Wealthy nation

“ This wealth has been like a shower of gold pieces flung out into a populous Italian street by a passerby. We have all scrambled for it; a few of the strongest have won the prize, while the rest look on with covetous eyes. This wealth of the continent belongs to the nation; and justice demands such methods of legislation as will give most equitably to the nation this common wealth, and to each member of the nation his share of advantage in the common store. ”

“ The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the advantage, but even the quantity, of national wealth, resolves itself finally into one of abstract justice. It is impossible to conclude, of any given mass of acquired wealth, merely by the fact of its existence, whether it signifies good or evil to the nation in the midst of which it exists. ”

“ The royal revenues and princely preserves, are they not supported out of the sweat of the poorer classes, upon whom all the burdens of society fall at last? And why should there be royal revenues and princely preserves? Do they add anything to the wealth of a nation or the happiness of a people? ”

“ It is for you to decide whether our greatness shall be only temporary, or whether it shall be enduring. When I am told that the greatness of our country is shown by the £100,000,000 of revenue produced, may I not also ask how it is that we have 1,100,000 paupers in this kingdom, and why it is that £7,000,000 should be taken from the industry chiefly of the labouring classes to support a small nation, as it were, of paupers? ”

“ Looked at merely on the material side, you would think that what a philanthropic statesman would desire, who wished a vigorous, prosperous nation, would be a strong and virile population, thrifty and industrious, and not mere slaves of mines and mills, degenerating in their children, year by year, physically and morally. But apparently they have gone upon the theory that it is money, not man, that makes a state. ”

“ Nothing could be more agreeable to the spirit of that system than a sort of bounty upon the production of money, the very thing which, it supposes, constitutes the wealth of every nation. It is one of its many admirable expedients for enriching the country. ”

“ But no matter how this war for commercial supremacy may end, we must remember that the real greatness of a nation, or people, does not wholly consist in mere material wealth. We of North America are overlooking this important fact in our sudden and marvellous development. We are to-day, and not without some truth, called a purely "dollar nation." ”

“ Our lexicographers define riches to be opulence, the possession of landed estates, of gold and silver, etc., and the man that possesses the most of this kind of wealth is rich in comparison with his neighbor. The riches of a kingdom or nation does not consist so much in the fulness of its treasury as in the fertility of its soil and the industry of its people. The common definition may be termed the riches of this world, but are they the true riches? ”

“ They knew that every man was habitually, if not naturally, fond of his own nation, and that he was inclined to enrich it and defend it at the expense of another, even, perhaps, of that to which he is indebted, for much higher degrees of greatness, wealth and power ”

“ Riches may be the goal of an individual's efforts; for a nation they can only be a means to conquer the other good things of life which we call civilization: glory, grandeur, power, beauty, knowledge, moral refinement. Can America, and will she, make use of her riches to rob us of the intellectual and moral leadership which Europe still possesses? Or will these riches, too swiftly won, exercise an evil influence simultaneously upon Europe and America, by making both continents more grossly materialistic? ”

“ Be it ours to maintain that the greatness of a nation depends not on the number of its great proprietors, on the wealth of its great capitalists, or the splendour of its great nobles, but on the absence of poverty among its people, on the education and refinement of its masses, on the universality of enjoyment in life.... ”

“ It was the principle of reward for ability to which the leaders of men owed their supremacy. When nations were organized this same principle took another and very useful form. The distribution of wealth had become strikingly unequal. There were endless grades of distinction between the supremely wealthy and the absolutely poor. The wealthy were ready to lavish their money in return for articles of pleasure and luxury. The poor, in their thirst for a share of wealth, were strongly stimulated to inventive activity in producing new and desirable wares. ”

“ I have never been able clearly to comprehend what the beastly Scotch feelosofers mean by their “national wealth;” but, as far as I can understand them, this is their meaning: that national wealth means that which is left of the products of the country over and above what is consumed, or used, by those whose labour causes the products to be. This being the notion, it follows, of course, that the fewer poor devils you can screw the products out of, the richer the nation is. ”

“ As the nation advanced wealth became principal, until today there is but little said about the intelligence, honesty and capability of national leaders only as financiers, and telling of the luxury and extravagance of their wives and daughters. ”

“ If you do not look beyond your material interests, the higher life of the nation, which you will thus serve to cherish and foster, will guard your honor, and protect your home; and, on the other hand, what can you expect in a nation whose highest ideal is the dollar, or what the dollar will buy, but venality, corruption, and ultimate ruin? ”

“ For Wood the prosperity of a country is inferred from the composite statements of historians concerning its “finances, army, navy, commerce, agriculture, manufacture, public building, territorial changes, condition of law and order, general condition of the people as a whole, growth and decline of political liberty, and the diplomatic position of the nation, or its prestige when viewed internationally.” He does not indicate clearly whether a nation must show progress in one, most, or all of these respects to be classified as prosperous. ”

“ Whether the real foundation for wealth must not be laid in the numbers, the frugality, and the industry of the people? And whether all attempts to enrich a nation by other means, as raising the coin, stock-jobbing, and such arts are not vain?
198. Qu. Whether a door ought not to be shut against all other methods of growing rich, save only by industry and merit? And whether wealth got otherwise would not be ruinous to the public? ”

“ The age, wisdom, and dignity of a great nation are yours. You can resolve our doubts for us. The United States have land enough. You have abundant means of communication. In all your wide country, your steamboats, rail cars, and carriages can bear your people whithersoever they wish to go. Neither have you any lack of wealth, that your people should wish to become rich at our expense. ”

