interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will
      study to prevent; because, in every religion except the true, it is highly
      pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the truth, by
      infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion.
      Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and
      sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most
      violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some
      novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be
      paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every
      tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the
      human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry
      and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace.
      And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid
      for his intended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the
      priests; and that, in reality, the most decent and advantageous
      composition, which he can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe
      their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and
      rendering it superfluous for them to be farther active, than merely to
      prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastors. And in this
      manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first
      from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political
      interests of society.”

      But whatever may have been the good or bad effects of the independent
      provision of the clergy, it has, perhaps, been very seldom bestowed upon
      them from any view to those effects. Times of violent religious
      controversy have generally been times of equally violent political
      faction. Upon such occasions, each political party has either found it, or
      imagined it, for his interest, to league itself with some one or other of
      the contending religious sects. But this could be done only by adopting,
      or, at least, by favouring the tenets of that particular sect. The sect
      which had the good fortune to be leagued with the conquering party
      necessarily shared in the victory of its ally, by whose favour and
      protection it was soon enabled, in some degree, to silence and subdue all
      its adversaries. Those adversaries had generally leagued themselves with
      the enemies of the conquering party, and were, therefore the enemies of
      that party. The clergy of this particular sect having thus become complete
      masters of the field, and their influence and authority with the great
      body of the people being in its highest vigour, they were powerful enough
      to overawe the chiefs and leaders of their own party, and to oblige the
      civil magistrate to respect their opinions and inclinations. Their first
      demand was generally that he should silence and subdue all their
      adversaries; and their second, that he should bestow an independent
      provision on themselves. As they had generally contributed a good deal to
      the victory, it seemed not unreasonable that they should have some share
      in the spoil. They were weary, besides, of humouring the people, and of
      depending upon their caprice for a subsistence. In making this demand,
      therefore, they consulted their own ease and comfort, without troubling
      themselves about the effect which it might have, in future times, upon the
      influence and authority of their order. The civil magistrate, who could
      comply with their demand only by giving them something which he would have
      chosen much rather to take, or to keep to himself, was seldom very forward
      to grant it. Necessity, however, always forced him to submit at last,
      though frequently not till after many delays, evasions, and affected
      excuses.

      But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the
      conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of
      another, when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt
      equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed
      every man to choose his own priest, and his own religion, as he thought
      proper. There would, and, in this case, no doubt, have been, a great
      multitude of religious sects. Almost every different congregation might
      probably have had a little sect by itself, or have entertained some
      peculiar tenets of its own. Each teacher, would, no doubt, have felt
      himself under the necessity of making the utmost exertion, and of using
      every art, both to preserve and to increase the number of his disciples.
      But as every other teacher would have felt himself under the same
      necessity, the success of no one teacher, or sect of teachers, could have
      been very great. The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can
      be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but one sect
      tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided
      into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert, and
      under a regular discipline and subordination. But that zeal must be
      altogether innocent, where the society is divided into two or three
      hundred, or, perhaps, into as many thousand small sects, of which no one
      could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity. The
      teachers of each sect, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more
      adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that candour and
      moderation which are so seldom to be found among the teachers of those
      great sects, whose tenets, being supported by the civil magistrate, are
      held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms and
      empires, and who, therefore, see nothing round them but followers,
      disciples, and humble admirers. The teachers of each little sect, finding
      themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every
      other sect; and the concessions which they would mutually find it both
      convenient and agreeable to make one to another, might in time, probably
      reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational
      religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism,
      such as wise men have, in all ages of the world, wished to see
      established; but such as positive law has, perhaps, never yet established,
      and probably never will establish in any country; because, with regard to
      religion, positive law always has been, and probably always will be, more
      or less influenced by popular superstition and enthusiasm. This plan of
      ecclesiastical government, or, more properly, of no ecclesiastical
      government, was what the sect called Independents (a sect, no doubt, of
      very wild enthusiasts), proposed to establish in England towards the end
      of the civil war. If it had been established, though of a very
      unphilosophical origin, it would probably, by this time, have been
      productive of the most philosophical good temper and moderation with
      regard to every sort of religious principle. It has been established in
      Pennsylvania, where, though the quakers happen to be the most numerous,
      the law, in reality, favours no one sect more than another; and it is
      there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and
      moderation.

      But though this equality of treatment should not be productive of this
      good temper and moderation in all, or even in the greater part of the
      religious sects of a particular country; yet, provided those sects were
      sufficiently numerous, and each of them consequently too small to disturb
      the public tranquillity, the excessive zeal of each for its particular
      tenets could not well be productive of any very hurtful effects, but, on
      the contrary, of several good ones; and if the government was perfectly
      decided, both to let them all alone, and to oblige them all to let alone
      one another, there is little danger that they would not of their own
      accord, subdivide themselves fast enough, so as soon to become
      sufficiently numerous.

      In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of
      ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two
      different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of
      which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal,
      or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and
      revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and
      adopted by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of
      disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices
      which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of
      gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction
      between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal or loose
      system, luxury, wanton, and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure
      to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of
      the two sexes, etc. provided they are not accompanied with gross
      indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are generally
      treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or
      pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those
      excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The
      vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single
      week’s thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor
      workman for ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the
      most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people,
      therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such
      excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to
      people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years,
      on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion; and people of that
      rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of
      excess, as one of the advantages of their fortune; and the liberty of
      doing so without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which
      belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they
      regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and
      censure them either very slightly or not at all.

      Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom
      they have generally drawn their earliest, as well as their most numerous
      proselytes. The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted
      by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there
      have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend
      themselves to that order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan
      of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them,
      perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by
      refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of
      folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently
      recommended them, more than any thing else, to the respect and veneration
      of the common people.

