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EXTRACTS FROM A COLLECTION OF MEMORANDUMS.
Perhaps the custom of allowing parents to murder their infant children, though barbarous, tends to render a state more populous, as in China. Many marry by that inducement; and such is the force of natural affection, that none make use of that privilege but in extreme necessity.
A pound of steel, when manufactured, may become of 10,000 value.
No hospitals in Holland have any land or settled revenue, and yet the poor better provided for than any where else in the world.
The Romans had two ways chiefly of levying their taxes,—by public lands, which were all dissipated by popular tribunes about the end of the republic; or by customs upon importation, which were different in different places; in some the fortieth part of the value; in Sicily the twentieth.
They had also a kind of excise, which began with the emperors, and was the two-hundredth or one-hundredth part of the value of all goods sold, the fiftieth of slaves.
Beside this, they had pretty early, even in the time of the republic, duties upon mines and salt; and in order to levy the former more easily, they forbid all mines in Italy. Their mines near Carthagena [127]yielded them 25,000 drachms a-day. Burman de Vict. Rom.
In the time of the monarchy, the kings had the sole power of imposing taxes. In the time of the republic, 'tis strange to see this power belonging sometimes to the magistrates, sometimes to the senate, or to the people. We learn from Livy, in the second Punic War, that the senate could contract debt alone. Polybius says, that all money matters belonged to the senate. The censors levied all the taxes, and farmed them out to the Roman knights. The Romans could be no great politicians; since the senate could not gain the sovereignty, nor the censors the supreme magistracy, notwithstanding these advantages.
All French projectors take it for granted that 'tis equally dangerous to make the people too easy as to oppress them too much. Comte de Boulainvilliers.
The charter governments in America, almost entirely independent of England.
Those north of Virginia interfere most with us in manufactures, which proceeds from the resemblance of soil and climate.
Gustavus Vasa is perhaps the only instance of a prince who humbled the clergy while he aspired to arbitrary power.
From 1729 to 1730, imported of corn into Ireland to the value of 274,000,—ascribed to the want of a drawback by the Irish House of Commons.
The exchange to Holland always against us. Craftsman. Not true.
Our exports no rule to judge of our trade: masters enter more than they export, to persuade others that their ship is near full.
The East India Company have offered to pay all the duties upon tea, provided it may be sold duty free. [128]The interest the crown has in seizures thought to be the cause why they were refused.—Never asked; because afterwards they cannot expect the execution of the laws against foreign tea.
The government of England perhaps the only one, except Holland, wherein the legislature has not force enough to execute the laws without the good-will of the people. This is an irregular kind of check upon the legislature.
Men have much oftener erred from too great respect to government than from too little.
The French sugar colonies supplied entirely with provisions from our northern colonies.
The gross produce of the English customs 3,000,000 a-year; the neat produce 1,800,000.
In all the British Leeward Islands, the muster-roll exceeded not two thousand five hundred men a few years ago, and yet there are twenty thousand blacks in Antigua alone.
The French fish on the coasts of Newfoundland in the winter, which gives them an advantage above us.
Our bustle about the Ostend company, the cause of the great progress of the French company.
The East India Company have desired to have China raw silk put upon the same footing as to duty with the Italian, but have been refused.
The reason why the court has a greater superiority among the Lords than Commons, beside the bishops, is that the court gives places to the Lords, chiefly for their interest among the Commons.
Eighteen hundred children put upon the parishes at Dublin in five years, of which, upon inquiry, there remained only twenty-eight.
[129]Ninety-five thousand seamen computed to be in France; only sixty thousand in England.
Ships formerly lasted twenty-seven years in the English navy; now only thirteen.
Within the last two thousand years, almost all the despotic governments of the world have been improving, and the free ones degenerating; so that now they are pretty near a par.
There must be a balance in all governments; and the inconvenience of allowing a single person to have any share is, that what may be too little for a balance in one hand will be too much in another.
The fiars of wheat, in 1400, were fixed at Edinburgh, 6 sh. 7 p. Scots money.
Banks first invented in Sweden on account of their copper money.
There is not a word of trade in all Machiavel, which is strange, considering that Florence rose only by trade.
