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difference between the interest which the bank would pay, and that which it would obtain, by lending its deposits on mercantile, landed, or other security. There are no insuperable objections in principle, nor, I should think, in practice, to an institution of this sort, as a means of supplying the same convenient mode of investment

now afforded by the public funds. It would constitute the state a great insurance company, to insure that part of the community who live on the interest of their property, against the risk of losing it by the bankruptcy of those to whom they might otherwise be under the necessity of confiding it.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE ORDINARY FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT, CONSIDERED AS TO THEIR ECONOMICAL EFFECTS.

§ 1. BEFORE we discuss the line of demarcation between the things with which government should, and those with which they should not, directly interfere, it is necessary to consider the economical effects, whether of a bad or of a good complexion, arising from the manner in which they acquit themselves of the duties which devolve on them in all societies, and which no one denies to be incumbent on them.

The first of these is the protection of person and property. There is no need to expatiate on the influence exercised over the economical interests of society by the degree of completeness with which this duty of government is performed. Insecurity of person and property, is as much as to say, uncertainty of the connexion between all human exertion or sacrifice, and the attainment of the ends for the sake of which they are undergone. It means, uncertainty whether they who sow shall reap, whether they who produce shall consume, and they who spare today shall enjoy to-morrow. It means, not only that labour and frugality are not the road to acquisition, but that violence is. When person and property are to a certain degree insecure, all the possessions of the weak are at the mercy of the strong. No one can keep what he has produced, unless he is more capable of defending it, than others who give no part of their time

and exertions to useful industry are of taking it from him. The productive classes, therefore, when the insecurity surpasses a certain point, being unequal to their own protection against the predatory population, are obliged to place themselves individually in a state of dependence on some member of the predatory class, that it may be his interest to shield them from all depredation except his own. In this manner, in the Middle Ages, allodial property generally became feudal, and numbers of the poorer freemen voluntarily made themselves and their posterity serfs of some military lord.

Nevertheless, in attaching to this great requisite, security of person and property, the importance which is justly due to it, we must not forget that even for economical purposes there are other things quite as indispensable, the presence of which will often make up for a very considerable degree of imperfection in the protective arrangements of government. As was observed in a previous chapter,* the free cities of Italy, Flanders, and the Hanseatic league, were habitually in a state of such internal turbulence, varied by such destructive external. wars, that person and property enjoyed very imperfect protection; yet during several centuries they increased rapidly in wealth and prosperity, brought many * Supra, p. 70.

an incentive to exertion: what is fatal to it, is the belief that it will not be suffered to produce its fruits.

of the industrial arts to a high degree of advancement, carried on distant and dangerous voyages of exploration and commerce with extraordinary success, became an overmatch in power for the § 2. Simple over-taxation by gogreatest feudal lords, and could defend vernment, though a great evil, is not themselves even against the sovereigns comparable in the economical part of of Europe because in the midst of its mischiefs to exactions much more turmoil and violence, the citizens of moderate in amount, which either those towns enjoyed a certain rude subject the contributor to the arbifreedom, under conditions of union and trary mandate of government officers, co-operation, which, taken together, or are so laid on as to place skill, inmade them a brave, energetic, and dustry, and frugality at a disadvantage. high-spirited people, and fostered a The burthen of taxation in our own great amount of public spirit and country is very great, yet as every one patriotism. The prosperity of these knows its limit, and is seldom made to and other free states in a lawless age, pay more than he expects and calshows that a certain degree of in- culates on, and as the modes of taxasecurity, in some combinations of cir- tion are not of such a kind as much to cumstances, has good as well as bad impair the motives to industry and effects, by making energy and prac- economy, the sources of prosperity are tical ability the conditions of safety. little diminished by the pressure of Insecurity paralyzes, only when it is taxation; they may even, as some such in nature and in degree, that no think, be increased, by the extra exerenergy, of which mankind in general tions made to compensate for the presare capable, affords any tolerable means sure of the taxes. But in the barof self-protection. And this is a main barous despotisms of many countries reason why oppression by the govern- of the East, where taxation consists in ment, whose power is generally irre- fastening upon those who have sucsistible by any efforts that can be ceeded in acquiring something, in made by individuals, has so much order to confiscate it, unless the posmore baneful an effect on the springs sessor buys its release by submitting of national prosperity, than almost to give some large sum as a comany degree of lawlessness and turbu- promise, we cannot expect to find lence under free institutions. Nations voluntary industry, or wealth derived have acquired some wealth, and made from any source but plunder. And some progress in improvement, in even in comparatively civilized counstates of social union so imperfect as tries, bad modes of raising a revenue to border on anarchy: but no counhave had effects similar in kind, though tries in which the people were exposed in an inferior degree. French writers without limit to arbitrary exactions before the Revolution represented the from the officers of government, ever taille as a main cause of the back yet continued to have industry or ward state of agriculture, and of the wealth. A few generations of such a wretched condition of the rural popugovernment never fail to extinguish lation; not from its amount, but beboth. Some of the fairest, and once cause, being proportioned to the visible the most prosperous, regions of the capital of the cultivator, it gave him a earth, have, under the Roman and motive for appearing poor, which sufafterwards under the Turkish domi- ficed to turn the scale in favour of innion, been reduced to a desert, solely dolence. The arbitrary powers also of by that cause. I say solely, because fiscal officers, of intendants and subthey would have recovered with the délégués, were more destructive of prosutmost rapidity, as countries always perity than a far larger amount of do, from the devastations of war, or exactions, because they destroyed seany other temporary calamities. Dif-curity: there was a marked superiority ficulties and hardships are often but in the condition of the districts pos

