An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy
by James Steuart


An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy being an
Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations.
in which are particularly considered
Population, Agriculture, Trade, Industry, Money, Coin, Interest,
Circulation, Banks, Exchange, Public Credit, and Taxes

by Sir James Steuart, Bart.

Ore trabit quodcumque potest atque addit acervo.
                Hor. Lib. I. Sat. 1

in Two Volumes.

London:
Printed for A. Millar, and T. Cadell, in the Strand.

MDCCLXVII


PREFACE

    It is with the greatest diffidence that I present to the
public this attempt towards reducing to principles, and forming
into a regular science, the complicated interests of domestic
policy. When I consider the time and labour employed in the
composition, I am apt to value it from selfish considerations.
When I compare it even with my own abilities, I still think
favourably of it, for a better reason; because it contains a
summary of the most valuable part of all my knowledge. But when I
consider the greatness of my subject, how small does the result
of my application appear!
    The imperfections, therefore, discovered in this work, must
be ascribed to the disproportion between the extent of the
undertaking, and that of my capacity. This, I can assure my
reader, has been exerted to the utmost: and if, after all, I have
failed, it may, at least, with justice, be said, that I have
miscarried in an attempt of the greatest importance to mankind.
    I no where, I think, have shewn a desire to make my court to
any particular minister, whose administration might have been
hinted at. I have freely followed the thread of my reasoning
without a bias, either in favour of popular opinions, or of any
of the numberless systems which have been formed by those who
have written upon particular parts of my subject. The warmth of
my temper may have led me sometimes into commendations when I
have been pleased; but when I felt the effects of ill humour on
being dissatisfied with particular circumstances, relating to
countries, to men, and to things, which I had in my eye at the
time I was writing, I was immediately aware of the danger of
blaming the steps of any administration, without being well
formed of the whole combination of circumstances which the
minister may have had before him at the time.
    This composition being the successive labour of many years
spent in travelling, the reader will find some passages in which
the unities of time and place have not been observed. These I
could have corrected with ease, had I not been advised to leave
them as characters to point out the circumstances under which I
wrote, and thereby to confirm the authenticity of certain facts.
    The modes of thinking, also, peculiar to the several
countries where I have lived, have, no doubt, had an influence on
what I have written concerning their customs: this work,
therefore, will not, in general, correspond to the meridian of
national opinions any where; and of this it is proper the reader
should be apprised, that he may not apply to the domestic
circumstances of his own country what was intended to refer to
those of other nations; nor impute to wilful prejudice, what was
the irresistible effect of my experience and conviction.
    Since the first publication of this work some criticisms upon
it have been published in which little regard has been paid to
this advertisement.
    The greater part of it by far, (the three first books
particularly) was composed abroad. Can it be supposed, that
during an absence of near twenty years, I should in my studies
have all the while been modelling my speculations upon the
standard of English notions.
    It has been alleged that I have imbibed prejudices abroad, by
no means consistent with the present state of England, and the
genius of Englishmen.
    To which I answer, that I flatter myself to have imbibed no
prejudices either abroad or at home, at least I think I have
exhibited none of them in my work; because there I have rejected
all party opinions whatever.
    According to my way of treating this subject no general rule
can be laid down in political matters: every thing there must be
considered according to the circumstances and spirit of the
nations to which they relate. Accordingly we shall find in this
inquiry some reasonings built on the principles of arbitrary
power, others on those of national liberty, others again on those
of democracy. Had I, in compliment to the sentiments of
Englishmen, suppressed every combination which might apply to the
circumstances of those very countries where I was studying my
subject, from the actual inspection of their policy, what merit
should I have had to plead with my own countrymen from my travels
and from my studies, any local English writer describing English
policy and sounding through every page the most peculiar opinions
of this nation, might have amused his readers far better than
ever I could pretend to.
    If, from this work, I have any merit at all, it is by
divesting myself of English notions, so far as to be able to
expose in a fair light, the sentiments and policy of foreign
nations, relatively to their own situation.
    Now the principal attention of an intelligent reader who
peruses a book like this, will be directed towards the
investigatory part of it: every step of the reasoning will be
weighed by him until the final conclusion be drawn; he will then
give his assent to it in proportion to the accuracy of the
induction; but he never will recoil from what he has once
assented to, in order to form a general notion conceding any
result by comparing it with his own animal feelings or with the
popular opinion of his countrymen.
    This much I am obliged to say in my own justification, with
respect to several passages which have been written at times when
England was very distant from my thoughts.
    I have read many authors on the subject of political
oeconomy; and I have endeavoured to draw from them all the
instruction I could. I have travelled, for many years, through
different countries, and have examined them, constantly, with an
eye to my own subject. I have attempted to draw information from
every one with whom I have been acquainted: this, however, I
found to be very difficult until I had attained to some previous
knowledge of my subject. Such difficulties confirmed to me the
justness of Lord Bacon's remark, that he who can draw information
by forming proper questions, must be already possessed of half
the science.
    I could form no consistent plan from the various opinions I
met with: hence I was engaged to compile the observations I bad
casually made, in the course of my travels, reading, and
experience. From these I formed the following work after
expunging the numberless inconsistencies and contradictions which
I found had arisen from my separate inquiries into every
particular branch.
    I had observed so many persons declining in knowledge as they
advanced in years, that I resolved early to throw upon paper
whatever I had learned; and to this I used to have recourse, as
others have to their memories. The unity of the object of all my
speculations, rendered this practice more useful to me than it
would be to one whose researches are more extended.
    Whoever is much accustomed to write for his own use merely,
must contract a more careless style than another who has made
language his study, and who writes in hopes of acquiring a
literary reputation. I never, till very lately, thought of
appearing as an author on this subject; and, in the frequent
perusals of what I had written, my corrections were chiefly in
favour of perspicuity. add to this, that the language in which I
now write was, for many years, foreign to those with whom I lived
and conversed. When these circumstances are added to the
intricacy of my subject, which constantly carried off my
attention from every ornament of language, I flatter myself that
those of my readers, at least, who enter as heartily as I have
done into the spirit of this work, will candidly overlook the
want of that elegance which adorns the style of some celebrated
authors in this Augustan age.
    I present this enquiry to the public as nothing more than an
essay which may serve as a canvass for better hands than mine to
work upon.
    It contains such observations only as the general view of the
domestic policy of the countries I have seen, has suggested. It
is a speculation, and no more. It is a rough drawing of a mighty
plan, proportioned in correctness to my own sagacity, to my
knowledge of the subject, and to the extent of my ideas.
    It goes little farther than to collect and arrange some
elements relating to the most interesting branches of modern
policy, such as population, agriculture, trade, industry, money,
coin, interest, circulation, banks, exchange, public credit, and
taxes. The principles deduced from all these topics, appear
tolerably consistent; and the whole is a train of reasoning,
through which I have adhered to the connection of subjects as
faithfully as I could: but the nature of the work being a
deduction of principles, not a collection of institutions, I
seized the opportunities which my reasoning threw in my way, to
connect every principle, as I went along, with every part of the
inquiry to which it could refer; and when I found the connexion
sufficiently shewn, I broke off such disquisitions as would have
led me from the object then present.
    When principles thus casually applied in one part, to matters
intended to be afterwards treated of in another, came to be taken
up a-new, they involved me in what may appear prolixity. This I
found most unavoidable, when I was led to thoughts which were new
to myself, and consequently such as must have cost me the
greatest labour to set in a clear and distinct point of view. Had
I been master of my subject on setting out, the arrangement of
the whole would have been rendered more concise: but had this
been the case, I should never have been able to go through the
painful deduction which forms the whole chain of my reasoning,
and upon which, to many readers slow in forming combinations, the
conviction it carries along with it in a great measure depends:
to the few, again, of a more penetrating genius, to whom the
slightest hint is sufficient to lay open every consequence before
it be drawn, in allusion to Horace, I offer this apology, Clarus
esse laboro, prolixus fio.
    The path I have taken was new to me, after all I had read on
the subject. I examined, by my own principles, what I had
gathered from others; and adopted it as far as I found it tally
with collateral circumstances. When, on the other hand, I found a
disagreement, I was apprized immediately of some mistake; and
this I found constantly owing to the narrowness of the
combinations upon which it had been founded.
    The great danger of running into error upon particular points
relating to this subject, proceeds from our viewing them in a
light too confined, and to our not attending to the influence of
concomitant circumstances, which render general rules of little
use. Men of parts and knowledge seldom fail to reason
consequentially on every subject; but when inquiries are made
concerning the complicated interests of society, the vivacity of
an author's genius is apt to prevent him from attending to the
variety of circumstances which render uncertain every
consequence, almost, which he can draw from his reasoning. To
this I ascribe the habit of running into what the French call
Systèmes. These are no more than a chain of contingent
consequences, drawn from a few fundamental maxims, adopted,
