Chapter LIII: Part III: Of the Expense of public Works and public Institutions (2)

The Hudson’s Bay company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had
been much more fortunate than the Royal African company. Their necessary
expense is much smaller. The whole number of people whom they maintain in
their different settlements and habitations, which they have honoured with
the name of forts, is said not to exceed a hundred and twenty persons.
This number, however, is sufficient to prepare beforehand the cargo of
furs and other goods necessary for loading their ships, which, on account
of the ice, can seldom remain above six or eight weeks in those seas. This
advantage of having a cargo ready prepared, could not, for several years,
be acquired by private adventurers; and without it there seems to be no
possibility of trading to Hudson’s Bay. The moderate capital of the
company, which, it is said, does not exceed one hundred and ten thousand
pounds, may, besides, be sufficient to enable them to engross the whole,
or almost the whole trade and surplus produce, of the miserable though
extensive country comprehended within their charter. No private
adventurers, accordingly, have ever attempted to trade to that country in
competition with them. This company, therefore, have always enjoyed an
exclusive trade, in fact, though they may have no right to it in law. Over
and above all this, the moderate capital of this company is said to be
divided among a very small number of proprietors. But a joint-stock
company, consisting of a small number of proprietors, with a moderate
capital, approaches very nearly to the nature of a private copartnery, and
may be capable of nearly the same degree of vigilance and attention. It is
not to be wondered at, therefore, if, in consequence of these different
advantages, the Hudson’s Bay company had, before the late war, been able
to carry on their trade with a considerable degree of success. It does not
seem probable, however, that their profits ever approached to what the
late Mr Dobbs imagined them. A much more sober and judicious writer, Mr
Anderson, author of the Historical and Chronological Deduction of
Commerce, very justly observes, that upon examining the accounts which Mr
Dobbs himself has given for several years together, of their exports and
imports, and upon making proper allowances for their extraordinary risk
and expense, it does not appear that their profits deserve to be envied,
or that they can much, if at all, exceed the ordinary profits of trade.

The South Sea company never had any forts or garrisons to maintain, and
therefore were entirely exempted from one great expense, to which other
joint-stock companies for foreign trade are subject; but they had an
immense capital divided among an immense number of proprietors. It was
naturally to be expected, therefore, that folly, negligence, and
profusion, should prevail in the whole management of their affairs. The
knavery and extravagance of their stock-jobbing projects are sufficiently
known, and the explication of them would be foreign to the present
subject. Their mercantile projects were not much better conducted. The
first trade which they engaged in, was that of supplying the Spanish West
Indies with negroes, of which (in consequence of what was called the
Assiento Contract granted them by the treaty of Utrecht) they had the
exclusive privilege. But as it was not expected that much profit could be
made by this trade, both the Portuguese and French companies, who had
enjoyed it upon the same terms before them, having been ruined by it, they
were allowed, as compensation, to send annually a ship of a certain
burden, to trade directly to the Spanish West Indies. Of the ten voyages
which this annual ship was allowed to make, they are said to have gained
considerably by one, that of the Royal Caroline, in 1731; and to have been
losers, more or less, by almost all the rest. Their ill success was
imputed, by their factors and agents, to the extortion and oppression of
the Spanish government; but was, perhaps, principally owing to the
profusion and depredations of those very factors and agents; some of whom
are said to have acquired great fortunes, even in one year. In 1734, the
company petitioned the king, that they might be allowed to dispose of the
trade and tonnage of their annual ship, on account of the little profit
which they made by it, and to accept of such equivalent as they could
obtain from the king of Spain.

In 1724, this company had undertaken the whale fishery. Of this, indeed,
they had no monopoly; but as long as they carried it on, no other British
subjects appear to have engaged in it. Of the eight voyages which their
ships made to Greenland, they were gainers by one, and losers by all the
rest. After their eighth and last voyage, when they had sold their ships,
stores, and utensils, they found that their whole loss upon this branch,
capital and interest included, amounted to upwards of £237,000.

