Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest [29]
will be had as long as Men have Money or Credit, whatever Rates they cost, and the rather because they are dear. For it being Vanity not Use that makes the Expensive Fashion of your People, the Emulation is, who shall have the finest, that is, the dearest things, not the most convenient or useful. How many things do we value or buy, because they come at dear rates from Japan and China, which if they were our own Manufacture or Product, common to be had, and for a little Money, would be contemned and neglected? Have not several of our own Commodities offered to Sale at reasonable Rates been despised, and the very same eagerly bought and brag'd of, when sold for Fiench at a double Price? You must not think therefore that the raising their Price will lessen the Vent of Fashionable Foreign Commodities amongst you, as long as Men have any way to purchase them, but rather increase it. French Wine is become a Modish Drink amongst us, and a Man is asham'd to Entertain his Friend, or almost to Dine himself Without it. The Price is in the Memory of Man rais'd from 6 d. to 2 s. and does this hinder the Drinking of it? No, the quite contrary, a Man's way of Living is commended, because he will give any Rate for it: And a Man will give any Rate rather than pass for a poor Wretch, or Penurious Curmudgeon, that is not able or knows not how to live well, nor use his Friends civilly. Fashion is for the most part nothing but the Ostentation of Riches, and therefore the high price of what serves to that, rather increases than lessens its Vent. The contest and glory is in the Expence, not the Usefulness of it; and People are then thought, and said to live well, when they can make a shew of rare and foreign things, and such as their Neighbours cannot go to the Price of. Thus we see how Foreign Commodities fall not in their Price by Taxes laid on them, because the Merchant is not necessitated to bring to your Market any but Fashionable Commodities, and those go off the better for their high rate. But on the contrary your Landholder being forced to bring his Commodities to Market, such as his Land and Industry affords them, common and known things, must sell them there at such price as he can get. This the buyer knows; and these home-bred Commodities being seldom, the Favourites of your People, or any farther acceptable, than as great conveniency recommends them to the Vulgar, or downright necessity to all, as soon as a Tax is laid on them, every one makes as sparing a use of them as he can, that he may save his Money for other necessary, or creditable Expences, whereby the price they yield the first Seller is mightily abated, and so the yearly value of the Land, which produces them, lessen'd too. If therefore the laying of Taxes upon Commodities does, as it is evident, affect the Land, that is out at Rack-rent, it is plain it does equally affect all the other Land in England too, and the Gent. will, but the worst way, increase their own Charges, that is by lessening the Yearly Value of their Estates, if they hope to ease their Land, by charging Commodities. It is in vain in a Country whose great Fund is Land, to hope to lay the publick charge of the Government on any thing else; there at last it will terminate. The Merchant (do what you can) will not bear it, the Labourer cannot, and therefore the Landholder must: And whether he were best do it, by laying it directly, where it will at last settle, or by letting it come to him by the sinking of his Rents, which when they are once fallen every one knows are not easily raised again, let him consider. Holland is brought as an instance of laying the Charge of the publique upon Trade, and 'tis possibly (excepting some few small Free Towns) the only place in the World that could be brought to favour this way. But yet when examin'd will be found to shew the quite contrary, and be a clear Proof, that lay the Taxes how you will, Land every where, in proportion, bears the greater share of the burthen. The publick Charge of the Government, 'tis said, is, in the United Provinces, laid on Trade.