      A man of rank and fortune is, by his station, the distinguished member of
      a great society, who attend to every part of his conduct, and who thereby
      oblige him to attend to every part of it himself. His authority and
      consideration depend very much upon the respect which this society bears
      to him. He dares not do anything which would disgrace or discredit him in
      it; and he is obliged to a very strict observation of that species of
      morals, whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this
      society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. A man of low
      condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished member of
      any great society. While he remains in a country village, his conduct may
      be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself. In this
      situation, and in this situation only, he may have what is called a
      character to lose. But as soon as he comes into a great city, he is sunk
      in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by
      nobody; and he is, therefore, very likely to neglect it himself, and to
      abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. He never emerges
      so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct never excites so much the
      attention of any respectable society, as by his becoming the member of a
      small religious sect. He from that moment acquires a degree of
      consideration which he never had before. All his brother sectaries are,
      for the credit of the sect, interested to observe his conduct; and, if he
      gives occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those austere
      morals which they almost always require of one another, to punish him by
      what is always a very severe punishment, even where no evil effects attend
      it, expulsion or excommunication from the sect. In little religious sects,
      accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always
      remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the
      established church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have
      frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.

      There are two very easy and effectual remedies, however, by whose joint
      operation the state might, without violence, correct whatever was unsocial
      or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of all the little sects into which
      the country was divided.

      The first of those remedies is the study of science and philosophy, which
      the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or
      more than middling rank and fortune; not by giving salaries to teachers in
      order to make them negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of
      probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone
      by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal
      profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any
      honourable office, of trust or profit. If the state imposed upon this
      order of men the necessity of learning, it would have no occasion to give
      itself any trouble about providing them with proper teachers. They would
      soon find better teachers for themselves, than any whom the state could
      provide for them. Science is the great antidote to the poison of
      enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people
      were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.

      The second of those remedies is the frequency and gaiety of public
      diversions. The state, by encouraging, that is, by giving entire liberty
      to all those who, from their own interest, would attempt, without scandal
      or indecency, to amuse and divert the people by painting, poetry, music,
      dancing; by all sorts of dramatic representations and exhibitions; would
      easily dissipate, in the greater part of them, that melancholy and gloomy
      humour which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and
      enthusiasm. Public diversions have always been the objects of dread and
      hatred to all the fanatical promoters of those popular frenzies. The
      gaiety and good humour which those diversions inspire, were altogether
      inconsistent with that temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose,
      or which they could best work upon. Dramatic representations, besides,
      frequently exposing their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even
      to public execration, were, upon that account, more than all other
      diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence.

      In a country where the law favoured the teachers of no one religion more
      than those of another, it would not be necessary that any of them should
      have any particular or immediate dependency upon the sovereign or
      executive power; or that he should have anything to do either in
      appointing or in dismissing them from their offices. In such a situation,
      he would have no occasion to give himself any concern about them, further
      than to keep the peace among them, in the same manner as among the rest of
      his subjects, that is, to hinder them from persecuting, abusing, or
      oppressing one another. But it is quite otherwise in countries where there
      is an established or governing religion. The sovereign can in this case
      never be secure, unless he has the means of influencing in a considerable
      degree the greater part of the teachers of that religion.

      The clergy of every established church constitute a great incorporation.
      They can act in concert, and pursue their interest upon one plan, and with
      one spirit as much as if they were under the direction of one man; and
      they are frequently, too, under such direction. Their interest as an
      incorporated body is never the same with that of the sovereign, and is
      sometimes directly opposite to it. Their great interest is to maintain
      their authority with the people, and this authority depends upon the
      supposed certainty and importance of the whole doctrine which they
      inculcate, and upon the supposed necessity of adopting every part of it
      with the most implicit faith, in order to avoid eternal misery. Should the
      sovereign have the imprudence to appear either to deride, or doubt himself
      of the most trifling part of their doctrine, or from humanity, attempt to
      protect those who did either the one or the other, the punctilious honour
      of a clergy, who have no sort of dependency upon him, is immediately
      provoked to proscribe him as a profane person, and to employ all the
      terrors of religion, in order to oblige the people to transfer their
      allegiance to some more orthodox and obedient prince. Should he oppose any
      of their pretensions or usurpations, the danger is equally great. The
      princes who have dared in this manner to rebel against the church, over
      and above this crime of rebellion, have generally been charged, too, with
      the additional crime of heresy, notwithstanding their solemn protestations
      of their faith, and humble submission to every tenet which she thought
      proper to prescribe to them. But the authority of religion is superior to
      every other authority. The fears which it suggests conquer all other
      fears. When the authorized teachers of religion propagate through the
      great body of the people, doctrines subversive of the authority of the
      sovereign, it is by violence only, or by the force of a standing army,
      that he can maintain his authority. Even a standing army cannot in this
      case give him any lasting security; because if the soldiers are not
      foreigners, which can seldom be the case, but drawn from the great body of
      the people, which must almost always be the case, they are likely to be
      soon corrupted by those very doctrines. The revolutions which the
      turbulence of the Greek clergy was continually occasioning at
      Constantinople, as long as the eastern empire subsisted; the convulsions
      which, during the course of several centuries, the turbulence of the Roman
      clergy was continually occasioning in every part of Europe, sufficiently
      demonstrate how precarious and insecure must always be the situation of
      the sovereign, who has no proper means of influencing the clergy of the
      established and governing religion of his country.

