While reasonable arguments are unanimous in adjudging also to the Jews a participation in the rights of man, it is not thereby understood that even in their present debased condition, they may not be useful to the state, or that their increase might possibly become injurious to it. On this too, Rabbi Menasseh’s reasoning in this tract, well deserves attention, since in his days, he would seek for none but a very qualified admission of his brethren in England. Holland alone affords an example which may remove all doubts on that head. There, the increase of the Jews has never yet been complained of; although the means of getting a living are almost as scantily doled out to them, and their privileges are almost as stunted as in many a province of Germany. “Ay,” it is said, “but Holland is a commercial country; and therefore cannot have too many trading inhabitants.” Agreed. But I should like to know, whether it was commerce which drew people thither; or whether commerce was not rather drawn there by the people? How is it, that so many a city in Brabant and the Netherlands, with equal or perhaps superior commercial accommodations, comes so much behind the city of Amsterdam? What makes people crowd together on a barren soil, in marches not intended by Nature to be inhabited; and by industry and art metamorphose lone fens into a garden of God, and invent resources for a comfortable existence, which excites our admiration? What else but liberty, mild government, equitable laws and the hospitable manner in which men of all complexions, garbs, opinions, manners, customs and creeds, are admitted, protected and quietly allowed to follow their business? Nothing else but these advantages have produced, in Holland, the almost superabundant blessings and exuberance of prosperity, for which that country is so much envied.
Generally speaking, “Men superfluous to the state, men, of whom a country can make no use at all,” seem to me terms which no statesman should make use of. Men are all more or less useful: they may be employed in this or that way; and more or less promote the happiness of their fellow creatures and their own. But no country can, without serious injury to itself, dispense with the humblest, the seemingly most useless of its inhabitants, and to a wise government, not even a pauper is one too many--not even a cripple altogether useless. Mr. Dohm, in the introduction to his work, has, indeed, tried to determine the quantity which population may not exceed, without overfilling the country and becoming injurious to it. But I think that, with any proviso whatever, no legislator should give this the least consideration; there is no arrangement to oppose the accumulation of souls, no measure to put a stop to increase, that does not tend far more to injure the improvement of the inhabitants, the destination of man and his happiness, than is done by the alleged superfluity. In this, let them depend upon the wise ordering of Nature. Let it quietly take its course, and on no account place impediments in its way, by unreasonable officiousness. Men will flock to places where they can get a living; they multiply and crowd together where their activity has free play. Population increases as long as genius can discover new means of earning. When the sources become exhausted, it instantly stops, of course; and if you make a vessel too full on one side, it will, of itself, discharge the superfluity on the other. Nay, I venture to assert, that such an instance never occurs; and that there never has been a thinning or emigration of the people, which was not the fault of the laws or the management of them. As often as, under any government whatsoever, men become a nuisance to men, it is owing to nothing but the laws of their administrators.
In some modern publications, there is an echo of the objection--”The Jews are an unproductive people; they neither till the ground, cultivate the arts, nor exercise mechanical trades; and, therefore, do not assist Nature in bringing forth, nor give her produce another form, but only carry and transport the raw or wrought commodities of various countries one to another. They are therefore, mere consumers, who cannot but be a tax upon the producer.” Nay, an eminent, and, in other respects, a very acute author, the other day, loudly complained about the hardship of the producer having to maintain so many consumers, to fill so many useless stomachs. Mere common sense, thinks he, shows that the price of the products of nature, and of the arts, must be run up the greater the number of intermediate buys and sellers, who themselves add nothing to the stock, yet will have them. Accordingly he gives the State this advice and friendly admonition, either not to tolerate Jews at all, or to allow them to exercise agricultural and mechanical trades.
The conclusion may be heartily well meant, but so much weaker are the premises, which appear so plain and irrefutable to the author. According to his ideas, who are precisely called producers and consumers? If he alone produces who co-operates in the composing of some tangible thing, or improves it by the labour of his hands, the largest and most valuable portion of the state consists of mere consumers. According to these principles, both the learned and military professions produce nothing, unless the books written by the former may be said to form an exception. From the trading and working classes, there are first to be deducted, merchants, porters, carriers by hand and by water, etc., and at the upshot, the class of producers, as they are called, will consist chiefly of ploughboys and journeymen mechanics. For landholders and master-manufactureres, now-a-days rarely put their hands to the work themselves. Thus, with the exception of that carefully useful, but considerably minor portion of the population, the state would be composed of individuals who neither cultivate the productions of nature, nor improvise them by the labor of their hands--that is, of mere consumers; and will it be therefore said also, of useless stomachs which are a burden to the producers?
