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

least

became really free, in our present sense of the word freedom.

 

Nor was this all. They were generally at the same time erected into a

commonalty or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a

town-council of their own, of making bye-laws for their own government, of

building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants

under a sort of military discipline, by obliging them to watch and ward;

that is, as anciently understood, to guard and defend those walls against

all attacks and surprises, by night as well as by day. In England they were

generally exempted from suit to the hundred and county courts : and all such

pleas as should arise among them, the pleas of the crown excepted, were left

to the decision of their own magistrates. In other countries, much greater

and more extensive jurisdictions were frequently granted to them. {See

Madox, Firma Burgi. See also Pfeffel in the Remarkable events under Frederick

II. and his Successors of the House of Suabia.}

 

It might, probably, be necessary to grant to such towns as were admitted to

farm their own revenues, some sort of compulsive jurisdiction to oblige

their own citizens to make payment. In those disorderly times, it might have

been extremely inconvenient to have left them to seek this sort of justice

from any other tribunal. But it must seem extraordinary, that the sovereigns

of all the different countries of Europe should have exchanged in this

manner for a rent certain, never more to be augmented, that branch of their

revenue, which was, perhaps, of all others, the most likely to be improved

by the natural course of things, without either expense or attention of

their own ; and that they should, besides, have in this manner voluntarily

erected a sort of independent republics in the heart of their own dominions.

 

In order to understand this, it must be remembered, that, in those days, the

sovereign of perhaps no country in Europe was able to protect, through the

whole extent of his dominions, the weaker part of his subjects from the

oppression of the great lords. Those whom the law could not protect, and who

were not strong enough to defend themselves, were obliged either to have

recourse to the protection of some great lord, and in order to obtain it, to

become either his slaves or vassals; or to enter into a league of mutual

defence for the common protection of one another. The inhabitants of cities

and burghs, considered as single individuals, had no power to defend

themselves; but by entering into a league of mutual defence with their

neighbours, they were capable of making no contemptible resistance. The

lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as a different

order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species

from themselves. The wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their

envy and indignation, and they plundered them upon every occasion without

mercy or remorse. The burghers naturally hated and feared the lords. The

king hated and feared them too ; but though, perhaps, he might despise, he

had no reason either to hate or fear the burghers. Mutual interest,

therefore, disposed them to support the king, and the king to support them

against the lords. They were the enemies of his enemies, and it was his

interest to render them as secure and independent of those. enemies as he

could. By granting them magistrates of their own, the privilege of making

bye-laws for their own government, that of building walls for their own

defence, and that of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military

discipline, he gave them all the means of security and independency of the

barons which it was in his power to bestow. Without the establishment of

some regular government of this kind, without some authority to compel their

inhabitants to act according to some certain plan or system, no voluntary

league of mutual defence could either have afforded them any permanent

security, or have enabled them to give the king any considerable support. By

granting them the farm of their own town in fee, he took away from those

whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for his

allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion, that he was ever afterwards to

oppress them, either by raising the farm-rent of their town, or by granting

it to some other farmer.

 

The princes who lived upon the worst terms with their barons, seem

accordingly to have been the most liberal in grants of this kind to their

burghs. King John of England, for example, appears to have been a most

munificent benefactor to his towns. {See Madox.} Philip I. of France lost

all authority over his barons. Towards the end of his reign, his son Lewis,

known afterwards by the name of Lewis the Fat, consulted, according to

Father Daniel, with the bishops of the royal demesnes, concerning the most

proper means of restraining the violence of the great lords. Their advice

consisted of two different proposals. One was to erect a new order of

jurisdiction, by establishing magistrates and a town-council in every

considerable town of his demesnes. The other was to form a new militia, by

making the inhabitants of those towns, under the command of their own

magistrates, march out upon proper occasions to the assistance of the king.

