An Essay Upon Projects

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AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS

Contents:

Introduction
Author's Preface
Author's Introduction
The History of Projects
Of Projectors
Of Banks
Of the Multiplicity of Banks
Of the Highways
Of Assurances
Of Friendly Societies
Of Seamen
Of Wagering
Of Fools
A Charity-Lottery
Of Bankrupts
Of Academies
Of a Court Merchant
Of Seamen
The Conclusion

INTRODUCTION.

Defoe's "Essay on Projects" was the first volume he published, and
no great writer ever published a first book more characteristic in
expression of his tone of thought. It is practical in the highest
degree, while running over with fresh speculation that seeks
everywhere the well-being of society by growth of material and moral
power. There is a wonderful fertility of mind, and almost whimsical
precision of detail, with good sense and good humour to form the
groundwork of a happy English style. Defoe in this book ran again
and again into sound suggestions that first came to be realised long
after he was dead. Upon one subject, indeed, the education of
women, we have only just now caught him up. Defoe wrote the book in
1692 or 1693, when his age was a year or two over thirty, and he
published it in 1697.

Defoe was the son of James Foe, of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, whose
family had owned grazing land in the country, and who himself throve
as a meat salesman in London. James Foe went to Cripplegate Church,
where the minister was Dr. Annesley. But in 1662, a year after the
birth of Daniel Foe, Dr. Annesley was one of the three thousand
clergymen who were driven out of their benefices by the Act of
Uniformity. James Foe was then one of the congregation that
followed him into exile, and looked up to him as spiritual guide
when he was able to open a meeting-house in Little St. Helen's.
Thus Daniel Foe, not yet De Foe, was trained under the influence of
Dr. Annesley, and by his advice sent to the Academy at Newington
Green, where Charles Morton, a good Oxford scholar, trained young
men for the pulpits of the Nonconformists. In later days, when
driven to America by the persecution of opinion, Morton became Vice-
President of Harvard College. Charles Morton sought to include in
his teaching at Newington Green a training in such knowledge of
current history as would show his boys the origin and meaning of the
controversies of the day in which, as men, they might hereafter take
their part. He took pains, also, to train them in the use of
English. "We were not," Defoe said afterwards, "destitute of
language, but we were made masters of English; and more of us
excelled in that particular than of any school at that time."

Daniel Foe did not pass on into the ministry for which he had been
trained. He said afterwards, in his "Review," "It was my disaster
first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour
of that sacred employ." At the age of about nineteen he went into
business as a hose factor in Freeman's Court, Cornhill. He may have
bought succession to a business, or sought to make one in a way of
life that required no capital. He acted simply as broker between
the manufacturer and the retailer. He remained at the business in
Freeman's Court for seven years, subject to political distractions.
In 1683, still in the reign of Charles the Second, Daniel Foe, aged
twenty-two, published a pamphlet called "Presbytery Roughdrawn."
Charles died on the 6th of February, 1685. On the 14th of the next
June the Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme with eighty-three
followers, hoping that Englishmen enough would flock about his
standard to overthrow the Government of James the Second, for whose
exclusion, as a Roman Catholic, from the succession to the throne
there had been so long a struggle in his brother's reign. Daniel
Foe took leave of absence from his business in Freeman's Court,
joined Monmouth, and shared the defeat at Sedgmoor on the 6th of
July. Judge Jeffreys then made progress through the West, and
Daniel Foe escaped from his clutches. On the 15th of July Monmouth
was executed. Daniel Foe found it convenient at that time to pay
personal attention to some business affairs in Spain. His name
suggests an English reading of a Spanish name, Foa, and more than
once in his life there are indications of friends in Spain about
whom we know nothing. Daniel Foe went to Spain in the time of
danger to his life, for taking part in the rebellion of the Duke of
Monmouth, and when he came back he wrote himself De Foe. He may
have heard pedigree discussed among his Spanish friends; he may have
wished to avoid drawing attention to a name entered under the letter
F in a list of rebels. He may have played on the distinction
between himself and his father, still living, that one was Mr. Foe,
the other Mr. D. Foe. He may have meant to write much, and wishing
to be a friend to his country, meant also to deprive punsters of the
opportunity of calling him a Foe. Whatever his chief reason for the
change, we may be sure that it was practical.