In 1722, this company petitioned the parliament to be allowed to divide
their immense capital of more than thirty-three millions eight hundred
thousand pounds, the whole of which had been lent to government, into two
equal parts; the one half, or upwards of £16,900,000, to be put upon the
same footing with other government annuities, and not to be subject to the
debts contracted, or losses incurred, by the directors of the company, in
the prosecution of their mercantile projects; the other half to remain as
before, a trading stock, and to be subject to those debts and losses. The
petition was too reasonable not to be granted. In 1733, they again
petitioned the parliament, that three-fourths of their trading stock might
be turned into annuity stock, and only one-fourth remain as trading stock,
or exposed to the hazards arising from the bad management of their
directors. Both their annuity and trading stocks had, by this time, been
reduced more than two millions each, by several different payments from
government; so that this fourth amounted only to £3,662,784:8:6. In 1748,
all the demands of the company upon the king of Spain, in consequence of
the assiento contract, were, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, given up
for what was supposed an equivalent. An end was put to their trade with
the Spanish West Indies; the remainder of their trading stock was turned
into an annuity stock; and the company ceased, in every respect, to be a
trading company.

It ought to be observed, that in the trade which the South Sea company
carried on by means of their annual ship, the only trade by which it ever
was expected that they could make any considerable profit, they were not
without competitors, either in the foreign or in the home market. At
Carthagena, Porto Bello, and La Vera Cruz, they had to encounter the
competition of the Spanish merchants, who brought from Cadiz to those
markets European goods, of the same kind with the outward cargo of their
ship; and in England they had to encounter that of the English merchants,
who imported from Cadiz goods of the Spanish West Indies, of the same kind
with the inward cargo. The goods, both of the Spanish and English
merchants, indeed, were, perhaps, subject to higher duties. But the loss
occasioned by the negligence, profusion, and malversation of the servants
of the company, had probably been a tax much heavier than all those
duties. That a joint-stock company should be able to carry on successfully
any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any
sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all
experience.

