date

[xxxvi. 10] 1821. April 26.
[xxxvi. 10]

1821. April 26.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance?

But as, with the power of granting, the power of refusing receives correspondent encrease, so with that love which produces gratitude will encrease that fear which produces respect: not more than in the hands of the opulent, with the negative power of refusing favour to those who have not been, and those who have ceased to be, the objects of their regard is conjoined, in no inconsiderable degree, the power of doing positive evil to those who were the objects of their positive aversion. By the operation of all these causes taken together, thus intimate is the connection between the idea presented by the word rich, and the idea presented by the word respectable. Of the effect produced by this association on conduct, discourse and, to no inconsiderable degree, on opinion and affection, an exemplification may be seen in the picture of the parasite as drawn by the earliest of the Dramatists whose works have reached us.

If such and so great as the ordinary influence and effect of this matter of wealth in hands of individuals distributed in parcels of an ordinary bulk each, what must it be accumulated in an immense mass in company with supreme power and the highest lot of factitious dignity, togeher with the manufactory in which all inferior lots are fabricated - these instruments of influence all placed in the same hand. If such be the influence /even were wealth the whole/ of wealth when reckoned by thousands, what must it not be when reckoned by millions?

As long as wealth and government have had existence, the powers of poetry and oratory have been employed in singing the praises of the powerful, the dignified and the wealthy. While the effusions of praise have thus had free scope with reward in every shape to pay for them, those of censure have all along and every where been suppressed by every restraint which it was in the power of punishment to apply.
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  • Title: [[Recapitulation] 11 Oct. 1801]
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    3

    25

    Decrease of prices in any considerable and sensible degree is not desirable any more than encrease of prices

    26

    The an encrease produces loss to one part of the community, the other to another.

    27

    But the mischief which the community is exposed to suffer from encrease is beyond comparison greater than that it is exposed to suffer from decrease: for encrease, with the mischief attendant on it, has its limits.

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    The entire stoppage of the encrease of money would be productive to a certain degree of a decrease of prices

    29

    But the decrease capable of resulting from such a cause would never /hardly/ be considerable enough to be productive of a sensible degree of inconvenience.

    30

    It can no otherwise happen /be produced/ than by an encrease in the quantity of real wealth. It therefore can not outstrip the encrease in the quantity of real wealth. The encrease in the quantity of real wealth can scarcely be quick enough to produce any sensible inconvenience by encrease of

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    prices: that is to produce in the compass of more[?] than an ordinary term has to run any such decrease in the prices of the products of agriculture as shall diminish in any sensible degree the means /[…?]/ of the farmer in respect of the payment of his rent.

    31

    It does not appear that the quantity of real wealth has more than doubled itself in the course of the last hundred years. But it must double itself before it can have produced a diminution to the amount of 50 per Cent in the quantities of money in the hands of farmers for the payment of their rents.

    32

    If the encrease in the population of Great Britain and Ireland is to be understood as kindled by the encrease in the quantity of subsistence capable of being raised within the local limits of the two Islands, it is impossible that the real wealth of the two Islands should ever rise to double its present amount, in any number of years, much less in another hundred years. For there remains, out of land susceptible of cultivation, double the quantity of land already brought into cultivation.

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    If therefore the quantity of real wealth were to double itself in the hundred years, the virtual income tax thus imposed on the farmers would not, if /although/ it were subject to no deductions exceed the amount of 10 per Cent: for the three rents which on the ordinary computation the farmer must and does produce it is one only that he will have to turn into money for producing the same […?] sum of money every year for paying the Landlord’s Rent: for the rest, though he will receive less money a quantity of money decreased[?] in the proportion supposed, yet as the value of it will encrease

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    in the same proportion, he will be no loser upon these two parts: that portion of them which is consumed by him and his family in kind included.

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    The amount of this tax is no greater than what may be expected to receive in the time a full compensation in /from/ the improvements that will have been made in agriculture, and if it should

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    not receive any compensation, the amount of it /its pressure on the particular class/ is scarce worth regarding when compared either with that of the pressure to which all classes have been accustomed or with the encrease on the aggregate of the national wealth as composed of the wealth of all classes together which it must have had for its accompaniment, having had that and nothing else for its cause.

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    As it has happened, the encrease in the quantity of real wealth has been accompanied with an encrease in the quantity of money for some centuries. But this consideration is altogether an accidental one.

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    Neither, if I have been rightly informed would it be found, if we were to go back to a certain period be found a uniform or constant one, for in the history of this country there have been different periods during which prices have been upon the decrease.

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    of the quantity employd /applied/ in paying labour employed in encreasing the quantity of stock constituting the /a/ source of real wealth, to the quantity employd in paying labour employd in drawing wealth for the purposes of quick and annual consumption from those sources.