116 GEOEGE HAGUE ON THE MORAL AND 



in the number of ships there might be a difference of fi^-e per cent. ; in the number of the 

 crews there might be as much as twenty per cent. ; in the number of houses one or two per 

 cent. ; in the value of the houses thirty to forty per cent. ; in the value of merchandise for sale 

 fifteen per cent, on wholesale articles, and fifty per cent, on retail ; while in the value of the 

 contents of private houses the difference between the highest and lowest estimate might 

 be as much as one to two hundred per cent. Yet in every one of these estimates there might 

 be a fair amount of care exercised in determining qixantities and numbers, and an honest 

 judgment on the part of individuals in estimating values. The influences that sway men in 

 one direction and in another would operate as powerfully as is expressed by these per- 

 centages. If moral and intellectual states could be expressed by numbers or mathematical 

 signs, the differences between one man's mental condition and temperament aud another 

 man's may be as much as 10, 20, 50, 100 or 200 per cent. 



8. But if what we have supposed done in Liverpool is extended over the entire area 

 of the kingdom, we can see to what an extent svich influences may operate in determining 

 such matters as population, the number of cultivated or cultivatable acres of land, the 

 number and contents of inhabited houses, factories, warehouses, public buildings, ships 

 and mines, together with the amount of crops and production of the land and, finally, of 

 the total value of the land, and of the various erections thereon for trading or manufac- 

 turing purposes, as well as the A'alue of the stocks of merchandise contained therein, of 

 ships aud their contents, of mines, railways, canals, as well as goods in transit thereon, of 

 the diversified contents of private houses, palaces, museums and galleries. Even to this, 

 if we desired to estimate not only the value of what was contained within the borders of 

 the United Kingdom itself, but the value of all the property owned by its inhabitants, we 

 must add the value of similar properties in every British colony, in the empire of India, 

 in the United States, and nearly every foreign country in the world, together with claims 

 in the shape of bonds and shares, in th-e usufruct of innumerable other properties and 

 enterprises in every country, such usufruct being gathered sometimes by taxation aud 

 sometimes by earnings of corporate enterprises as represented by interest and dividends. 



The right to this yearly usufruct is, perhaps, a form of wealth more easily ascertain- 

 able than any other, inasmuch as in almost every instance it can be measured by public 

 daily quotations. The value of consols and other Government securities, the amount of 

 balances in banks and of actual cash on hand, the value of railway stocks and bonds, is 

 about the only thing in which temperament or other influences could never enter in deter- 

 mining the question of value. 



But, generally, it is safe to say that if an attempt were made to arrive at the total 

 value of all that there is in the United Kingdom, aud all that is owned by its inhabitants, 

 there would be room for many different estimates, and the difference between the 

 highest and the lowest might amount to thousands of millions sterling. 



9. Every word of the foregoing applies to the United States or to Canada. 



10. The figures given haA^e hitherto been hypothetical, though the grounds upon which 

 I have asserted that differences would arise are real and practical. I will now, however, 

 come to matters in which the figures themselves will correspond with the actual occur- 

 rences of business life. 



In the course of dispensing credit it is common with bankers to have balance sheets 

 submitted to them by their customers. It is their unfortunate lot also sometimes to be 