The old English East India company was established in 1600, by a charter
from Queen Elizabeth. In the first twelve voyages which they fitted out
for India, they appear to have traded as a regulated company, with
separate stocks, though only in the general ships of the company. In 1612,
they united into a joint stock. Their charter was exclusive, and, though
not confirmed by act of parliament, was in those days supposed to convey a
real exclusive privilege. For many years, therefore, they were not much
disturbed by interlopers. Their capital, which never exceeded £744,000,
and of which £50 was a share, was not so exorbitant, nor their dealings so
extensive, as to afford either a pretext for gross negligence and
profusion, or a cover to gross malversation. Notwithstanding some
extraordinary losses, occasioned partly by the malice of the Dutch East
India company, and partly by other accidents, they carried on for many
years a successful trade. But in process of time, when the principles of
liberty were better understood, it became every day more and more
doubtful, how far a royal charter, not confirmed by act of parliament,
could convey an exclusive privilege. Upon this question the decisions of
the courts of justice were not uniform, but varied with the authority of
government, and the humours of the times. Interlopers multiplied upon
them; and towards the end of the reign of Charles II., through the whole
of that of James II., and during a part of that of William III., reduced
them to great distress. In 1698, a proposal was made to parliament, of
advancing two millions to government, at eight per cent. provided the
subscribers were erected into a new East India company, with exclusive
privileges. The old East India company offered seven hundred thousand
pounds, nearly the amount of their capital, at four per cent. upon the
same conditions. But such was at that time the state of public credit,
that it was more convenient for government to borrow two millions at eight
per cent. than seven hundred thousand pounds at four. The proposal of the
new subscribers was accepted, and a new East India company established in
consequence. The old East India company, however, had a right to continue
their trade till 1701. They had, at the same time, in the name of their
treasurer, subscribed very artfully three hundred and fifteen thousand
pounds into the stock of the new. By a negligence in the expression of the
act of parliament, which vested the East India trade in the subscribers to
this loan of two millions, it did not appear evident that they were all
obliged to unite into a joint stock. A few private traders, whose
subscriptions amounted only to seven thousand two hundred pounds, insisted
upon the privilege of trading separately upon their own stocks, and at
their own risks. The old East India company had a right to a separate
trade upon their own stock till 1701; and they had likewise, both before
and after that period, a right, like that or other private traders, to a
separate trade upon the £315,000, which they had subscribed into the stock
of the new company. The competition of the two companies with the private
traders, and with one another, is said to have well nigh ruined both. Upon
a subsequent occasion, in 1750, when a proposal was made to parliament for
putting the trade under the management of a regulated company, and thereby
laying it in some measure open, the East India company, in opposition to
this proposal, represented, in very strong terms, what had been, at this
time, the miserable effects, as they thought them, of this competition. In
India, they said, it raised the price of goods so high, that they were not
worth the buying; and in England, by overstocking the market, it sunk
their price so low, that no profit could be made by them. That by a more
plentiful supply, to the great advantage and conveniency of the public, it
must have reduced very much the price of India goods in the English
market, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have raised very much
their price in the Indian market, seems not very probable, as all the
extraordinary demand which that competition could occasion must have been
but as a drop of water in the immense ocean of Indian commerce. The
increase of demand, besides, though in the beginning it may sometimes
raise the price of goods, never fails to lower it in the long-run. It
encourages production, and thereby increases the competition of the
producers, who, in order to undersell one another, have recourse to new
divisions or labour and new improvements of art, which might never
otherwise have been thought of. The miserable effects of which the company
complained, were the cheapness of consumption, and the encouragement given
to production; precisely the two effects which it is the great business of
political economy to promote. The competition, however, of which they gave
this doleful account, had not been allowed to be of long continuance. In
1702, the two companies were, in some measure, united by an indenture
tripartite, to which the queen was the third party; and in 1708, they were
by act of parliament, perfectly consolidated into one company, by their
present name of the United Company of Merchants trading to the East
Indies. Into this act it was thought worth while to insert a clause,
allowing the separate traders to continue their trade till Michaelmas
1711; but at the same time empowering the directors, upon three years
notice, to redeem their little capital of seven thousand two hundred
pounds, and thereby to convert the whole stock of the company into a joint
stock. By the same act, the capital of the company, in consequence of a
new loan to government, was augmented from two millions to three millions
two hundred thousand pounds. In 1743, the company advanced another million
to government. But this million being raised, not by a call upon the
proprietors, but by selling annuities and contracting bond-debts, it did
not augment the stock upon which the proprietors could claim a dividend.
It augmented, however, their trading stock, it being equally liable with
the other three millions two hundred thousand pounds, to the losses
sustained, and debts contracted by the company in prosecution of their
mercantile projects. From 1708, or at least from 1711, this company, being
delivered from all competitors, and fully established in the monopoly of
the English commerce to the East Indies, carried on a successful trade,
and from their profits, made annually a moderate dividend to their
proprietors. During the French war, which began in 1741, the ambition of
Mr Dupleix, the French governor of Pondicherry, involved them in the wars
of the Carnatic, and in the politics of the Indian princes. After many
signal successes, and equally signal losses, they at last lost Madras, at
that time their principal settlement in India. It was restored to them by
the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; and, about this time the spirit of war and
conquest seems to have taken possession of their servants in India, and
never since to have left them. During the French war, which began in 1755,
their arms partook of the general good fortune of those of Great Britain.
They defended Madras, took Pondicherry, recovered Calcutta, and acquired
the revenues of a rich and extensive territory, amounting, it was then
said, to upwards of three millions a-year. They remained for several years
in quiet possession of this revenue; but in 1767, administration laid
claim to their territorial acquisitions, and the revenue arising from
them, as of right belonging to the crown; and the company, in compensation
for this claim, agreed to pay to government £400,000 a-year. They had,
before this, gradually augmented their dividend from about six to ten per
cent.; that is, upon their capital of three millions two hundred thousand
pounds, they had increased it by £128,000, or had raised it from one
hundred and ninety-two thousand to three hundred and twenty thousand