It is from this period, according to the French antiquarians, that we are to

date the institution of the magistrates and councils of cities in France. It

was during the unprosperous reigns of the princes of the house of Suabia,

that the greater part of the free towns of Germany received the first grants

of their privileges, and that the famous Hanseatic league first became

formidable. {See Pfeffel.}

 

The militia of the cities seems, in those times, not to have been inferior

to that of the country ; and as they could be more readily assembled upon

any sudden occasion, they frequently had the advantage in their disputes

with the neighbouring lords. In countries such as Italy or Switzerland, in

which, on account either of their distance from the principal seat of

government, of the natural strength of the country itself, or of some other

reason, the sovereign came to lose the whole of his authority; the cities

generally became independent republics, and conquered all the nobility in

their neighbourhood; obliging them to pull down their castles in the

country, and to live, like other peaceable inhabitants, in the city. This is

the short history of the republic of Berne, as well as of several other

cities in Switzerland. If you except Venice, for of that city the history is

somewhat different, it is the history of all the considerable Italian

republics, of which so great a number arose and perished between the end of

the twelfth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

 

In countries such as France and England, where the authority of the

sovereign, though frequently very low, never was destroyed altogether, the

cities had no opportunity of becoming entirely independent. They became,

however, so considerable, that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them,

besides the stated farm-rent of the town, without their own consent. They

were, therefore, called upon to send deputies to the general assembly of the

states of the kingdom, where they might join with the clergy and the barons

in granting, upon urgent occasions, some extraordinary aid to the king.

Being generally, too, more favourable to his power, their deputies seem

sometimes to have been employed by him as a counterbalance in those

assemblies to the authority of the great lords. Hence the origin of the

representation of burghs in the states-general of all great monarchies in

Europe.

 

Order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security of

individuals, were in this manner established in cities, at a time when the

occupiers of land in the country, were exposed to every sort of violence.

But men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their

necessary subsistence ; because, to acquire more, might only tempt the

injustice of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of

enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better

their condition, and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the

conveniencies and elegancies of life. That industry, therefore, which aims

at something more than necessary subsistence, was established in cities long

before it was commonly practised by the occupiers of land in the country.

If, in the hands of a poor cultivator, oppressed with the servitude of

villanage, some little stock should accumulate, he would naturally conceal

it with great care from his master, to whom it would otherwise have

belonged, and take the first opportunity of running away to a town. The law

was at that time so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns, and so desirous

of diminishing the authority of the lords over those of the country, that if

he could conceal himself there from the pursuit of his lord for a year, he

was free for ever. Whatever stock, therefore, accumulated in the hands of

the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took

refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the

person that acquired it.

 

The inhabitants of a city, it is true, must always ultimately derive their

subsistence, and the whole materials and means of their industry, from the

country. But those of a city, situated near either the sea-coast or the

banks of a navigable river, are not necessarily confined to derive them from

the country in their neighbourhood. They have a much wider range, and

may draw them from the most remote corners of the world, either in exchange

for the manufactured produce of their own industry, or by performing the

office of carriers between distant countries, and exchanging the produce of

one for that of another. A city might, in this manner, grow up to great

wealth and splendour, while not only the country in its neighbourhood, but

all those to which it traded, were in poverty and wretchedness. Each of

those countries, perhaps, taken singly, could afford it but a small part,

either of its subsistence or of its employment ; but all of them taken

together, could afford it both a great subsistence and a great employment.

There were, however, within the narrow circle of the commerce of those

times, some countries that were opulent and industrious. Such was the Greek

empire as long as it subsisted, and that of the Saracens during the reigns

of the Abassides. Such, too, was Egypt till it was conquered by the Turks,

some part of the coast of Barbary, and all those provinces of Spain which

were under the government of the Moors.

 

The cities of Italy seem to have been the first in Europe which were raised

by commerce to any considerable degree of opulence. Italy lay in the centre

of what was at that time the improved and civilized part of the world. The

crusades, too, though, by the great waste of stock and destruction of

inhabitants which they occasioned, they must necessarily have retarded the

progress of the greater part of Europe, were extremely favourable to that of

some Italian cities. The great armies which marched from all parts to the

conquest of the Holy Land, gave extraordinary encouragement to the shipping

of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, sometimes in transporting them thither, and

always in supplying them with provisions. They were the commissaries, if one

may say so, of those armies ; and the most destructive frenzy that ever

befel the European nations, was a source of opulence to those republics.

 

The inhabitants of trading cities, by importing the improved manufactures

and expensive luxuries of richer