Here the absurdity is palpable: and as the conclusion is just, the error must lodge somewhere in the antecedents. And so it does. Not only making something but doing something also, is called producing. Not he alone who labours with his hands, but, generally, whoever does, promotes, occasions, or facilitates anything that may tend to the benefit or comfort of his fellow-creatures, deserves to be called a producers; and, at times, he deserves it the more, the less you see him move his hands or feet. Many a merchant, while quietly engaged at his desk in forming commercial speculations, or pondering, while lolling on his sofa, on distant adventures, produces, in the main, more than the most active and noisy mechanic or tradesman. The soldier too produces; for it is he who procures the country peace and security. So does the shcolar produce, it is true, rarely anything palpable to the senses, yet matters, at least, equally valuable, such as wholesome advice, information, pastime and pleasure. The expression, “that there is more produced by any Paris pastrycook, than by the whole Academy of Science,” could have escaped a man like Rousseau only in a fit of spleen. The well-being of a country at large as well as of every individual in it, requires many things both sensual and intellectual, many goods both material and spiritual; and he who, more or less directly or indirectly, contributes towards them, cannot be called a mere consumer; he does not eat his bread for nothing; he produces something in return.
This, I should think, places the matter in a far clearer light to common sense. And as to immediate buyers or sellers, in particular, I will undertake to maintain, that they are not only far from prejudicial, either to the producer or consumer, provided abuses be prevented, but very beneficial and almost indispensable to both; nay, that through their agency, commodities become more useful, more in demand, and also cheaper; while the producer gains more, and is thereby enabled to live better and happier without any extraordinary exertion of his strength.
I imagine a workman who is obliged to go himself to the farmer for the raw material, and also to take the manufactured product to the wholesaler himself; who has to mind that he lays in, at a certain season of the year, an adequate stock of the former, and takes the latter, as often as he has occasion, to one who may just have a demand for it, and will become a purchaser. Compare to him, the workman to whom the intermediate dealer brings the raw material into his house, sells it for him for ready money or on credit, according to his present exigency and circumstances. At times he also takes the wrought articles off his hands, and disposes of them to the shopkeeper, at convenient opportunities. What a deal of time and trouble must not the former save, which he may devote to his in-door business, and which the latter is obliged to waste in chance travelling and tarrying about the country, in ever so many avocations, or convivialities, which either he dare not or cannot prevail upon himself to decline. How much more, then, will the former, with the same degree of exertion, work, and produce; and thus be able to afford higher prices, and live comfortably notwithstanding? Will not real industry be promoted thereby, and does the intermediate dealer still deserve to be called a useless consumer? This argument in favour of the petty buyer and seller becomes still more forcible when applied to the wholesale dealer, to the merchant proper, who removes and transports the productions of nature and the arts from one country to another, from one hemisphere to another. He is a real benefactor to the state, to the human race at large, and therefore, every thing but a useless stomach living at the producer’s charge.
I said, “provided abuses be prevented”. These principally consist in the manoeuvres and trick resorted to by the intermediate dealers in raw materials, to get the grower’s fate into their power, and become the rulers of the prices of things, by depressing them in the hands of the first holder, and driving them up in their own. These are great evils, which crush the producer’s industry and the consumer’s enterprise, and which should be counteracted by laws and by policy regulations. Not indeed summarily, by prohibiting, excluding, or stopping; and least of all, by granted or winked-at monopoly or forestalling. Such measures either aggravate the evils which it is intended to avert by them, or bringing on others still more ruinous. Rather let them seek to abate, as much as possible, all restrictions, abolish all chartered companies, abrogate al preferring and excluding exceptions, grant the humblest dealer and jobber in raw materials, equal rights and privileges, with the first house of commerce; in one word, let them every way promote competition, and excite rivalry, and, amongst the intermediate dealers, whereby the prices of commodities will be kept in equilibrium, arts and manufacturing encouraged on the one hand, and on the other, every one enabled to enjoy the industry of his fellow creatures without excessive exertion. The consumer may live comfortably without luxury, and the artist yet maintain himself respectably. It is by competition only, by unlimited liberty, and the equality of the laws of buying and selling, that those ends can be obtained; and, therefore, the commonest salesman or buyer-up, who takes the raw material from the grower to the workman, or the wrought from him to the grower, is of very considerable utility to the prosperity of the arts, industry, and commerce in general. He causes the raw material to maintain its price to the advantage of the grower, while, for the benefit of the workman, and the prosperity of trades, he seeks to spread the products of industry about in all directions, and to render the comforts of life more known, and more generally serviceable. On this consideration, the pettiest traddicking Jew is not a mere consumer, but a useful inhabitant (citizen, I must say) of the state--a real producer.
Let it not be said, that I am a partial advocate of my brethren; that I am magnifying everything which may go in their favour, or tend to their recommendation. Once more I quote Holland. And when the subjects treated of industry and commerce, what country in the world can be more aptly quoted? It is merely through competition and rivalry, through unlimited liberty and equality of the privileges of buyers and sellers, of whatsoever station, quality, or religious persuasion they be, that all commodities have their price there, but with a moderate difference as to buying and selling; while rivals and competitors bring both the parties to a mean, which tends to their mutual advantage. Hence, with a small sacrifice, you can buy or sell any article whatsoever, at all seasons of the year, and at all times of the day, nowhere better, and with greater ease, than at Amsterdam.