      Articles of faith, as well as all other spiritual matters, it is evident
      enough, are not within the proper department of a temporal sovereign, who,
      though he may be very well qualified for protecting, is seldom supposed to
      be so for instructing the people. With regard to such matters, therefore,
      his authority can seldom be sufficient to counterbalance the united
      authority of the clergy of the established church. The public
      tranquillity, however, and his own security, may frequently depend upon
      the doctrines which they may think proper to propagate concerning such
      matters. As he can seldom directly oppose their decision, therefore, with
      proper weight and authority, it is necessary that he should be able to
      influence it; and he can influence it only by the fears and expectations
      which he may excite in the greater part of the individuals of the order.
      Those fears and expectations may consist in the fear of deprivation or
      other punishment, and in the expectation of further preferment.

      In all Christian churches, the benefices of the clergy are a sort of
      freeholds, which they enjoy, not during pleasure, but during life or good
      behaviour. If they held them by a more precarious tenure, and were liable
      to be turned out upon every slight disobligation either of the sovereign
      or of his ministers, it would perhaps be impossible for them to maintain
      their authority with the people, who would then consider them as mercenary
      dependents upon the court, in the sincerity of whose instructions they
      could no longer have any confidence. But should the sovereign attempt
      irregularly, and by violence, to deprive any number of clergymen of their
      freeholds, on account, perhaps, of their having propagated, with more than
      ordinary zeal, some factious or seditious doctrine, he would only render,
      by such persecution, both them and their doctrine ten times more popular,
      and therefore ten times more troublesome and dangerous, than they had been
      before. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of govermnent,
      and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who
      have the smallest pretensions to independency. To attempt to terrify them,
      serves only to irritate their bad humour, and to confirm them in an
      opposition, which more gentle usage, perhaps, might easily induce them
      either to soften, or to lay aside altogether. The violence which the
      French government usually employed in order to oblige all their
      parliaments, or sovereign courts of justice, to enregister any unpopular
      edict, very seldom succeeded. The means commonly employed, however, the
      imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think, were forcible
      enough. The princes of the house of Stuart sometimes employed the like
      means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of
      England, and they generally found them equally intractable. The parliament
      of England is now managed in another manner; and a very small experiment,
      which the duke of Choiseul made, about twelve years ago, upon the
      parliament of Paris, demonstrated sufficiently that all the parliaments of
      France might have been managed still more easily in the same manner. That
      experiment was not pursued. For though management and persuasion are
      always the easiest and safest instruments of government as force and
      violence are the worst and the most dangerous; yet such, it seems, is the
      natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good
      instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. The French
      government could and durst use force, and therefore disdained to use
      management and persuasion. But there is no order of men, it appears I
      believe, from the experience of all ages, upon whom it is so dangerous or
      rather so perfectly ruinous, to employ force and violence, as upon the
      respected clergy of an established church. The rights, the privileges, the
      personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic, who is upon good terms
      with his own order, are, even in the most despotic governments, more
      respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank and fortune.
      It is so in every gradation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild
      government of Paris, to that of the violent and furious government of
      Constantinople. But though this order of men can scarce ever be forced,
      they may be managed as easily as any other; and the security of the
      sovereign, as well as the public tranquillity, seems to depend very much
      upon the means which he has of managing them; and those means seem to
      consist altogether in the preferment which he has to bestow upon them.

      In the ancient constitution of the Christian church, the bishop of each
      diocese was elected by the joint votes of the clergy and of the people of
      the episcopal city. The people did not long retain their right of
      election; and while they did retain it, they almost always acted under the
      influence of the clergy, who, in such spiritual matters, appeared to be
      their natural guides. The clergy, however, soon grew weary of the trouble
      of managing them, and found it easier to elect their own bishops
      themselves. The abbot, in the same manner, was elected by the monks of the
      monastery, at least in the greater part of abbacies. All the inferior
      ecclesiastical benefices comprehended within the diocese were collated by
      the bishop, who bestowed them upon such ecclesiastics as he thought
      proper. All church preferments were in this manner in the disposal of the
      church. The sovereign, though he might have some indirect influence in
      those elections, and though it was sometimes usual to ask both his consent
      to elect, and his approbation of the election, yet had no direct or
      sufficient means of managing the clergy. The ambition of every clergyman
      naturally led him to pay court, not so much to his sovereign as to his own
      order, from which only he could expect preferment.

      Through the greater part of Europe, the pope gradually drew to himself,
      first the collation of almost all bishoprics and abbacies, or of what were
      called consistorial benefices, and afterwards, by various machinations and
      pretences, of the greater part of inferior benefices comprehended within
      each diocese, little more being left to the bishop than what was barely
      necessary to give him a decent authority with his own clergy. By this
      arrangement the condition of the sovereign was still worse than it had
      been before. The clergy of all the different countries of Europe were thus
      formed into a sort of spiritual army, dispersed in different quarters
      indeed, but of which all the movements and operations could now be
      directed by one head, and conducted upon one uniform plan. The clergy of
      each particular country might be considered as a particular detachment of
      that army, of which the operations could easily be supported and seconded
      by all the other detachments quartered in the different countries round
      about. Each detachment was not only independent of the sovereign of the
      country in which it was quartered, and by which it was maintained, but
      dependent upon a foreign sovereign, who could at any time turn its arms
      against the sovereign of that particular country, and support them by the
      arms of all the other detachments.

