An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

though with different

degrees of oppression in different countries, was not the only one. When the

king’s troops, when his household, or his officers of any kind, passed

through any part of the country, the yeomanry were bound to provide them

with horses, carriages, and provisions, at a price regulated by the

purveyor. Great Britain is, I believe, the only monarchy in Europe where the

oppression of purveyance has been entirely abolished. It still subsists in

France and Germany.

 

The public taxes, to which they were subject, were as irregular and

oppressive as the services The ancient lords, though extremely unwilling to

grant, themselves, any pecuniary aid to their sovereign, easily allowed him

to tallage, as they called it, their tenants, and had not knowledge enough

to foresee how much this must, in the end, affect their own revenue. The

taille, as it still subsists in France. may serve as an example of those

ancient tallages. It is a tax upon the supposed profits of the farmer, which

they estimate by the stock that he has upon the farm. It is his interest,

therefore, to appear to have as little as possible, and consequently to

employ as little as possible in its cultivation, and none in its

improvement. Should any stock happen to accumulate in the hands of a

French farmer, the taille is almost equal to a prohibition of its ever being

employed upon the land. This tax, besides, is supposed to dishonour whoever

is subject to it, and to degrade him below, not only the rank of a

gentleman, but that of a burgher ; and whoever rents the lands of another

becomes subject to it. No gentleman, nor even any burgher, who has stock,

will submit to this degradation. This tax, therefore, not only hinders the

stock which accumulates upon the land from being employed in its

improvement, but drives away all other stock from it. The ancient tenths and

fifteenths, so usual in England in former times, seem, so far as they

affected the land, to have been taxes of the same nature with the taille.

 

Under all these discouragements, little improvement could he expected from

the occupiers of land. That order of people, with all the liberty and

security which law can give, must always improve under great disadvantage.

The farmer, compared with the proprietor, is as a merchant who trades with

burrowed money, compared with one who trades with his own. The stock of both

may improve; but that of the one, with only equal good conduct, must always

improve more slowly than that of the other, on account of the large share

of the profits which is consumed by the interest of the loan. The lands

cultivated by the farmer must, in the same manner, with only equal good

conduct, be improved more slowly than those cultivated by the proprietor,

on account of the large share of the produce which is consumed in the rent,

and which, had the farmer been proprietor, he might have employed in the

further improvement of the land. The station of a farmer, besides, is, from

the nature of things, inferior to that of a proprietor. Through the greater

part of Europe, the yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank of people,

even to the better sort of tradesmen and mechanics, and in all parts of

Europe to the great merchants and master manufacturers. It can seldom

happen, therefore, that a man of any considerable stock should quit the

superior, in order to place himself in an inferior station. Even in the

present state of Europe, therefore, little stock is likely to go from any

other profession to the improvement of land in the way of farming. More

does, perhaps, in Great Britain than in any other country, though even there

the great stocks which are in some places employed in farming, have

generally been acquired by fanning, the trade, perhaps, in which, of all

others, stock is commonly acquired most slowly. After small proprietors,

however, rich and great farmers are in every country the principal

improvers. There are more such, perhaps, in England than in any other

European monarchy. In the republican governments of Holland, and of Berne

in Switzerland, the farmers are said to be not inferior to those of England.

 

The ancient policy of Europe was, over and above all this, unfavourable to

the improvement and cultivation of land, whether carried on by the

proprietor or by the farmer ; first, by the general prohibition of the

exportation of corn, without a special licence, which seems to have been a

very universal regulation ; and, secondly, by the restraints which were laid

upon the inland commerce, not only of corn, but of almost every other part

of the produce of the farm, by the absurd laws against engrossers,

regraters, and forestallers, and by the privileges of fairs and markets. It

has already been observed in what manner the prohibition of the exportation

of corn, together with some encouragement given to the importation of

foreign corn, obstructed the cultivation of ancient Italy, naturally the most

fertile country in Europe, and at that time the seat of the greatest empire

in the world. To what degree such restraints upon the inland commerce of

this commodity, joined to the general prohibition of exportation, must have

discouraged the cultivation of countries less fertile, and less favourably

circumstanced, it is not, perhaps, very easy to imagine.

