In the case of the English lord, however large may be the number ofhis descendants, only one can hold the title at a time.The othermembers of the family are commoners, who gain a livelihood eitherin one of the learned professions, or in the Civil Service, incommerce, industry, or agriculture.The story goes that some timeago one of the first dukes in England conceived the idea ofinviting all the blood relations of his house to a banquet, but hewas fain to abandon the design because their name was legion,notwithstanding that the family pedigree had not reached fartherback than for a few centuries.It would require a whole volume toshow the effect of this institution upon the spirit of enterprise,the colonisation, the might and the liberties, and especially uponthe forces of production of this nation.(9*)The geographical position of England, too, has exercised animmense influence upon the independent development of the nation.
England in its relation to the continent of Europe has ever been aworld by itself; and was always exempt from the effects of therivalries, the prejudices, the selfishness, the passions, and thedisasters of her Continental neighbours.To this isolated conditionshe is mainly indebted for the independent and unalloyed growth ofher political constitution, for the undisturbed consummation of theReformation, and for the secularisation of ecclesiastical propertywhich has proved so beneficial to her industries.To the same causeshe is also indebted for that continuous peace, which, with theexception of the period of the civil war, she has enjoyed for aseries of centuries, and which enabled her to dispense withstanding armies, while facilitating the early introduction of aconsistent customs system.
By reason of her insular position, England not only enjoyedimmunity from territorial wars, but she also derived immenseadvantages for her manufacturing supremacy from the Continentalwars.Land wars and devastations of territory inflict manifoldinjury upon the manufactures at the seat of hostilities; directly,by interfering with the farmer's work and destroying the crops,which deprives the tiller of the soil of the means wherewithal topurchase manufactured goods, and to produce raw material and foodfor the manufacturer; indirectly, by often destroying themanufactories, or at any rate ruining them, because hostilitiesinterfere with the importation of raw material and with theexportation of goods, and because it becomes a difficult matter toprocure capital and labour just at the very time when the mastershave to bear extraordinary imposts and heavy taxation; and lastlythe injurious effects continue to operate even after the cessationof the war, because both capital and individual effort are everattracted towards agricultural work and diverted from manufactures,precisely in that proportion in which the war may have injured thefarmers and their crops, and thereby opened up a more directlyprofitable field for the employment of capital and of labour thanthe manufacturing industries would then afford.While in Germanythis condition of things recurred twice in every hundred years, andcaused German manufactures to retrograde, those of England madeuninterrupted progress.English manufacturers, as opposed to theirContinental competitors, enjoyed a double and treble advantagewhenever England, by fitting out fleets and armies, by subsidies,or by both these means combined, proceeded to take an active partin foreign wars.
We cannot agree with the defenders of unproductive expenditure,namely, of that incurred by wars and the maintenance of largearmies, nor with those who insist upon the positively beneficialcharacter of a public debt; but neither do we believe that thedominant school are in the right when they contend that allconsumption which is not directly reproductive -- for instance,that of war -- is absolutely injurious without qualification.Theequipment of armies, wars, and the debts contracted for thesepurposes, may, as the example of England teaches, under certaincircumstances, very greatly conduce to the increase of theproductive powers of a nation.Strictly speaking, material wealthmay have been consumed unproductively, but this consumption may,nevertheless, stimulate manufacturers to extraordinary exertions,and lead to new discoveries and improvements, especially to anincrease of productive powers.This productive power then becomesa permanent acquisition; it will increase more and more, while theexpense of the war is incurred only once for all.(10*) And thus itmay come to pass, under favouring conditions such as have occurredin England, that a nation has gained immeasurably more than it haslost from that very kind of expenditure which theorists hold to beunproductive.That such was really the case with England, may beshown by figures.For in the course of the war, that country hadacquired in the cotton manufacture alone a power of productionwhich yields annually a much larger return in value than the amountwhich the nation has to find to defray the interest upon theincreased national debt, not to mention the vast development of allother branches of industry, and the additions to her colonialwealth.