      Those arms were the most formidable that can well be imagined. In the
      ancient state of Europe, before the establishment of arts and
      manufactures, the wealth of the clergy gave them the same sort of
      influence over the common people which that of the great barons gave them
      over their respective vassals, tenants, and retainers. In the great landed
      estates, which the mistaken piety both of princes and private persons had
      bestowed upon the church, jurisdictions were established, of the same kind
      with those of the great barons, and for the same reason. In those great
      landed estates, the clergy, or their bailiffs, could easily keep the
      peace, without the support or assistance either of the king or of any
      other person; and neither the king nor any other person could keep the
      peace there without the support and assistance of the clergy. The
      jurisdictions of the clergy, therefore, in their particular baronies or
      manors, were equally independent, and equally exclusive of the authority
      of the king’s courts, as those of the great temporal lords. The tenants of
      the clergy were, like those of the great barons, almost all tenants at
      will, entirely dependent upon their immediate lords, and, therefore,
      liable to be called out at pleasure, in order to fight in any quarrel in
      which the clergy might think proper to engage them. Over and above the
      rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large
      portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe.
      The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater
      part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, etc. The
      quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and
      there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they
      could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this
      immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons
      employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse
      hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality and
      the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very
      great. They not only maintained almost the whole poor of every kingdom,
      but many knights and gentlemen had frequently no other means of
      subsistence than by travelling about from monastery to monastery, under
      pretence of devotion, but in reality to enjoy the hospitality of the
      clergy. The retainers of some particular prelates were often as numerous
      as those of the greatest lay-lords; and the retainers of all the clergy
      taken together were, perhaps, more numerous than those of all the
      lay-lords. There was always much more union among the clergy than among
      the lay-lords. The former were under a regular discipline and
      subordination to the papal authority. The latter were under no regular
      discipline or subordination, but almost always equally jealous of one
      another, and of the king. Though the tenants and retainers of the clergy,
      therefore, had both together been less numerous than those of the great
      lay-lords, and their tenants were probably much less numerous, yet their
      union would have rendered them more formidable. The hospitality and
      charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great
      temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual
      weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration
      among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and
      almost all occasionally, fed by them. Everything belonging or related to
      so popular an order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines,
      necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes of the common people; and every
      violation of them, whether real or pretended, the highest act of
      sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness. In this state of things, if the
      sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few
      of the great nobility, we cannot wonder that he should find it still more
      so to resist the united force of the clergy of his own dominions,
      supported by that of the clergy of all the neighbouring dominions. In such
      circumstances, the wonder is, not that he was sometimes obliged to yield,
      but that he ever was able to resist.

      The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times (which to us, who live
      in the present times, appear the most absurd), their total exemption from
      the secular jurisdiction, for example, or what in England was called the
      benefit of clergy, were the natural, or rather the necessary, consequences
      of this state of things. How dangerous must it have been for the sovereign
      to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime whatever, if his order were
      disposed to protect him, and to represent either the proof as insufficient
      for convicting so holy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be
      inflicted upon one whose person had been rendered sacred by religion? The
      sovereign could, in such circumstances, do no better than leave him to be
      tried by the ecclesiastical courts, who, for the honour of their own
      order, were interested to restrain, as much as possible, every member of
      it from committing enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion to such
      gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people.

      In the state in which things were, through the greater part of Europe,
      during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for
      some time both before and after that period, the constitution of the
      church of Rome may be considered as the most formidable combination that
      ever was formed against the authority and security of civil government, as
      well as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can
      flourish only where civil government is able to protect them. In that
      constitution, the grossest delusions of superstition were supported in
      such a manner by the private interests of so great a number of people, as
      put them out of all danger from any assault of human reason; because,
      though human reason might, perhaps, have been able to unveil, even to the
      eyes of the common people, some of the delusions of superstition, it could
      never have dissolved the ties of private interest. Had this constitution
      been attacked by no other enemies but the feeble efforts of human reason,
      it must have endured for ever. But that immense and well-built fabric,
      which all the wisdom and virtue of man could never have shaken, much less
      have overturned, was, by the natural course of things, first weakened, and
      afterwards in part destroyed; and is now likely, in the course of a few
      centuries more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether.

      The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the
      same causes which destroyed the power of the great barons, destroyed,
      in the same manner, through the greater part of Europe, the whole
      temporal power of the clergy. In the produce of arts, manufactures, and
      commerce, the clergy, like the great barons, found something for which
      they could exchange their rude produce, and thereby discovered the
      means of spending their whole revenues upon their own persons, without
      giving any considerable share of them to other people. Their charity
      became gradually less extensive, their hospitality less liberal, or
      less profuse. Their retainers became consequently less numerous, and,
      by degrees, dwindled away altogether. The clergy, too, like the great
      barons, wished to get a better rent from their landed estates, in order
      to spend it, in the same manner, upon the gratification of their own
      private vanity and folly. But this increase of rent could be got only
      by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became, in a great
      measure, independent of them. The ties of interest, which bound the
      inferior ranks of people to the clergy, were in this manner gradually
      broken and dissolved. They were even broken and dissolved sooner than
      those which bound the same ranks of people to the great barons; because
      the benefices of the church being, the greater part of them, much smaller
      than the estates of the great barons, the possessor of each benefice was
      much sooner able to spend the whole of its revenue upon his own person.
      During the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the
      power of the great barons was, through the greater part of Europe, in
      full vigour. But the temporal power of the clergy, the absolute command
      which they had once had over the great body of the people was very much
      decayed. The power of the church was, by that time, very nearly reduced,
      through the greater part of Europe, to what arose from their spiritual
      authority; and even that spiritual authority was much weakened, when it
      ceased to be supported by the charity and hospitality of the clergy. The
      inferior ranks of people no longer looked upon that order as they had
      done before; as the comforters of their distress, and the relievers of
      their indigence. On the contrary, they were provoked and disgusted by the
      vanity, luxury, and expense of the richer clergy, who appeared to spend
      upon their own pleasures what had always before been regarded as the
      patrimony of the poor.

