---
id: book-3-chapter-04
title: "HOW THE COMMERCE OF TOWNS CONTRIBUTED TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE COUNTRY."
book: "3"
chapter: 4
artifact_type: content
---

CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE COMMERCE OF TOWNS CONTRIBUTED
TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE COUNTRY.



      The increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns contributed
      to the improvement and cultivation of the countries to which they
      belonged, in three different ways.

      First, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the
      country, they gave encouragement to its cultivation and further
      improvement. This benefit was not even confined to the countries in which
      they were situated, but extended more or less to all those with which they
      had any dealings. To all of them they afforded a market for some part
      either of their rude or manufactured produce, and, consequently, gave some
      encouragement to the industry and improvement of all. Their own country,
      however, on account of its neighbourhood, necessarily derived the greatest
      benefit from this market. Its rude produce being charged with less
      carriage, the traders could pay the growers a better price for it, and yet
      afford it as cheap to the consumers as that of more distant countries.

      Secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was frequently
      employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of which a great
      part would frequently be uncultivated. Merchants are commonly ambitious of
      becoming country gentlemen, and, when they do, they are generally the best
      of all improvers. A merchant is accustomed to employ his money chiefly in
      profitable projects; whereas a mere country gentleman is accustomed to
      employ it chiefly in expense. The one often sees his money go from him,
      and return to him again with a profit; the other, when once he parts with
      it, very seldom expects to see any more of it. Those different habits
      naturally affect their temper and disposition in every sort of business.
      The merchant is commonly a bold, a country gentleman a timid undertaker.
      The one is not afraid to lay out at once a large capital upon the
      improvement of his land, when he has a probable prospect of raising the
      value of it in proportion to the expense; the other, if he has any
      capital, which is not always the case, seldom ventures to employ it in
      this manner. If he improves at all, it is commonly not with a capital, but
      with what he can save out or his annual revenue. Whoever has had the
      fortune to live in a mercantile town, situated in an unimproved country,
      must have frequently observed how much more spirited the operations of
      merchants were in this way, than those of mere country gentlemen. The
      habits, besides, of order, economy, and attention, to which mercantile
      business naturally forms a merchant, render him much fitter to execute,
      with profit and success, any project of improvement.

      Thirdly, and lastly, commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order
      and good government, and with them the liberty and security of
      individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived
      almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile
      dependency upon their superiors. This, though it has been the least
      observed, is by far the most important of all their effects. Mr Hume is
      the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto taken notice of it.

      In a country which has neither foreign commerce nor any of the finer
      manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange
      the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the
      maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality
      at home. If this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a
      thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a
      hundred or a thousand men. He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with
      a multitude of retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give
      in return for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty,
      must obey him, for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who
      pays them. Before the extension of commerce and manufactures in Europe,
      the hospitality of the rich and the great, from the sovereign down to the
      smallest baron, exceeded every thing which, in the present times, we can
      easily form a notion of Westminster-hall was the dining-room of William
      Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be too large for his company. It
      was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he strewed the
      floor of his hall with clean hay or rushes in the season, in order that
      the knights and squires, who could not get seats, might not spoil their
      fine clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner. The
      great Earl of Warwick is said to have entertained every day, at his
      different manors, 30,000 people; and though the number here may have been
      exaggerated, it must, however, have been very great to admit of such
      exaggeration. A hospitality nearly of the same kind was exercised not many
      years ago in many different parts of the Highlands of Scotland. It seems
      to be common in all nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little
      known. I have seen, says Doctor Pocock, an Arabian chief dine in the
      streets of a town where he had come to sell his cattle, and invite all
      passengers, even common beggars, to sit down with him and partake of his
      banquet.

      The occupiers of land were in every respect as dependent upon the great
      proprietor as his retainers. Even such of them as were not in a state of
      villanage, were tenants at will, who paid a rent in no respect equivalent
      to the subsistence which the land afforded them. A crown, half a crown, a
      sheep, a lamb, was some years ago, in the Highlands of Scotland, a common
      rent for lands which maintained a family. In some places it is so at this
      day; nor will money at present purchase a greater quantity of commodities
      there than in other places. In a country where the surplus produce of a
      large estate must be consumed upon the estate itself, it will frequently
      be more convenient for the proprietor, that part of it be consumed at a
      distance from his own house, provided they who consume it are as dependent
      upon him as either his retainers or his menial servants. He is thereby
      saved from the embarrassment of either too large a company, or too large a
      family. A tenant at will, who possesses land sufficient to maintain his
      family for little more than a quit-rent, is as dependent upon the
      proprietor as any servant or retainer whatever, and must obey him with as
      little reserve. Such a proprietor, as he feeds his servants and retainers
      at his own house, so he feeds his tenants at their houses. The subsistence
      of both is derived from his bounty, and its continuance depends upon his
      good pleasure.

