第20章 POPULAR ERRORS ON THE CAUSES AFFECTING(11)

So far am I from concurring in Mr. Ricardo's opinion, that it is the interest of the labourers that revenue should be spentrather on service s than on commodities, that I believe their interest to be precisely opposite. In the first place, the labourercan generally manage better his own income than it can be managed for him by his master. If a domestic servant could earnas wages the whole sum which he costs his master, even if he were to spend it as he received it, he would probably spend itwith more enjoyment. Secondly, the income spent on services is spent in the purchase of what perishes at the instant of itscreation; that spent on commodities often leaves results which, when their first purchaser has done with them, areserviceable to others. In this country the poor are, to a great extent, clothed with garments originally provided for theirsuperiors. In all the better class of cottages may be found articles of furniture which never could have been made for theirpresent possessors. A large portion of the commodities which now contribute to the comfort of the labouring classes wouldnever have existed, if it had been the fashion in this country, during the last fifty years, to prefer retinue and attendance todurable commodities. And, thirdly, the income employed on commodities is favourable to the creation of both material andimmaterial capital; that employed on services is not. The duties of a servant are so easily learned, that he can scarcely betermed a skilled labourer: his accumulations are small in amount, and seldom turned to much advantage. The artisan learnsa trade, in which every year adds to his skill, and is taught mechanical and chemical processes, often susceptible ofindefinite improvement, and in which a single invention may raise the author to wealth, and diffuse prosperity over a wholedistrict, or even a whole nation. An industrious artisan can often save a large portion of his income, and invest it with greatand immediate profit. He purchases with his savings a small stock of tools and materials, and by the vigilance and activitywhich can be applied only to a small capital, renders every portion of it efficient. The ancestors, and not the remoteancestors, of some of our richest and our proudest families, the authors of some of our most valuable discoveries, werecommon mechanics. What menial servant has in this country, and in modern times, been a public benefactor, or even raisedhimself to affluence? Both history and observation show that those countries in which expenditure is chiefly employed inthe purchase of services are poor, and those in which it is employed on commodities are rich.

Mr. Ricardo's theory as to the effects of war is still more strikingly erroneous. It is, in the first place, open to all theobjections which I have already opposed to his views respecting menial servants. The revenue which is employed inmaintaining soldiers and sailors would, even if unproductively consumed, maintain at least an equal number of servants andartisans; and that portion of it which would have been employed in the maintenance of artisans would (as we have seen)have been far more beneficially employed. The demand for soldiers and sailors is not, as he terms it, an additional, it ismerely a substituted demand. But a great part of that revenue would have been productively consumed. Instead ofemploying some labourers in converting suburbs into fortifications, and forests into navies, to perish by dry rot in harbour,or by exposure. at sea, and others in walking the deck and parading on the rampart, it would have employed them in adding more and moreevery year to the fund from which their subsistence is derived. War is mischievous to every class in the community; but tonone is it such. a curse as to the labourers.