LONDON-DEPRECIATION OF CURRENCY. 169 vernment gropes on through the unknown regions of finance, advancing every year a few steps through their obscure immensity; feeling all the time the pulse of the people, as the criminal on the rack has a physician by him, to watch the instant when a turn of the wheel more might kill him. "Il faut pousser contre une porte," says Charron, pour savoir qu'elle est fermée;"-till now the door has always yielded to the pressure, whenever 66 government has tried it. I have ascertained, by inquiries made with some care, respecting the nominal increase of prices of things, that the rent of land has trebled in the last fifty years.* The rise is not uniform, and depends materially on adventitious circumstances, such as canals, roads, and capital. In Lincolnshire, for instance, pasturage, which by its nature has received no other increase of nominal value, than that occasioned by the depreciation of specie, rents now at 40 or 45 shillings an acre, which 40 or 50 years ago produced only 15 or 20 shillings. In other places, the increase is much greater. The pay of labourers was, 50 years ago, something less than a shilling a-day, now 2s. 6d. or 3s. a-day. Country wages by the year, L.8, or L.10, and the labourer fed; now L. 20 or L.22 for men; and for women they have risen from L.3 or L.4 to L.8 or L.9. In the same interval of time, the price of wheat has quadrupled, having risen from 3s. 9d. to about 15s.f Farmers pay their high rents now with *The late Mr. Kent, Craig's Court, Charing Cross, who, by his profession, was likely to be well-informed, confirmed this. † I have annexed the table of depreciation of Sir George Shuckburgh Evelyn, taken from the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. LXXXVIII. p. 176; which it may prove interesting to compare with the depreciation of other countries. greater ease than they did their low ones formerly, partly from the greater consumption, readier sale, and rise of prices of their produce; and partly because they cultivate with more industry: and that those only who have a capital, venture on large farms and great rents. It does not appear that any very great discoveries have been made in agriculture; the most useful novelty was the introduction of turnips for animals, and potatoes for men. With turnips, large flocks of sheep are kept, which not only furnish meat and wool, but fertilize the land, and fit it for cultivation. During the fifty years which preceded the last, the rise was not near so considerable; wheat indeed seems to have fallen from 4s. 5d. a bushel to 3s. 9d.; meat doubled. The rent of land rose half, or fifty per cent.; and it is worth observing, that landlords found it difficult to get tenants, while now a lease is no sooner expired, than ten farmers offer to take it. Upon the whole, the nominal increase of prices has been about four-fold, in the last hundred years. It is undeniable, that, under such circumstances, a debt of an hundred millions, for instance, represents now only twenty-five millions, and in another century may represent only six. This is an effectual sinking-fund. The one hastens the payment of the debt, the other destroys the debt; it extinguishes without paying it. The people pay 4,000,000 for the interest on this debt, with the same facility they would have paid 1,000,000 one hundred years ago; because their wheat, their sheep, and their daily labour, bring them four times the sum of money they brought formerly. Taxes are prodigious, but they bear exclusively on the rich; and as nobody is compelled to be rich, he who chooses need not pay taxes. Those LONDON-DEPRECIATION OF CURRENCY. 171 who were born to a fortune, or by their talents and industry have acquired one, under the protection of a government vigorous, safe, and free, alone pay for the support of that government; the mere poor pay in fact nothing. This is probably the only country in the world where people make fortunes by agriculture. A farmer, who understands his business, becomes rich in England, with the same degree of certainty as in other professions; while, in most countries, a farmer is condemned, by the nature of his trade, to be a mere labourer all his life. The depreciation of money, or increase of prices, is really indifferent to those who sell, as well as buy. Those only who live upon a fixed income, the lenders to Government, for instance, who buy, but do not sell, are progressively abridged of their accustomed enjoyments, and fall back gradually into the rear-ranks of society. It must be owned, however, that as they receive an interest of four or five per cent. on their capital, while the land-proprietor does not get more than three per cent. on his, their lot is not so unequal as it appears at first sight. The depreciation operates as a tax on the national debt, on a certain surplus of wealth, with which individuals fill up the annual loans; on the floating capital of the nation, which would otherwise elude taxations easier than any other sort of property. It is in fact the debt which pays the debt. Such is the great corrective principle of the national debt, and the reason of its having been carried so far beyond what was deemed its natural limits, without any material inconvenience. Notwithstanding the loud complaints against taxes and the debt, there is not much real harm done, or danger to apprehend, and as to ruining the nation, which is a very common expres sion here, it puts me in mind of the carpenter, who, when told by some powerful person, that he would ruin him, answered, very philosophically, through mere simplicity," thou canst not ruin me, I am a carpenter!" You cannot ruin a nation unless you strew salt on its fields, or dry up its rivers. There is nothing mortal, in a national point of view, but an arbitrary and corrupt administration of justice. A pure and equitable system of law is the invaluable gem which all the other social institutions are only intended to guard and preserve inviolate. In this sense, we might say with Pope, For forms of government let fools contest, The means, however, cannot be indifferent to the end proposed, and the object of forms of government is precisely to secure that best adminis tration. The greatest evil attending this perpetual rise of prices, is, that it begins at the wrong end; by the proceeds of labour, instead of the pay of labour. The landed proprietor and his tenant are taxed; the one exacts a higher rent, and the other a greater price for his produce, and the increased quantity of money is another cause of rise of prices. The labourer, however, can no longer procure, with his usual salary, the common necessaries of life for himself and family, but, as the demand for labour has not increased, and as improvements in machinery and larger farms have a tendency to diminish it, he has no means to enforce an increase of salary, and no other argument to offer than that of his poverty, and farmers are accused of being a little deaf to this argument. |