      Upon the authority which the great proprietors necessarily had, in such a
      state of things, over their tenants and retainers, was founded the power
      of the ancient barons. They necessarily became the judges in peace, and
      the leaders in war, of all who dwelt upon their estates. They could
      maintain order, and execute the law, within their respective demesnes,
      because each of them could there turn the whole force of all the
      inhabitants against the injustice of anyone. No other person had
      sufficient authority to do this. The king, in particular, had not. In
      those ancient times, he was little more than the greatest proprietor in
      his dominions, to whom, for the sake of common defence against their
      common enemies, the other great proprietors paid certain respects. To have
      enforced payment of a small debt within the lands of a great proprietor,
      where all the inhabitants were armed, and accustomed to stand by one
      another, would have cost the king, had he attempted it by his own
      authority, almost the same effort as to extinguish a civil war. He was,
      therefore, obliged to abandon the administration of justice, through the
      greater part of the country, to those who were capable of administering
      it; and, for the same reason, to leave the command of the country militia
      to those whom that militia would obey.

      It is a mistake to imagine that those territorial jurisdictions took their
      origin from the feudal law. Not only the highest jurisdictions, both civil
      and criminal, but the power of levying troops, of coining money, and even
      that of making bye-laws for the government of their own people, were all
      rights possessed allodially by the great proprietors of land, several
      centuries before even the name of the feudal law was known in Europe. The
      authority and jurisdiction of the Saxon lords in England appear to have
      been as great before the Conquest as that of any of the Norman lords after
      it. But the feudal law is not supposed to have become the common law of
      England till after the Conquest. That the most extensive authority and
      jurisdictions were possessed by the great lords in France allodially, long
      before the feudal law was introduced into that country, is a matter of
      fact that admits of no doubt. That authority, and those jurisdictions, all
      necessarily flowed from the state of property and manners just now
      described. Without remounting to the remote antiquities of either the
      French or English monarchies, we may find, in much later times, many
      proofs that such effects must always flow from such causes. It is not
      thirty years ago since Mr Cameron of Lochiel, a gentleman of Lochaber in
      Scotland, without any legal warrant whatever, not being what was then
      called a lord of regality, nor even a tenant in chief, but a vassal of the
      Duke of Argyll, and with out being so much as a justice of peace, used,
      notwithstanding, to exercise the highest criminal jurisdictions over his
      own people. He is said to have done so with great equity, though without
      any of the formalities of justice; and it is not improbable that the state
      of that part of the country at that time made it necessary for him to
      assume this authority, in order to maintain the public peace. That
      gentleman, whose rent never exceeded £500 a-year, carried, in 1745, 800 of
      his own people into the rebellion with him.

      The introduction of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be regarded
      as an attempt to moderate, the authority of the great allodial lords. It
      established a regular subordination, accompanied with a long train of
      services and duties, from the king down to the smallest proprietor. During
      the minority of the proprietor, the rent, together with the management of
      his lands, fell into the hands of his immediate superior; and,
      consequently, those of all great proprietors into the hands of the king,
      who was charged with the maintenance and education of the pupil, and who,
      from his authority as guardian, was supposed to have a right of disposing
      of him in marriage, provided it was in a manner not unsuitable to his
      rank. But though this institution necessarily tended to strengthen the
      authority of the king, and to weaken that of the great proprietors, it
      could not do either sufficiently for establishing order and good
      government among the inhabitants of the country; because it could not
      alter sufficiently that state of property and manners from which the
      disorders arose. The authority of government still continued to be, as
      before, too weak in the head, and too strong in the inferior members; and
      the excessive strength of the inferior members was the cause of the
      weakness of the head. After the institution of feudal subordination, the
      king was as incapable of restraining the violence of the great lords as
      before. They still continued to make war according to their own
      discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very frequently upon
      the king; and the open country still continued to be a scene of violence,
      rapine, and disorder.

