Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Get The Fight For Local Control Schools Suburbs and American Democracy 1st Edition Campbell F. Scribner PDF Full Chapter
Get The Fight For Local Control Schools Suburbs and American Democracy 1st Edition Campbell F. Scribner PDF Full Chapter
Get The Fight For Local Control Schools Suburbs and American Democracy 1st Edition Campbell F. Scribner PDF Full Chapter
https://ebookmeta.com/product/manufacturing-technology-for-
aerospace-structural-materials-1st-edition-f-c-campbell/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/joseph-smith-for-president-the-
prophet-the-assassins-and-the-fight-for-american-religious-
freedom-1st-edition-spencer-w-mcbride/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/strangling-the-axis-the-fight-for-
control-of-the-mediterranean-during-the-second-world-war-1st-
edition-richard-hammond/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/an-inconvenient-minority-the-
attack-on-asian-american-excellence-and-the-fight-for-
meritocracy-1st-edition-kenny-xu/
Following the Northern Star Caribbean Identities and
Education in North American Schools Caribbean
Identities and Education in North American Schools 1st
Edition Greg Wiggan
https://ebookmeta.com/product/following-the-northern-star-
caribbean-identities-and-education-in-north-american-schools-
caribbean-identities-and-education-in-north-american-schools-1st-
edition-greg-wiggan/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-two-faces-of-democracy-
decentering-agonism-and-deliberation-mary-f-scudder/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/paris-noir-the-suburbs-herve-
delouche/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/unthinkable-trauma-truth-and-the-
trials-of-american-democracy-1st-edition-raskin/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/american-designs-the-late-novels-
of-james-and-faulkner-jeanne-campbell-reesman/
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
merchant aids him by furnishing him with all the necessaries. For this
reason an unstinted care should be bestowed upon them, for as the
soul cannot exist without a body, even so the soldier cannot get
along without the merchant; nor can the merchant get along without
the soldier. A country expands through the profession of war, and is
beautified through commerce. Consequently the merchants must be
protected against offenders, so that they receive not the least insult
from government officials. Many unthinking people disdain the
merchants, loathe them and offend them without provocation, and
yet there is no condition of life which can get along without the
merchant.
But the merchants must be guarded not only against outside
offenders: they must not interfere with each other as well, and men
from other ranks must not enter the merchant guild and thus cause
them no end of disturbance. Commerce should be free, so that they
themselves may be benefited and the interests of his Imperial
Highness be guarded.
If commerce were free for the Russian merchants, and neither
men from other ranks nor foreigners would in the least impair the
commerce of Russians, the revenue would be increased. I am of the
opinion that without changing the duties, the revenue would be
doubled or trebled, whereas now the greater half is lost through the
traders from the other ranks.
If a person belonging to some other rank, whether he be senator,
or officer, or nobleman, or government official, or clerical, or peasant,
should wish to carry on commerce, let him leave his former rank and
join the merchant guild, and trade in a straightforward manner, and
not by stealth, and pay his duties and other merchant taxes, and let
him never again do anything by stealth, as before, without consent of
the Merchant Commander, and escape the paying of imposts.
Every rank must behave in such a manner as not to sin before
God and do wrong before the Tsar; and they should live as is their
profession: if one be a soldier, let him be a soldier, and if he have
another vocation, let him devote himself entirely to that vocation.
Our Lord Himself has said: No man can serve two masters. So let
the soldier, or man of another rank, stay in his profession, and let
him not enter into another rank, for if he devote himself to
commerce, he will curtail his military duties. The Lord Himself has
said: Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also. And St.
Paul the apostle has said that no soldier can find favour with his
captain who meddles with commerce. There is a popular saw which
says, Choose one or the other, war or commerce.
For these reasons it does not behoove the soldier or man of
another rank to trade. If, however, he have a desire to become a
merchant, let him join the guild.
If there be no prohibition for external merchants, from the ranks of
the nobles, officers or peasants, the merchants will not be able to
become enriched, and it will not be possible for the revenue to be
increased.