 

CHAPTER III.

 

OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF CITIES AND TOWNS, AFTER THE FALL OF THE ROMAN

EMPIRE.

 

The inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall of the Roman

empire, not more favoured than those of the country. They consisted, indeed,

of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the

ancient republics of Greece and Italy. These last were composed chiefly of

the proprietors of lands, among whom the public territory was originally

divided, and who found it convenient to build their houses in the

neighbourhood of one another, and to surround them with a wall, for the sake

of common defence. After the fall of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the

proprietors of land seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on

their own estates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. The

towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, who seem, in those

days, to have been of servile, or very nearly of servile condition. The

privileges which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of

some of the principal towns in Europe, sufficiently show what they were

before those grants. The people to whom it is granted as a privilege, that

they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of

their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord,

should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own

effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether, or

very nearly, in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in

the country.

 

They seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean set of people, who seemed

to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair,

like the hawkers and pedlars of the present times. In all the different

countries of Europe then, in the same manner as in several of the Tartar

governments of Asia at present, taxes used to be levied upon the persons and

goods of travellers, when they passed through certain manors, when they went

over certain bridges, when they carried about their goods from place to

place in a fair, when they erected in it a booth or stall to sell them in.

These different taxes were known in England by the names of passage,

pontage, lastage, and stallage. Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord,

who had, it seems, upon some occasions, authority to do this, would grant to

particular traders, to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a

general exemption from such taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of

servile, or very nearly of servile condition, were upon this account called

free traders. They, in return, usually paid to their protector a sort of

annual poll-tax. In those days protection was seldom granted without a

valuable consideration, and this tax might perhaps be considered as

compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other

taxes. At first, both those poll-taxes and those exemptions seem to have

been altogether personal, and to have affected only particular individuals,

during either their lives, or the pleasure of their protectors. In the very

imperfect accounts which have been published from Doomsday-book, of several

of the towns of England, mention is frequently made, sometimes of the tax

which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king, or to some

other great lord, for this sort of protection, and sometimes of the general

amount only of all those taxes. {see Brady’s Historical Treatise of Cities

and Boroughs, p. 3. etc.}

 

But how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the

inhabitants of the towns, it appears evidently, that they arrived at liberty

and independency much earlier than the occupiers of land in the country.

That part of the king’s revenue which arose from such poll-taxes in any

particular town, used commonly to be let in farm, during a term of years,

for a rent certain, sometimes to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to

other persons. The burghers themselves frequently got credit enough to be

admitted to farm the revenues of this sort winch arose out of their own

town, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent.

{See Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 18; also History of the Exchequer, chap. 10,

sect. v, p. 223, first edition.} To let a farm in this manner, was quite

agreeable to the usual economy of, I believe, the sovereigns of all the

different countries of Europe, who used frequently to let whole manors to

all the tenants of those manors, they becoming jointly and severally

answerable for the whole rent ; but in return being allowed to collect it in

their own way, and to pay it into the king’s exchequer by the hands of their

own bailiff, and being thus altogether freed from the insolence of the

king’s officers; a circumstance in those days regarded as of the greatest

importance.

 

At first, the farm of the town was probably let to the burghers, in the same

manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In process

of time, however, it seems to have become the general practice to grant it

to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain, never afterwards

to be augmented. The payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions,

in return, for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. Those

exemptions, therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be

considered as belonging to individuals, as individuals, but as burghers of a

particular burgh, which, upon this account, was called a free burgh, for the

same reason that they had been called free burghers or free traders.

 

Along with this grant, the important privileges, above mentioned, that they

might give away their own daughters in marriage, that their children should

succeed to them, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will,

were generally bestowed upon the burghers of the town to whom it was given.

Whether such privileges had before been usually granted, along with the

freedom of trade, to particular burghers, as individuals, I know not. I

reckon it not improbable that they were, though I cannot produce any direct

evidence of it. But however this may have been, the principal attributes of

villanage and slavery being thus taken away from them, they now at