An Essay on Projects | Page 6

suitable to the subject
of them; and to dedicate a book of projects to a person who had never
concerned himself to think that way would be like music to one that has
no ear.
And yet your having a capacity to judge of these things no way brings
you under the despicable title of a projector, any more than knowing
the practices and subtleties of wicked men makes a man guilty of their
crimes.
The several chapters of this book are the results of particular thoughts
occasioned by conversing with the public affairs during the present war
with France. The losses and casualties which attend all trading nations

in the world, when involved in so cruel a war as this, have reached us
all, and I am none of the least sufferers; if this has put me, as well as
others, on inventions and projects, so much the subject of this book, it
is no more than a proof of the reason I give for the general projecting
humour of the nation.
One unhappiness I lie under in the following book, viz.: That having
kept the greatest part of it by me for near five years, several of the
thoughts seem to be hit by other hands, and some by the public, which
turns the tables upon me, as if I had borrowed from them.
As particularly that of the seamen, which you know well I had
contrived long before the Act for registering seamen was proposed.
And that of educating women, which I think myself bound to declare,
was formed long before the book called "Advice to the Ladies" was
made public; and yet I do not write this to magnify my own invention,
but to acquit myself from grafting on other people's thoughts. If I have
trespassed upon any person in the world, it is upon yourself, from
whom I had some of the notions about county banks, and factories for
goods, in the chapter of banks; and yet I do not think that my proposal
for the women or the seamen clashes at all, either with that book, or the
public method of registering seamen.
I have been told since this was done that my proposal for a commission
of inquiries into bankrupt estates is borrowed from the Dutch; if there is
anything like it among the Dutch, it is more than ever I knew, or know
yet; but if so, I hope it is no objection against our having the same here,
especially if it be true that it would be so publicly beneficial as is
expressed.
What is said of friendly societies, I think no man will dispute with me,
since one has met with so much success already in the practice of it. I
mean the Friendly Society for Widows, of which you have been
pleased to be a governor.
Friendly societies are very extensive, and, as I have hinted, might be
carried on to many particulars. I have omitted one which was
mentioned in discourse with yourself, where a hundred tradesmen, all
of several trades, agree together to buy whatever they want of one
another, and nowhere else, prices and payments to be settled among
themselves; whereby every man is sure to have ninety-nine customers,
and can never want a trade; and I could have filled up the book with

instances of like nature, but I never designed to fire the reader with
particulars.
The proposal of the pension office you will soon see offered to the
public as an attempt for the relief of the poor; which, if it meets with
encouragement, will every way answer all the great things I have said
of it.
I had wrote a great many sheets about the coin, about bringing in plate
to the Mint, and about our standard; but so many great heads being
upon it, with some of whom my opinion does not agree, I would not
adventure to appear in print upon that subject.
Ways and means also I have laid by on the same score: only adhering
to this one point, that be it by taxing the wares they sell, be it by taxing
them in stock, be it by composition--which, by the way, I believe is the
best--be it by what way soever the Parliament please, the retailers are
the men who seem to call upon us to be taxed; if not by their own
extraordinary good circumstances, though that might bear it, yet by the
contrary in all other degrees of the kingdom.
Besides, the retailers are the only men who could pay it with least
damage, because it is in their power to levy it again upon their
customers in the prices of their goods, and is no more than paying a
higher rent for their shops.
The retailers