pounds a-year. They were attempting about this time to raise it still
further, to twelve and a-half per cent., which would have made their
annual payments to their proprietors equal to what they had agreed to pay
annually to government, or to £400,000 a-year. But during the two years in
which their agreement with government was to take place, they were
restrained from any further increase of dividend by two successive acts of
parliament, of which the object was to enable them to make a speedier
progress in the payment of their debts, which were at this time estimated
at upwards of six or seven millions sterling. In 1769, they renewed their
agreement with government for five years more, and stipulated, that during
the course of that period, they should be allowed gradually to increase
their dividend to twelve and a-half per cent; never increasing it,
however, more than one per cent. in one year. This increase of dividend,
therefore, when it had risen to its utmost height, could augment their
annual payments, to their proprietors and government together, but by
£680,000, beyond what they had been before their late territorial
acquisitions. What the gross revenue of those territorial acquisitions was
supposed to amount to, has already been mentioned; and by an account
brought by the Cruttenden East Indiaman in 1769, the neat revenue, clear
of all deductions and military charges, was stated at two millions
forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-seven pounds. They were said,
at the same time, to possess another revenue, arising partly from lands,
but chiefly from the customs established at their different settlements,
amounting to £439,000. The profits of their trade, too, according to the
evidence of their chairman before the house of commons, amounted, at this
time, to at least £400,000 a-year; according to that of their accountant,
to at least £500,000; according to the lowest account, at least equal to
the highest dividend that was to be paid to their proprietors. So great a
revenue might certainly have afforded an augmentation of £680,000 in their
annual payments; and, at the same time, have left a large sinking fund,
sufficient for the speedy reduction of their debt. In 1773, however, their
debts, instead of being reduced, were augmented by an arrear to the
treasury in the payment of the four hundred thousand pounds; by another to
the custom-house for duties unpaid; by a large debt to the bank, for money
borrowed; and by a fourth, for bills drawn upon them from India, and
wantonly accepted, to the amount of upwards of twelve hundred thousand
pounds. The distress which these accumulated claims brought upon them,
obliged them not only to reduce all at once their dividend to six per
cent. but to throw themselves upon the mercy of govermnent, and to
supplicate, first, a release from the further payment of the stipulated
£400,000 a-year; and, secondly, a loan of fourteen hundred thousand, to
save them from immediate bankruptcy. The great increase of their fortune
had, it seems, only served to furnish their servants with a pretext for
greater profusion, and a cover for greater malversation, than in
proportion even to that increase of fortune. The conduct of their servants
in India, and the general state of their affairs both in India and in
Europe, became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry: in consequence of
which, several very important alterations were made in the constitution of
their government, both at home and abroad. In India, their principal
settlements or Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, which had before been
altogether independent of one another, were subjected to a
governor-general, assisted by a council of four assessors, parliament
assuming to itself the first nomination of this governor and council, who
were to reside at Calcutta; that city having now become, what Madras was
before, the most important of the English settlements in India. The court
of the Mayor of Calcutta, originally instituted for the trial of
mercantile causes, which arose in the city and neighbourhood, had
gradually extended its jurisdiction with the extension of the empire. It
was now reduced and confined to the original purpose of its institution.
Instead of it, a new supreme court of judicature was established,
consisting of a chief justice and three judges, to be appointed by the
crown. In Europe, the qualification necessary to entitle a proprietor to
vote at their general courts was raised, from five hundred pounds, the
original price of a share in the stock of the company, to a thousand
pounds. In order to vote upon this qualification, too, it was declared
necessary, that he should have possessed it, if acquired by his own
purchase, and not by inheritance, for at least one year, instead of six
months, the term requisite before. The court of twenty-four directors had
before been chosen annually; but it was now enacted, that each director
should, for the future, be chosen for four years; six of them, however, to
go out of office by rotation every year, and not be capable of being
re-chosen at the election of the six new directors for the ensuing year.
In consequence of these alterations, the courts, both of the proprietors
and directors, it was expected, would be likely to act with more dignity
and steadiness than they had usually done before. But it seems impossible,
by any alterations, to render those courts, in any respect, fit to govern,
or even to share in the government of a great empire; because the greater
part of their members must always have too little interest in the
prosperity of that empire, to give any serious attention to what may
promote it. Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small
fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock,
merely for the influence which he expects to aquire by a vote in the court
of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in
the appointment of the plunderers of India; the court of directors, though
they make that appointment, being necessarily more or less under the
influence of the proprietors, who not only elect those directors, but
sometimes over-rule the appointments of their servants in India. Provided
he can enjoy this influence for a few years, and thereby provide for a
certain number of his friends, he frequently cares little about the
dividend, or even about the value of the stock upon which his vote is
founded. About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of
which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other
sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so
perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the
improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their
administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of
the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
This indifference, too, was more likely to be increased than diminished by
some of the new regulations which were made in consequence of the
parliamentary inquiry. By a resolution of the house of commons, for
example, it was declared, that when the £1,400,000 lent to the company by
government, should be paid, and their bond-debts be reduced to £1,500,000,
they might then, and not till then, divide eight per cent. upon their
capital; and that whatever remained of their revenues and neat profits at
home should be divided into four parts; three of them to be paid into the
exchequer for the use of the public, and the fourth to be reserved as a
fund, either for the further reduction of their bond-debts, or for the
discharge of other contingent exigencies which the company might labour
under. But if the company were bad stewards and bad sovereigns, when the
whole of their neat revenue and profits belonged to themselves, and were
at their own disposal, they were surely not likely to be better when
three-fourths of them were to belong to other people, and the other
fourth, though to be laid out for the benefit of the company, yet to be so
under the inspection and with the approbation of other people.

