Jim Devine wrote:
Perelman, Michael wrote:
Money from the East India Company was used to buy estates, which did
help to revolutionize the countryside.
How is buying land revolutionary? don't capitalist-type property
relations have to be in place before land can be bought?
"the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was frequently
employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of which a
great part would frequently be uncultivated. Merchants are commonly
ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and when they do, they are
generally the best of all improvers. A merchant is accustomed to
employ his money chiefly in profitable projects, whereas a mere
country gentleman is accustomed to employ it chiefly in expence. The
one often sees his money go from him and return to him again with a
profit; the other, when once he parts with it, very seldom expects to
see any more of it. Those different habits naturally affect their
temper and disposition in every sort of business. A merchant is
commonly a bold, a country gentleman a timid undertaker. The one is
not afraid to lay out at once a large capital upon the improvement of
his land when he has a probable prospect of raising the value of it
in proportion to the expence. The other, if he has any capital, which
is not always the case, seldom ventures to employ it in this manner.
If he improves at all, it is commonly not with a capital, but with
what he can save out of his annual revenue. Whoever has had the
fortune to live in a mercantile town situated in an unimproved
country must have frequently observed how much more spirited the
operations of merchants were in this way than those of mere country
gentlemen.*57 The habits, besides, of order, economy, and attention,
to which mercantile business naturally forms a merchant, render him
much fitter to execute, with profit and success, any project of
improvement."
"what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have
effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and
manufactures gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the
great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the
whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume
themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All
for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of
the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As
soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole
value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share
them with any other persons. For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps,
or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the
maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance
of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and
authority which it could give them. The buckles, however, were to be
all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of
them; whereas in the more ancient method of expence they must have
shared with at least a thousand people. With the judges that were to
determine the preference this difference was perfectly decisive; and
thus, for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest, and
the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole
power and authority."
"A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness was
in this manner brought about by two different orders of people who
had not the least intention to serve the public. To gratify the most
childish vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. The
merchants and artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a
view to their own interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar
principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got. Neither
of them had either knowledge or foresight of that great revolution
which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was
gradually bringing about.
"It is thus that through the greater part of Europe the commerce and
manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the
cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html
Ted
