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

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