Defence of Usury [38]
understand clearly what benefit was expected from it, but how that benefit was to flow from it is as much a mystery to me as ever. I will however avail myself now of that intelligence. By way of postscript, I have accordingly given a very short, but what appeared to me compleat, answer to the argument afforded by that supposed benefit to my system: and being thereby engaged to touch upon the measure of an ulterior reduction by which this supposed advantage was brought to view, I have stated such other considerations a appear to combat the propriety of that ulterior reduction, though not all of them applicable to the continuing of the rate at its present level. As little can I pretend to say, whether a project of the same nature bas received any check from it in England. Infallibility is among the appendages of power: and if it be a dream, it is one of those which do not own themselves as such, and from which men are seldom thankful for being awaked. Several circumstances render probable that a project of this sort was not very long ago entertained: a positive assertion to that effect made in the Irish Parliament received no contradiction. Of late, nothing has been heard of it. The notion perhaps may be, that the country is not yet ripe for it. My notion is that no country ever was, or ever can be. I do not pretend here to exhaust the subject, or to urge all that can be urged against the measure: nor to trace out to the last link the whole chain of its consequences. Such an undertaking would require more paper perhaps than it is worth, at any rate more time than at present I can spare. All I pretend to is to give what shall be sufficient to demonstrate its impolicy and injustice. The propositions here given as conclusions from the decisive principle are, most of them, maintained by Dr Smith. The proposition here given as a principle itself is also laid down in the same admirable work: but without emphasis, and for any direct use that has been made of it, it might as well have not been there. Wide is the difference between a full view of a principle and a side glance. The principle which forms the basis of Locke's Essay is to be found, in so many words, in Aristotle: yet what was the world the better for it while it was in the hands of Aristotle, till Locke put it out to use? This same principle is also to be found, stated still more pointedly, in Lord Sheffield's elaborate and useful work. Yet what came of it? The whole work is full of advice as repugnant to that principle as it is to the doctrines of Dr Smith's book: that very book which his Lordship quotes in those terms of respect which is its due, for the sake of stating almost the only doctrine in which the authority is in his favour, passing by the whole of what is against him, that is almost the whole contents of the book, as if they had not been there. Colonies. Dr. Smith observes that, by the expence they have produced instead of revenue, they have been always hitherto worth so much less than nothing, and by the expence of wars waged for them, a hundred and so many millions less than nothing. What is his practical inference? that they should be given up? no: but that either they should be given up, or made to yield a revenue, which is impossible. The idea of giving them up is started -- but how? as the extremity of misfortune, the horrors of which should drive us into schemes for making them yield a revenue, as the only alternative common sense admitts of. We are to give them up: how? with the same emotions of regret, with which a man who found a necessity of retrenching, would lay down his equipage. The separation would be a misfortune not to us only, but to them. Why to them? because nothing but our superior wisdom and virtue could prevent their falling together by the ears. The event has not been favourable to this prophecy. Among these rebels, every thing breathes content and unanimity. Ill will there never has been: and the last spark of so much as a difference of opinion, patience has now finally extinguished. In the principal of our still loyal