      In this situation of things, the sovereigns in the different states of
      Europe endeavoured to recover the influence which they had once had in the
      disposal of the great benefices of the church; by procuring to the deans
      and chapters of each diocese the restoration of their ancient right of
      electing the bishop; and to the monks of each abbacy that of electing the
      abbot. The re-establishing this ancient order was the object of several
      statutes enacted in England during the course of the fourteenth century,
      particularly of what is called the statute of provisors; and of the
      pragmatic sanction, established in France in the fifteenth century. In
      order to render the election valid, it was necessary that the sovereign
      should both consent to it before hand, and afterwards approve of the
      person elected; and though the election was still supposed to be free, he
      had, however all the indirect means which his situation necessarily
      afforded him, of influencing the clergy in his own dominions. Other
      regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other parts of
      Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of the great benefices
      of the church, seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so
      effectually and so universally restrained as in France and England. The
      concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of
      France the absolute right of presenting to all the great, or what are
      called the consistorial, benefices of the Gallican church.

      Since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and of the concordat,
      the clergy of France have in general shewn less respect to the decrees of
      the papal court, than the clergy of any other catholic country. In all the
      disputes which their sovereign has had with the pope, they have almost
      constantly taken part with the former. This independency of the clergy of
      France upon the court of Rome seems to be principally founded upon the
      pragmatic sanction and the concordat. In the earlier periods of the
      monarchy, the clergy of France appear to have been as much devoted to the
      pope as those of any other country. When Robert, the second prince of the
      Capetian race, was most unjustly excommunicated by the court of Rome, his
      own servants, it is said, threw the victuals which came from his table to
      the dogs, and refused to taste any thing themselves which had been
      polluted by the contact of a person in his situation. They were taught to
      do so, it may very safely be presumed, by the clergy of his own dominions.

      The claim of collating to the great benefices of the church, a claim in
      defence of which the court of Rome had frequently shaken, and sometimes
      overturned, the thrones of some of the greatest sovereigns in Christendom,
      was in this manner either restrained or modified, or given up altogether,
      in many different parts of Europe, even before the time of the
      reformation. As the clergy had now less influence over the people, so the
      state had more influence over the clergy. The clergy, therefore, had both
      less power, and less inclination, to disturb the state.

      The authority of the church of Rome was in this state of declension, when
      the disputes which gave birth to the reformation began in Germany, and
      soon spread themselves through every part of Europe. The new doctrines
      were everywhere received with a high degree of popular favour. They were
      propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the
      spirit of party, when it attacks established authority. The teachers of
      those doctrines, though perhaps, in other respects, not more learned than
      many of the divines who defended the established church, seem in general
      to have been better acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and with the
      origin and progress of that system of opinions upon which the authority of
      the church was established; and they had thereby the advantage in almost
      every dispute. The austerity of their manners gave them authority with the
      common people, who contrasted the strict regularity of their conduct with
      the disorderly lives of the greater part of their own clergy. They
      possessed, too, in a much higher degree than their adversaries, all the
      arts of popularity and of gaining proselytes; arts which the lofty and
      dignified sons of the church had long neglected, as being to them in a
      great measure useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to
      some, their novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established
      clergy to a still greater number: but the zealous, passionate, and
      fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic eloquence, with which they
      were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended them to by far the greatest
      number.

      The success of the new doctrines was almost everywhere so great, that the
      princes, who at that time happened to be on bad terms with the court of
      Rome, were, by means of them, easily enabled, in their own dominions, to
      overturn the church, which having lost the respect and veneration of the
      inferior ranks of people, could make scarce any resistance. The court of
      Rome had disobliged some of the smaller princes in the northern parts of
      Germany, whom it had probably considered as too insignificant to be worth
      the managing. They universally, therefore, established the reformation in
      their own dominions. The tyranny of Christiern II., and of Troll
      archbishop of Upsal, enabled Gustavus Vasa to expel them both from Sweden.
      The pope favoured the tyrant and the archbishop, and Gustavus Vasa found
      no difficulty in establishing the reformation in Sweden. Christiern II.
      was afterwards deposed from the throne of Denmark, where his conduct had
      rendered him as odious as in Sweden. The pope, however, was still disposed
      to favour him; and Frederic of Holstein, who had mounted the throne in his
      stead, revenged himself, by following the example of Gustavus Vasa. The
      magistrates of Berne and Zurich, who had no particular quarrel with the
      pope, established with great ease the reformation in their respective
      cantons, where just before some of the clergy had, by an imposture
      somewhat grosser than ordinary, rendered the whole order both odious and
      contemptible.

      In this critical situation of its affairs the papal court was at
      sufficient pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful sovereigns of
      France and Spain, of whom the latter was at that time emperor of Germany.
      With their assistance, it was enabled, though not without great
      difficulty, and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether, or to
      obstruct very much, the progress of the reformation in their dominions. It
      was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of England.
      But from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving
      offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and
      emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, though he did not embrace
      himself the greater part of the doctrines of the reformation, was yet
      enabled, by their general prevalence, to suppress all the monasteries, and
      to abolish the authority of the church of Rome in his dominions. That he
      should go so far, though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the
      patrons of the reformation, who, having got possession of the government
      in the reign of his son and successor completed, without any difficulty,
      the work which Henry VIII. had begun.

      In some countries, as in Scotland, where the government was weak,
      unpopular, and not very firmly established, the reformation was strong
      enough to overturn, not only the church, but the state likewise, for
      attempting to support the church.

      Among the followers of the reformation, dispersed in all the different
      countries of Europe, there was no general tribunal, which, like that of
      the court of Rome, or an oecumenical council, could settle all disputes
      among them, and, with irresistible authority, prescribe to all of them the
      precise limits of orthodoxy. When the followers of the reformation in one
      country, therefore, happened to differ from their brethren in another, as
      they had no common judge to appeal to, the dispute could never be decided;
      and many such disputes arose among them. Those concerning the government
      of the church, and the right of conferring ecclesiastical benefices, were
      perhaps the most interesting to the peace and welfare of civil society.
      They gave birth, accordingly, to the two principal parties or sects among
      the followers of the reformation, the Lutheran and Calvinistic sects, the
      only sects among them, of which the doctrine and discipline have ever yet
      been established by law in any part of Europe.