... At the present time boyárs, noblemen and their people, soldiers
and peasants carry on commerce, without paying any tax, and many
merchants carry on trade in their names, and pay no tax. Not half the
revenue is collected, nor ever can be collected, if commerce is not to
be made free from the nobles and officials, since many mighty
people have taken to trade, and some who are not themselves
powerful but are not subject to the magistrate.
I know, for example, one case in a Nóvgorod county where there
are a hundred or two of merchant-peasants, and who do not pay a
farthing’s worth of taxes. And if a collector, seeing them, tries to
collect the revenue, the gentry take the peasant’s part and send the
collector away more dead than alive, and the government officers
look on, and dare not interfere. And there are some wealthy men,
who have some five or six hundred peasants carrying on such illicit
trade, and pay not a farthing to the Great Tsar. If all be arranged as I
have proposed, commerce will awaken as if from a dream.
It is a very bad custom the merchant people have, to do each
other wrong by cheating each other. Both foreigners and Russians
are in the habit of showing good-looking wares that are badly made
within or filled up with bad stuff; or bad wares are mixed with wares
of a good quality and are sold as if of good quality, taking for them an
unfair price, and greatly deceiving inexperienced people. They give
wrong weights and measures, deceive in price, and do not think all
that to be a sin, although they cause so much injustice to the
inexperienced. Yet those who deceive are in the end ruined through
their own iniquity, and become impoverished.
... In order to establish justice in the Merchant Rows, let there be
appointed hundred-men and fifty-men and ten-men, and over the
shop where there is an hundred-man let there be nailed a round
board, painted white, so that it can be easily seen, and on that board
let there be written “hundred-man.” Do the same with the shop of the
fifty-man and ten-man, so that those who purchase any goods may
know where to show their wares, if they should want to find out
whether they have received the right weight, or measure, or whether
the wares are good or bad, and whether they have paid the correct
price for them.
If a merchant have received more than the worth of the wares, let
him be fined a dime or two for every unfair kopek, and let him be
beaten with rods or a whip, that he may not do so again in the future;
and if he repeat his offence, let the fine and punishment be
increased.
But if one give wrong measure and weight, or sell different goods
from what the buyer demanded, and give him inferior goods, let his
punishment be much more severe, and the fine be ten times the
price of the goods.
And if an hundred-man, or fifty-man, or ten-man be guilty of such a
transgression, let the fine for the ten-man be tenfold, for the fifty-man
fiftyfold, and for the hundred-man hundredfold, and let the
punishment be with the knout, as many strokes as may be decided
upon. The hundred-men and fifty-men should receive very stringent
instructions to watch without relenting the ten-men and not to be
indulgent to them, but to fear the law like fire, lest their
transgressions reach the ears of high personages. And the ten-men
should watch all the shops under their charge, and see to it that no
inferior wares are adulterated by the admixture of better material, but
that they are sold such as they are, the good wares as good wares,
the mediocre as mediocre, and the poor as poor, and that right
weights and measures be given, and that the prices be not raised on
the goods, and that there be no adulterations. Let only the right price
be asked, and let them measure foreign stuffs, brocade, calamanco
and silks from the first end, and not from the last. And no matter what
buyer there come, whether rich or poor, whether experienced or
inexperienced, let them all be treated in the same fair manner, and
let there not a kopek be added to the price of one rouble or ten
roubles.
Whatever fine is to be collected should be collected by the
hundred-men, without delay, on the day the offence has been
committed. All the fines ought to be entered in a ledger which should
be reported every month in the proper office. No transaction, neither
great nor small, should take place with the foreigners who frequent
the fairs, without the permission of the Chief Commander of the
Merchant Guild. Whoever dares to sell even a rouble’s worth of
goods to these foreigners without the permission of the Chief
Commander shall be fined a hundredfold, a hundred roubles for
every rouble sold, and the punishment shall be administered with the
knout, as many strokes as may be decreed, that they should
remember them and never do so again.
It is known to the whole world how weak and impotent the Russian
army was when it had no regular instruction, and how incomparably
its strength was increased and became great and terrible when our
august monarch, his Imperial Highness Peter the First, instructed it
in a proper manner. The same is true of architecture, medicine,
political government, and all other affairs.