It might be more agreeable to the company, that their own servants and
dependants should have either the pleasure of wasting, or the profit of
embezzling, whatever surplus might remain, after paying the proposed
dividend of eight per cent. than that it should come into the hands of a
set of people with whom those resolutions could scarce fail to set them in
some measure at variance. The interest of those servants and dependants
might so far predominate in the court of proprietors, as sometimes to
dispose it to support the authors of depredations which had been committed
in direct violation of its own authority. With the majority of
proprietors, the support even of the authority of their own court might
sometimes be a matter of less consequence than the support of those who
had set that authority at defiance.

The regulations of 1773, accordingly, did not put an end to the disorder
of the company’s government in India. Notwithstanding that, during a
momentary fit of good conduct, they had at one time collected into the
treasury of Calcutta more than £3,000,000 sterling; notwithstanding that
they had afterwards extended either their dominion or their depredations
over a vast accession of some of the richest and most fertile countries in
India, all was wasted and destroyed. They found themselves altogether
unprepared to stop or resist the incursion of Hyder Ali; and in
consequence of those disorders, the company is now (1784) in greater
distress than ever; and, in order to prevent immediate bankruptcy, is once
more reduced to supplicate the assistance of government. Different plans
have been proposed by the different parties in parliament for the better
management of its affairs; and all those plans seem to agree in supposing,
what was indeed always abundantly evident, that it is altogether unfit to
govern its territorial possessions. Even the company itself seems to be
convinced of its own incapacity so far, and seems, upon that account
willing to give them up to government.

With the right of possessing forts and garrisons in distant and barbarous
countries is necessarily connected the right of making peace and war in
those countries. The joint-stock companies, which have had the one right,
have constantly exercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly
conferred upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously, how cruelly, they
have commonly exercised it, is too well known from recent experience.

When a company of merchants undertake, at their own risk and expense, to
establish a new trade with some remote and barbarous nation, it may not be
unreasonable to incorporate them into a joint-stock company, and to grant
them, in case of their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain
number of years. It is the easiest and most natural way in which the state
can recompense them for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment, of
which the public is afterwards to reap the benefit. A temporary monopoly
of this kind may be vindicated, upon the same principles upon which a like
monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that of a new
book to its author. But upon the expiration of the term, the monopoly
ought certainly to determine; the forts and garrisons, if it was found
necessary to establish any, to be taken into the hands of government,
their value to be paid to the company, and the trade to be laid open to
all the subjects of the state. By a perpetual monopoly, all the other
subjects of the state are taxed very absurdly in two different ways:
first, by the high price of goods, which, in the case of a free trade,
they could buy much cheaper; and, secondly, by their total exclusion from
a branch of business which it might be both convenient and profitable for
many of them to carry on. It is for the most worthless of all purposes,
too, that they are taxed in this manner. It is merely to enable the
company to support the negligence, profusion, and malversation of their
own servants, whose disorderly conduct seldom allows the dividend of the
company to exceed the ordinary rate of profit in trades which are
altogether free, and very frequently makes a fall even a good deal short
of that rate. Without a monopoly, however, a joint-stock company, it would
appear from experience, cannot long carry on any branch of foreign trade.
To buy in one market, in order to sell with profit in another, when there
are many competitors in both; to watch over, not only the occasional
variations in the demand, but the much greater and more frequent
variations in the competition, or in the supply which that demand is
likely to get from other people; and to suit with dexterity and judgment
both the quantity and quality of each assortment of goods to all these
circumstances, is a species of warfare, of which the operations are
continually changing, and which can scarce ever be conducted successfully,
without such an unremitting exertion of vigilance and attention as cannot
long be expected from the directors of a joint-stock company. The East
India company, upon the redemption of their funds, and the expiration of
their exclusive privilege, have a right, by act of parliament, to continue
a corporation with a joint stock, and to trade in their corporate capacity
to the East Indies, in common with the rest of their fellow subjects. But
in this situation, the superior vigilance and attention of a private
adventurer would, in all probability, soon make them weary of the trade.

