Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/243

Rh To war, therefore, and not to the wisdom of philanthropists, may be traced all those regulations of industry and commerce that have cursed and still curse every civilized nation. It was the author of customhouses, of cruel taxes, like the taille and gabelle, and of all the licenses and monopolies ever invented. While the plunder of enemies often contributes, as it did in the case of the Romans, to the military chests of a nation, it is upon the taxation of industry and commerce, a form of internal aggression always accompanying the external aggression, that the despot must depend for certain and definite revenues. To make sure that both are conducted in a manner most advantageous to himself as well as to his subjects, he assumes the right to regulate them. Since the exportation of commodities would diminish his own supplies and increase those of his enemies, he prohibits it; since their importation would drain his kingdom of the precious metals, indispensable in war, he prohibits that also. Considering that our enemies might profit by our provisions and it is important to leave them their merchandise," said St. Louis, "we have ordered that the former shall not be exported nor the latter imported" Sometimes industries fall under the blight of royal protection because they provide commodities useful in war; sometimes, to make the state independent of supplies that might be cut off by war; sometimes, to establish monopolies to get the ready money required in war; sometimes, to stimulate production in order to make easier the burdens of war; sometimes, as was once proposed in France in regard to the silk industry, to prevent a form of toil that might unfit men for war. But whatever the regulation or the industry regulated, it is always war that gives the first impulse to this exercise of despotism, and the more a country is given up to war, the more despotic the regulations. It was so in Spain, where those of Charles V and his successors ruined industry; it was so in France, where those of Boyleau, Sully, and Colbert paralyzed industry; it was so in Germany, where the Great Elector and the other princes pursued the same ruinous policy. Only in England and Holland, where despotism throve the least, did industry thrive the most.

War also is the origin of those distinctions of society based, not upon character and ability, but upon occupation and birth. As long as it was the chief or only pursuit of man, it was the only calling of respect and honor. All other pursuits were more or less ignoble and debasing. Soldiers fight and die for their country. Only slaves work. Toilers, consequently, become objects of scorn and contempt. Not even philosophers were able to rise above the prejudices born of war. "Nature" said Plato, describing the inhabitants of his ideal republic, "made neither shoemakers nor blacksmiths. Such occupations degrade the people that engage in them. . . . As to