| Description | (The date above is that of the fair copy, but from the reference to the date of Bennett’s death it is clear that this draft was composed the day before.)
I have receiv’d one letter from you this year, dated the 3d February, which I should have answered a few posts ago, but I have been confin’d to my chamber for a fortnight past with rhumatism, cold, &c., for which I have been blooded, blister’d, and run through all the medical gantlet, which hath taken away my disorder but hath left me feeble at present.
I am glad you have got the fossills, &c., safe. I have also sent you another box full of terra ponderosa aerata; it is consign’d to Messrs. Isnel & Martin at Amsterdam, to be forwarded to you by the dilligence to Langensaltza. I would with pleasure have sent Mr. Wiegleb a piece of plumbago, such as you discribe, but I have no such piece; however, I will write to my friend Gilbert, who is a partner in that mine, for such a piece.
I observe what you say respecting an excursion to the mines in Bohemia, Saxony, and Fryburg, and assure you it would give me pleasure to comply with your wishes on that head, particularly as Mr. Wiegleb intended to be of the party; but there are various circumstances and considerations which have lately occur’d that induce me to wish you to return home so soon as your present course of lectures are finished.
In the first place, all my Cornish plans of mineing are at an end, both for my self and you. The people of Cornwall and their mines are grown poor; the expences of working them is great, arising from their great depth; the price of ore is low; there is no probability of their mending; and our accounts of mineing are several thousand pounds on the wrong side. Hence I am of opineon that the journey you propose may give you the mineing mania, may lead you into mineing scrapes and turn your persuits from things of real advantage to those of no advantage—at least, it would be better for you to take some future opportunity of seeing those countries and mines.
At present I am desireous you should return home because I think you and I have scarcely lived together sufficiently for you to become my son in principles and disposition; and I am very desireous that we should be better acquainted before I die, and that you may be better qualify’d than my self to conduct those establishments I have made at great expence, which, if continued with oeconomy and prudence, may become very advantageous to you, or, per contra, ruinous. I begin to feel my self infirm and overloaded with business, and the more I strugle with my load the faster will my infirmities encrease. I am therefore desireous that you should now seriously turn your thoughts to real business, that you may not only ease my mind but that you may become properly acquainted and established in it before I withdraw.
I have train’d up hundred[s] of young men, but so thinly are sown the seeds of honour and gratitude in the human heart that I have not been able to select any one to associate with you as a partner, friend, and assistant, except your old school fellow Bennet, whose apprentiship expired this week without one spot of any vice or neglect from the first to the last day of it. I had just agreed with him to carry on a certain branch of new manufactory, and he had with zeal fitted up shops and made a begining, when lo! he was si[e]zed with a putrid fever and died this morning, most sincerly lamented by me and all Soho.
I had some thoughts of your makeing a tour to some of the great cities in Germany and of giveing you introductions to persons of distinction, but under all the circumstances I have turn’d over in my mind I think it a better plan for you to return home so soon as your course of lectures are finish’d. You may this summer get a little introduction into business, and next winter, if circumstances will admit, you may go to Edinburg, attend Dr. Black through one course of chymistry in your own language. You may attend Dr. Robinson through one course of natural, experemental, and mechanical lectures, and at the same time study rhetorick and the bell letter , which are essential embelishments in the character of a gentleman, then return to business again for a while, after which you may make a tour through Germany with infinite more pleasure and advantage to your self and society than at present.
These are my sentiments, and I hope upon your deliberate consideration of them they will be yours.
I cannot approve of the arguments, maxims, or the policy of the German princes in respect to their coin. There is an old English proverb, i.e. honesty is the best policy, and I am sure it will hold with sovereigns as well as with subjects; but their narrow minded policy will not answer for a great commercial country. Kings may force their own subjects to take shillings for guineas in internal circulation, but foreign states will only receive their ballances of trade in that which carries with it intrinsick value. Suppose Poland sells to England a certain quantity of corn, value one hundred guineas to be paid in cash, and our king was suddenly to alter the nominal value of his money and make every shilling pass for a guinea, the Polish merchant would of course ask 21 times as much for his corn, or he would not sell it to the English. Neither do I see any good purpose answer’d by putting a great quantity of alloy into it, because when merchants calculate what ought to be the rate of exchange between the money of one country and that of another, they take two things into consideration, viz. first, what proportion do the bills drawn by Amsterdam this day upon London bear to the sum wanted to remit to London? If those drawn are not equal to the sums wanted, the rate of exchange rises; and if the contrary, it falls. The second data is the relative proportion of fine gold or silver which the money of one country bears to another; and if any alteration is made—as was lately done in the louis d’or in France—in the weight or finess, that circumstance alone will alter the per of exchange between Paris and London, &c.
If I was to speak of the price of bread or meat, or make out a list of the prises of any other necessarys of life, in comparing their prises of Russia, Germany, England, France, Spain, or any other kingdom, I should say that so many pounds of meat is worth so many grains of fine gold, and of bread, &c., so many grains; and thus their value would at once be very nearly seen, for the price of gold in different kingdoms varies but little; silver varies much more; and the variation [in] the prices of all things depend on the plenty or scarcity at markett, and the greater or lesser demands or wants of that market; it is so with gold and silver, and butter and eggs.
[Edited transcript.] |