An eminent French author, of great knowledge in matters of political
economy, the Abbe Morellet, gives a list of fifty-five joint-stock
companies for foreign trade, which have been established in different
parts of Europe since the year 1600, and which, according to him, have all
failed from mismanagement, notwithstanding they had exclusive privileges.
He has been misinformed with regard to the history of two or three of
them, which were not joint-stock companies and have not failed. But, in
compensation, there have been several joint-stock companies which have
failed, and which he has omitted.

The only trades which it seems possible for a joint-stock company to carry
on successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those, of which all
the operations are capable of being reduced to what is called a routine,
or to such a uniformity of method as admits of little or no variation. Of
this kind is, first, the banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance
from fire and from sea risk, and capture in time of war; thirdly, the
trade of making and maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and, fourthly,
the similar trade of bringing water for the supply of a great city.

Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse,
the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon
any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering
speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous
and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it. But the
constitution of joint-stock companies renders them in general, more
tenacious of established rules than any private copartnery. Such
companies, therefore, seem extremely well fitted for this trade. The
principal banking companies in Europe, accordingly, are joint-stock
companies, many of which manage their trade very successfully without any
exclusive privilege. The bank of England has no other exclusive privilege,
except that no other banking company in England shall consist of more than
six persons. The two banks of Edinburgh are joint-stock companies, without
any exclusive privilege.

The value of the risk, either from fire, or from loss by sea, or by
capture, though it cannot, perhaps, be calculated very exactly, admits,
however, of such a gross estimation, as renders it, in some degree,
reducible to strict rule and method. The trade of insurance, therefore,
may be carried on successfully by a joint-stock company, without any
exclusive privilege. Neither the London Assurance, nor the Royal Exchange
Assurance companies have any such privilege.

When a navigable cut or canal has been once made, the management of it
becomes quite simple and easy, and it is reducible to strict rule and
method. Even the making of it is so, as it may be contracted for with
undertakers, at so much a mile, and so much a lock. The same thing may be
said of a canal, an aqueduct, or a great pipe for bringing water to supply
a great city. Such under-takings, therefore, may be, and accordingly
frequently are, very successfully managed by joint-stock companies,
without any exclusive privilege.

To establish a joint-stock company, however, for any undertaking, merely
because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or,
to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which
take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might
be capable of thriving, if they had such an exemption, would certainly not
be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly reasonable, with
the circumstance of being reducible to strict rule and method, two other
circumstances ought to concur. First, it ought to appear with the clearest
evidence, that the undertaking is of greater and more general utility than
the greater part of common trades; and, secondly, that it requires a
greater capital than can easily be collected into a private copartnery. If
a moderate capital were sufficient, the great utility of the undertaking
would not be a sufficient reason for establishing a joint-stock company;
because, in this case, the demand for what it was to produce, would
readily and easily be supplied by private adventurers. In the four trades
above mentioned, both those circumstances concur.

The great and general utility of the banking trade, when prudently
managed, has been fully explained in the second book of this Inquiry. But
a public bank, which is to support public credit, and, upon particular
emergencies, to advance to government the whole produce of a tax, to the
amount, perhaps, of several millions, a year or two before it comes in,
requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into any private
copartnery.

The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private
people, and, by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an
individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society. In order
to give this security, however, it is necessary that the insurers should
have a very large capital. Before the establishment of the two joint-stock
companies for insurance in London, a list, it is said, was laid before the
attorney-general, of one hundred and fifty private usurers, who had failed
in the course of a few years.

That navigable cuts and canals, and the works which are sometimes
necessary for supplying a great city with water, are of great and general
utility, while, at the same time, they frequently require a greater
expense than suits the fortunes of private people, is sufficiently
obvious.

Except the four trades above mentioned, I have not been able to recollect
any other, in which all the three circumstances requisite for rendering
reasonable the establishment of a joint-stock company concur. The English
copper company of London, the lead-smelting company, the glass-grinding
company, have not even the pretext of any great or singular utility in the
object which they pursue; nor does the pursuit of that object seem to
require any expense unsuitable to the fortunes of many private men.
Whether the trade which those companies carry on, is reducible to such
strict rule and method as to render it fit for the management of a
joint-stock company, or whether they have any reason to boast of their
extraordinary profits, I do not pretend to know. The mine-adventurers
company has been long ago bankrupt. A share in the stock of the British
Linen company of Edinburgh sells, at present, very much below par, though
less so than it did some years ago. The joint-stock companies, which are
established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting some particular
manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the
diminution of the general stock of the society, can, in other respects,
scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most
upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to
particular branches of the manufacture, of which the undertakers mislead
and impose upon them, is a real discouragement to the rest, and
necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would
otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and
which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements
the greatest and the most effectual.

