The Road to Ruin
George Berkeley warned that industry, not financial speculation, was the guarantee of a nation’s wealth.
1721
King George I 1714-1727
George Berkeley warned that industry, not financial speculation, was the guarantee of a nation’s wealth.
1721
King George I 1714-1727
In 1721, Bishop Berkeley published an agonised response to the frenzy for get-rich-quick schemes then gripping the country, of which the infamous South Sea Company was just one startling example. The nation’s economy, he said, needed money and credit to cycle steadily through honest industry. Too many people were taking them out and staking them on the wheel of fortune.
Abridged.
Industry is the natural sure way to wealth. This is so true that it is impossible an industrious free people should want the necessaries and comforts of life, or an idle enjoy them under any form of government. Money is so far useful to the public as it promoteth industry, and credit having the same effect is of the same value with money; but money or credit circulating through a nation from hand to hand, without producing labour and industry in the inhabitants, is direct gaming.*
It is not impossible for cunning men to make such plausible schemes as may draw those who are less skilful into their own and the public ruin: But surely there is no man of sense and honesty but must see and own, whether he understands the game or not, that it is an evident folly for any people, instead of prosecuting the old honest methods of industry and frugality, to sit down to a public gaming-table, and play off their money one to another.* The more methods there are in a state for acquiring riches without industry or merit, the less there will be of either in that state; this is as evident as the ruin that attends it. [...]
* On the get-rich-quick schemes of the day, some of which were quite fantastic, see DH Montgomery on The South Sea Bubble.
* William Cobbett was still making the same distinction a little over eighty years later: see The Real Merchant.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
According to Berkeley, what is the proper function of money or credit in society?
To stimulate honest and free industrial activity.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
He is honest. He works hard. He deserves the money he makes.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IBegrudge. IIPenny. IIIWealth.