About twenty thousand tun of wine imported into England about the time of the first Dutch war.—Sir Josiah Child.
One per cent. in interest, worse than two per cent. in customs; because ships pay the interest, not the customs.
Eight hundred thousand Jews chased from Spain by Ferdinand the Catholic.—Geddes.[129:1]
About 100,000 Moors condemned for apostacy, by the Inquisition, in forty years. 4000 burned.—Id.
Near a million of Moors expelled Spain.—Id.
The Commons of Castile, in taking arms against Charles the Fifth, among other things petition, that no sheep nor wool shall be allowed to go out of the kingdom.—Id.
[130]The interest in Rome reduced to six per cent. under Tiberius.—Tacit.
The laws of Arragon required a public trial for the subjects: but allowed the king a kind of despotic power over his servants and ministers, in order to render the great men less fond of court preferment.—Geddes.
'Twould be more easy for the English liberties to recover themselves than the Roman, because of the mixed government. The transition is not so violent.
The farms were large among the ancients. The Leontine farms in Sicily contained 130,000 acres, and were farmed to eighty-three farmers.—Cicero in Verrem.
After the conquest of Egypt by Augustus, the prices of every thing doubled in Rome.
The Roman colonies, in the time of Augustus, voted in their colonies, and sent their votes to Rome.
The Romans very exact in their book-keeping; in so much, that a crime, such as bribery or poisoning, could be proved or refuted from their books.—Cic. pro Cluentio.
They also kept commentaries or ephemerides, wherein every action or word was wrote down; at least Augustus practised this with his daughters and nieces.—Sueton.
In Nero's time, 30,000 buried in one autumn, while there was a plague.
Machiavel makes it a question, whether absolute power is best founded on the nobility or the people. In my opinion, a subject who usurps upon a free state, cannot trust the nobles, and must caress the people. This was the case with the Roman emperors. But an established monarchy is better founded on the nobles.
[131]When the Lex Licinia was promulgated, the senate voted that it should be binding from that moment, as if it had been voted by the people.
In 1721, the English and Dutch drew more money from Spain than France did.—Dict. de Com.
There is computed to be 3000 tun of gold in the bank of Amsterdam, at 100,000 florins a tun.—Id.
A ship of 50 or 60 tun has commonly seven hands, and increases a man every 10 tun.—Id.
The French commerce sunk much about the middle of the seventeenth century, by reason of their infidelity in their goods.—Id.
There seems to have been a very bad police in Rome; for Cicero says, that if Milo had waylaid Clodius, he would have waited for him in the neighbourhood, where his death might have been attributed to robbers, by reason of the commonness of the accident; and yet Clodius had above sixty servants with him, all armed.
Thirty-eight holidays in the year in France.—Vauban. One hundred and eighty working days at a medium.—Id.
The people commonly live poorest in countries which have the richest natural soil.
600 slaves, working in the silver mines of Athens, yielded a mina a-day to their master Xenophon. He computes that 10,000 slaves would produce a revenue of 100 talents a-year.
The holidays in Athens made two months in the year.—Salmasius.
The public in Athens paid 20 per cent. for money.—Xenophon.
Many of the chief officers of the army were named by the people in old Rome.—Liv. lib. ix. and lib. vii.
The Roman senate were obliged by law to give [132]their authority to the Comitia Centuriata before the suffrages were called.—Id. lib. viii. cap. 12.
The Pontifices of old Rome suppressed the records of their religion on purpose, as well as those of new Rome.—Id. lib. ix.
Every part of the office of the senate could be brought before the people; even the distribution of provinces. An evident part of the executive.—Id. lib. x. cap. 24.
60,000 sterling amassed beforehand for building the Capitol.—Id. lib. i.
Plays, a part of religious service for a pestilence.—Id. lib. vii.
The senators were forbid trade among the Romans.—Id. lib. viii. cap. 63.
In the Roman government, there was a great restraint on liberty, since a man could not leave his colony, or live where he pleased.—Id. lib. xxxix. cap. 3.
External superstition punished by the Romans.—Id. lib. xxxix. cap. 16.