But, most of all, that is true of the government of the Church: when
there is not the light of instruction, the Church cannot have any good
conduct, and impossibly can there be avoided disorder and
superstitions that deserve a great deal of ridicule, as well as strife,
and most foolish heresies.
Many foolishly assert that instruction is the cause of heresy. But
the heretics of ancient days, the Valentinians, Manichæans,
Catharists, Euchites, Donatists and others, whose stupid acts are
described by Irenæus, Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret and others,
raved, not through instruction, but through arrogant foolishness. And
did not our own dissenters rave so deliriously through their lack of
culture, and ignorance? Though there are some heresiarchs, such
as were Arius, Nestorius and a few others, yet their heresies arose
not through instruction, but from an imperfect understanding of the
Holy Writ, and they grew and were strengthened through malice and
false pride which did not permit them to change their wrong opinion
after they had discovered the truth, and against their conscience.
And though their instruction gave them the power to use sophisms,
that is, cunning proofs of their elucubrations, yet he who would want
to ascribe this evil simply to instruction would be compelled to say
that where a physician poisons a patient, his knowledge of medicine
was the cause thereof, and where a soldier valiantly and cunningly
strikes down the enemy, military art is the cause of killing. And when
we look through history, as through a telescope, at the past ages, we
shall discover more evil in the Dark Ages than in those that were
enlightened through culture. The bishops were not so arrogant
before the fifth century as they were afterwards, especially the
bishops of Rome and Constantinople, because before there was
learning, and afterwards it grew less. If learning were dangerous to
the Church and State, the best Christians would not study
themselves, and would forbid others to study; but we see that all our
ancient teachers studied not only the Holy Writ, but also profane
philosophy. Besides many others, the most famous pillars of the
Church have advocated profane learning, namely: Basil the Great in
his instruction to the studying youths, Chrysostom in his books on
monastic life, Gregory the Theologue in his sermon on Julian the
Apostate. I should have a great deal to say, if I were to dwell on this
alone.
Good and thorough instruction is the root and seed and foundation
of all usefulness, both for the fatherland and the Church. There is,
however, a kind of instruction which does not deserve that name,
though it is deemed by certain clever but not well-informed men to
be the real instruction.
Many are in the habit of asking in what schools such and such an
one has been educated? When they hear that he has been in
rhetoric, philosophy and theology, they are prone to place him very
high, for the sake of those names, but in that they frequently err, for
not all get good instruction from good teachers, one on account of
his dulness, another on account of his laziness; how much is that the
case when the teacher is little, or not at all, proficient in his subject!
It is important to know that from the sixth to the fifteenth century,
that is, for nine hundred years, all learning in Europe was of a very
meagre and imperfect character, so that we see in the authors who
wrote at that time great sharpness of wit, but small enlightenment.
With the fifteenth century there began to appear better-informed and
more skilful teachers, and by degrees many academies acquired a
greater importance than in those ancient Augustan times; many
other schools, on the contrary, stuck fast in their ancient slime,
preserving, indeed, the names of rhetoric, philosophy and other
sciences, but in reality having none of them. Different causes have
led to this, but space does not permit their mention here.
People who have received, so to say, an empty and fantastic
education in these institutions are generally more stupid than those
who have received none at all. Being themselves in the dark, they
deem themselves to be perfect, and imagining that they have
learned all that there is to be learned, neither have the desire, nor
think it worth while to read books and study more. On the other
hand, a man who has received the proper schooling is never
satisfied with his knowledge, and never stops learning, even though
he has passed the age of Methuselah.
But this is the greatest misfortune: the above-mentioned
imperfectly instructed people are not only useless, but also very
harmful to society, State and Church. They humble themselves
beyond necessity before the authorities, attempting through cunning
to appropriate to themselves favours, and crawl into higher places.
They hate people of the same standing as themselves, and if anyone
is praised for his learning, they use their utmost endeavour to
depreciate and denounce him before the people and authorities.
They are prone to take part in rebellions, hoping to gain advantages
for themselves through them. When they take to theological
discussions, they cannot help falling into heresies, for, being
ignorant, they easily fall into error, after which they will not change
the opinion they have uttered, for fear of appearing not to have
known all. But wise men have this proverb: “It is the property of a
wise man to change his opinion.”
FOOTNOTES: