LIBERTY AND PROPERTY PRESERVED AGAINST REPUBLICANS AND LEVELLERS. A COLLECTION OF TRACTS. NUMBER VIII. CONTAINING Dialogue between a Tradesman and his Porter-Analysis and Refutation of Paine's Rights of Man-Questions to the People of Great Britain-Think a little. Printed and Sold by J. DOWNES, No. 240, Strand, near Temple-Bar; where the Bookfellers in Town and Country may be ferved with any quantity. PRICE ONE PENNY. A DIALOGUE BETWEEN Mr. T, A TRADESMAN IN THE CITY, A AND HIS PORTER, JOHN W. LITTLE time fince, a refpectable Tradefman in the City met one of his Porters on a Saturday evening dreffed in his best clothes, and with a face full of business. The Porter, being a fober and induftrious man, was ufually treated with more familiarity by his master than the reft of the servants, who did not fo well deferve it. The mafter therefore stopped to speak to him, and the following converfation paffed between them. Mafter. What, John! how came you to be in your Sunday's coat on a Saturday night? Are you going to your club feaft? John. No, Sir; my club has been broken up thefe three months. Mafter. Broken up! What's the reafon of that, John ? John. Why they now go to a good many new clubs, and a poor man cannot afford to belong to more than one. Mafter. What new clubs, John? I thought your's was a very good club. I remember, when you had theague and fever laft winter, what help you faid you had from your club. Why have the members left it? They must be lucky ⚫ to have met with a better. John. Why, Sir, they get nothing at present from the new clubs, though they pay fomewhat. But I hear that they will get a great deal by and bye. Mafer. How fo? John. Really, Sir, I do not very well understand politics, but it is to be brought about fomehow by a change in the Government. We hear that the people are to rife, and declare their rights. Mafter. And pray do you belong to any of these clubs, John? John. No, Sir; I have been to one of them as a vifitor two or three times, and I was going again just as you met me. Mafter. Well then, you can tell us all about it. Pray how came that club to meet first ? John. The working men, as I hear, were got together by two or three gentlemen that frequented the house, and ufed to talk and drink with them as good-naturedly as could be; and treated them at firft with punch and porter, till the club was fettled. Mafter. Then they do not treat you now? John. No, Sir; we hear nothing of them now, only they fend us fome little books and printed papers now and then. Mafter. Well, and what do the gentlemen and their books tell you? John. I do not like to fay, Sir, for fear you should be angry. Mafter. You mean, John, that you do not like to tell ma because you think you have done wrong. have done wrong. You know I fhould not be angry with you for nothing; you know I am your friend; tell me then, what do you learn from the gentlemen and their books? John. Why then, Sir, they say that one perfon ought not to be richer or greater than another; and that all the money, and all the good things of the land, fhould be divided equally, equally, and that then there could not be any poverty That's one thing they fay. Mafter. And do you think that is poffible, John? John. Yes, indeed, Sir; it feems plain and fair enough. Mafter. Well, then, I'll tell you firft, why it ought not to be; and, fecondly, why it cannot be. It ought not to be, because whatever property any individual poffeffes at this moment, in this country, has been purchased with his own money, gained by his own industry, or given to him by his relations who worked for it. The laws of reason and universal justice always decreed our right to fuch property, and the laws of all countries long fince confirmed that decree, by ordering that robbers fhould be hanged. But to bring the matter home to yourfelf. I think you have one hundred pounds in the Bank, and I know I pay you eighteen fhillings a-week; your income then is about fifty pounds a-year. What would you fay, if your fellow-fervant Johnfon, to whom I pay fourteen hillings a-week, which is all he has, was to insist on your paying him feven pounds a-year, to bring him to an equality with yourself? Would you readily confent to part with it ? John. No, I cannot fay that I fhould like it, or think it reasonable. Mafter. Why not? John. Becaufe it is what I earn by my own labour. Mafter. And yet Johnfon and you cannot be equal, while you receive fifty pounds a-year, and he but thirtyfix. But we will fuppofe for a moment that you would willingly have given up the feven pounds, and that Johnfon and yourself should foon after marry, and that you fhould have five children, and Johnson fhould have none; your incomes, it is true, would then be equal, but your wants would not. What is to be done in this cafe? for if you cannot be equal in all circumstances, the whole ftory of equality is nonfenfe. What ftep, I fay, would you take in that fituation ? John. Why I fhould apply to Johnson for relief. Mafter. And what would you do if he fhould refuse, as no doubt he would? John. I do not very well know, but I fuppofe the law would help me. A 2 Mafer: Maßter. In truth I fuppofe not; for the law would tell you that the feven pounds a-year which you gave to Johnfon became abfolutely his own from that moment, and that he may relieve you or not, as he pleases; and this ever has been, and ever will be, the law of all countries, let the knaves and fools of your club tell you what they please. But we will confider the matter another way. You know that you have lived with me feven years, and Johnfon but two and you know that I can truft you with more safety than I can Johnson, because he gets drunk fometimes, and you are always fober; and you know that you do all your work more cleverly than he does his. Do you think then that it would be fair if I were to take two fhillings a-week from your wages, and to add them to his ? John. N, really, I think not. Mafter. And yet, if this new principle of equality is right, I ought to do fo. And this leads me to tell you why it is impoffible that all men fhould have equal fhares of the riches, and good things, as you call them, of the land. If we can fuppofe that a country could for any time exift without religion, without a King, and without laws, as is the cafe of miferable France at this moment, it is true that for that time men would be equal; that is to fay, they would be equally poor, equally wicked, and equally foolish; but this could not last long; industrious men would foon become more comfortable than their idle neighbours, good men would foon be diftinguished from the multitude, and wife men would be again refpected; the induftrious would become rich, the good would be beloved, and the wife would be again powerful. Now it is unfortunately the cafe, that nine men out of ten are neither wife, honeft, or industrious, and therefore they are always behind-hand, and always muft be, unless God Almighty fhould be pleased to improve our nature, which I fear we do not take much pains to deferve at his hands. Are you fatisfied with my reafoning? John. Indeed, Sir, there is a good deal of truth in it, but yet I do think there can be no reason for such a vast difference between men: I mean, that fome should be fo very much richer than others. Now there's a Duke in the county where I was born that they fay has thirty thoufand a-year isn't that a fhame, Sir? Mafter. I cannot fay, John, till you tell me whether he ipends it. John John. OI warrant you, Sir, he fpends it all, and the folks fay that he's as poor as a rat too, the more fhame for him. Why he was three years in filling up one canal and making another. They fay that job coft him five thousand pounds; and he keeps fuch a ftud of horfes, and fix or eight carriages, and a matter of forty fervants. If you talk of foolish peo, le, I think he is foolish with a witness. It was only last year that he took in his head to grub up a fine wood, which had not been planted above ten years, because he thought it would look better about half a mile off; and fo he has planted twenty thousand elms and oaks up the fide of a hill, instead of in the valley. Now is it not a fhame, Sir, to throw away fo much money? Mafter. If it were really thrown away, I fhould think it a fhame as well as you; but in this country no man can throw money away, for every fort of expence, however idle it may feem, is in the end a public benefit. You forget that the nobleman whom you spoke of must have employed the poor of half a dozen parishes in the alteration of his wood and his canal; that perhaps twenty men and boys work in his ftables; that forty household fervants are fupported at his charge; that the farmer, the butcher, the baker, the maltfter, the cheefemonger, the coal-merchant, the tallowchandler, the grocer, the linen and woollen draper, the fhoemaker, the taylor, and all the people who are employed by them, derive a great part of their living from his extravagance, which is a misfortune only to himself, and a bleffing to all around him. But what other complaints do your gentlemen and your books make? John. Why, Sir, they fay that the farmers in the country are very hardly treated about tithes, and that tithes are unjuft; and indeed I think it is very hard that a man must plough, and dung, and fow, and reap, and all at his own expence, and at laft the parfon should come and run away with a tenth part of his crop. Mafter. You may depend upon it, however, that the farmer gets as much at last as he would if he paid no tithe at all. John. Nay, Sir, how can that be, for we know that he gets but nine parts out of ten of his crop? Mafter. Here is the cafe, John. Suppofe you was my tenant, and rented a farm of a hundred a-year of me, and that the tithe of your farm was worth twenty-five A 3 pounds |