Page:Manual of Political Economy.djvu/81

 32 Manual of Political Economy.

BOOK I. CH. IV.

Should wars be paid for by increased taxation?

be consumed, and it is only that portion which maintains productive labourers that ministers to the future production of wealth. But if an invader should ever range unrestrained over these islands, and should destroy the wealth which exists in a permanent form, such as public works, machinery and buildings, then the disaster could not soon be repaired, and England would suffer for a far longer period than did poorer nations, conquered in more backward times. Hence the richer a country is, the more severe may be the injury inflicted on her by war, if the enemy should destroy any considerable part of the wealth which is in the form of fixed capital and which constitutes her industrial plant. If Germany had adopted this policy in her war with France, it would have been impossible for France to have recovered her prosperity with the remarkable rapidity to which allusion has just been made. Of late years a feeling of false humanity has attempted to make the rights of private property respected in war. Life may be sacrificed with as much prodigality as ever. The foremost mechanical genius of this mechanical age is devoted to the production of weapons of death; but civilization, it is said, demands that there should be no wanton destruction of property. No such attempt to palliate the material disasters of war ought to be encouraged; war will be rendered less frequent, if a whole nation is made to feel its terrible consequences, instead of concentrating all the horrors in the sacrifice of thousands of helpless victims who may be marshalled at the caprice of a despot. If any, nation should ever threaten England with invasion, England ought to speak in unmistakable language that her vengeance should not be confined to a retributive slaughter of soldiers, but that she would destroy all the public works upon which the wealth of the nation mainly depended. This would give a practical check to vaunting ambition, and might rouse a nation to restrain the military designs of the most despotic ruler.

This digression suggests a consideration of the much debated financial question, whether any extraordinary national expenditure, such as is caused by a war, ought to be defrayed by a loan or by increased taxation? England has resorted to loans, and a permanent record