These are from the same book (see preceding post)
WE are not ignorant that the duties paid at the custom house on the importation of foreign goods are finally reimbursed by the consumer, but we impose them as the easiest way of levying a tax from those consumers. If our new country was as closely inhabited as your old one, we might without much difficulty collect a land tax, that would be sufficient for all purposes; but where farms are at five or six miles’ distance from each other, the going of the collectors from house to house to demand the taxes, and being obliged to call more than once for the same tax, makes the trouble of collecting in many cases exceed the value of the sum collected. Things that are practicable in one country are not always so in another, where circumstances differ. Our duties are, however, generally so small, as to give little temptation to smuggling.
Believe me ever, my dear friend, yours most affectionately,
B. Franklin.
To M. Le Veillard. April 22, 1788.
Unprejudiced men well know that all the penal and prohibitory laws that were ever thought on will not be sufficient to prevent manufacturers in a country, whose inhabitants surpass the number that can subsist by the husbandry of it. That this will be the case in America soon, if our people remain confined within the mountains, and almost as soon should it be unsafe for them to live beyond, though the country be ceded to us, no man acquainted with political and commercial history can doubt. Manufactures are founded in poverty. It is the multitude of poor without land in a country, and who must work for others at low wages, or starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture, and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of the same kind from abroad, and to bear the expense of its own exportation.
But no man who can have a piece of land of his own, sufficient by his labor to subsist his family in plenty, is poor enough to be a manufacturer, and work for a master. Hence, while there is land enough in America for our people, there can never be manufacturers to any amount or value. It is a striking observation of a very able pen, that the natural livelihood of the thin inhabitants of a forest country is hunting; that of a greater number, pasturage; and that of the greatest, manufactures; which last must subsist the bulk of a people in a full country, or they must be subsisted by charity, or perish.
From Canada Pamphlet.
DO not, my courteous reader, take pet at our proprietory constitution for these our bargain and sale proceedings in legislation. It is a happy country where justice and what was your own before, can be had for ready money. It is another addition to the value of money, and of course another spur to industry. Every land is not so blessed. There are countries where the princely proprietor claims to be lord of all property, where what is your own shall not only be wrested from you, but the money you give to have it restored shall be kept with it; and your offering so much, being a sign that you are too rich, you shall be plundered of everything that remained. These times are not come here yet. Your present proprietors have never been more unreasonable hitherto than barely to insist on your fighting in defence of their property, and paying the expense yourselves; or, if their estates must, ah! must, be taxed, towards it, that the best of their lands shall be taxed no higher than the worst of yours.
Preface to a speech.
A TURNPIKE tax is no burden, as the turnpike gives more benefit than it takes. And ought the rich in Britain, who have made such numbers poor by engrossing all the small divisions of land, and who keep the laborers and working people poor by limiting their wages, ought these gentry to complain of the burden of maintaining the poor that have worked for them at unreasonably low rates all their lives? As well might the planter complain of his being obliged to maintain his poor negroes, when they grow old, are sick, or lame, and unable to provide for themselves.
Political Observations.
FOOD is always necessary to all, and much the greatest part of the labor of mankind is employed in raising provisions for the mouth. Is not this kind of labor, then, the fittest to be the standard by which to measure the values of all other labor, and consequently of all other things whose value depends on the labor of making or procuring them? May not even gold and silver be thus valued? If the labor of the farmer, in producing a bushel of wheat, be equal to the labor of the miner in producing an ounce of silver, will not the bushel of wheat just measure the value of the ounce of silver? The miner must eat; the farmer indeed can live without the ounce of silver, and so perhaps will have some advantage in settling the price.
But these discussions I leave to you, as being more able to manage them; only, I will send you a little scrap I wrote some time since on the laws prohibiting foreign commodities.
To Lord Kames. London, Feb. 21, 1769.
THIS pamphlet had a good effect; Governor Thomas was so pleased with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declined it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
Life of Franklin.
THIS gave me occasion to observe that when men are employed, they are best contented; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with the pork, the bread, etc., and were continually in bad humor; which put me in mind of a sea captain, whose rule it was to keep his men constantly at work, and, when his mate once told him that they had done everything, and there was nothing further to employ them about: "O," said he, "make them scour the anchor."
Life of Franklin.
https://archive.org/details/wisdomofbenjamin00franuoft
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