They were very jealous of the established religion.—Id. lib. xl. cap. 29.
Robbers established in legal companies in Egypt; and such captains as Jonathan Wyld established.—Diodorus Siculus.
Whoever consecrated the tenth of their goods to Hercules, was esteemed sure of happiness by the Romans.—Id.
Jupiter, according to the Cretan tradition, was a pious worshipper of the gods; a clear proof that those people had a preceding religion.—Id. lib. v.
Gradenigo's change of the Venetian republic was made in 1280.—St. Didier.
The clergy are chosen by a popular call.—Id.
[133]Vossius says he saw in Rome, that, digging forty foot underground, they found the tops of columns buried.
Horses were very rare among the ancients, (before the Romans,) and not employed in any thing but war. 1st, In the retreat of the ten thousand, 'twould have been easy to have mounted the whole army, if horses had been as common as at present. 2d, They had about fifty horses, which, instead of increasing, diminished during the road, though very useful. 3d, In the spoils of villages, Xenophon frequently mentions sheep and oxen; never horses. 4th, Cleombrotus' army, in lib. v. Hist. made use of asses for the carriages.
Demosthenes tells the Athenians, that a very honest man of Macedonia, who would not lie, told him such and such things of Philip's situation: a kind of style that marks but bad intelligence, and little communication among the different states.—Olynth. 2.
The 30 tyrants killed about 1500 citizens untried.—schines.
Thrasybulus restoring the people, and Csar's conquest, the only instances in ancient history of revolutions without barbarous cruelty.
There seems to be a natural course of things which brings on the destruction of great empires. They push their conquests till they come to barbarous nations, which stop their progress by the difficulty of subsisting great armies. After that, the nobility and considerable men of the conquering nation and best provinces withdraw gradually from the frontier army, by reason of its distance from the capital, and barbarity of the country in which they quarter. They forget the use of war. Their barbarous soldiers become their masters. These have no law but their [134]sword, both from their bad education, and from their distance from the sovereign to whom they bear no affection. Hence disorder, violence, anarchy, tyranny, and a dissolution of empire.
Perseus's ambassadors to the Rhodians spoke a style like the modern, with regard to the balance of power, but are condemned by Livy.—Lib. xlii. cap. 46.
Herodotus makes a scruple of so much as delivering an account of the difference of religion among foreigners, lest he should give offence.—Lib. ii.
The Egyptians more careful of preserving their cats than their houses in time of fire.—Id.
Plutarch says, that the effect of the naval power of Athens, established by Themistocles, was to render their government more popular: and that husbandmen and labourers are more friends to nobility than merchants and seamen are.—In Vita Themist.
Solon is the first person mentioned in history to have raised the value of money, which, says Plutarch, was a benefit to the poor in paying their debts, and no loss to the rich.—In Vita Solon.
PHILOSOPHY.
Men love pleasure more than they hate pain.—Bayle.
Men are vicious, but hate a religion that authorizes vice.—Id.
The accounts we have of the sentiments of the ancient philosophers not very distinct nor consistent. Cicero contradicts himself in two sentences: in saying that Thales allowed the ordering of the world by a mind, and in saying that Anaxagoras was the first.
Strato's atheism the most dangerous of the [135]ancient—holding the origin of the world from nature, or a matter endued with activity. Bayle thinks there are none but the Cartesians can refute this atheism.
A Stratonician could retort the arguments of all the sects of philosophy. Of the Stoics, who maintained their God to be fiery and compound; and of the Platonicians, who asserted the ideas to be distinct from the Deity. The same question,—Why the parts or ideas of God had that particular arrangement?—is as difficult as why the world had.
Some pretend that there can be no necessity, according to the system of atheism, "because even matter cannot be determined without something superior to determine it."—Fenelon.
Three proofs of the existence of a God: 1st, Some thing necessarily existent, and what is so is infinitely perfect. 2d, The idea of infinite must come from an infinite being. 3d, The idea of infinite perfection implies that of actual existence.
There is a remarkable story to confirm the Cartesian philosophy of the brain. A man hurt by the fall of a horse, forgot about twenty years of his life, and remembered what went before in a much more lively manner than usual.
