书城外语The Querist
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第10章

307 Whether the total sum of all other powers, be it of enjoyment or action, which belong to man, or to all mankind together, is not in truth a very narrow and limited quantity? But whether fancy is not boundless?

308 Whether this capricious tyrant, which usurps the place of reason, doth not most cruelly torment and delude those poor men, the usurers, stockjobbers, and projectors, of content to themselves from heaping up riches, that is, from gathering counters, from multiplying figures, from enlarging denominations, without knowing what they would be at, and without having a proper regard to the use or end or nature of things?

309 Whether the ignis fatuus of fancy doth not kindle immoderate desires, and lead men into endless pursuits and wild labyrinths?

310 Whether counters be not referred to other things, which, so long as they keep pace and proportion with the counters, it must be owned the counters are useful; but whether beyond that to value or covet counters be not direct folly?

311 Whether the public aim ought not to be, that men's industry should supply their present wants, and the overplus be converted into a stock of power?

312 Whether the better this power is secured, and the more easily it is transferred, industry be not so much the more encouraged?

313 Whether money, more than is expedient for those purposes, be not upon the whole hurtful rather than beneficial to a State?

314 Whether the promoting of industry should not be always in view, as the true and sole end, the rule and measure, of a national bank? And whether all deviations from that object should not be carefully avoided?

315 Whether it may not be useful, for supplying manufactures and trade with stock, for regulating exchange, for quickening commerce, for putting spirit into the people?

316 Whether we are sufficiently sensible of the peculiar security there is in having a bank that consists of land and paper, one of which cannot be exported, and the other is in no danger of being exported?

317 Whether it be not delightful to complain? And whether there be not many who had rather utter their complaints than redress their evils?

318 Whether, if 'the crown of the wise be their riches' (Prov., xiv.24), we are not the foolishest people in Christendom?

319 Whether we have not all the while great civil as well as natural advantages?

320 Whether there be any people who have more leisure to cultivate the arts of peace, and study the public weal?

321 Whether other nations who enjoy any share of *******, and have great objects in view, be not unavoidably embarrassed and distracted by factions? But whether we do not divide upon trifles, and whether our parties are not a burlesque upon politics?

322 Whether it be not an advantage that we are not embroiled in foreign affairs, that we hold not the balance of Europe, that we are protected by other fleets and armies, that it is the true interest of a powerful people, from whom we are descended, to guard us on all sides?

323 Whether England doth not really love us and wish well to us, as bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh? And whether it be not our part to cultivate this love and affection all manner of ways?

324 What sea-ports or foreign trade have the Swisses; and yet how warm are those people, and how well provided?

325 Whether there may not be found a people who so contrive as to be impoverished by their trade? And whether we are not that people?

326 Whether it would not be better for this island, if all our fine folk of both ***es were shipped off, to remain in foreign countries, rather than that they should spend their estates at home in foreign luxury, and spread the contagion thereof through their native land?

327 Whether our gentry understand or have a notion of magnificence, and whether for want thereof they do not affect very wretched distinctions?

328 Whether there be not an art or skill in governing human pride, so as to render it subservient to the pubic aim?

329 Whether the great and general aim of the public should not be to employ the people?

330 What right an eldest son hath to the worst education?

331 Whether men's counsels are not the result of their knowledge and their principles?

332 Whether there be not labour of the brains as well as of the hands, and whether the former is beneath a gentleman?

333 Whether the public be more interested to protect the property acquired by mere birth than that which is the Mediate fruit of learning and virtue?

334 Whether it would not be a poor and ill-judged project to attempt to promote the good of the community, by invading the rights of one part thereof, or of one particular order of men?

335 Whether there be a more wretched, and at the same time a more unpitied case, than for men to make precedents for their own undoing?

336 Whether to determine about the rights and properties of men by other rules than the law be not dangerous?

337 Whether those men who move the corner-stones of a constitution may not pull an old house on their own heads?

338 Whether there be not two general methods whereby men become sharers in the national stock of wealth or power, industry and inheritance? And whether it would be wise in a civil society to lessen that share which is allotted to merit and industry?

339 Whether all ways of spending a fortune be of equal benefit to the public, and what sort of men are aptest to run into an improper expense?

340 If the revenues allotted for the encouragement of religion and learning were made hereditary in the hands of a dozen lay lords and as many overgrown commoners, whether the public would be much the better for it?

341 Whether the Church's patrimony belongs to one tribe alone;and whether every man's son, brother, or himself, may not, if he please, be qualified to share therein?

342 What is there in the clergy to create a jealousy in the public? Or what would the public lose by it, if every squire in the land wore a black coat, said his prayers, and was obliged to reside?