a gentleman, but that of a burgher, and who- CHAP. ever rents the lands of another becomes fubject to it. No gentleman, nor even any burgher who has stock, will fubmit to this degradation. This tax, therefore, not only hinders the stock which accumulates upon the land from being employed in its improvement, but drives away all other stock from it. The ancient tenths and fifteenths, fo ufual in England in former times, feem, fo far as they affected the land, to have been taxes of the fame nature with the taille. UNDER all these difcouragements, little improvement could be expected from the occupiers of land. That order of people, with all the liberty and fecurity which law can give, muft always improve under great difadvantages. The farmer compared with the proprietor, is as a merchant who trades with borrowed money compared with one who trades with his own. The ftock of both may improve, but that of the one, with only equal good conduct, must always improve more flowly than that of the other, on account of the large fhare of the profits which is confumed by the intereft of the loan. The lands cultivated by the farmer muft, in the fame manner, with only equal good conduct, be improved more flowly than thofe cultivated by the proprietor; on account of the large fhare of the produce which is confumed in the rent, and which, had the farmer been proprietor, he might have employed in the further improvement of the land. The ftation of a farmer befides is, from the nature of things, inferior to that of a proVOL. II. prietor. H III. BOOK prietor. Through the greater part of Europe the yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank of people, even to the better fort of tradesmen and mechanics, and in all parts of Europe to the great merchants and mafter manufacturers. It can feldom happen, therefore, that a man of any confiderable stock fhould quit the fuperior, in order to place himself in an inferior station. Even in the present state of Europe, therefore, little ftock is likely to go from any other profeffion to the improvement of land in the way of farming. More does perhaps in Great Britain than in any other country, though even there the great stocks which are, in fome places, employed in farming, have generally been acquired by farming, the trade, perhaps, in which of all others ftock is commonly acquired moft flowly. After fmall proprietors, however, rich and great farmers are, in every country, the principal improvers. There are more fuch perhaps in England than in any other European monarchy. In the republican governments of Holland and of Berne in Switzerland, the farmers are faid to be not inferior to thofe of England. THE ancient policy of Europe was, over and above all this, unfavourable to the improvement and cultivation of land, whether carried on by the proprietor or by the farmer; firft, by the general prohibition of the exportation of corn without a special licence, which feems to have been a very univerfal regulation; and fecondly, by the restraints which were laid upon the inland commerce, not only of corn but of almost every other other part of the produce of the farm, by the CHA P. abfurd laws against engroffers, regrators, and foreftallers, and by the privileges of fairs and markets. It has already been obferved in what manner the prohibition of the exportation of corn, together with fome encouragement given to the importation of foreign corn, obftructed the cultivation of ancient Italy, naturally the moft fertile country in Europe, and at that time the feat of the greatest empire in the world. To what degree fuch restraints upon the inland commerce of this commodity, joined to the general prohibition of exportation, muft have difcouraged the cultivation of countries less fertile, and lefs favourably circumstanced, it is not perhaps very easy to imagine. CHA P. III. Of the Rife and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire. HE inhabitants of cities and towns were, THE after the fall of the Roman empire, not more favoured than thofe of the country. They confifted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the firft inhabitants of the ancient republics of Greece and Italy. These laft were compofed chiefly of the proprietors of lands, among whom the public territory was originally divided, and who found it convenient to build their H 2 ther, and to furround them with a wall, for the fake of common defence. After the fall of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land feem generally to have lived in fortified castles on their own eftates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradefinen and mechanics, who feem in those days to have been of fervile, or very nearly of fervile condition. The privileges which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of fome of the principal towns in Europe, fufficiently fhew what they were before those grants. The people to whom it is granted as a privilege, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the confent of their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord, fhould fucceed to their goods, and that they might difpose of their own effects by will, muft, before those grants, have been either altogether, or very nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country. THEY feem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean fet of people, who used to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and pedlars of the prefent times. In all the different countries of Europe then, in the fame manner as in feveral of the Tartar governments of Afia at prefent, taxes used to be levied upon the perfons and goods of travellers, when they paffed through certain manors, when they went over certain bridges, when they III. they carried about their goods from place to place CHAP. in a fair, when they erected in it a booth or stall to fell them in. Thefe different taxes were known in England by the names of paffage, pontage, laftage, and ftallage. Sometimes the king, fometimes a great lord, who had, it seems, upon fome occafions, authority to do this, would grant to particular traders, to fuch particularly as lived in their own demefnes, a general exemption from fuch taxes. Such traders, though in other refpects of fervile, or very nearly of fervile condition, were upon this account called Free-traders. They in return ufually paid to their protector a fort of annual poll-tax, In those days protection was feldom granted without a valuable confideration, and this tax might, perhaps, be confidered as compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other taxes. At first, both thofe poll-taxes and thofe exemptions feem to have been altogether perfonal, and to have affected only particular individuals, during either their lives, or the pleasure of their protectors. In the very imperfect accounts which have been published from Domefday-book, of several of the towns of England, mention is frequently made fometimes of the tax which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king, or to fome other great lord, for this fort of protection; and fometimes of the general amount only of all those taxes*, See Brady's hiftorical treatife of Cities and Burroughs, P. 3, &c. |