ART. II.—Of the Expense of the Institution for the Education of
Youth.

The institutions for the education of the youth may, in the same manner,
furnish a revenue sufficient for defraying their own expense. The fee or
honorary, which the scholar pays to the master, naturally constitutes a
revenue of this kind.

Even where the reward of the master does not arise altogether from this
natural revenue, it still is not necessary that it should be derived from
that general revenue of the society, of which the collection and
application are, in most countries, assigned to the executive power.
Through the greater part of Europe, accordingly, the endowment of schools
and colleges makes either no charge upon that general revenue, or but a
very small one. It everywhere arises chiefly from some local or provincial
revenue, from the rent of some landed estate, or from the interest of some
sum of money, allotted and put under the management of trustees for this
particular purpose, sometimes by the sovereign himself, and sometimes by
some private donor.

Have those public endowments contributed in general, to promote the end of
their institution? Have they contributed to encourage the diligence, and
to improve the abilities, of the teachers? Have they directed the course
of education towards objects more useful, both to the individual and to
the public, than those to which it would naturally have gone of its own
accord? It should not seem very difficult to give at least a probable
answer to each of those questions.

In every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who
exercise it, is always in proportion to the necessity they are under of
making that exertion. This necessity is greatest with those to whom the
emoluments of their profession are the only source from which they expect
their fortune, or even their ordinary revenue and subsistence. In order to
acquire this fortune, or even to get this subsistence, they must, in the
course of a year, execute a certain quantity of work of a known value;
and, where the competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are
all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every
man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness.
The greatness of the objects which are to be acquired by success in some
particular professions may, no doubt, sometimes animate the exertions of a
few men of extraordinary spirit and ambition. Great objects, however, are
evidently not necessary, in order to occasion the greatest exertions.
Rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an
object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions.
Great objects, on the contrary, alone and unsupported by the necessity of
application, have seldom been sufficient to occasion any considerable
exertion. In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some
very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy
fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession?

The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished, more
or less, the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence,
so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund,
altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular
professions.

In some universities, the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a
small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part
arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. The necessity of
application, though always more or less diminished, is not, in this case,
entirely taken away. Reputation in his profession is still of some
importance to him, and he still has some dependency upon the affection,
gratitude, and favourable report of those who have attended upon his
instructions; and these favourable sentiments he is likely to gain in no
way so well as by deserving them, that is, by the abilities and diligence
with which he discharges every part of his duty.

In other universities, the teacher is prohibited from receiving any
honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of
the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is, in this
case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set
it. It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can;
and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or
does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest,
at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it
altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer
him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that
authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it
is his interest to employ that activity in any way from which he can
derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from
which he can derive none.

If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the
college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the
greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either
are, or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to
be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his
neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect
his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public
professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the
pretence of teaching.

If the authority to which he is subject resides, not so much in the body
corporate, of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous persons,
in the bishop of the diocese, for example, in the governor of the
province, or, perhaps, in some minister of state, it is not, indeed, in
this case, very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty
altogether. All that such superiors, however, can force him to do, is to
attend upon his pupils a certain number of hours, that is, to give a
certain number of lectures in the week, or in the year. What those
lectures shall be, must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher;
and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he
has for exerting it. An extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is
liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. In its nature, it
is arbitrary and discretionary; and the persons who exercise it, neither
attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps
understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom
capable of exercising it with judgment. From the insolence of office, too,
they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to
censure or deprive him of his office wantonly and without any just cause.
The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it,
and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the
meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. It is by powerful
protection only, that he can effectually guard himself against the bad
usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most
likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by
obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready, at all
times, to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour
of the body corporate, of which he is a member. Whoever has attended for
any considerable time to the administration of a French university, must
have had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an
arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind.

Whatever forces a certain number of students to any college or university,
independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less
to diminish the necessity of that merit or reputation.

