Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch Pass'd off to heaven, translated, and not killed; As though he had no wife to pine for him-- Of our fierce doings! I have told, O Britons! O my brethren! I have told Who will not fall before their images, And yield them worship, they are enemies Such have 1 been deem'd." * S. T. C. * That he might be deemed so no longer, Mr. COLERIDGE soon after becanie passionate for war himself; and “swell'd the war-whoop" in the Morning Post. "I am not indeed silly enough," he says, "to take as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion that the late war (1802) was a war produced by the MORNING POST; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on my tomb.”—Biographia Literaria, vol, i, p. 212. ON THE EFFECTS OF WAR AND TAXES. "Great princes have great playthings. Some have play'd At hewing mountains into men, and some At building human wonders mountain-high. But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise, COWPER. August 31, 1817. THE whole question of the effect of war and taxes, in an economical point of view, reduces itself to the distinction between productive and unproductive labour. It is a pity that some member of the House of Commons does not move a string of resolutions on this subject, as a comment on the measures of the present, and a guide to those of future reigns. A film appears to have been spread for some time over the eyes of the nation, as to the consequences of the course they were pursuing; and a good deal of pains has been taken, by sophistry, and false statements, to perplex a very plain question. But we are not without hopes, in the following observations, of putting the merits of our debt and taxes in so clear a light, that not even the Finance Committee shall be any longer blind to them. Labour is of two kinds, productive and unproductive :-that which adds materially to the comforts and necessaries of life, or that which adds nothing to the common stock, or nothing in proportion to what it takes away from it in order to maintain itself. Money may be laid out, and people employed in either of these two kinds of labour equally, but not, we imagine, with equal benefit to the community.-[See p. 109, &c. of this volume.] Suppose I employ a man in standing on his head, or running up and down a hill all day, and that I give him five shillings a day for his pains. He is equally employed, equally paid, and equally gains a subsistence in this way, as if he was employed, in his original trade of a shoemaker, in making a pair of shoes for a person who wants them. But in the one case he is employed in unproductive, in the other in productive labour. In the one, he is employed and paid and receives a subsistence for doing that which might as well be let alone; in the other, for doing that which is of use and importance, and which must either be done by him, or give some one else double trouble to do it. If I hire a livery-servant, and keep him fine and lazy and well-fed to stand behind my chair while I eat turtle or venison, this is another instance of unproductive labour. Now the person who is in real want of a pair of shoes, and who has by his own labour and skill raised money enough to pay for them, will not assuredly lay it out, in preference, in hiring the shoemaker to run up a hill for him, or to stand upon his head, or behind a chair for his amusement.* But if I have received this money from him in the shape of taxes, having already received enough in the same way to pay for my shoes, my stockings, my house, my furniture, &c. then it is very likely (as we see it constantly happen) that I shall lay out this last five shillings worth of taxes, which I probably get for doing nothing, in employing another person to do nothing, -or to run up a hill, or to stand upon his head, or wait behind me at dinner, while the poor man, who pays me the tax, goes without his shoes and his dinner. Is this clear? Or put thus in two words. That is productive labour, for which a man will give the only money he has in the world, or a certain sum, having no more than other people: that is unproductive labour, for which a man will never give the only money he is worth, the money he has earned by his own labour, nor any money at all, unless he has ten times as much as he wants, or as other people it We never knew but one instance to contradict this opinion. A person who had only fourpence left in the world, which his wife had put by to pay for the baking of some meat and a pudding, went and laid it out in purchasing a new string for a guitar. Some one on this occasion quoted the lines, "And ever against eating cares, Wrap me in soft Lydian airs." S have, to throw away in superfluities. A man who has only got money to buy a loaf will not lay it out in an ice. But he may lay it out in a dram! Yes; because to the wretched it is often more important to forget their future than even to supply their present wants. The extravagance and thoughtlessness of the poor arise, not from their having more than enough to satisfy their immediate necessities, but from their not having enough to ward off impending ones,—in a word, from desperation. This is the true answer to Mr. Malthus's politico-theological system of parish ethics, the only real clue to the causes and the cure of pauperism! If the Board of Works were to have a canal made from London to the Land's End (as has been proposed) this, for aught we know, would be productive labour, and well paid for out of the public taxes; because the public might in the end reap the benefit of the money and the labour so employed. But if the Prince Regent were by the advice of some fantastical, purblind politician, to order this canal to be lined all the way with gold-leaf, which would be washed away as soon as the water came into the canal, this is what we should call unproductive labour. Such a project would indeed cost as much money, it would require the raising of as many taxes, it would keep as many men employed, it would maintain them while they were so employed, just as well as if they were employed in any other way; but when done, it would be of no use to Prince or people. We have heard of a patriotic nobleman, who had a brick-wall built round his estate, to give employment to the poor in his neighbourhood. If he had afterwards employed them to pull it down again, it would have given them twice the employment and done twice the good. But if the same persons had been employed in productive labour, in raising corn, in making furniture, in building or improving cottages, it would not have been equally adviseable to set them to work again to burn the corn, or destroy the furniture, or pull down the cottages. In spite then of the fashionable doctrines of political economy, so well suited to the extravagance of the times, there is something else to be considered in judging of the value of labour, besides what it costs, viz. what it produces; whether it is of use to any body, and to whom. All is not gain that goes out of the purse. The nobleman above mentioned did not take the money to pay for building the wall round his estate out of the pockets of the people; but suppose an equal sum to be taken yearly out of the Civil List or any other branch of public revenue, and employed in raising some huge heap of stones-not a monument, but a mausoleum of royal taste and magnificence-the question is, whether the money thus raised by taxes, and laid out in a job, is a saving or a loss to the public? And this question is, we conceive, answered by another, whether if the money had remained in the hands of the public, they would have agreed among themselves, to have laid it out in such a building for them to look at? It would hardly be thought wise to vote a sum of money, to build a Cottage Ornée, large enough to cover a whole county; though the expense (and, according to the theory we are combating, the benefit) would increase with the size of the building and the waste of work. The Pyramids of Egypt and the Pavilion at Brighton, are among the instances of unproductive labour. We have been twenty years at war, and have laid out five hundred millions in war taxes; and what have we gained by it? Where are the proceeds? If it has not been thrown away in what produces no return, if it has not been sunk in the war, as much as if it had been sunk in the sea, if the government as good factors for the general weal have laid out all this enormous sum in useful works, in productive labour, let them give us back the principal and the interest, (which is just double) and keep the profits to themselves-instead of which, they have made away with the principal, and come to us to pay them the interest in taxes. They have nothing to shew for either, but spiked cannon, rotten ships, gunpowder blown into the air, heaps of dead men's sculls, the turned heads and coats of Poets Laureate, with the glories of Trafalgar and Waterloo, which however will pay no |