Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/301

 there is something else to be considered in judging of the value of labour, besides what it costs, viz. what it produces; whether it is of use to any body, and to whom. All is not gain that goes out of the purse. The nobleman above mentioned did not take the money to pay for building the wall round his estate out of the pockets of the people; but suppose an equal sum to be taken yearly out of the Civil List or any other branch of public revenue, and employed in raising some huge heap of stones—not a monument, but a mausoleum of royal taste and magnificence—the question is, whether the money thus raised by taxes, and laid out in a job, is a saving or a loss to the public? And this question is, we conceive, answered by another, whether if the money had remained in the hands of the public, they would have agreed among themselves, to have laid it out in such a building for them to look at? It would hardly be thought wise to vote a sum of money, to build a Cottage Ornée, large enough to cover a whole county; though the expense (and, according to the theory we are combating, the benefit) would increase with the size of the building and the waste of work. The Pyramids of Egypt and the Pavilion at Brighton, are among the instances of unproductive labour.

We have been twenty years at war, and have laid out five hundred millions in war taxes; and what have we gained by it? Where are the proceeds? If it has not been thrown away in what produces no return, if it has not been sunk in the war, as much as if it had been sunk in the sea, if the government as good factors for the general weal have laid out all this enormous sum in useful works, in productive labour, let them give us back the principal and the interest, (which is just double) and keep the profits to themselves—instead of which, they have made away with the principal, and come to us to pay them the interest in taxes. They have nothing to shew for either, but spiked cannon, rotten ships, gunpowder blown into the air, heaps of dead men's sculls, the turned heads and coats of Poets Laureate, with the glories of Trafalgar and Waterloo, which however will pay no