perhaps, rashly. Such systems are mere conceits; they mislead the
understanding, and efface the path to truth. An induction is
formed, from whence a conclusion, called a principle, is drawn
and defined; but this is no sooner done, than the author extends
its influence far beyond the limits of the ideas present to his
understanding, when he made his definition. The best method,
therefore, to detect a pretended system, is always to substitute
the definition in place of the term.
    The imperfection also of language engages us frequently in
disputes merely verbal; and instead of being on our guard against
the many unavoidable ambiguities attending the most careful
speech, we place a great part of our learning when at school, and
of our wit when we appear on the stage of the world, in the
prostitution of language. The learned delight in vague, and the
witty in equivocal terms. In general, we familiarize ourselves so
much to words, and think so little, when we speak and write, that
the signs of our ideas take the place of the images which they
were intended to represent.
    Every true proposition, when understood, must be assented to
universally. This is the case always, when simple ideas are
affirmed or denied of each other. Nobody ever doubted that sound
is the object of hearing, or colour that of sight, or that black
is not white. But whenever a dispute arises concerning a
proposition, wherein complex ideas are compared, we may often
rest assured, that the parties do not understand each other.
Luxury, says one, is incompatible with the prosperity of a state.
Luxury is the fountain of a nation's welfare and happiness, says
another. There may, in reality, be no difference in the
sentiments of these two persons. The first may consider luxury as
prejudicial to foreign trade, and as corrupting the morals of a
people. The other may consider luxury as the means of providing
employment for such as must live by their industry, and of
promoting an equable circulation of wealth and subsistence,
through all the classes of inhabitants. If each of them had
attended to the other's complex idea of luxury, with all its
consequences, they would have rendered their propositions less
general.
    The difference, therefore, of opinion between men is
frequently more apparent than real. When we compare our own
ideas, we constantly see their relations with perspicuity; but
when we come to communicate these relations to other people, it
is often impossible to put them into words sufficiently
expressive of the precise combination of them we have made in our
own minds.
    This being the case, I have avoided, as much as possible,
condemning such opinions as I have taken the liberty to review;
because I have examined such only as have been advanced by men of
genius and reputation; and since all matters of controversy
regard the comparison of our ideas, if the terms we use to
express them were sufficiently understood by both parties, most
political disputes would, I am persuaded, be soon at an end.
    Here it may be objected, that we frequently adopt an opinion,
without being able to give a sufficient reason for it; and yet we
cannot persuade ourselves to give it up, though we find it
combated by the strongest arguments. To this I answer, that in
such cases we do not adhere to our own opinions, but to those of
others received upon trust. It is our regard for the authority,
and not for the opinion, which makes us tenacious: for were the
opinion truly our own, we could not fail of seeing, or at least
we should not long be at a loss in recollecting, the ground upon
which it is built. But when we assent implicitly to any political
doctrine, there is no room for reason: we then satisfy ourselves
with the persuasion that those whom we trust have sufficient
reasons for what they advance. While our assent therefore is
implicit, we are beyond conviction; not because we do not
perceive the force of the arguments brought against our opinion,
but because we are ignorant of the force of those which can be
brought to support it: and as no body will sell what belongs to
him, without being previously informed of its value, so no body
will give up an implicit opinion, without knowing all that can be
said for it. To this class of men I do not address myself in this
inquiry.
    But I insensibly run into a metaphysical speculation, in
order to prove, that in political questions it is better for
people to judge from experience and reason, than from authority
to explain their terms, than to dispute about words; and to
extend the combinations of their own ideas, than to follow
conceits, however decorated with the name of systems. How far I
have avoided such defects, the reader will determine.
    Every writer values himself upon his impartiality; because he
is not sensible of his fetters. The wandering and independent
life I have led may naturally have set me free, in some measure,
from strong attachments to popular opinions. This may be called
impartiality. But as no man can be deemed impartial, who leans to
any side whatever, I have been particularly on my guard against
the consequences of this sort of negative impartiality; because I
have found it sometimes carrying me too far from that to which a
national prejudice might have led me.
    In discussing general points, the best method I found to
maintain a just balance in this respect, was to avert my eye from
the country in which I lived at the time; and to judge of absent
things by the absent. Objects which are present, are apt to
produce perceptions too strong to be impartially compared with
those recalled by memory only.
    When I have had occasion to dip into any question concerning
the preference to be given to certain forms of government above
others, and to touch upon points which have been the object of
sharp disputes, I have given my opinion with freedom, when it
seemed proper: but in stating the question, I have endeavoured to
avoid all trite, and, as I may call them, technical terms of
party; which in such disputes every side chuses to take in their
own acceptation: and as there is no sentiment of concord or
good-will in their hearts, instead of coming to explanations
together, they are charmed to find an occasion to differ
concerning general propositions, from those they hate for
particular considerations.
    I have sometimes entered so heartily into the spirit of the
statesman, as to be apt to forget my station in the society where
I live; and when as a private man I have read over the work of
the politician, my natural partiality in favour of individuals
has led me to condemn, as Machiavellian principles, every
sentiment, approving the sacrifice of private concerns in favour
of a general plan.
    In order, therefore, to reconcile me to myself in this
particular, and to prevent certain expressions here and there
interspersed, from making the slightest impression upon a reader
of delicate sentiments, I must observe, that nothing would have
been so easy as to soften many passages, where the politician
appears to have snatched the pen out of the hand of the private
citizen: but as I write for such only who can follow a close
reasoning, and attend to the general scope of the whole inquiry,
I have, purposely, made no correction; but continued painting, in
the strongest colours, every inconvenience which must affect
certain individuals living under our free modern governments,
whenever a wise statesman sets about correcting old abuses,
proceeding from idleness, sloth, or fraud in the lower classes,
arbitrary jurisdictions in the higher, and neglects in
administrations with respect to the interests of both. The more
any cure is painful and dangerous, the more ought men carefully
to avoid the disease. This leads me to say a word concerning the
connection between the theory of morals and that of politics.
    I lay it down as a general maxim, that the characteristic of
a good action consists in the conformity between the motive, and
the duty of the agent. Were there but one man upon earth, his
duty would contain no other precepts than those dictated by
self-love. If he come to be a father, a husband, a friend, his
self-love falls immediately under limitations: he must withhold
from himself, and give to his children; he must know how to
sacrifice some of his fancies, in order to gratify, now and then,
those of his wife, or of his friend. If he come to be a judge, a
magistrate; he must frequently forget that he is a friend, or a
father: and if he rise to be a statesman, he must disregard many
other attachments more comprehensive, such as family, place of
birth, and even, in certain cases, his native country. His duty
here becomes relative to the general good of that society of
which he is the head: and as the death of a criminal cannot be
imputed to the judge who condemns him, neither can a particular
inconvenience resulting to an individual, in consequence of a
step taken for a general reformation, be imputed to him who sits
at the helm of government.
    If it should be asked, of what utility a speculation such as
this can be to a statesman, to whom it is in a manner addressed
from the beginning to the end: I answer, that although it seem
addressed to a statesman, the real object of the inquiry is to
influence the spirit of those whom he governs; and the variety of
matter contained in it, may even suggest useful hints to himself.
But his own genius and experience will enable him to carry such
notions far beyond the reach of my abilities.
    I have already said that I considered my work as no more than
a canvass prepared for more able hands than mine to work upon.
Now although the sketch it contains be not sufficiently correct,
I have still made some progress, I think, in preparing the way
for others to improve upon my plan, by contriving proper
questions to be resolved by men of experience in the practical
part of government.
    I leave it therefore to masters in the science to correct and
extend my ideas: and those who have not made the principles of
policy their particular study, may have an opportunity of
comparing the exposition I have given of them with the commonly
received opinions concerning many questions of great importance
to society. They will, for instance, be able to judge how far
population can be increased usefully, by multiplying marriages,
and by dividing lands: how far the swelling of capitals, cities
and towns, tends to depopulate a country: how far the progress of
luxury brings distress upon the poor industrious man: how far
restrictions laid upon the corn trade, tend to promote an ample
supply of subsistence in all our markets: how far the increase of
public debts tends to involve us in a general bankruptcy: how far
the abolition of paper currency would have the effect of reducing
the price of all commodities: how far a tax tends to enhance
their value: and how far the diminution of duties is an essential
requisite for securing the liberty, and promoting the prosperity
and happiness of a people.
    Is it not of the greatest importance to examine, with
candour, the operations by which all Europe has been engaged in a
system of policy so generally declaimed against, and so contrary
to that which we hear daily recommended as the best? To shew,
from the plain principles of common sense, that our present
situation is the unavoidable consequence of the spirit and
manners of the present times; and that it is quite compatible
with all the liberty, affluence, and prosperity, which any human
society ever enjoyed in any age, or under any form of government?
A people taught to expect from a statesman the execution of
plans, big with impossibility and contradiction, will remain
discontented under the government of the best of Kings.