      But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have
      effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and
      manufactures gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the great
      proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus
      produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves, without
      sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves, and
      nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been
      the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they
      could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents
      themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.
      For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for something as frivolous and
      useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or, what is the same thing, the
      price of the maintenance of 1000 men for a year, and with it the whole
      weight and authority which it could give them. The buckles, however, were
      to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of
      them; whereas, in the more ancient method of expense, they must have
      shared with at least 1000 people. With the judges that were to determine
      the preference, this difference was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the
      gratification of the most childish, the meanest, and the most sordid of
      all vanities they gradually bartered their whole power and authority.

      In a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer
      manufactures, a man of £10,000 a-year cannot well employ his revenue in
      any other way than in maintaining, perhaps, 1000 families, who are all of
      them necessarily at his command. In the present state of Europe, a man of
      £10,000 a-year can spend his whole revenue, and he generally does so,
      without directly maintaining twenty people, or being able to command more
      than ten footmen, not worth the commanding. Indirectly, perhaps, he
      maintains as great, or even a greater number of people, than he could have
      done by the ancient method of expense. For though the quantity of precious
      productions for which he exchanges his whole revenue be very small, the
      number of workmen employed in collecting and preparing it must necessarily
      have been very great. Its great price generally arises from the wages of
      their labour, and the profits of all their immediate employers. By paying
      that price, he indirectly pays all those wages and profits, and thus
      indirectly contributes to the maintenance of all the workmen and their
      employers. He generally contributes, however, but a very small proportion
      to that of each; to a very few, perhaps, not a tenth, to many not a
      hundredth, and to some not a thousandth, or even a ten thousandth part of
      their whole annual maintenance. Though he contributes, therefore, to the
      maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of him,
      because generally they can all be maintained without him.

      When the great proprietors of land spend their rents in maintaining their
      tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely all his own tenants
      and all his own retainers. But when they spend them in maintaining
      tradesmen and artificers, they may, all of them taken together, perhaps
      maintain as great, or, on account of the waste which attends rustic
      hospitality, a greater number of people than before. Each of them,
      however, taken singly, contributes often but a very small share to the
      maintenance of any individual of this greater number. Each tradesman or
      artificer derives his subsistence from the employment, not of one, but of
      a hundred or a thousand different customers. Though in some measure
      obliged to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely dependent upon any
      one of them.

      The personal expense of the great proprietors having in this manner
      gradually increased, it was impossible that the number of their retainers
      should not as gradually diminish, till they were at last dismissed
      altogether. The same cause gradually led them to dismiss the unnecessary
      part of their tenants. Farms were enlarged, and the occupiers of land,
      notwithstanding the complaints of depopulation, reduced to the number
      necessary for cultivating it, according to the imperfect state of
      cultivation and improvement in those times. By the removal of the
      unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the full value of the
      farm, a greater surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of a
      greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which the merchants and
      manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of spending upon his own
      person, in the same manner as he had done the rest. The cause continuing
      to operate, he was desirous to raise his rents above what his lands, in
      the actual state of their improvement, could afford. His tenants could
      agree to this upon one condition only, that they should be secured in
      their possession for such a term of years as might give them time to
      recover, with profit, whatever they should lay out in the further
      improvement of the land. The expensive vanity of the landlord made him
      willing to accept of this condition; and hence the origin of long leases.

      Even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not
      altogether dependent upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages which
      they receive from one another are mutual and equal, and such a tenant will
      expose neither his life nor his fortune in the service of the proprietor.
      But if he has a lease for a long term of years he is altogether
      independent; and his landlord must not expect from him even the most
      trifling service, beyond what is either expressly stipulated in the lease,
      or imposed upon him by the common and known law of the country.

      The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers
      being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of
      interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace
      of the country. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau, for a mess
      of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of
      plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children
      than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any
      substantial burgher or tradesmen in a city. A regular government was
      established in the country as well as in the city, nobody having
      sufficient power to disturb its operations in the one, any more than in
      the other.

      It does not, perhaps, relate to the present subject, but I cannot help
      remarking it, that very old families, such as have possessed some
      considerable estate from father to son for many successive generations,
      are very rare in commercial countries. In countries which have little
      commerce, on the contrary, such as Wales, or the Highlands of Scotland,
      they are very common. The Arabian histories seem to be all full of
      genealogies; and there is a history written by a Tartar Khan, which has
      been translated into several European languages, and which contains scarce
      any thing else; a proof that ancient families are very common among those
      nations. In countries where a rich man can spend his revenue in no other
      way than by maintaining as many people as it can maintain, he is apt to
      run out, and his benevolence, it seems, is seldom so violent as to attempt
      to maintain more than he can afford. But where he can spend the greatest
      revenue upon his own person, he frequently has no bounds to his expense,
      because he frequently has no bounds to his vanity, or to his affection for
      his own person. In commercial countries, therefore, riches, in spite of
      the most violent regulations of law to prevent their dissipation, very
      seldom remain long in the same family. Among simple nations, on the
      contrary, they frequently do, without any regulations of law; for among
      nations of shepherds, such as the Tartars and Arabs, the consumable nature
      of their property necessarily renders all such regulations impossible.

