Defence of Usury [27]
what is essential to the publick, is, what the error is in the sentiments entertained, not who it is that entertains them. I know not whether the observations which I have been troubling you with, will be thought to need, or whether they will be thought to receive, any additional support from those comfortable positions, of which you have made such good and such frequent use, concerning the constant tendency of mankind to get forward in the career of prosperity, the prevalence of prudence over imprudence, in the sum of private conduct at least, and the superior fitness of individuals for managing their own pecuniary concerns, of which they know the particulars and the circumstances, in comparison of the legislator, who can have no such knowledge. I will make the experiment: for, so long as I have the mortification to see you on the opposite side, I can never think the ground I have taken strong enough, while any thing remains that appears capable of rendering it still stronger. "With regard to misconduct, the number of prudent and successful undertakings" (you observe(28*)) "is every where much greater than that of injudicious and unsuccessful ones. After all our complaints of the frequency of bankruptcies, the unhappy men who fall into this misfortune make but a very small part of the whole number engaged in trade, and all other sorts of business; not much more perhaps than one in a thousand." 'Tis in support of this position that you appeal to history for the constant and uninterrupted progress of mankind, in our island at least, in the career of prosperity: calling upon any one who should entertain a doubt of the fact, to divide the history into any number of periods, from the time of Caesar's visit down to the present: proposing for instance the respective aeras of the Restoration, the Accession of Elizabeth, that of Henry VII, the Norman Conquest, and the Heptarchy, and putting it to the sceptic to find out, if he can, among all these periods, any one at which the condition of the country was not more prosperous than at the period immediately preceding it; spite of so many wars, and fires, and plagues, and all other public calamities, with which it has been at different times afflicted, whether by the hand of God, or by the misconduct of the sovereign. No very easy task, I believe: the fact is too manifest for the most jaundiced eye to escape seeing it: -- But what and whom are we to thank for it, but projects, and projectors? "No," I think I hear you saying, "I will not thank projectors for it, I will rather thank the laws, which by fixing the rates of interest have been exercising their vigilance in repressing the temerity of projectors, and preventing their imprudence from making those defalcations from the sum of national prosperity which it would not have failed to make, had it been left free. If, during all these periods, that adventurous race of men had been left at liberty by the laws to give full scope to their rash enterprizes, the increase of national prosperity during these periods might have afforded some ground for regarding them in a more favourable point of view. But the fact is, that their activity has had these laws to check it; without which checks you must give me leave to suppose, that the current of prosperity, if not totally stopt, or turned the other way, would at any rate have been more or less retarded. Here then" (you conclude) "lies the difference between us: what you look upon as the cause of the increase about which we are both agreed, I look upon as an obstacle to it: and what you look upon as the obstacle, I look upon as the cause." instead of starting this as a sort of plea that might be urged by you, I ought, perhaps, rather to have mentioned it as what might be urged by some people in your place: for as I do not imagine your penetration would suffer you to rest satisfied with it, still less can I suppose that, if you were not, your candour would allow you to make use of it as if you were. To prevent your resting satisfied with it, the following considerations would