Book I

Of Population and Agriculture

Introduction

    Oeconomy, in general, is the art of providing for all the
wants of a family, with prudence and frugality.
    If any thing necessary or useful be found wanting, if any
thing provided be lost or misapplied, if any servant, any animal,
be supernumerary or useless, if any one sick or infirm be
neglected, we immediately perceive a want of oeconomy. The object
of it, in a private family, is therefore to provide for the
nourishment, the other wants, and the employment of every
individual. In the first place, for the master, who is the head,
and who directs the whole; next for the children, who interest
him above all other things; and last for the servants, who being
useful to the head, and essential to the well-being of the
family, have therefore a title to become an object of the
master's care and concern.
    The whole oeconomy must be directed by the head, who is both
lord and steward of the family. It is however necessary, that
these two offices be not confounded with one another. As lord, he
establishes the laws of his oeconomy; as steward, he puts them in
execution. As lord, he may restrain and give his commands to all
within the house as he thinks proper; as steward, he must conduct
with gentleness and address, and is bound by his own regulations.
The better the oeconomist, the more uniformity is perceived in
all his actions, and the less liberties are taken to depart from
stated rules. He is not so much master, as that he may break
through the laws of his oeconomy, although in every respect he
may keep each individual within the house, in the most exact
subordination to his commands. Oeconomy and government, even in a
private family, present therefore two different ideas, and have
also two different objects.
    What oeconomy is in a family, political oeconomy is in a
state: with these essential differences, however, that in a state
there are no servants, all are children: that a family may be
formed when and how a man pleases, and he may there establish
what plan of oeconomy he thinks fit; but states are found formed,
and the Oeconomy of these depends upon a thousand circumstances.
The statesman (this is a general term to signify the legislature
and supreme power, according to the form of government) is
neither master to establish what oeconomy he pleases, or, in the
exercise of his sublime authority, to overturn at will the
established laws of it, let him be the most despotic monarch upon
earth.(1*)
    The great art therefore of political oeconomy is, first to
adapt the different operations of it to the spirit, manners,
habits, and customs of the people; and afterwards to model these
circumstances so, as to be able to introduce a set of new and
more useful institutions.
    The principal object of this science is to secure a certain
fund of subsistence for all the inhabitants, to obviate every
circumstance which may render it precarious; to provide every
thing necessary for supplying the wants of the society, and to
employ the inhabitants (supposing them to be free-men) in such a
manner as naturally to create reciprocal relations and
dependencies between them, so as to make their several interests
lead them to supply one another with their reciprocal wants.
    If one considers the variety which is found in different
countries, in the distribution of property, subordination of
classes, genius of people, proceeding from the variety of forms
of government, laws, climate, and manners, one may conclude, that
the political oeconomy in each must necessarily be different, and
that principles, however universally true, may become quite
ineffectual in practice, without a sufficient preparation of the
spirit of a people.
    It is the business of a statesman to judge of the expediency
of different schemes of oeconomy, and by degrees to model the
minds of his subjects so as to induce them, from the allurement
of private interest, to concur in the execution of his plan.
    The speculative person who, removed from the practice,
extracts the principles of this science from observation and
reflection, should divest himself, as far as possible, of every
prejudice in favour of established opinions, however reasonable,
when examined relatively to particular nations: he must do his
utmost to become a citizen of the world, comparing customs,
examining minutely institutions which appear alike, when in
different countries they are found to produce different effects:
he should examine the cause of such differences with the utmost
diligence and attention. It is from such inquiries that the true
principles are discovered.
    He who takes up the pen upon this subject, keeping in his eye
the customs of his own or any other country, will fall more
naturally into a description of one particular system of it, than
into an examination of the principles of the science in general;
he will applaud such institutions as he finds rightly
administered at home; he will condemn those which are
administered with abuse; but, without comparing different methods
of executing the same plan in different countries, he will not
easily distinguish the disadvantages which are essential to the
institution, from those which proceed from the abuse. For this
reason a land-tax excites he indignation of a Frenchman, an
excise that of an Englishman. One who looks into the execution of
both, in each country, and in every branch of their management,
will discover the real effects of these impositions, and be able
to distinguish what proceeds from abuse, from what is essential
to the burden.
    Nothing is more effectual towards preparing the spirit of a
people to receive a good plan of oeconomy, than a proper
representation of it. On the other hand, nothing is better
calculated to keep the statesman, who is at the head of affairs,
in awe.
    When principles are well understood, the real consequences of
burdensome institutions are clearly seen: when the purposes they
are intended for are not obtained, the abuse of the statesman's
administration appears palpable. People then will not so much cry
out against the imposition, as against the misapplication. It
will not be a land-tax of four shillings in the pound, nor an
excise upon wines and tobacco, which will excite the murmurs of a
nation; it will be the prodigal dissipation and misapplication of
the amount of these taxes after they are laid on. But when
principles are not known, all inquiry is at an end, the moment a
nation can be engaged to submit to the burden. It is the same
with regard to many other parts of this science: while people
remain blind they are always mistrustful.
    Having pointed out the object of my pursuit, I shall only
add, that my intention is to attach myself principally to a clear
deduction of principles, and a short application of them to
familiar examples, in order to avoid abstraction as much as
possible. I farther intend to confine myself to such parts of
this extensive subject, as shall appear the most interesting in
the general system of modern politics; of which I shall treat
with that spirit of liberty, which reigns more and more every
day, throughout all the polite and flourishing nations of Europe.
    When I compare the elegant performances which have appeared
in Great Britain and in France with my dry and abstracted manner
of treating the same subject, in a plain language void of
ornament, I own I am discouraged on many accounts. If I be
obliged to set out by laying down, as fundamental principles, the
most obvious truths, I dread the imputation of pedantry, and of
pretending to turn common sense into science. If I follow these
principles through a minute detail, I may appear trifling. I
therefore hope the reader will believe me, when I tell him, that
these defects have not escaped my discernment, but that my
genius, the nature of the work, and the connection of the
subject, have obliged me to write in an order and in a style,
where every thing has been sacrificed to perspicuity.
    My principal aim shall be to discover truth, and to enable my
reader to touch the very link of the chain where I may at any
time go astray.
    My business shall not be to seek for new thoughts, but to
reason consequentially; and if any thing new shall be found, it
will be in the conclusions.
    Long steps in political reasoning lead to error: close
reasoning is tedious, and to many appears trivial: this, however,
must be my plan, and my consolation is, that the farther I
advance, I shall become the more interesting.
    Every supposition must be considered as strictly relative to
the circumstances presupposed; and though, in order to prevent
misapplication, and to avoid abstraction as much as possible, I
frequently make use of examples for illustrating every principle;
yet these, which are taken from matters of fact, must be supposed
divested of every foreign circumstance inconsistent with the
supposition.
    I shall combat no particular opinion in such intricate
matters; though sometimes I may pass them in review, in order to
point out how I am led to differ from them.
    I pretend to form no system, but, by tracing out a succession
of principles, consistent with the nature of man and with one
another, I shall endeavour to furnish some materials towards the
forming of a good one.