The privileges of graduates in arts, in law, physic, and divinity, when
they can be obtained only by residing a certain number of years in certain
universities, necessarily force a certain number of students to such
universities, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers. The
privileges of graduates are a sort of statutes of apprenticeship, which
have contributed to the improvement of education just as the other
statutes of apprenticeship have to that of arts and manufactures.

The charitable foundations of scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc.
necessarily attach a certain number of students to certain colleges,
independent altogether of the merit of those particular colleges. Were the
students upon such charitable foundations left free to choose what college
they liked best, such liberty might perhaps contribute to excite some
emulation among different colleges. A regulation, on the contrary, which
prohibited even the independent members of every particular college from
leaving it, and going to any other, without leave first asked and obtained
of that which they meant to abandon, would tend very much to extinguish
that emulation.

If in each college, the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct each student
in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily chosen by the student,
but appointed by the head of the college; and if, in case of neglect,
inability, or bad usage, the student should not be allowed to change him
for another, without leave first asked and obtained; such a regulation
would not only tend very much to extinguish all emulation among the
different tutors of the same college, but to diminish very much, in all of
them, the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective
pupils. Such teachers, though very well paid by their students, might be
as much disposed to neglect them, as those who are not paid by them at all
or who have no other recompense but their salary.

If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant
thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing to his students, that
he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better
than nonsense. It must, too, be unpleasant to him to observe, that the
greater part of his students desert his lectures; or perhaps, attend upon
them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. If he is
obliged, therefore, to give a certain number of lectures, these motives
alone, without any other interest, might dispose him to take some pains to
give tolerably good ones. Several different expedients, however, may be
fallen upon, which will effectually blunt the edge of all those
incitements to diligence. The teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils
himself the science in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some
book upon it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language,
by interpreting it to them into their own, or, what would give him still
less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and by now and then
making an occasional remark upon it, he may flatter himself that he is
giving a lecture. The slightest degree of knowledge and application will
enable him to do this, without exposing himself to contempt or derision,
by saying any thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The
discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all
his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham lecture, and to
maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of
the performance.

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not
for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or, more properly
speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to
maintain the authority of the master, and, whether he neglects or performs
his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he
performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume
perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and
folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty,
there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students
ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance
upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known
wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint may, no doubt,
be in some degree requisite, in order to oblige children, or very young
boys, to attend to those parts of education, which it is thought necessary
for them to acquire during that early period of life; but after twelve or
thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or
restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education.
Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that so far from
being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master,
provided he shews some serious intention of being of use to them, they are
generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the
performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a
good deal of gross negligence.

Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for the teaching of which
there are no public institutions, are generally the best taught. When a
young man goes to a fencing or a dancing school, he does not, indeed,
always learn to fence or to dance very well; but he seldom fails of
learning to fence or to dance. The good effects of the riding school are
not commonly so evident. The expense of a riding school is so great, that
in most places it is a public institution. The three most essential parts
of literary education, to read, write, and account, it still continues to
be more common to acquire in private than in public schools; and it very
seldom happens, that anybody fails of acquiring them to the degree in
which it is necessary to acquire them.

In England, the public schools are much less corrupted than the
universities. In the schools, the youth are taught, or at least may be
taught, Greek and Latin; that is, everything which the masters pretend to
teach, or which it is expected they should teach. In the universities, the
youth neither are taught, nor always can find any proper means of being
taught the sciences, which it is the business of those incorporated bodies
to teach. The reward of the schoolmaster, in most cases, depends
principally, in some cases almost entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of
his scholars. Schools have no exclusive privileges. In order to obtain the
honours of graduation, it is not necessary that a person should bring a
certificate of his having studied a certain number of years at a public
school. If, upon examination, he appears to understand what is taught
there, no questions are asked about the place where he learnt it.

The parts of education which are commonly taught in universities, it may
perhaps be said, are not very well taught. But had it not been for those
institutions, they would not have been commonly taught at all; and both
the individual and the public would have suffered a good deal from the
want of those important parts of education.

The present universities of Europe were originally, the greater part of
them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of
churchmen. They were founded by the authority of the pope; and were so
entirely under his immediate protection, that their members, whether
masters or students, had all of them what was then called the benefit of
clergy, that is, were exempted from the civil jurisdiction of the
countries in which their respective universities were situated, and were
amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. What was taught in the
greater part of those universities was suitable to the end of their
institution, either theology, or something that was merely preparatory to
theology.