In April, 1687, James the Second issued a Declaration for Liberty of
Conscience in England, by which he suspended penal laws against all
Roman Catholics and Nonconformists, and dispensed with oaths and
tests established by the law. This was a stretch of the king's
prerogative that produced results immediately welcome to the
Nonconformists, who sent up addresses of thanks. Defoe saw clearly
that a king who is thanked for overruling an unwelcome law has the
whole point conceded to him of right to overrule the law. In that
sense he wrote, "A Letter containing some Reflections on His
Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience," to warn the
Nonconformists of the great mistake into which some were falling.
"Was ever anything," he asked afterwards, "more absurd than this
conduct of King James and his party, in wheedling the Dissenters;
giving them liberty of conscience by his own arbitrary dispensing
authority, and his expecting they should be content with their
religious liberty at the price of the Constitution?" In the letter
itself he pointed out that "the king's suspending of laws strikes at
the root of this whole Government, and subverts it quite. The Lords
and Commons have such a share in it, that no law can be either made,
repealed, or, which is all one, suspended, but by their consent."

In January, 1688, Defoe having inherited the freedom of the City of
London, took it up, and signed his name in the Chamberlain's book,
on the 26th of that month, without the "de," "Daniel Foe." On the
5th of November, 1688, there was another landing, that of William of
Orange, in Torbay, which threatened the government of James the
Second. Defoe again rode out, met the army of William at Henley-on-
Thames, and joined its second line as a volunteer. He was present
when it was resolved, on the 13th of February, 1689, that the flight
of James had been an abdication; and he was one of the mounted
citizens who formed a guard of honour when William and Mary paid
their first visit to Guildhall.

Defoe was at this time twenty-eight years old, married, and living
in a house at Tooting, where he had also been active in foundation
of a chapel. From hose factor he had become merchant adventurer in
trade with Spain, and is said by one writer of his time to have been
a "civet-cat merchant." Failing then in some venture in 1692, he
became bankrupt, and had one vindictive creditor who, according to
the law of those days, had power to shut him in prison, and destroy
all power of recovering his loss and putting himself straight with
the world. Until his other creditors had conquered that one enemy,
and could give him freedom to earn money again and pay his debts--
when that time came he proved his sense of honesty to much larger
than the letter of the law--Defoe left London for Bristol, and there
kept out of the way of arrest. He was visible only on Sunday, and
known, therefore, as "the Sunday Gentleman." His lodging was at the
Red Lion Inn, in Castle Street. The house, no longer an inn, still
stands, as numbers 80 and 81 in that street. There Defoe wrote this
Essay on Projects." He was there until 1694, when he received
offers that would have settled him prosperously in business at
Cadiz, but he held by his country. The cheek on free action was
removed, and the Government received with favour a project of his,
which is not included in the Essay, "for raising money to supply the
occasions of the war then newly begun." He had also a project for
the raising of money to supply his own occasions by the
establishment of pantile works, which proved successful. Defoe
could not be idle. In a desert island he would, like his Robinson
Crusoe, have spent time, not in lamentation, but in steady work to
get away.

H. M.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

TO DALBY THOMAS, ESQ., One of the Commission's for Managing His
majesty's Duties on Glass, &c

SIR,

This Preface comes directed to you, not as commissioner, &c., under
whom I have the honour to serve his Majesty, nor as a friend, though
I have great obligations of that sort also, but as the most proper
judge of the subjects treated of, and more capable than the greatest
part of mankind to distinguish and understand them.

Books are useful only to such whose genius are 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 of manufactures, especially so far as relates to the
inland trade, have never been taxed yet, and their wealth or number
is not easily calculated. Trade and land has been handled roughly
enough, and these are the men who now lie as a reserve to carry on
the burden of the war.

These are the men who, were the land tax collected as it should be,
ought to pay the king more than that whole Bill ever produced; and
yet these are the men who, I think I may venture to say, do not pay
a twentieth part in that Bill.

Should the king appoint a survey over the assessors, and indict all
those who were found faulty, allowing a reward to any discoverer of
an assessment made lower than the literal sense of the Act implies,
what a register of frauds and connivances would be found out!

In a general tax, if any should be excused, it should be the poor,
who are not able to pay, or at least are pinched in the necessary
parts of life by paying. And yet here a poor labourer, who works
for twelve pence or eighteen pence a day, does not drink a pot of
beer but pays the king a tenth part for excise; and really pays more
to the king's taxes in a year than a country shopkeeper, who is
alderman of the town, worth perhaps two or three thousand pounds,
brews his own beer, pays no excise, and in the land-tax is rated it
may be at 100 pounds, and pays 1 pound 4s. per annum, but ought, if
the Act were put in due execution, to pay 36 pounds per annum to the
king.

