There is an example of the compensations in the commercial history of
this country. When the European wars threw the carrying-trade of the
world, from 1800 to 1812, into American bottoms, a seizure was now and
then made of an American ship. Of course, the loss was serious to the
owner, but the country was indemnified; for we charged threepence a
pound for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, and so on; which paid
for the risk and loss, and brought into the country an immense
prosperity, early marriages, private wealth, the building of cities, and
of states: and, after the war was over, we received compensation over
and above, by treaty, for all the seizures. Well, the Americans grew
rich and great. But the pay-day comes round. Britain, France, and
Germany, which our extraordinary profits had impoverished, send out,
attracted by the fame of our advantages, first their thousands, then
their millions, of poor people, to share the crop. At first, we employ
them, and increase our prosperity: but, in the artificial system of
society and of protected labor, which we also have adopted and enlarged,
there come presently checks and stoppages. Then we refuse to employ
these poor men. But they will not so be answered. They go into the poor
rates, and, though we refuse wages, we must now pay the same amount in
the form of taxes. Again, it turns out that the largest proportion of
crimes are committed by foreigners. The cost of the crime, and the
expense of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and the standing army
of preventive police we must pay. The cost of education of the
posterity of this great colony, I will not compute. But the gross
amount of these costs will begin to pay back what we thought was a net
gain from our transatlantic customers of 1800. It is vain to refuse this
payment. We cannot get rid of these people, and we cannot get rid of
their will to be supported. That has become an inevitable element of
our politics; and, for their votes, each of the dominant parties courts
and assists them to get it executed. Moreover, we have to pay, not what
would have contented them at home, but what they have learned to think
necessary here; so that opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral
considerations complicate the problem.
There are a few measures of economy which will bear to be named without
disgust; for the subject is tender, and we may easily have too much of
it; and therein resembles the hideous animalcules of which our bodies
are built up,—which, offensive in the particular, yet compose valuable
and effective masses. Our nature and genius force us to respect ends,
whilst we use means. We must use the means, and yet, in our most
accurate using, somehow screen and cloak them, as we can only give them
any beauty, by a reflection of the glory of the end. That is the good
head, which serves the end, and commands the means. The rabble are
corrupted by their means: the means are too strong for them, and they
desert their end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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