第78章 Letter XIX(3)

What will happen,when we have mortgaged and funded all we have to mortgage and to fund;when we have mortgaged to new creditors that sinking fund which was mortgaged to other creditors not yet paid off;when we have mortgaged all the product of our land,and even our land itself?Who can answer,that when we come to such extremities,or have them more nearly in prospect,ten millions of people will bear any longer to be hewers of wood,and drawers of water,to maintain the two hundredth part of that number at ease,and in plenty?Who can answer,that the whole body of the people will suffer themselves to be treated,in favour of an handful of men (for they who monopolize the whole power,and may in time monopolize the whole property of the funds,are indeed but an handful),who can answer,that the whole body of the people will suffer themselves to be treated,in favour of such an handful,as the poor Indians are,in favour of the Spaniards;to be parcelled out in lots,as it were;and to be assigned,like these indians to the Spanish planters,to toil and starve for the proprietors of the several funds?Who can answer,that a scheme,which oppresses the farmer,ruins the manufacturer,breaks the merchant,discourages industry,and reduces fraud into system;which beggars so often the fair adventurer and innocent proprietor;which drains continually a portion of our national wealth away to foreigners,and draws most perniciously the rest of that immense property that was diffused among thousands,into the pockets of a few;who can answer that such a scheme will be always endured?But I have run,before I was aware,from my subject,which requires no more than that I should take notice of the establishment of the public funds,as it furnishes new means of corruption on the part of the crown,and new facilities to these means,on the part of the people.

Now this,I suppose,hath need of no proof,and of little explanation;for,first,the whole art of stockjobbing,the whole mystery of iniquity mentioned above,arises from this establishment,and is employed about the funds;and,secondly,the main springs that turn,or may turn,the artificial wheel of credit,and make the paper estates that are fastened to it,rise or fall,lurk behind the veil of the treasury.From hence it follows,that if this office should be ever unrighteously administered;if there should ever be at the head of it,one of those veteran sharpers,who hath learned by experience how to improve the folly,and aggravate the misfortunes of his fellow-subjects,of the innocent,of the poor,of the widow,and of the orphan,to his own,or any other private advantage;it follows,I say,that he must have it in his power,and there can be no doubt of his will,to employ two methods of corruption,without any encumbrance to the civil list.Such a ministerial jobber may employ the opportunities of gaining on the funds,that he can frequently create by a thousand various artifices (notwithstanding the excellent provisions that have been lately made against the infamous practice of stockjobbing,by the wisdom of the legislature,and which we promise ourselves will be still improved),and he may apply the gains that are thus made,to corruption,in aid of the civil list.He may corrupt men with their own spoils,and bribe even those whom he reduced by his clandestine practices to that penury which could alone make them capable of being bribed;or,when he hath to do with men of another character (for no rank alone will be sufficient to raise them,in such an age,above the most direct and prostitute corruption),he may bribe them by a whisper,initiate them into his mystery to gain them,and then secure them by a participation of the same fraud and the same profit.

Though this reasoning be hypothetical,yet the suppositions are not strained,nor unnatural;for as the meanest grubs on earth have raised themselves by stockjobbing to the rank and port of noblemen and gentlemen;so may noblemen and gentlemen debase themselves to their meanness,and acquire the same spirit,by following the same trade.That luxury which began to spread after the Restoration of King Charles the Second,hath increased ever since;hath descended from the highest to the lowest ranks of our people,and is become national.