sessing Provincial States, which were exempt from this scourge. The universal venality ascribed to Russian functionaries, must be an immense drag on the capabilities of economical improvement possessed so abundantly by the Russian empire; since the emoluments of public officers must depend on the success with which they can multiply vexations, for the purpose of being bought off by bribes.

the many disadvantages to an independent nation from being brought prematurely to a stationary state, while the neighbouring countries continue advancing.

§ 3. The subject of protection to person and property, considered as afforded by government, ramifies widely, into a number of indirect channels. It embraces, for example, the whole subject of the perfection or inefficiency of the means provided for the ascertainment of rights and the redress of injuries. Person and property cannot be considered secure where the administration of justice is imperfect, either from defect of integrity or capacity in the tribunals, or because the delay, vexation, and expense accompanying their operation impose a heavy tax on those who appeal to them, and make it preferable to submit to any endurable amount of the evils which they are designed to remedy. In England there is no fault to be found with the administration of justice, in point of pecuniary integrity; a result which the progress of social improvement may also be supposed to have brought about in several other nations of Europe. But legal and judicial imperfections of other kinds are abundant; and, in England especially, are a large abatement from the value of the services which the government renders back to the people in return for our enormous taxation. In the first place, the incognoscibility (as Bentham termed it) of the law, and its extreme uncer tainty, even to those who best know it, render a resort to the tribunals often necessary for obtaining justice, when, there being no dispute as to facts, no litigation ought to be required. In the next place, the procedure of the tribunals is so replete with delay, vexation, and expense, that the price at which justice is at last obtained is an evil outweighing a very considerable amount of injustice; and the wrong side, even that which the law considers such, has many chances of gaining its point, through the abandonment of litigation by the other party for want

Yet mere excess of taxation, even when not aggravated by uncertainty, is, independently of its injustice, a serious economical evil. It may be carried so far as to discourage industry by insufficiency of reward. Very long before it reaches this point, it prevents or greatly checks accumulation, or causes the capital accumulated to be sent for investment to foreign countries. Taxes which fall on profits, even though that kind of income may not pay more than its just share, necessarily diminish the motive to any saving, except for investment in foreign countries where profits are higher. Holland, for example, seems to have long ago reached the practical minimum of profits: already in the last century her wealthy capitalists had a great part of their fortunes invested in the loans and joint-stock speculations of other countries: and this low rate of profit is ascribed to the heavy taxa. tion, which had been in some measure forced on her by the circumstances of her position and history. The taxes indeed, besides their great amount, were many of them on necessaries, a kind of tax peculiarly injurious to industry and accumulation. But when the aggregate amount of taxation is very great, it is inevitable that recourse must be had for part of it to taxes of an objectionable character. And any taxes on consumption, when heavy, even if not operating on profits, have something of the same effect, by driving persons of moderate means to live abroad, often taking their capital with them. Although I by no means join with those political economists who think no state of national existence desirable in which there is not a rapid increase of wealth, I cannot overlook | of funds, or through a compromise in

which a sacrifice is made of just rights to terminate the suit, or through some technical quirk, whereby a decision is obtained on some other ground than the merits. This last detestable incident often happens without blame to the judge, under a system of law, of which a great part rests on no rational principles adapted to the present state of society, but was originally founded partly on a kind of whims and conceits, and partly on the principles and incidents of feudal tenure, (which now survive only as legal fictions;) and has only been very imperfectly adapted, as cases arose, to the changes which had taken place in society. Of all parts of the English legal system, the Court of Chancery, which has the best substantive law, has been incomparably the worst as to delay, vexation, and expense; and this is the only tribunal for most of the classes of cases which are in their nature the most complicated, such as cases of partnership, and the great range and variety of cases which come under the denomination of trust. The recent reforms in this Court have abated the mischief, but are still far from having

removed it.

Fortunately for the prosperity of England, the greater part of the mercantile law is comparatively modern, and was made by the tribunals, by the simple process of recognising and giving force of law to the usages which, from motives of convenience, had grown up among merchants themselves: so that this part of the law, at least, was substantially made by those who were most interested in its goodness: while the defects of the tribu. nals have been the less practically pernicious in reference to commercial transactions, because the importance of credit, which depends on character, renders the restraints of opinion (though, as daily experience proves, an insufficient) yet a very powerful, protection against those forms of mercantile dishonesty which are generally recognised as such.