Chap. I

Of the Government of Mankind

    Man we find acting uniformly in all age, in all countries,
and in all climates, from the principles of self-interest,
expediency, duty, or passion. In this he is alike, in nothing
else.
    These motives of human actions produce such a variety of
circumstances, that if we consider the several species of animals
in the creation, we shall find the individuals of no class so
unlike to one another, as man to man. No wonder then if people
differ in opinion with regard to every thing almost which relates
to our species.
    As this noble animal is a sociable creature, both from
necessity and inclination, we find also, in all ages, climates
and countries, a certain modification of government and
subordination established among them. Here again we are presented
with as great a variety, as there are different societies; all
however agreeing in this, that the end of a voluntary
subordination to authority is with a view to promote the general
good.
    Constant and uninterrupted experience has proved to man, that
virtue and justice, in those who govern, are sufficient to render
the society happy, under any form of government. Virtue and
justice, when applied to government, mean no more than a tender
affection for the whole society, and an exact and impartial
regard for the interest of every class.
    All actions, and all things indeed, are good or bad by
relation only. Nothing is so complex as relations when considered
with regard to a society, and nothing is so difficult as to
discover truth, when involved and blended with these relations.
    We are not to conclude from this, that every operation of
government must become problematical and uncertain as to its
consequences: some are evidently good; others are notoriously
bad; those, the tendency of which is less evident, are always the
least essential, and the more complex they appear to a discerning
eye, the more trivial they are found to be in their immediate
consequences.
    A government must be continually in action, and one principal
object of its attention must be, the consequences and effects of
new institutions.
    Experience alone will shew, what human prudence could not
foresee; and mistakes must be corrected as often as expediency
requires.
    All governments have what they call their fundamental laws;
but fundamental, that is, invariable laws, can never subsist
among men, the most variable thing we know: the only fundamental
law, salus populi, must ever be relative, like every other thing.
But this is rather a maxim than a law.
    It is however expedient, nay absolutely necessary, that in
every state, certain laws be supposed fundamental and invariable:
both to serve as a curb to the ambition of individuals, and to
point out to the statesman the outlines, or sketch of that plan
of government, which experience has proved to be the best adapted
to the spirit of his people.
    Such laws may even be considered as actually invariable,
while a state subsists without convulsions or revolutions;
because then the alterations are so gradual, that they become
imperceptible to all, but the most discerning, who can compare
the customs and manners of the same people in different periods
of time and under different circumstances.
    As we have taken for granted the fundamental maxim, that
every operation of government should be calculated for the good
of the people, so we may with equal certainty decide, that in
order to make a people happy, they must be governed according to
the spirit which prevails among them.
    I am next to explain what I mean by the spirit of a people,
and to show how far this spirit must be made to influence the
government of every society.