If I were to be asked how I would remedy this, I would answer, it
should be by some method in which every man may be taxed in the due
proportion to his estate, and the Act put in execution, according to
the true intent and meaning of it, in order to which a commission of
assessment should be granted to twelve men, such as his Majesty
should be well satisfied of, who should go through the whole
kingdom, three in a body, and should make a new assessment of
personal estates, not to meddle with land.

To these assessors should all the old rates, parish books, poor
rates, and highway rates, also be delivered; and upon due inquiry to
be made into the manner of living, and reputed wealth of the people,
the stock or personal estate of every man should be assessed,
without connivance; and he who is reputed to be worth a thousand
pounds should be taxed at a thousand pounds, and so on; and he who
was an overgrown rich tradesman of twenty or thirty thousand pounds
estate should be taxed so, and plain English and plain dealing be
practised indifferently throughout the kingdom; tradesmen and landed
men should have neighbours' fare, as we call it, and a rich man
should not be passed by when a poor man pays.

We read of the inhabitants of Constantinople, that they suffered
their city to be lost for want of contributing in time for its
defence, and pleaded poverty to their generous emperor when he went
from house to house to persuade them; and yet when the Turks took
it, the prodigious immense wealth they found in it, made them wonder
at the sordid temper of the citizens.

England (with due exceptions to the Parliament, and the freedom
wherewith they have given to the public charge) is much like
Constantinople; we are involved in a dangerous, a chargeable, but
withal a most just and necessary war, and the richest and moneyed
men in the kingdom plead poverty; and the French, or King James, or
the devil may come for them, if they can but conceal their estates
from the public notice, and get the assessors to tax them at an
under rate.

These are the men this commission would discover; and here they
should find men taxed at 500 pounds stock who are worth 20,000
pounds. Here they should find a certain rich man near Hackney rated
to-day in the tax-book at 1,000 pounds stock, and to-morrow offering
27,000 pounds for an estate.

Here they should find Sir J- C- perhaps taxed to the king at 5,000
pounds stock, perhaps not so much, whose cash no man can guess at;
and multitudes of instances I could give by name without wrong to
the gentlemen.

And, not to run on in particulars, I affirm that in the land-tax ten
certain gentlemen in London put together did not pay for half so
much personal estate, called stock, as the poorest of them is
reputed really to possess.

I do not inquire at whose door this fraud must lie; it is none of my
business.

I wish they would search into it whose power can punish it. But
this, with submission, I presume to say: The king is thereby
defrauded and horribly abused, the true intent and meaning of Acts
of Parliament evaded, the nation involved in debt by fatal
deficiencies and interests, fellow-subjects abused, and new
inventions for taxes occasioned.

The last chapter in this book is a proposal about entering all the
seamen in England into the king's pay--a subject which deserves to
be enlarged into a book itself; and I have a little volume of
calculations and particulars by me on that head, but I thought them
too long to publish. In short, I am persuaded, was that method
proposed to those gentlemen to whom such things belong, the greatest
sum of money might be raised by it, with the least injury to those
who pay it, that ever was or will be during the war.

Projectors, they say, are generally to be taken with allowance of
one-half at least; they always have their mouths full of millions,
and talk big of their own proposals. And therefore I have not
exposed the vast sums my calculations amount to; but I venture to
say I could procure a farm on such a proposal as this at three
millions per annum, and give very good security for payment--such an
opinion I have of the value of such a method; and when that is done,
the nation would get three more by paying it, which is very strange,
but might easily be made out.

In the chapter of academies I have ventured to reprove the vicious
custom of swearing. I shall make no apology for the fact, for no
man ought to be ashamed of exposing what all men ought to be ashamed
of practising. But methinks I stand corrected by my own laws a
little, in forcing the reader to repeat some of the worst of our
vulgar imprecations, in reading my thoughts against it; to which,
however, I have this to reply:

First, I did not find it easy to express what I mean without putting
down the very words--at least, not so as to be very intelligible.