      A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness, was in
      this manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not
      the least intention to serve the public. To gratify the most childish
      vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and
      artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own
      interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny
      wherever a penny was to be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or
      foresight of that great revolution which the folly of the one, and the
      industry of the other, was gradually bringing about.

      It was thus, that, through the greater part of Europe, the commerce and
      manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause
      and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.

      This order, however, being contrary to the natural course of things, is
      necessarily both slow and uncertain. Compare the slow progress of those
      European countries of which the wealth depends very much upon their
      commerce and manufactures, with the rapid advances of our North American
      colonies, of which the wealth is founded altogether in agriculture.
      Through the greater part of Europe, the number of inhabitants is not
      supposed to double in less than five hundred years. In several of our
      North American colonies, it is found to double in twenty or
      five-and-twenty years. In Europe, the law of primogeniture, and
      perpetuities of different kinds, prevent the division of great estates,
      and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. A small
      proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory, views
      it with all the affection which property, especially small property,
      naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure, not only in
      cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most
      industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful. The same
      regulations, besides, keep so much land out of the market, that there are
      always more capitals to buy than there is land to sell, so that what is
      sold always sells at a monopoly price. The rent never pays the interest of
      the purchase-money, and is, besides, burdened with repairs and other
      occasional charges, to which the interest of money is not liable. To
      purchase land, is, everywhere in Europe, a most unprofitable employment of
      a small capital. For the sake of the superior security, indeed, a man of
      moderate circumstances, when he retires from business, will sometimes
      choose to lay out his little capital in land. A man of profession, too
      whose revenue is derived from another source often loves to secure his
      savings in the same way. But a young man, who, instead of applying to
      trade or to some profession, should employ a capital of two or three
      thousand pounds in the purchase and cultivation of a small piece of land,
      might indeed expect to live very happily and very independently, but must
      bid adieu for ever to all hope of either great fortune or great
      illustration, which, by a different employment of his stock, he might have
      had the same chance of acquiring with other people. Such a person, too,
      though he cannot aspire at being a proprietor, will often disdain to be a
      farmer. The small quantity of land, therefore, which is brought to market,
      and the high price of what is brought thither, prevents a great number of
      capitals from being employed in its cultivation and improvement, which
      would otherwise have taken that direction. In North America, on the
      contrary, fifty or sixty pounds is often found a sufficient stock to begin
      a plantation with. The purchase and improvement of uncultivated land is
      there the most profitable employment of the smallest as well as of the
      greatest capitals, and the most direct road to all the fortune and
      illustration which can be required in that country. Such land, indeed, is
      in North America to be had almost for nothing, or at a price much below
      the value of the natural produce; a thing impossible in Europe, or indeed
      in any country where all lands have long been private property. If landed
      estates, however, were divided equally among all the children, upon the
      death of any proprietor who left a numerous family, the estate would
      generally be sold. So much land would come to market, that it could no
      longer sell at a monopoly price. The free rent of the land would go no
      nearer to pay the interest of the purchase-money, and a small capital
      might be employed in purchasing land as profitable as in any other way.