The imperfections of the law, both in its substance and in its procedure, fall heaviest upon the interests con

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nected with what is technically called real property; in the general language of European jurisprudence, immoveable property. With respect to all this portion of the wealth of the community, the law fails egregiously in the protection which it undertakes to provide. It fails, first, by the uncertainty, and the maze of technicalities, which make it impossible for any one, at however great an expense, to possess a title to land which he can positively know to be unassailable. It fails, secondly, in omitting to provide due evidence of transactions, by a proper registration of legal documents. fails, thirdly, by creating a necessity for operose and expensive instruments and formalities (independently of fiscal burthens) on occasion of the purchase and sale, or even the lease or mortgage, of immoveable property. And, fourthly, it fails by the intolerable expense and delay of law proceedings, in almost all cases in which real property is concerned. There is no doubt that the greatest sufferers by the defects of the higher courts of civil law are the landowners. Legal expenses, either those of actual litigation, or of the preparation of legal instruments, form, I apprehend, no inconsiderable item in the annual expenditure of most persons of large landed property; and the saleable value of their land is greatly impaired, by the difficulty of giving to the buyer complete confidence in the title; independently of the legal expenses which accompany the transfer. Yet the landowners, though they have been masters of the legislation of England, to say the least, since 1688, have never made a single move in the direction of law reform, and have been strenuous opponents of some of the improvements of which they would more particularly reap the benefit; especially that great one of a registration of contracts affecting land, which when proposed by a Commission of eminent real property lawyers, and introduced into the House of Commons by Lord Campbell, was so offensive to the general body of landlords, and was rejected by so large a majority, as to have long discouraged

ends, much also depends, even in an economical point of view, upon the moral influences of the law. Enough has been said in a former place,+ on the degree in which both the industrial and all other combined operations of mankind depend for efficiency on their being able to rely on one

any repetition of the attempt. This irrational hostility to improvement, in a case in which their own interest would be the most benefited by it, must be ascribed to an intense timidity on the subject of their titles, generated by the defects of the very law which they refuse to alter; and to a conscious ignorance, and inca-another for probity and fidelity to pacity of judgment, on all legal sub- engagements; from which we see how jects, which makes them helplessly greatly even the economical prosperity defer to the opinion of their profes- of a country is liable to be affected, by sional advisers, heedless of the fact anything in its institutions by which that every imperfection of the law, in either integrity and trustworthiness, or proportion as it is burthensome to the contrary qualities, are encouraged. them, brings gain to the lawyer. The law everywhere ostensibly favours at least pecuniary honesty and the faith of contracts; but if it affords facilities for evading those obligations, by trick and chicanery, or by the unscrupulous use of riches in instituting unjust or resisting just litigation; if there are ways and means by which persons may attain the ends of roguery, under the apparent sanction of the law; to that extent the law is demoralizing, even in regard to pecuniary integrity. And such cases are, unfortunately, frequent under the English system. If, again, the law, by a misplaced indulgence, protects idleness or prodigality against their natural consequences, or dismisses crime with inadequate penalties, the effect, both on the prudential and on the social virtues, is unfavourable. When the law, by its own dispensations and injunctions, establishes injustice between individual and individual; as all laws do which recognise any form of slavery; as the laws of all countries do, though not all in the same degree, in respect to the family relations; and as the laws of many countries do, though in still more unequal degrees, as between rich and poor; the effect on the moral sentiments of the people is still more disastrous. But these subjects introduce considerations so much larger and deeper than those of political economy, that I only advert to them in order not to pass wholly unnoticed things superior in importance to those of which I treat.

In so far as the defects of legal arrangements are a mere burthen on the landowner, they do not much affect the sources of production; but the uncertainty of the title under which land is held, must often act as a great discouragement to the expenditure of capital in its improvement; and the expense of making transfers, operates to prevent land from coming into the hands of those who would use it to most advantage; often amounting, in the case of small purchases, to more than the price of the land, and tantamount, therefore, to a prohibition of the purchase and sale of land in small portions, unless in exceptional circumstances. Such purchases, however, are almost everywhere extremely desirable, there being hardly any country in which landed property is not either too much or too little subdivided, requiring either that great estates should be broken down, or that small ones should be bought up and consolidated. To make land as easily transferable as stock, would be one of the greatest economical improvements which could be bestowed on a country; and has been shown, again and again, to have no insuperable difficulty attending it.

Besides the excellences or defects that belong to the law and judicature of a country as a system of arrangements for attaining direct practical

Lord Westbury's recent Act is a material mitigation of this grievous defect in English law, and will probably lead to further improvements.

† Supra, p. 68,

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