“ Thus whilst a paper system pretends to make a nation rich and potent, it only makes a minority of that nation rich and potent, at the expense of the majority, which it makes poor and impotent. Wealth makes a nation, a faction or an individual, powerful ”

“ It therefore belongs of right to the people. For what are its sources? In twenty-five years the wealth of the nation is reported to have grown from fourteen billion to forty-four billion. Why? What is the secret of this marvelous growth of wealth? ”

“ It is the glory of our nation that its literature is amongst its best possessions; and that the general scope and tendency of that literature are calculated to raise and cherish an enlightened public sentiment. Whatever be the amount of national wealth—however various the comforts and luxuries which private riches may command—it is quite certain that without that courage and intelligence which make a people free and keep them so, the public [Pg 321] and private accumulations are comparatively worthless. ”

“ That the wealth of the country has greatly increased, is not a matter of doubt. This is not only an acknowledged truth, but it is the boast of the millocracy. It is at the head of all their demands—"Mark our wealth—our importance to the conntry." ”

“ In order, therefore, to make the balance of domestic wealth turn in favour of a poor man, he must be both industrious and frugal.
416Now let us apply these principles to a whole nation, considered as an individual in the great society of mankind. A private person who conducts his affairs with prudence, must either be in a way of growing richer by his industry, or of spending his income with oeconomy and discretion: so I must suppose a nation which is well governed, either to be growing rich by foreign trade, or at least in a state of not becoming poorer by it. ”

“ It can mean, that as the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer. The distribution of national wealth is the true test of the "prosperity" of a nation, and not how many hundred millions of money or money's worth constitute the nation's revenue. Fortunes may be becoming m.ore colossal while the bulk of the small people find it harder and harder to live. ”

“ The question naturally arises, what is to be the effect of such accumulated wealth, such vast increase of population, such expanded domain, and such augmentation of national power? Plainly enough either one of two very opposite conditions may arise. It may either blast or bless, it may lift us to heaven or sink us to perdition.
If we shall become proud, selfish, imperious, oppressive, and rapacious; if we shall persist in trampling on the weak and exalting the strong, worshipping the rich and despising the poor, our doom as a nation is already foreshadowed. ”

“ When the people are prosperous under the sway of a wise ruler, familiar with the true principle of national wealth, it is not only the tiller of the soil who fills his belly, nor the weaver alone who has a suit of clothes to his back. ”

“ Alike in nothing but one lust of gold, Just half the land would buy, and half be sold: Their country's wealth our mightier misers drain, Or cross, to plunder provinces, the main; The rest, some farm the poor-box, some the pews; Some keep assemblies, and would keep the stews; Some with fat bucks on childless dotards fawn; Some win rich widows by their chine and brawn; While with the silent growth of ten per cent. In dirt and darkness, hundreds stink content. ”

“ A poor nation might have suffered distress or scarcity, but could not have raised the means of living to such a degree as is here shown, if they had not had the money to purchase on such a scale. But we have abundant other means of demonstrating the progress of wealth in the nation from the splendour maintained by the Court, the cost in dress, jewellery, horses, and household establishments, the amount of taxation and revenue, the extent of shipping, of foreign commerce, and the rank and influence which the nation had assumed in Europe. ”

“ There are only two ways by which wealth is accumulated and brought into few hands; the one by compulsion and levying taxes, the other by producing or procuring objects of desire; for a small quantity of which, people give up a great portion of their labour.
Sovereigns have amassed wealth and possessed revenue by the first means, and the use they have put it to has been magnificence in building, or in great or useful works, for war, or for pleasure. ”

“ I constantly reiterated the advice to be prudent and saving, not because I rated money-making as the highest of human pursuits, but because history teaches that national wealth is the nurse of civilisation and liberty. With wealth come the agents of civilisation and the inevitable ambition to be first in the arts of peace and war ”

“ If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. ”

“ But she would do well to beware not [40] to resemble the milliner who took it into her head to wear the fine laces which she used to make up for her customers. While a favourable balance is preserved upon foreign trade, a nation grows richer daily; and when one nation grows richer, others must be growing poorer. ”

“ If it be an improving power, using all the wealth entrusted to it to the best advantage, the nation is enriched in root and branch at once, and the Government is enabled, for every order presented, to return a quantity of wealth greater than the order was written for, according to the fructification obtained in the interim. ”

“ More than wealth, more [Pg 34] than production, more than trade, more than any material prosperity, there will come with them learning, universal education, literature, arts, the charms and graces of life. I would think but little of my country if it had merely material wealth. I would think but little of my country if the conception of its people was that we were to live like the robber baron of the Middle Ages, who merely gathered into his castle for his own luxury the wealth that he had taken from the surrounding people. ”

“ Local situation, or temporary circumstances, have always afforded the first means of rising to wealth and greatness. The minds of men, in a poor state, seem never to have neglected an opportunity, presented either by the one or the other, and they have generally proved successful, till energy of mind and industry were banished, by the habits of luxury, negligence, and pride, which accompany, or at least soon follow, the acquisition of either. ”

“ Is this chasm so wide and deep, that the national distress cannot be discerned in its bottom?
The disciples of the capacity of currency for transferring property, are more ardent and skilful than those who are contented with its utility in exchanging it, because the cultivation of that capacity is their trade, in which they become perfect by practice; and because mankind have ever thought it very pleasant to get rich without industry. Hence a school appears in every country for teaching nations that taxation, stocks, and exclusive privileges, are the best guardians of their prosperity. ”