Chap. II

Of the Spirit of a People

    The spirit of a people is formed upon a set of received
opinions relative to three objects; morals, government, and
manners: these once generally adopted by any society, confirmed
by long and constant habit, and never called in question, form
the basis of all laws, regulate the form of every government, and
determine what is commonly called the customs of a country.
    To know a people, we must examine them under these general
heads. We acquire the knowledge of their morals with ease, by
consulting the tenets of their religion, and from what is taught
among them by authority.
    The second, or government, is more disguised, as it is
constantly changing from circumstances, partly resulting from
domestic and partly from foreign considerations. A thorough
knowledge of their history, and conversation with their ministers
of state, may give one, who has access to these helps, a very
competent knowledge of this branch.
    The last, or the knowledge of the manners of a people, is by
far the most difficult to acquire, and yet is the most open to
every person's observation. Certain circumstances with regard to
manners are supposed by every one in the country to be so well
known, so generally followed and observed, that it seldom occurs
to any body to inform a stranger concerning them. In one country
nothing is so injurious as a stroke with a stick, or even a
gesture which implies a design or a desire to strike. in another
a stroke is not near so offensive as an opprobrious expression.
An innocent liberty with the fair sex, which in one country
passes without censure, is looked upon in another as the highest
indignity. In general, the opinion of a people with regard to
injuries is established by custom only, and nothing is more
necessary in government, than an exact attention to every
circumstance peculiar to the people to be governed.
    The kingdom of Spain was lost for a violence committed upon
chastity;(2*) the city of Genoa for a blow;(3*) the kingdoms of
Naples and Sicily have ever been ready to revolt; because having
been for many ages under the dominion of strangers, the people
have never been governed according to the true spirit of their
manners. Let us consult the revolutions of all countries, and we
shall find, that the most trivial circumstances have had a
greater influence on such events, than the more weighty reasons,
which are always set forth as the real motives. I need not
enlarge upon this subject, my intention is only to suggest an
idea which any one may pursue, and which will be applied upon
many occasions as we go along; for there is no treating any point
which regards the political oeconomy of a nation, without
accompanying the example with some supposition relative to the
spirit of the people.
    I have said, that the most difficult thing to learn
concerning a people, is the spirit of their manners.
Consequently, the most difficult thing for a stranger to adopt,
is their manner. Men acquire the language, nay even lose the
foreign accent, before they lose the peculiarity of their manner.
The reason is plain. The inclinations must be changed, the taste
for amusements must be new-modelled; established maims upon
government, manners, nay even upon some moral actions, must
undergo certain new modifications, before the stranger's
conversation and behaviour can become consistent with the spirit
of the people with whom he lives.
    From these considerations, we may find the reason, why
nothing is more heavy to bear than the government of conquerors,
in spite of all their endeavours to render themselves agreeable
to the conquered. Of this, experience has ever proved the truth,
and princes are so much persuaded of it, that when a country is
subdued in our days, or when it otherwise changes masters, there
is seldom any question of altering, but by very slow degrees and
length of time, the established laws and customs of the
inhabitants. I might safely say, there is no form of government
upon earth so excellent in itself, as, necessarily, to make the
people happy under it. Freedom itself, imposed upon a people
groaning under the greatest slavery, will not make them happy,
unless it is made to undergo certain modifications, relative to
their established habits.
    Having explained what I mean by the spirit of a people, I
come next to consider, how far this spirit must influence
government.
    If governments be taken in general, we shall find them
analogous to the spirit of the people. But the point under
consideration is, how a statesman is to proceed, when expediency
and refinement require a change of administration, or when it
becomes necessary from a change of circumstances.
    The great alteration in the affairs of Europe within these
three centuries, by the discovery of America and the Indies, the
springing up of industry and learning, the introduction of trade
and the luxurious arts, the establishment of public credit, and a
general system of taxation, have entirely altered the plan of
government every where.
    From feudal and military, it is become free and commercial. I
oppose freedom in government to the feudal system, to mark only
that there is not found now that chain of subordination among the
subjects, which made the essential part of the feudal form. The
head there had little power, and the lower classes of the people
little liberty. Now every industrious man, who lives with
oeconomy, is free and independent under most forms of government.
Formerly, the power of the barons swallowed up the independency
of all inferior classes. I oppose commercial to military; because
the military governments now are made to subsist from the
consequences and effects of commerce only. that is, from the
revenue of the state, proceeding from taxes. Formerly, every
thing was brought about by numbers; now, numbers of men cannot be
kept together without money.
    This is sufficient to point out the nature of the revolution
in the political state, and of consequence in the manners of
Europe.
    The spirit of a people changes no doubt of itself, but by
slow degrees. The same generation commonly adheres to the same
principles, and retains the same spirit. In every country we find
two generations upon the stage at a time; that is to say, we may
distribute into two classes the spirit which prevails; the one
amongst men between twenty and thirty, when opinions are forming;
the other of those who are past fifty, when opinions and habits
are formed and confirmed. A person of judgment and observation
may foresee many things relative to government, from an exact
attention to the rise and progress of new customs and opinions,
provided he preserve his mind free from all attachments and
prejudices, in favour of those which he himself has adopted, and
in that delicacy of sensation necessary to perceive the influence
of a change of circumstances. This is the genius proper to form a
great minister.
    In every new step the spirit of the people should be first
examined; and if this be not found ripe for the execution of the
plan, it ought to be put off, kept entirely secret, and every
method used to prepare the people to relish the innovation.
    The project of introducing popery into England was blown
before it was put in practice, and so miscarried. Queen Elizabeth
kept her own secret, and succeeded in a similar attempt. The
scheme of a general excise was pushed with too much vivacity, was
made a matter of party, was ill-timed, and the people nowise
prepared for it; hence it will be the more difficult to bring
about at another time, without the greatest precautions.
    In turning and working upon the spirit of a people, nothing
is impossible to an able statesman. When a people can be engaged
to murder their wives and children, and to burn themselves,
rather than submit to a foreign enemy, when they can be brought
to give their most precious effects, their ornaments of gold and
silver, for the support of a common cause; when women are brought
to give their hair to make ropes, and the most decrepit old men
to mount the walls of a town for its defence; I think I may say,
that by properly conducting and managing the spirit of a people,
nothing is impossible to be accomplished. But when I say, nothing
is impossible, I must be understood to mean, that nothing
essentially necessary for the good of the people is impossible;
and this is all that is required in government.
    That it requires a particular talent in a statesman to
dispose the minds of a people to approve even of the scheme which
is the most conducive to their interest and prosperity, appears
from this, that we see examples of wise, rich, and powerful
nations languishing in inactivity, at a time when every
individual is animated with a quite contrary spirit; becoming a
prey to their enemies, like the city of Jerusalem, while they are
taken up with their domestic animosities, merely because the
remedies proposed against these evils contradict the spirit of
the times.
    The great art of governing is to divest oneself of prejudices
and attachments to particular opinions, particular classes, and
above all to particular persons; to consult the spirit of the
people, to give way to it in appearance, and in so doing to give
it a turn capable of inspiring those sentiments which may induce
them to relish the change, which an alteration of circumstances
has rendered necessary.
    Can any change be greater among free men, than from a state
of absolute liberty and independence to become subject to
constraint in the most trivial actions? This change has however
taken place over all Europe within these three hundred years, and
yet we think ourselves more free than ever our fathers were.
Formerly a gentleman who enjoyed a bit of land, knew not what it
was to have any demand made upon him, but in virtue of
obligations by himself contracted. He disposed of the fruits of
the earth, and of the labour of his servants or vassals, as he
thought fit. Every thing was bought, sold, transferred,
transported, modified, and composed, for private consumption, or
for public use, without ever the state's being once found
interested in what was doing. This, I say, was formerly the
general situation of Europe, among free nations under a regular
administration; and the only impositions commonly known to affect
landed men, were made in consequence of a contract of
subordination, feudal or other, which had certain limitations;
and the impositions were appropriated for certain purposes.
    Daily experience shews, that nothing is more against the
inclinations of a people than the imposition of taxes; and the
less they are accustomed to them, the more difficult it is to get
them established.
    The great abuse of governors in the application of taxes
contributes not a little to entertain and augment this repugnancy
in the governed: but besides abuse, there is often too little
management used to prepare the spirits of the people for such
innovations; for we see them upon many occasions submitting with
cheerfulness to very heavy impositions, provided they he
well-timed, and consistent with their manners and disposition. A
French gentleman, who cannot bear the thought of being put upon a
level with a peasant in paying a land-tax, pays contentedly, in
time of war, a general tax upon all his effects, under a
different name. To pay for your head is terrible in one country;
to pay for light appears as terrible in another.
    It often happens, that statesmen take the hint of new
impositions from the example of other nations, and not from a
nice examination of their own domestic circumstances. But when
these are rightly attended to, it becomes easy to discover the
means of executing the same plan, in a way quite adapted to the
spirit, temper, and circumstances of the people. When strangers
are employed as statesmen, the disorder is still greater, unless
there be extraordinary penetration, temper, and, above all,
flexibility and discretion.
    Statesmen have sometimes recourse to artifice instead of
reason, because their intentions often are not upright. This
destroys all confidence between them and the people; and
confidence is necessary when you are in a manner obliged to ask a
favour, or when what you demand is not indisputably your right. A
people thus tricked into an imposition, though expedient for
their prosperity, will oppose violently, at another time, a like
measure, even when essential to their preservation.
    At other times, we see statesmen presenting the allurement of
present ease, precisely at the time when people's minds are best
disposed to receive a burden. I mean when war threatens, and when
the mind is heated with a resentment of injuries. Is it not
wonderful, at such a time as this, to increase taxes in
proportion only to the interest of money wanted; does not this
imply a shortsightedness, or at least an indifference as to what
is to come? Is it not more natural, that a people should consent
to come under burdens to gratify revenge, than submit to repay a
large debt when their minds are restored to a state of
tranquility.
    From the examples I have given, I hope what I mean by the
spirit of a people is sufficiently understood, and I think I have
abundantly shewn the necessity of its being properly disposed, in
order to establish a right plan of oeconomy. This is so true,
that many examples may be found, of a people's rejecting the most
beneficial institutions, and even the greatest favours, merely
because some circumstance had shocked their established customs.
No wonder then, if we see them refuse to come under limitations,
restraints, and burdens, when the utmost they can be flattered
with from them, is a distant prospect of national good.
    I have found it necessary to premise these general
reflections, in order to obviate many objections which might
naturally enough occur in the perusal of this inquiry. I shall
have occasion to make a number of suppositions, and to draw
consequences from them, which are abundantly natural, provided a
proper spirit in the people be presupposed, but which would be
far from being natural without this supposition. I suppose, for
example, that a poor man, loaded with many children, would be
glad to have the state maintain them; that another, who has waste
lands, would be obliged to one who would gratuitously build him a
farm-house upon it. yet in both suppositions I may prove
mistaken; for fathers there are, who would rather see their
children dead than out of their hands; and proprietors are to be
found, who, for the sake of hunting, would lay the finest country
in Europe into a waste.
    In order to communicate an adequate idea of what I understand
by political oeconomy, I have explained the term, by pointing out
the object of the art; which is, to provide food, other
necessaries, and employment to every one of the society.
    This is a very simple and a very general method of defining a
most complicated operation.
    To provide a proper employment for all the members of a
society, is the same as to model and conduct every branch of
their concerns.
    Upon this idea may be formed, I think, the most extensive
basis for an inquiry into the principles of political oeconomy.
    The next thing to be done, is to fall upon a distinct method
of analysing so extensive a subject, by contriving a train of
ideas, which may be directed towards every part of the plan, and
which, at the same time, may be made to arise methodically from
one another.
    For this purpose I have taken a hint from what the late
revolutions in the politics of Europe have pointed out to be the
regular progress of mankind, from great simplicity to complicated
refinement.
    This first book shall then set out with taking up society in
the cradle, as I may say. I shall here examine the principles
which influence their multiplication, the method of providing for
their subsistence, the origin of their labour, the effects of
their liberty and slavery, the distribution of them into classes,
with some other topics which relate to mankind in general.
    Here we shall find the principles of industry influencing the
multiplication of mankind, and the cultivation of the soil. This
I have thrown in on purpose to prepare my reader for the subject
of the second book; where he will find the same principle (under
the wings of liberty) providing an easy subsistence for a
numerous populace, by the means of trade, which sends the labour
of an industrious people over the whole world.
    From the experience of what has happened these last two
hundred years, we find to what a pitch the trade and industry of
Europe has increased alienations, and the circulation of money. I
shall therefore closely adhere to these, as the most immediate
consequences of the preceding improvement; and, by analysing
them, I shall form my third and fourth books, in which I intend
to treat of money and credit.
    We see also how credit has engaged nations to avail
themselves of it in their wars, and how, by the use of it, they
have been led to contract debts; which they never can satisfy and
pay, without imposing taxes. The doctrine, then, of debts and
taxes will very naturally follow that of credit in this great
chain of political consequences.
    By this kind of historical clue, I shall conduct myself
through the great avenues of this extensive labyrinth; and in my
review of every particular district, I shall step from
consequence to consequence, until I have penetrated into the
inmost recesses of my own understanding.
    When a subject is broken off, I shall render my transitions
as gradual as I can, by still preserving some chain of connexion;
and although I cannot flatter myself (in such infinite variety of
choice, as to order and distribution) to hit at all times on that
method, which may appear to every reader the most natural and the
most correct, yet I shall spare no pains in casting the materials
into different forms, so as to make the best distribution of them
in my power.