      The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church of
      England, preserved more or less of the episcopal government, established
      subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign the disposal of all the
      bishoprics, and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, and
      thereby rendered him the real head of the church; and without depriving
      the bishop of the right of collating to the smaller benefices within his
      diocese, they, even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured
      the right of presentation, both in the sovereign and in all other lay
      patrons. This system of church government was, from the beginning,
      favourable to peace and good order, and to submission to the civil
      sovereign. It has never, accordingly, been the occasion of any tumult or
      civil commotion in any country in which it has once been established. The
      church of England, in particular, has always valued herself, with great
      reason, upon the unexceptionable loyalty of her principles. Under such a
      government, the clergy naturally endeavour to recommend themselves to the
      sovereign, to the court, and to the nobility and gentry of the country, by
      whose influence they chiefly expect to obtain preferment. They pay court
      to those patrons, sometimes, no doubt, by the vilest flattery and
      assentation; but frequently, too, by cultivating all those arts which best
      deserve, and which are therefore most likely to gain them, the esteem of
      people of rank and fortune; by their knowledge in all the different
      branches of useful and ornamental learning, by the decent liberality of
      their manners, by the social good humour of their conversation, and by
      their avowed contempt of those absurd and hypocritical austerities which
      fanatics inculcate and pretend to practise, in order to draw upon
      themselves the veneration, and upon the greater part of men of rank and
      fortune, who avow that they do not practise them, the abhorrence of the
      common people. Such a clergy, however, while they pay their court in this
      manner to the higher ranks of life, are very apt to neglect altogether the
      means of maintaining their influence and authority with the lower. They
      are listened to, esteemed, and respected by their superiors; but before
      their inferiors they are frequently incapable of defending, effectually,
      and to the conviction of such hearers, their own sober and moderate
      doctrines, against the most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack
      them.

      The followers of Zuinglius, or more properly those of Calvin, on the
      contrary, bestowed upon the people of each parish, whenever the church
      became vacant, the right of electing their own pastor; and established, at
      the same time, the most perfect equality among the clergy. The former part
      of this institution, as long as it remained in vigour, seems to have been
      productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended
      equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people. The
      latter part seems never to have had any effects but what were perfectly
      agreeable.

      As long as the people of each parish preserved the right of electing their
      own pastors, they acted almost always under the influence of the clergy,
      and generally of the most factious and fanatical of the order. The clergy,
      in order to preserve their influence in those popular elections, became,
      or affected to become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged
      fanaticism among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the
      most fanatical candidate. So small a matter as the appointment of a parish
      priest, occasioned almost always a violent contest, not only in one
      parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes who seldom failed to take
      part in the quarrel. When the parish happened to be situated in a great
      city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city
      happened, either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head
      and capital of a little republic, as in the case with many of the
      considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry dispute of
      this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other
      factions, threatened to leave behind it, both a new schism in the church,
      and a new faction in the state. In those small republics, therefore, the
      magistrate very soon found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the
      public peace, to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant
      benefices. In Scotland, the most extensive country in which this
      presbyterian form of church government has ever been established, the
      rights of patronage were in effect abolished by the act which established
      presbytery in the beginning of the reign of William III. That act, at
      least, put in the power of certain classes of people in each parish to
      purchase, for a very small price, the right of electing their own pastor.
      The constitution which this act established, was allowed to subsist for
      about two-and-twenty years, but was abolished by the 10th of queen Anne,
      ch.12, on account of the confusions and disorders which this more popular
      mode of election had almost everywhere occasioned. In so extensive a
      country as Scotland, however, a tumult in a remote parish was not so
      likely to give disturbance to government as in a smaller state. The 10th
      of queen Anne restored the rights of patronage. But though, in Scotland,
      the law gives the benefice, without any exception to the person presented
      by the patron; yet the church requires sometimes (for she has not in this
      respect been very uniform in her decisions) a certain concurrence of the
      people, before she will confer upon the presentee what is called the cure
      of souls, or the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the parish. She sometimes,
      at least, from an affected concern for the peace of the parish, delays the
      settlement till this concurrence can be procured. The private tampering of
      some of the neighbouring clergy, sometimes to procure, but more frequently
      to prevent this concurrence, and the popular arts which they cultivate, in
      order to enable them upon such occasions to tamper more effectually, are
      perhaps the causes which principally keep up whatever remains of the old
      fanatical spirit, either in the clergy or in the people of Scotland.

      The equality which the presbyterian form of church government establishes
      among the clergy, consists, first, in the equality of authority or
      ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, secondly, in the equality of benefice.
      In all presbyterian churches, the equality of authority is perfect; that
      of benefice is not so. The difference, however, between one benefice and
      another, is seldom so considerable, as commonly to tempt the possessor
      even of the small one to pay court to his patron, by the vile arts of
      flattery and assentation, in order to get a better. In all the
      presbyterian churches, where the rights of patronage are thoroughly
      established, it is by nobler and better arts, that the established clergy
      in general endeavour to gain the favour of their superiors; by their
      learning, by the irreproachable regularity of their life, and by the
      faithful and diligent discharge of their duty. Their patrons even
      frequently complain of the independency of their spirit, which they are
      apt to construe into ingratitude for past favours, but which, at worse,
      perhaps, is seldom anymore than that indifference which naturally arises
      from the consciousness that no further favours of the kind are ever to be
      expected. There is scarce, perhaps, to be found anywhere in Europe, a more
      learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men, than the greater
      part of the presbyterian clergy of Holland, Geneva, Switzerland, and
      Scotland.

      Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very
      great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may be, no doubt,
      carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but
      exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of
      levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides,
      almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own
      conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which
      the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection,
      by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him
      to follow. The common people look upon him with that kindness with which
      we naturally regard one who approaches somewhat to our own condition, but
      who, we think, ought to be in a higher. Their kindness naturally provokes
      his kindness. He becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive to assist
      and relieve them. He does not even despise the prejudices of people who
      are disposed to be so favourable to him, and never treats them with those
      contemptuous and arrogant airs, which we so often meet with in the proud
      dignitaries of opulent and well endowed churches. The presbyterian clergy,
      accordingly, have more influence over the minds of the common people, than
      perhaps the clergy of any other established church. It is, accordingly, in
      presbyterian countries only, that we ever find the common people
      converted, without persecution completely, and almost to a man, to the
      established church.

      In countries where church benefices are, the greater part of them, very
      moderate, a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than
      a church benefice. The universities have, in this case, the picking and
      chusing of their members from all the churchmen of the country, who, in
      every country, constitute by far the most numerous class of men of
      letters. Where church benefices, on the contrary, are many of them very
      considerable, the church naturally draws from the universities the greater
      part of their eminent men of letters; who generally find some patron, who
      does himself honour by procuring them church preferment. In the former
      situation, we are likely to find the universities filled with the most
      eminent men of letters that are to be found in the country. In the latter,
      we are likely to find few eminent men among them, and those few among the
      youngest members of the society, who are likely, too, to be drained away
      from it, before they can have acquired experience and knowledge enough to
      be of much use to it. It is observed by Mr de Voltaire, that father
      Porée, a jesuit of no great eminence in the republic of letters, was the
      only professor they had ever had in France, whose works were worth the
      reading. In a country which has produced so many eminent men of letters,
      it must appear somewhat singular, that scarce one of them should have been
      a professor in a university. The famous Cassendi was, in the beginning of
      his life, a professor in the university of Aix. Upon the first dawning of
      his genius, it was represented to him, that by going into the church he
      could easily find a much more quiet and comfortable subsistence, as well
      as a better situation for pursuing his studies; and he immediately
      followed the advice. The observation of Mr de Voltaire may be applied, I
      believe, not only to France, but to all other Roman Catholic countries. We
      very rarely find in any of them an eminent man of letters, who is a
      professor in a university, except, perhaps, in the professions of law and
      physic; professions from which the church is not so likely to draw them.
      After the church of Rome, that of England is by far the richest and best
      endowed church in Christendom. In England, accordingly, the church is
      continually draining the universities of all their best and ablest
      members; and an old college tutor who is known and distinguished in Europe
      as an eminent man of letters, is as rarely to be found there as in any
      Roman catholic country. In Geneva, on the contrary, in the protestant
      cantons of Switzerland, in the protestant countries of Germany, in
      Holland, in Scotland, in Sweden, and Denmark, the most eminent men of
      letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the
      far greater part of them, been professors in universities. In those
      countries, the universities are continually draining the church of all its
      most eminent men of letters.

      It may, perhaps, be worth while to remark, that, if we except the poets, a
      few orators, and a few historians, the far greater part of the other
      eminent men of letters, both of Greece and Rome, appear to have been
      either public or private teachers; generally either of philosophy or of
      rhetoric. This remark will be found to hold true, from the days of Lysias
      and Isocrates, of Plato and Aristotle, down to those of Plutarch and
      Epictetus, Suetonius, and Quintilian. To impose upon any man the necessity
      of teaching, year after year, in any particular branch of science seems in
      reality to be the most effectual method for rendering him completely
      master of it himself. By being obliged to go every year over the same
      ground, if he is good for any thing, he necessarily becomes, in a few
      years, well acquainted with every part of it, and if, upon any particular
      point, he should form too hasty an opinion one year, when he comes, in the
      course of his lectures to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter,
      he is very likely to correct it. As to be a teacher of science is
      certainly the natural employment of a mere man of letters; so is it
      likewise, perhaps, the education which is most likely to render him a man
      of solid learning and knowledge. The mediocrity of church benefices
      naturally tends to draw the greater part of men of letters in the country
      where it takes place, to the employment in which they can be the most
      useful to the public, and at the same time to give them the best
      education, perhaps, they are capable of receiving. It tends to render
      their learning both as solid as possible, and as useful as possible.

      The revenue of every established church, such parts of it excepted as may
      arise from particular lands or manors, is a branch, it ought to be
      observed, of the general revenue of the state, which is thus diverted to a
      purpose very different from the defence of the state. The tithe, for
      example, is a real land tax, which puts it out of the power of the
      proprietors of land to contribute so largely towards the defence of the
      state as they otherwise might be able to do. The rent of land, however,
      is, according to some, the sole fund; and, according to others, the
      principal fund, from which, in all great monarchies, the exigencies of the
      state must be ultimately supplied. The more of this fund that is given to
      the church, the less, it is evident, can be spared to the state. It may be
      laid down as a certain maxim, that all other things being supposed equal,
      the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be, either the
      sovereign on the one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases,
      the less able must the state be to defend itself. In several protestant
      countries, particularly in all the protestant cantons of Switzerland, the
      revenue which anciently belonged to the Roman catholic church, the tithes
      and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford
      competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little
      or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. The magistrates of
      the powerful canton of Berne, in particular, have accumulated, out of the
      savings from this fund, a very large sum, supposed to amount to several
      millions; part of which is deposited in a public treasure, and part is
      placed at interest in what are called the public funds of the different
      indebted nations of Europe; chiefly in those of France and Great Britain.
      What may be the amount of the whole expense which the church, either of
      Berne, or of any other protestant canton, costs the state, I do not
      pretend to know. By a very exact account it appears, that, in 1755, the
      whole revenue of the clergy of the church of Scotland, including their
      glebe or church lands, and the rent of their manses or dwelling-houses,
      estimated according to a reasonable valuation, amounted only to
      £68,514:1:5 ¹⁄₁₂d. This very moderate revenue affords a decent subsistence
      to nine hundred and forty-four ministers. The whole expense of the church,
      including what is occasionally laid out for the building and reparation of
      churches, and of the manses of ministers, cannot well be supposed to
      exceed eighty or eighty-five thousand pounds a-year. The most opulent
      church in Christendom does not maintain better the uniformity of faith,
      the fervour of devotion, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere
      morals, in the great body of the people, than this very poorly endowed
      church of Scotland. All the good effects, both civil and religious, which
      an established church can be supposed to produce, are produced by it as
      completely as by any other. The greater part of the protestant churches of
      Switzerland, which, in general, are not better endowed than the church of
      Scotland, produce those effects in a still higher degree. In the greater
      part of the protestant cantons, there is not a single person to be found,
      who does not profess himself to be of the established church. If he
      professes himself to be of any other, indeed, the law obliges him to leave
      the canton. But so severe, or, rather, indeed, so oppressive a law, could
      never have been executed in such free countries, had not the diligence of
      the clergy beforehand converted to the established church the whole body
      of the people, with the exception of, perhaps, a few individuals only. In
      some parts of Switzerland, accordingly, where, from the accidental union
      of a protestant and Roman catholic country, the conversion has not been so
      complete, both religions are not only tolerated, but established by law.

