RICHARD CANTILLON 273 Can this refer to the author, who, according to the state- ment of Mirabeau was a Protestant ?? Mirabeau's opinion was obviously based upon Chapter 16, Part I. of the Essai, in which Cantilion attacks the idleness of monks, especially those of the mendicant order. 'Without useful work them- selves, they often interrupt and hinder the industry of others. They take from poor folk as charity the subsistence which should fortify them in their work. They make them lose a lot of time in useless conversation;to say nothing of those who intrigue themselves into families and those who are vicious. Experience shows that countries which have embraced Protestantism, and have neither monks nor mendicants, have become visibly stronger in consequence. They enjoy also the advantage of having suppressed a great number of F?tes, which are holidays in Roman Catholic countries, and which diminish the work of the people by nearly the eighth part of the year. 'e Mirabeau had some excuse for doubting whether this was the language of a Catholic. But Cantilion was dealing here with labour as a cause of wealth, and arguing that, as Mill might have said, idle monks and mendicants are 'unproductive.' The weight of other evidence indicates that he was probably a Catholic;though, what with penalties upon Protestants on one side of the Channel and Roman Catholic disabilities on the other, an Anglo-French- man of that time may have thought it prudent to observe a studied neutrality in face of both Churches. A Committee of the House of Commons which examined one John Plunket, a suspected Jacobite, found that a letter had been sent (in 1714 ?) to Lady Middleton, ? Mons. Plunket, chez Monsieur le Chevalier Cantilion, Paris. One Isabella Creagh informed the Committee that Plunket had given into her keeping a promissory note for 930 livres, signed Richard Cantilion. s A small parchment document preserved in the Biblioth?que Nationale, Paris, reads thus: Anno 171?1. Richard Cantilion, chevallier d'Angleterre et banquier k Paris, au nora et cornroe procureur de D e Elizabeth Begue a reconnu avoir renu de ( ? ? la somme de soixante livres pour l'ann?e enti?re mil sept cent douz h cause de pareille somme de rente constitute sur les aydes et gabelles le dix huit d?cembre rail sept cent onze, dont quitte fait et pass? h Paris ?s ?tudes l'an mil ?ept cent quinze le dernier septembre, eta si?,m? Richard Cantilion. ?
- L'Aml des Hornroes, i. 27. ? Essai, pp. 124-5.
? Reports from Committee.? of the Ho,.?c of Con?,wns, reprinted 1803, i. 224. 4 Blank in original. ? l'i?ce.? Origi?w?les, vol. 589, No. 18688. No. 2. VOL. ? ?'
