To Dr Smith
A little tract of mine, in the latter part of which I took the liberty of making use of your name, (the Defence of Usury), having been some time out of print, I am about publishing a new edition of it. I am now therefore at a period at which, if I have done you or any body any injustice, I shall have the opportunity, and assuredly I do not want the inclination, to repair it: or if in any other respect I have fallen into an error, I could give myself and the public the benefit of its being set right. I have been Battered with the intelligence that, upon the whole, your sentiments with respect to the points of difference are at present the same as mine: but as the intimation did not come directly from you, nor has the communication of it received the sanction of your authority, I shall not without that action give any hint, honourable as it would be to me, and great as the service is which it could not but render to my cause.
I have been favoured with the communication from Dr Reid of Glasgow of an inedited paper of his on the same subject, written a good many years ago. He declares himself now fully of my opinion on the question of expediency, and had gone a considerable length towards it at that time. The only ground on which he differs from me, is that of the origination of the prejudice, of which his paper gives, as might be expected, an account more ecclesiastical than mine. Anxious to do my cause as much service as it is capable of receiving, I write to him now, to endeavour to persuade him to give his paper to the world, or if he looks upon so much of it as concerns the question of utility [as] superseded by mine, that he will either communicate the historical part -- that part which he prefers to mine -- to some general repository for short publications, or allow me the honour of forwarding it to the world in company with mine. The account that has been given by the Marquis de Condorcet of the sentiments of Turgot on the same subject, is already every body's without leave: I shall accordingly annex, by way of appendix to my new edition, the original as well as a translation of that short passage. I am the more anxious to collect all the force I can muster, in as far as I find from the printed debates, as well as from private intelligence, that the project of reducing the rate of interest in Ireland is not yet given up: though this perseverance is hardly reconciliable with the account I receive from the same quarter, of the impression made in that country by the Defence of Usury. Yet the subjecting the rate of interest to a further reduction by a new law, is a much more mischievous and less defensible measure than the continuing of the restraint upon the old footing: and adds to the mischief of the old established regimen others of a new and much more serious nature. It would be a tax upon the owners of money, much heavier than ever was levied upon the proprietors of land: with this circumstance to distinguish it from all other taxes, that, instead of being brought into the treasury for the public service, it is made a present of to the collectors, in expectation of the good they are to do the nation by the spending of it. If this be good thrift, in the name of consistency and equality let them impose a land Tax to the same amount, and dispose of the produce in the same manner. What makes my anxiety the greater, is the uncertainty whether this project of plunder without profit may not be still hovering over this island. Last year it was roundly and positively asserted in the Irish House of Commons, as if upon personal knowledge, to he determined upon in the Cabinet here: and the Administration being appealed to, though they of course would not acknowledge, would no contradict it. Its suspension hitherto may have resulted from nothing more than a doubt whether the nation were yet ripe, according to the Irish phrase, for this mode of enrichment: as if there were a time at which a nation were riper for plunder and waste than at another. I am truly sorry I can not find time to make one effort more for the express purpose of stemming the torrent of delusion in that channel. The straw I have planted has done something: what might not be hoped for, if your oak-stick were linked with it?
As the world judges, one upon examination and nine hundred and ninety-nine upon trust, the declaration of your opinion upon any point of legislation would be worth, I won't pretend to say how many votes: but the declaration of your opinion in favour of a side to which conviction and candour had brought you over from the opposite one, would be worth at least twice or thrice as many: under such circumstances, the authority of the converter would tell for little in comparison of that of the proselyte, especially such a proselyte. We should have the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer abjuring his annual motion in the face of the House, and Lord Hawkesbury who, it has been said, is Mr Pitt's tutor in this wise business, quietly and silently putting his papers and calculations into the fire.
If, then, you agree with me in looking upon this as a most pernicious measure, you would, like me, be glad to see it put an end to, and for that purpose the acknowledgement of your opinion on a subject which you have made so much and so honourably your own, is an expedient to the use of which, I should hope, you would not see any objection: the less as you would hardly, I suppose, let another edition of your great work go abrwith opinions in it that were yours no longer. If, then, you think proper to honour me with your allowance for that purpose, then and not otherwise I will make it known to the public, in such words as you give me, that you no longer look upon the rate of interest as fit subject for restraint: and then, thanks to you and Turgot and Dr Reid, the Defence of Usury may be pronounced, in its outworks at least, a strong-hold.
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