Chap. III

Upon what Principles, and from what natural Causes do Mankind
multiply? And what are the Effects of Procreation in Countries
where Numbers are found to increase?

    The multiplication of mankind has been treated of in
different ways; some have made out tables to show the progression
of multiplication, others have treated the question historically.
The state of numbers in different ages of the world, or in
different countries at different times, has been made the object
of inquiry; and the most exact scrutiny has been made into
ancient authors, as the means of investigating the truth of this
matter. All passages relative to the subject have been laid
together, and accompanied with glosses and interpretations the
most plausible, in order to determine the main question. The
elaborate performances of Mr Hume, and Dr Wallace, who have
adopted opposite opinions in regard to the populousness of the
ancient world, have left nothing new to be said upon this
subject; at least the application they appear to have given in
examining the ancients, is a great discouragement to any one who
might otherwise still flatter himself to find out circumstances
in them, proper to cast a new light upon the question.
    My intention in this chapter is not to decide, nor even to
give my opinion upon that matter, far less to combat the
arguments advanced on either side. I am to consider the question
under a different point of view; not to inquire what numbers of
people were found upon the earth at a certain time, but to
examine the natural and rational causes of multipliCation. If we
can discover these, we may perhaps be led to judge how far they
might have operated in different ages and in different countries.
    The fundamental principle of the multiplication of all
animals, and consequently of man, is generation; the next is
food: generation gives existence, food preserves it. Did the
earth produce of itself the proper nourishment for man with
unlimited abundance, we should find no occasion to labour in
order to procure it. Now in all countries found inhabited, as in
those which have been found desolate, if the state of animals be
inquired into, the number of them will be found in proportion to
the quantity of food produced by the earth, regularly throughout
the year, for their subsistence. I say, regularly throughout the
year, because we perceive, in those animals which produce in
great abundance, such as all the feathered sort, that vast
multitudes are destroyed in winter; they are brought forth with
the fruits of the earth, and fall in proportion to their decay.
This principle is so natural, that I think it can hardly be
controverted.
    As to man, the earth does not spontaneously produce
nourishment for him in any considerable degree. I allow that as
some species of animals support life by devouring others, so may
man; but it must be observed, that the species feeding must
always be much inferior in number to the species fed upon. This
is evident in reason and in fact.
    Were the earth therefore uncultivated, the numbers of mankind
would not exceed the proportion of the spontaneous fruits which
she offers for their immediate use, or for that of the animals
which might be the proper nourishment of man.
    There is therefore a certain number of mankind which the
earth would be able to maintain without any labour: allow me to
call this quantity (A). Does it not, from this exposition of the
matter, appear plain, that without labour (A) never can increase
any more than animals, which do not work for themselves, can
increase beyond the proportion of food provided for them by
nature? Let it be however observed, that I do not pretend to
limit (A) to a determinate number. The seasons will no doubt
influence the numbers of mankind, as we see they influence the
plenty of other animals; but I say (A) will never increase beyond
the fixed proportion above mentioned.
    Having resolved one question with regard to multiplication,
and shewn that numbers must become greater or smaller according
to the productions of nature, I come to the second thing proposed
to be treated of in the chapter; to wit, what will become of the
generative faculty after it has produced the full proportion of
(A), and what effects will afterwards follow.
    We see how beneficent, I might have said prodigal, nature is
in bestowing life by generation. Several kinds of animals,
especially insects, multiply by thousands, and yet the species
does not appear annually to increase. Nobody can pretend that
particular individuals of any species have a privilege to live,
and that others die from a difference in their nature. It is
therefore reasonable to conclude, that what destroys such vast
quantities of those produced, must be, among other causes, the
want of food. Let us apply this to man.
    Those who are supposed to be fed with the spontaneous fruits
of the earth, cannot, from what has been said, multiply beyond
that proportion; at the same time the generative faculty will
work its natural effects in augmenting numbers. The consequence
will be, that certain individuals must become worse fed,
consequently weaker. consequently, if, in that weakly state,
nature should withhold a part of her usual plenty, the whole
multitude will be affected by it; a disease may take place, and
sweep off a far greater number than that proportioned to the
deficiency of the season. What results from this? That those who
have escaped, finding food more plentiful, become vigorous and
strong. generation gives life to additional numbers, food
preserves it, until they rise up to the former standard.
    Thus the generative faculty resembles a spring loaded with a
weight, which always exerts itself in proportion to the
diminution of resistance: when food has remained some time
without augmentation or diminution, generation will carry numbers
as high as possible; if then food come to be diminished, the
spring is overpowered; the force of it becomes less than nothing.
Inhabitants will diminish, at least, in proportion to the
overcharge. If, upon the other hand, food be increased, the
spring which stood at 0, will begin to exert itself in proportion
as the resistance diminishes; people will begin to be better fed;
they will multiply, and, in proportion as they increase in
numbers, the food will become scarce again.
    I must here subjoin a remark very analogous to this subject.
That the generative faculty in man (which we have compared to a
spring), and the care and love we have for our children, first
prompt us to multiply, and then engage us to divide what we have
with our little ones. Thus from dividing and subdividing it
happens, that in every country where food is limited to a certain
quantity, the inhabitants must be subsisted in a regular
progression, descending down from plenty and ample subsistence,
to the last periods of want, and even sometimes starving for
hunger.
    Although the examples of this last extremity are not common
in some countries, yet I believe they are more so than is
generally imagined; and the other stages of want are productive
of many diseases, and of a decay which extinguishes the faculty
of generation, or which weakens it, so as to produce children
less vigorous and less healthy. I appeal to experience, if this
reasoning be not just.
    Put two or three pairs of rabbits into a field proper for
them, the multiplication will be rapid; and in a few years the
warren will be stocked: you may take yearly from it a hundred
pairs, I shall suppose, and keep your warren in good order: give
over taking any for some years, you will perhaps find your
original stock rather diminished than increased, for the reasons
above mentioned. Africa yearly furnishes many thousands for the
cultivation of America; in this she resembles the warren. I have
little doubt but that if all her sons were returned to her at
once, by far the greater part would die of hunger.

Chap. IV

Continuation of the same Subject, with regard to the natural and
immediate Effects of Agriculture, as to Population