      England, on account of the natural fertility of the soil, of the great
      extent of the sea-coast in proportion to that of the whole country, and of
      the many navigable rivers which run through it, and afford the conveniency
      of water carriage to some of the most inland parts of it, is perhaps as
      well fitted by nature as any large country in Europe to be the seat of
      foreign commerce, of manufactures for distant sale, and of all the
      improvements which these can occasion. From the beginning of the reign of
      Elizabeth, too, the English legislature has been peculiarly attentive to
      the interest of commerce and manufactures, and in reality there is no
      country in Europe, Holland itself not excepted, of which the law is, upon
      the whole, more favourable to this sort of industry. Commerce and
      manufactures have accordingly been continually advancing during all this
      period. The cultivation and improvement of the country has, no doubt, been
      gradually advancing too; but it seems to have followed slowly, and at a
      distance, the more rapid progress of commerce and manufactures. The
      greater part of the country must probably have been cultivated before the
      reign of Elizabeth; and a very great part of it still remains
      uncultivated, and the cultivation of the far greater part much inferior to
      what it might be, The law of England, however, favours agriculture, not
      only indirectly, by the protection of commerce, but by several direct
      encouragements. Except in times of scarcity, the exportation of corn is
      not only free, but encouraged by a bounty. In times of moderate plenty,
      the importation of foreign corn is loaded with duties that amount to a
      prohibition. The importation of live cattle, except from Ireland, is
      prohibited at all times; and it is but of late that it was permitted from
      thence. Those who cultivate the land, therefore, have a monopoly against
      their countrymen for the two greatest and most important articles of land
      produce, bread and butcher’s meat. These encouragements, although at
      bottom, perhaps, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter, altogether
      illusory, sufficiently demonstrate at least the good intention of the
      legislature to favour agriculture. But what is of much more importance
      than all of them, the yeomanry of England are rendered as secure, as
      independent, and as respectable, as law can make them. No country,
      therefore, which the right of primogeniture takes place, which pays
      tithes, and where perpetuities, though contrary to the spirit of the law,
      are admitted in some cases, can give more encouragement to agriculture
      than England. Such, however, notwithstanding, is the state of its
      cultivation. What would it have been, had the law given no direct
      encouragement to agriculture besides what arises indirectly from the
      progress of commerce, and had left the yeomanry in the same condition as
      in most other countries of Europe? It is now more than two hundred years
      since the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, a period as long as the
      course of human prosperity usually endures.

      France seems to have had a considerable share of foreign commerce, near a
      century before England was distinguished as a commercial country. The
      marine of France was considerable, according to the notions of the times,
      before the expedition of Charles VIII. to Naples. The cultivation and
      improvement of France, however, is, upon the whole, inferior to that of
      England. The law of the country has never given the same direct
      encouragement to agriculture.

      The foreign commerce of Spain and Portugal to the other parts of Europe,
      though chiefly carried on in foreign ships, is very considerable. That to
      their colonies is carried on in their own, and is much greater, on account
      of the great riches and extent of those colonies. But it has never
      introduced any considerable manufactures for distant sale into either of
      those countries, and the greater part of both still remains uncultivated.
      The foreign commerce of Portugal is of older standing than that of any
      great country in Europe, except Italy.

      Italy is the only great country of Europe which seems to have been
      cultivated and improved in every part, by means of foreign commerce and
      manufactures for distant sale. Before the invasion of Charles VIII.,
      Italy, according to Guicciardini, was cultivated not less in the most
      mountainous and barren parts of the country, than in the plainest and most
      fertile. The advantageous situation of the country, and the great number
      of independent states which at that time subsisted in it, probably
      contributed not a little to this general cultivation. It is not
      impossible, too, notwithstanding this general expression of one of the
      most judicious and reserved of modern historians, that Italy was not at
      that time better cultivated than England is at present.

      The capital, however, that is acquired to any country by commerce and
      manufactures, is always a very precarious and uncertain possession, till
      some part of it has been secured and realized in the cultivation and
      improvement of its lands. A merchant, it has been said very properly, is
      not necessarily the citizen of any particular country. It is in a great
      measure indifferent to him from what place he carries on his trade; and a
      very trifling disgust will make him remove his capital, and, together with
      it, all the industry which it supports, from one country to another. No
      part of it can be said to belong to any particular country, till it has
      been spread, as it were, over the face of that country, either in
      buildings, or in the lasting improvement of lands. No vestige now remains
      of the great wealth said to have been possessed by the greater part of the
      Hanse Towns, except in the obscure histories of the thirteenth and
      fourteenth centuries. It is even uncertain where some of them were
      situated, or to what towns in Europe the Latin names given to some of them
      belong. But though the misfortunes of Italy, in the end of the fifteenth
      and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, greatly diminished the commerce
      and manufactures of the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany, those countries
      still continue to be among the most populous and best cultivated in
      Europe. The civil wars of Flanders, and the Spanish government which
      succeeded them, chased away the great commerce of Antwerp, Ghent, and
      Bruges. But Flanders still continues to be one of the richest, best
      cultivated, and most populous provinces of Europe. The ordinary
      revolutions of war and government easily dry up the sources of that wealth
      which arises from commerce only. That which arises from the more solid
      improvements of agriculture is much more durable, and cannot be destroyed
      but by those more violent convulsions occasioned by the depredations of
      hostile and barbarous nations continued for a century or two together;
      such as those that happened for some time before and after the fall of the
      Roman empire in the western provinces of Europe.
