It is, I apprehend, impossible, to explain the far extended oppression under which capital and industry have labored, but by admitting that they have applied themselves largely to objects, the direct effects of the attainment of which are worse than useless to society.Misery it is true is clamorous, happiness is quiet, and therefore the amount of the actual distress may sometimes have been made to appear greater than the reality, but admitting a large deduction for misrepresentation thence arising, there remain too many well authenticated facts and statements to doubt, that if freedom of intercourse and competition has produced good, it has also produced evil, and hence that luxuries have made a large part of the commodities in the production of which that competition has exerted its powers.We may observe too, that countries producers of articles which cannot be accounted luxuries, have in fact derived great advantages from the facility of intercourse and increase of exchanges.Russia seems never to have made so rapid advances, as within the last twenty years, while in Great Britain protracted misery and distress were never so rife as they have been for the greater part of that period.Were European nations ranged according to their productions, those two countries would probably be at opposite extremities of the scale of industry.
CHAPTER XIII.OF WASTE.
The causes arising from deficiencies in the moral and intellectual powers retarding the progress of improvement and accumulation, and diminishing the stocks of societies, which we have hitherto noticed, refer to the matter of which commodities consist.There are others proceeding apparently from the same circumstances, which create difficulties in the exchange and preservation of instruments, and may be said to relate to the manner in which exchanges are made and instruments preserved.
Every thing retarding, or interposing difficulties in the exchange of instruments, must have the effect of placing them in orders of slower return.
It must lengthen the period of exhaustion, or add to the labor of formation.
Instruments may be exchanged, as we have seen, either by barter or cash, or, through the intervention of credit, -- a promise to deliver an equivalent at some future time.
In the case of transfers by barter or cash, were the holders of instruments so exchanged to represent them exactly for what they are, all difficulties would be done.away with, not arising from the nature of the things themselves.
But it is the business of every exchanger to buy as cheaply, and sell as dearly, ss possible, and he very frequently, I might say generally, endeavors to do so by representing things to be other than what they are.Were any one, for example, desirous of purchasing a horse, morally certain that to whatsoever render of those animals he applied, he would tell him, as nearly as he himself knew, the qualities of the horses he had on hand, and their just value, any purchase of this sort he might have to make would be made with facility and at once.The purchaser, however, can seldom depend on the accuracy of the statements he so receives.He is often obliged.to take much trouble, and to spend no little time, before he makes his bargain, and, notwithstanding, is not unfrequently deceived.The time and money thus expended, both by the sellers and purchasers of horses, and other commodities, is so much loss to the community, and places the instruments on which they are expended in orders of more slow return.Indirectly, too, they may occasion more serious losses.Ira farmer be deceived in the purchase of a horse, it may very injuriously retard his operations at the moment when it is most necessary for him to advance them.If a builder be deceived in the timber he purchases, it may occasion the speedy decay of the whole fabric he erects.
The amount of loss arising, both directly and indirectly, from successful or unsuccessful attempts to pass off commodities for what they are not, is, I apprehend, determined by the weakness of the social and benevolent affections and intellectual powers.Where there is the most lively sympathy with the distresses and losses of others, one will be most restrained from being the cause of loss to another, both from the promptings of his own feelings, and from a consideration of the sentiments with which others will regard him.Where the tendency and consequences of actions are most clearly seen, one will be most cautious of doing any thing, which, by weakening general confidence and security, may prejudicially affect the interests of society.Such losses will therefore be least frequent where the accumulative principle is strongest, and most frequent where it is weakest.
In China every man who sells tells as many lies as he thinks have any chance of passing.He is never ashamed at being detected.When that happens, he merely compliments the person discovering the intended deception on his sagacity.Among the ancients, both Greeks and Romans, all sorts of trickery and artifice in purchasers and sellers seem to have been common.
Plato makes Socrates say that, in traffic and commerce, there is no such thing as an honest man, and Cicero has a remark very similar.These, anal the like assertions of classical authors, have indeed, now-a-days, been put down as mere prejudice, but, though we are doubtless a very acute and sagacious generation, I can scarce think but that Socrates and Cicero knew their own countrymen better than we can do.Mercantile honor and fair dealing are modern terms.Without much of the reality of what they import, the extensive transactions now carried on between individuals and communities could not exist.Nevertheless, the things to which they are applied want often not a little of being fitly so described, and the deficiency in all communities occasions a large portion of the outlay necessary to the formation of instruments.