    I now suppose man to add his labour and industry to the
natural activity of the soil: so far, as by this he produces an
additional quantity of food, so far he lays a foundation for the
maintenance of an additional number. This number I shall call
(B). From this I conclude, that as (A) is supposed to be in a
constant proportion to the spontaneous fruits, so (B) must be in
proportion to agriculture (by this term I understand at present
every method of augmenting food by labour), consequently the
number maintained by the labour of mankind must be to the whole
number of mankind as (B) is to (A + B), or as (B) is to (A) and
(B) jointly.
    By this operation we find mankind immediately divided into
two classes; those who, without working, live upon the
spontaneous fruits of the earth; that is, upon milk, cattle,
hunting, &c. The other part, those who are obliged to labour the
soil. It is proper next to inquire what should naturally oblige a
man to labour; and what are the natural consequences of it as to
multiplication.
    We have already said, that the principle of generation is
inherent in man, and prompts him to multiply. Another principle,
as naturally inherent in the mind, as the first is in the body,
is self-love, or a desire of ease and happiness, which prompts
those who find in themselves any superiority, whether personal or
political, to make use of every natural advantage. Consequently,
such will multiply proportionably: because by appropriating to
themselves the fruits of the earth, they have the means of
subsisting their offspring. The others, I think, will very
naturally become their servants; as this method is, of all
others, the most easy to procure subsistence. This is so
analogous to the nature of man, that we see every where, even
among children, that the smallest superiority in any one over the
rest, constantly draws along with it a tribute of service in one
way or other. Those who become servants for the sake of food,
will soon become slaves: for slavery is but the abuse of service,
established by a civil institution; and men who find no
possibility of subsisting otherwise, will be obliged to serve
upon the conditions prescribed to them.
    This seems a consequence not unnatural in the infancy of the
world: yet I do not pretend to affirm that this was the origin of
slavery. Servants, however, there have always been; and the abuse
of service is what we understand by slavery. The subordination of
children to their parents, and of servants to their masters,
seems to be the most rational origin of society and government.
The first of these is natural, and follows as the unavoidable
consequence of an entire dependence: the second is political, and
may very naturally take place as to those who cannot otherwise
procure subsistence. This last species of subordination may, I
think, have taken place, the moment man became obliged to labour
for subsistence, but no sooner.
    The wants of man are not confined to food, merely. When food
is to be produced from the rude surface of the earth, a great
part of his time must be taken up with this object, even
supposing him to be provided with every utensil proper for the
exercise of his industry: he must therefore be in a worse
condition to provide for his other wants: consequently, he may be
willing to serve any one who will do it for him. Whereas, on the
other hand, if we suppose all mankind idle and fed, living upon
the spontaneous fruits of the earth, the plan of universal
liberty becomes quite natural: because under such circumstances
they find no inducement to come under a voluntary subordination.
    Let us now borrow the idea of a primitive society, of a
government, of a king, from the most ancient history we have, the
better to point out the effects of agriculture and
multiplication. The society is the whole taken together; it is
Jacob, his sons, their wives, their children, and all the
servants. The government regards the institutions prescribed by
Jacob, to every one of the family, concerning their respective
subordination and duty. Multiplication will here go forward, not
in proportion to the generative faculty, but according to the
employment of the persons already generated. If Jacob continue
pasturing his herds, he must extend the limits of his right of
pasture; he must multiply his stock of cattle, in proportion as
the mouths of his family augment. He is charged with all this
detail: for he is master, and director, and statesman, and
general provider. His servants will work as they are ordered; but
if he has not had the proper foresight, to break up lands so soon
as his family comes nearly up to that proportion which his flocks
can easily feed; if in this case, a dry season should burn up the
grass in Palestine, he will be obliged to send some of his stock
of cattle, by some of his family, to market, there to be sold;
and with the price he must buy corn. For in this early age, there
was money, there were manufactures of sackcloth, of common
raiment, and of party-coloured garments; there was a trade in
corn, in spicery, balm, and myrrh. Jacob and his family were
shepherds, but they lived not entirely on flesh; they eat bread:
consequently there was tillage in those days, though they
exercised none. The famine however was ready to destroy them, and
probably would have done it, but for the providential
circumstance of Joseph's being governor of Egypt. He relieved
their distress, he gave to his family the best country in the
whole kingdom for pasture; and they had a gratuitous supply of
bread.
    No doubt, so long as these favourable circumstances
subsisted, multiplication would go on apace. What supernatural
assistance God was pleased to grant for the increase of his
chosen people, does not concern my inquiry.
    I have mentioned transiently this example of the patriarch,
to point out only how ancient the use of money, the invention of
trade and manufactures appear to have been. Without such previous
establishments, I consider mankind as savages, living on the
spontaneous fruits of the earth, as in the first supposition; and
confined, as to numbers, to the actual extent of these
productions.
    From what has been said, we may conclude, that the numbers of
mankind must depend upon the quantity of food produced by the
earth for their nourishment; from which, as a corollary, may be
drawn.
    That mankind have been, as to numbers, and must ever be, in
proportion to the food produced; and that the food produced will
be in the compound proportion of the fertility of the climate,
and the industry of the inhabitants.
    From this last proposition it appears plain, that there can
be no general rule for determining the number of inhabitants
necessary for agriculture, not even in the same country. The
fertility of the soil when laboured, the ease of labouring it,
the quantity of good spontaneous fruits, the plenty of fish in
the rivers and sea, the abundance of wild birds and beasts, have
in all ages, and ever must influence greatly the nourishment,
and, consequently, regulate the multiplication of man, and
determine his employment.
    To make an establishment in a country not before inhabited,
to root out woods, destroy wild and venomous animals, drain
marshy grounds, give a free course to water, and to lay down the
surface into corn fields, must surely require more hands than to
cultivate the same after it is improved. For the truth of this, I
appeal to our American brethren.
    We may therefore conclude, that the most essential requisite
for population, is that of agriculture, or the providing of
subsistence. Upon this all the rest depends: while subsistence is
upon a precarious footing, no statesman can turn his attention to
any thing else.
    The great importance of this object has engaged some to
imagine, that the luxurious arts, in our days, are prejudicial
both to agriculture and multiplication. It is sometimes of ill
consequence to fix one's attention too much upon any one object,
however important. Nobody can dispute that agriculture is the
foundation of multiplication, and the most essential requisite
for the prosperity of a state. But it does not follow from this,
that every body almost in the state should be employed in it;
that would be inverting the order of things, and turning the
master into the servant. The duty and business of man is not to
feed; he is fed, in order to do his duty, and to become useful in
his profession; whether agriculture, art, or science.
    It is not sufficient for my purpose to know, that the
introduction of agriculture, by multiplying the quantity of the
earth's productions, does evidently tend to increase the numbers
of mankind. I must examine the political causes which must
concur, in order to operate this effect.
    For this purpose, my next inquiry shall be directed towards
discovering the true principles which influence the employment of
man, with respect to agriculture. I shall spare no pains in
examining this point to the bottom, even though it should lead me
to anticipate some branches of my subject.
    I shall endeavour to lay down principles consistent with the
nature of man, with agriculture, and with multiplication, in
order, by their means, to discover both the use and abuse of the
two last. When these parts are well understood, the rest will go
on more smoothly, and I shall find the less occasion to interrupt
my subject, in order to explain the topics upon which the whole
depends.

Chap. V

In what Manner, and according to what Principles, and political
Causes, does Agriculture augment Population?