Secondly, why should words repeated only to expose the vice, taint
the reader more than a sermon preached against lewdness should the
assembly?--for of necessity it leads the hearer to the thoughts of
the fact. But the morality of every action lies in the end; and if
the reader by ill-use renders himself guilty of the fact in reading,
which I designed to expose by writing, the fault is his, not mine.

I have endeavoured everywhere in this book to be as concise as
possible, except where calculations obliged me to be particular; and
having avoided impertinence in the book, I would avoid it too, in
the preface, and therefore shall break off with subscribing myself,

Sir,
Your most obliged, humble servant
D. F.

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION.

Necessity, which is allowed to be the mother of invention, has so
violently agitated the wits of men at this time that it seems not at
all improper, by way of distinction, to call it the Projecting Age.
For though in times of war and public confusions the like humour of
invention has seemed to stir, yet, without being partial to the
present, it is, I think, no injury to say the past ages have never
come up to the degree of projecting and inventing, as it refers to
matters of negotiation and methods of civil polity, which we see
this age arrived to.

Nor is it a hard matter to assign probable causes of the perfection
in this modern art. I am not of their melancholy opinion who
ascribe it to the general poverty of the nation, since I believe it
is easy to prove the nation itself, taking it as one general stock,
is not at all diminished or impoverished by this long, this
chargeable war, but, on the contrary, was never richer since it was
inhabited.

Nor am I absolutely of the opinion that we are so happy as to be
wiser in this age than our forefathers; though at the same time I
must own some parts of knowledge in science as well as art have
received improvements in this age altogether concealed from the
former.

The art of war, which I take to be the highest perfection of human
knowledge, is a sufficient proof of what I say, especially in
conducting armies and in offensive engines. Witness the now ways of
rallies, fougades, entrenchments, attacks, lodgments, and a long et
cetera of new inventions which want names, practised in sieges and
encampments; witness the new forts of bombs and unheard-of mortars,
of seven to ten ton weight, with which our fleets, standing two or
three miles off at sea, can imitate God Almighty Himself and rain
fire and brimstone out of heaven, as it were, upon towns built on
the firm land; witness also our new-invented child of hell, the
machine which carries thunder, lightning, and earthquakes in its
bowels, and tears up the most impregnable fortification.

But if I would search for a cause from whence it comes to pass that
this age swarms with such a multitude of projectors more than usual,
who--besides the innumerable conceptions, which die in the bringing
forth, and (like abortions of the brain) only come into the air and
dissolve--do really every day produce new contrivances, engines, and
projects to get money, never before thought of; if, I say, I would
examine whence this comes to pass, it must be thus:

The losses and depredations which this war brought with it at first
were exceeding many, suffered chiefly by the ill-conduct of
merchants themselves, who did not apprehend the danger to be really
what it was: for before our Admiralty could possibly settle
convoys, cruisers, and stations for men-of-war all over the world,
the French covered the sea with their privateers and took an
incredible number of our ships. I have heard the loss computed, by
those who pretended they were able to guess, at above fifteen
millions of pounds sterling, in ships and goods, in the first two or
three years of the war--a sum which, if put into French, would make
such a rumbling sound of great numbers as would fright a weak
accountant out of his belief, being no less than one hundred and
ninety millions of livres. The weight of this loss fell chiefly on
the trading part of the nation, and, amongst them, on the merchants;
and amongst them, again, upon the most refined capacities, as the
insurers, &c. And an incredible number of the best merchants in the
kingdom sunk under the load, as may appear a little by a Bill which
once passed the House of Commons for the relief of merchant-
insurers, who had suffered by the war with France. If a great many
fell, much greater were the number of those who felt a sensible ebb
of their fortunes, and with difficulty bore up under the loss of
great part of their estates. These, prompted by necessity, rack
their wits for new contrivances, new inventions, new trades, stocks,
projects, and anything to retrieve the desperate credit of their
fortunes. That this is probable to be the cause will appear further
thus. France (though I do not believe all the great outcries we
make of their misery and distress--if one-half of which be true,
they are certainly the best subjects in the world) yet without
question has felt its share of the losses and damages of the war;
but the poverty there falling chiefly on the poorer sort of people,
they have not been so fruitful in inventions and practices of this
nature, their genius being quite of another strain. As for the
gentry and more capable sort, the first thing a Frenchman flies to
in his distress is the army; and he seldom comes back from thence to
get an estate by painful industry, but either has his brains knocked
out or makes his fortune there.

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