      The proper performance of every service seems to require, that its pay or
      recompence should be, as exactly as possible, proportioned to the nature
      of the service. If any service is very much underpaid, it is very apt to
      suffer by the meanness and incapacity of the greater part of those who are
      employed in it. If it is very much overpaid, it is apt to suffer, perhaps
      still more, by their negligence and idleness. A man of a large revenue,
      whatever may be his profession, thinks he ought to live like other men of
      large revenues; and to spend a great part of his time in festivity, in
      vanity, and in dissipation. But in a clergyman, this train of life not
      only consumes the time which ought to be employed in the duties of his
      function, but in the eyes of the common people, destroys almost entirely
      that sanctity of character, which can alone enable him to perform those
      duties with proper weight and authority.




      PART IV. Of the Expense of supporting the Dignity of the Sovereign.

      Over and above the expenses necessary for enabling the sovereign to
      perform his several duties, a certain expense is requisite for the support
      of his dignity. This expense varies, both with the different periods of
      improvement, and with the different forms of government.

      In an opulent and improved society, where all the different orders of
      people are growing every day more expensive in their houses, in their
      furniture, in their tables, in their dress, and in their equipage; it
      cannot well be expected that the sovereign should alone hold out against
      the fashion. He naturally, therefore, or rather necessarily, becomes more
      expensive in all those different articles too. His dignity even seems to
      require that he should become so.

      As, in point of dignity, a monarch is more raised above his subjects than
      the chief magistrate of any republic is ever supposed to be above his
      fellow-citizens; so a greater expense is necessary for supporting that
      higher dignity. We naturally expect more splendour in the court of a king,
      than in the mansion-house of a doge or burgo-master.




      CONCLUSION.

      The expense of defending the society, and that of supporting the dignity
      of the chief magistrate, are both laid out for the general benefit of the
      whole society. It is reasonable, therefore, that they should be defrayed
      by the general contribution of the whole society; all the different
      members contributing, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their
      respective abilities.

      The expense of the administration of justice, too, may no doubt be
      considered as laid out for the benefit of the whole society. There is no
      impropriety, therefore, in its being defrayed by the general contribution
      of the whole society. The persons, however, who give occasion to this
      expense, are those who, by their injustice in one way or another, make it
      necessary to seek redress or protection from the courts of justice. The
      persons, again, most immediately benefited by this expense, are those whom
      the courts of justice either restore to their rights, or maintain in their
      rights. The expense of the administration of justice, therefore, may very
      properly be defrayed by the particular contribution of one or other, or
      both, of those two different sets of persons, according as different
      occasions may require, that is, by the fees of court. It cannot be
      necessary to have recourse to the general contribution of the whole
      society, except for the conviction of those criminals who have not
      themselves any estate or fund sufficient for paying those fees.

      Those local or provincial expenses, of which the benefit is local or
      provincial (what is laid out, for example, upon the police of a particular
      town or district), ought to be defrayed by a local or provincial revenue,
      and ought to be no burden upon the general revenue of the society. It is
      unjust that the whole society should contribute towards an expense, of
      which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

      The expense of maintaining good roads and communications is, no doubt,
      beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without any
      injustice, be defrayed by the general contributions of the whole society.
      This expense, however, is most immediately and directly beneficial to
      those who travel or carry goods from one place to another, and to those
      who consume such goods. The turnpike tolls in England, and the duties
      called peages in other countries, lay it altogether upon those two
      different sets of people, and thereby discharge the general revenue of the
      society from a very considerable burden.

      The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction,
      is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may,
      therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of
      the whole society. This expense, however, might, perhaps, with equal
      propriety, and even with some advantage, be defrayed altogether by those
      who receive the immediate benefit of such education and instruction, or by
      the voluntary contribution of those who think they have occasion for
      either the one or the other.

      When the institutions, or public works, which are beneficial to the whole
      society, either cannot be maintained altogether, or are not maintained
      altogether, by the contribution of such particular members of the society
      as are most immediately benefited by them; the deficiency must, in most
      cases, be made up by the general contribution of the whole society. The
      general revenue of the society, over and above defraying the expense of
      defending the society, and of supporting the dignity of the chief
      magistrate, must make up for the deficiency of many particular branches of
      revenue. The sources of this general or public revenue, I shall endeavour
      to explain in the following chapter.
