Defence of Usury [33]
other, at what time soever planted, must equally have been planted by projectors: for though Tubal Cain himself were to be brought post from Armenia to plant Sheffield, Tubal Cain himself was as arrant a projector in his day, as ever Sir Thomas Lombe was, or Bishop Blaise: but Birmingham, it seems, claims in common parlance the title of a projecting town, to the exclusion of the other, because, being but of yesterday, the spirit of project smells fresher and stronger there than elsewhere. When the odious sound of the word projector no longer tingles in your ears, the race of men thus stigmatized do not always find you their enemy. Projects, even under the name of "dangerous and expensive experiments," are represented as not unfit to be encouraged, even though monopoly be the means: and the monopoly is defended in that instance, by its similarity to other instances in which the like means are employed to the like purpose. "When a company of merchants undertake at their own risk and expence to establish a new trade, with some remote and barbarous nation, it may not be unreasonable" (you observe) "to incorporate them into a joint-stock company, and to grant them, in case of their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain number of years. It is the easiest and most natural way, in which the state can recompense them, for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment, of which the public is afterwards to reap the benefit. A temporary monopoly of this kind may be vindicated, upon the same principles, upon which a like monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that of a new book to its author." Private respect must not stop me from embracing this occasion of giving a warning, which is so much needed by mankind. If so original and independent a spirit has not been always able to save itself from being drawn aside by the fascination of sounds, into the paths of vulgar prejudice, how strict a watch ought not men of common mould to set over their judgments, to save themselves from being led astray by similar delusions? I have sometimes been tempted to think, that were it in the power of laws to put words under proscription, as it is to put men, the cause of inventive industry might perhaps derive scarcely less assistance from a bill of attainder against the words project and Projectors, than it has derived from the act authorizing the grant of patents. I should add, however, for a time: for even then the envy, and vanity, and wounded pride, of the uningenious herd, would sooner or later infuse their venom into some other word, and set it up as a new tyrant, to hover, like its predecessor, over the birth of infant genius, and crush it in its cradle. Will not you accuse me of pushing malice beyond all bounds, if I bring down against you so numerous and respectable a body of men, as the members of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts? I do not, must not, care: for you command too much respect to have any claim to mercy. At least you will not accuse me of spiriting up against you barbarian enemies, and devoting you to the vengeance of Cherokees and Chicasaws. Of that popular institution, the very professed and capital object is the encouragement of projects, and the propagating of that obnoxious breed, the crushing of which you commend as a fit exercise for the arm of power. But if it be right to crush the acting malefactors, it would be downright inconsistency not to crush, at the same time, or rather not to begin with crushing, these their hirers and abettors. Thank then their inadvertence, or their generosity, or their prudence, if their beadle has not yet received orders to burn in ceremony, as a libel on the society, a book that does honour to the age. After having had the boldness to accuse so great a master of having fallen unawares into an error, may I take the still farther liberty, of setting conjecture to work to account for it? Scarce any man, perhaps no man, can push the work of creation, in any line, to such a pitch of compleatness, as to have gone through the task of