    I have already shewn, how the spontaneous fruits of the earth
provide a fund of nourishment for a determinate number of men,
and have slightly touched upon the consequences of adding labour
to the natural activity of the soil.
    Let me now carry this inquiry a little farther. Let me
suppose a country fertile in spontaneous productions, capable of
improvements of every kind, inhabited by a people living under a
free government, and in the most refined simplicity, without
trade, without the luxurious arts, and without ambition. Let me
here suppose a statesman, who shall inspire a taste for
agriculture and for labour into those who formerly consumed the
spontaneous fruits of the earth in ease and idleness. What will
become of this augmentation of food produced by this additional
labour?
    The sudden increase of food, such as that here supposed, will
immediately diffuse vigour into all; and if the additional
quantity be not very great, no superfluity will be found. No
sooner will the inhabitants be fully nourished, but they will
begin to multiply a-new: then they will come to divide with their
children, and food will become scarce again.
    Thus much is necessary for the illustration of one principle;
but the effects, which we have been pointing out, will not be
produced barely by engaging those who lived by hunting (I
suppose) to quit that trade, and turn farmers. The statesman must
also find out a method to make the produce of this new branch of
industry circulate downwards, so as to relieve the wants of the
most necessitous: Otherwise, the plenty produced, remaining in
the hands of those who produced it, will become to them an
absolute superfluity; which, had they any trade with a
neighbouring state, they would sell, or exchange, and leave their
fellow-citizens to starve. And as we suppose no trade at all,
this superfluity will perish like their cherries, in a year of
plenty; and consequently the farmers will immediately give over
working.
    If, to prevent this inconveniency, the statesman shall force
certain classes to labour the soil, and, with discretion,
distribute the produce of it to all that have occasion for
subsistence, taking in return their services for the public
benefit; this will prove an infallible way of multiplying
inhabitants, of making them laborious, and of preserving a
simplicity of manners; but it is also the picture of ancient
slavery, and is therefore excluded from the supposition.
    If he acts consistently with that spirit of liberty, which we
have supposed to animate his subjects, he has no method left, but
to contrive different employments for the hands of the
necessitous, that, by their labour, they may produce an
equivalent which may be acceptable to the farmers, in lieu of
this superfluity; for these last certainly will not raise it, if
they cannot dispose of it; nor will they dispose of it, but for a
proper equivalent. This is the only method (in a free state) of
procuring additional food, and of distributing it through the
society, as the price of those hours which before were spent in
idleness: and, as this will prove a more certain and more
extensive fund of subsistence, than the precarious productions of
spontaneous fruits, which cannot be increased at discretion, and
in proportion to demand, it will greatly increase numbers; but,
on the other hand, it must evidently destroy that simplicity of
manners which naturally reigns among nations who do not labour.
    A people, therefore, who have an industrious turn, will
multiply in proportion to the superfluity produced by their
farmers; because the labour of the necessitous will prove an
equivalent for it.
    Now this additional number of inhabitants, being raised and
fed with the superfluity actually produced by the farmers, can
never be supposed necessary for providing this quantity, which
(though relatively to the farmers it be called a superfluity) is
merely a sufficiency relatively to the whole society. and,
therefore, if it be found necessary to employ the new inhabitants
also in farming, it must be with a view only to a still greater
multiplication.
    Farther, we may lay it down as a principle, that a farmer
will not labour to produce a superfluity of grain relatively to
his own consumption, unless he finds some want which may be
supplied by means of that superfluity'. neither will other
industrious persons work to supply the wants of the farmer for
any other reason than to procure subsistence, which they cannot
otherwise so easily obtain. These are the reciprocal wants which
the statesman must create, in order to bind the society together.
Here, then, is one principle: Agriculture among a free people
will augment population, in proportion only as the necessitous
are put in a situation to purchase subsistence with their labour.
    If, in any country which actually produces nourishment for
its inhabitants, according to the progression above-mentioned, a
plan is set on foot for the extension of agriculture; the
augmentation must be made to bear a due proportion to the
progress of industry and wants of the people, or else an outlet
must be provided for disposing of the superfluity. And if, at
setting out, a foreign consumption cannot be procured for the
produce of husbandry, the greatest caution must be had to keep
the improvement of the soil within proper bounds: for, without
this, the plan intended for an improvement will, by over-doing,
turn out to the detriment of agriculture. This will be the case,
if the fruits of the earth be made to increase faster than the
numbers and the industry of those who are to consume them. For if
the whole be not consumed, the regorging plenty will discourage
the industry of the farmer.
    But if, together with an encouragement to agriculture, a
proper outlet be found for the superfluity, until the numbers and
industry of the people, by increasing, shall augment the
home-consumption, which again by degrees will diminish the
quantity of exportation, then the spring will easily overcome the
resistance; it will dilate; that is, numbers will continue to
increase.
    From this may be derived another principle: That agriculture,
when encouraged for the sake of multiplying inhabitants, must
keep pace with the progress of industry; or else an outlet must
be provided for all superfluity.
    In the foregoing example, I have supposed no exportation, the
more to simplify the supposition: I was, therefore, obliged to
throw in a circumstance, in order to supply the want of it; to
wit, an augmentation of inland demand from the suspension of
hunting; and I have supposed those who formerly supported
themselves by this, to consume the superfluous food of the
farmers for the price of their labour. This may do well enough as
a supposition, and has been made use of merely to explain
principles. but the manners of a people are not so easily
changed; and therefore I have a little anticipated the
supposition of trade, to shew only how it must concur with
industry, in the advancement of agriculture and multiplication.
    Let me next consider the consequences of an augmentation of
agriculture in a country where the inhabitants are lazy; or where
they live in such simplicity of manners, as to have few wants
which labour and industry can supply. In this case, I say, the
scheme of agriculture will not succeed; and, if set on foot, a
part of the grounds will soon become again uncultivated.
    The laziest part of the farmers, disgusted with a labour
which produces a plenty superfluous to themselves, which they
cannot dispose of for any equivalent, will give over working, and
return to their ancient simplicity. The more laborious will not
furnish food to the necessitous for nothing: such therefore who
cannot otherwise subsist, will naturally serve the industrious,
and thereby sell their service for food. Thus by the diminution
of labour, a part of the country, proportional to the quantity of
food which the farmers formerly found superfluous, will again
become uncultivated.
    Here then will be found a country, the population of which
must stop for want of food; and which, by the supposition, is
abundantly able to produce more. Experience every where shews the
possible existence of such a case, since no country in Europe is
cultivated to the utmost: and that there are many still, where
cultivation, and consequently multiplication, is at a stop. These
nations I consider as in a moral incapacity of multiplying: the
incapacity would be physical, if there was an actual
impossibility of their procuring an augmentation of food by any
means whatsoever.
    These principles seem to be confirmed by experience; whether
we compare them with the manner of living among the free American
savages, or among the free, industrious, and laborious Europeans.
We find the productions of all countries, generally speaking, in
proportion to the number of their inhabitants; and, on the other
hand, the inhabitants are most commonly in proportion to the
food.
    I beg that this may not be looked upon as a quibble, or what
is called a vicious circle. I have qualified the general
proposition by subjoining that it is found true most commonly;
and from what is to follow, we shall better discover both the
truth and meaning of what is here advanced. While certain causes
operate, food will augment, and mankind will increase in
proportion; when these causes cease, procreation will not augment
numbers; then the general proposition will take place; numbers
and food will remain the same, and balance one another. This I
imagine to be so in fact; and I hope to shew that it is rational
also. Let me now put an end to this chapter, by drawing some
conclusions from what has been laid down, in order to enlarge our
ideas, and to enable us to extend our plan.
    First, One consequence of a fruitful soil, possessed by a
free people, given to agriculture, and inclined to industry, will
be the production of a superfluous quantity of food, over and
above what is necessary to feed the farmers. Inhabitants will
multiply; and, according to their increase, a certain number of
the whole, proportional to such superfluity of nourishment
produced, will apply themselves to industry and to the supplying
of other wants.
    Secondly, From this operation produced by industry, we find
the people distributed into two classes. The first is that of the
farmers who produce the subsistence, and who are necessarily
employed in this branch of business; the other I shall call free
hands; because their occupation being to procure themselves
subsistence out of the superfluity of the farmers, and by a
labour adapted to the wants of the society, may vary according to
these wants, and these again according to the spirit of the
times.
    Thirdly, If, in the country we are treating of, both money
and the luxurious arts be supposed to be unknown, then the
superfluity of the farmers will be in proportion to the number of
those whose labour will be found sufficient to provide for all
the other necessities of the inhabitants; and, so soon as this is
accomplished, the consumption and produce becoming equally
balanced, the inhabitants will increase no more, or at least very
precariously, unless their wants be multiplied.

Chap. VI

How the Wants of Mankind promote their Multiplication


    If the country we were treating of in the former chapter be
supposed of a considerable extent and fruitfulness, and if the
inhabitants have turn for industry, in a short time luxury, and
the use of money (or of something participating of the nature of
money), will infallibly be introduced.
    By LUXURY, I understand the consumption of any thing produced
by the labour or ingenuity of man, which flatters our senses or
taste of living, and which is neither necessary for our being
well fed, well clothed, well defended against the injuries of the
weather, or for securing us against every thing which can hurt
us.(4*)
    By MONEY, I understand any commodity, which purely in itself
is of no material use to man for the purposes above-mentioned,
but which acquires such an estimation from his opinion of it, as
to become the universal measure of what is called value, and an
adequate equivalent for any thing alienable.(5*)
    Here a new scene opens. This money must be found in the hands
of some of the inhabitants; naturally, of such as have had the
wit to invent it, and the address to make their countrymen fond
of it, by representing it as an equivalent value for food and
necessaries; that is to say, the means of procuring, without work
or toil, not only the labour of others, but food itself.
    Here then is produced a new object of want. Every person
becomes fond of having money; but how to get it is the question.
The proprietors will not give it for nothing, and, by our former
supposition, every one within the society was understood to be
abundantly supplied with food and necessaries; the farmers, from
their labouring the ground; the free hands, by the return of
their own ingenuity, in furnishing necessaries. The proprietors
therefore of this money have all their wants supplied, and still
are possessors of this new kind of riches, which we now suppose
to be coveted by all.
    The natural consequence here will be, that those who have the
money will cease to labour, and yet will consume; and they will
not consume for nothing, for they will pay with money.
    Here then is a number of inhabitants, who live and consume
the produce of the earth without labouring; food will soon become
scarce; demand for it will rise, and that will be paid with
money, this is the best equivalent of all; many will run to the
plough; the superfluity of the farmers will augment; the rich
will call for superfluities; the free hands will supply them, and
demand food in their turn. These will, the rich, who not be found
a burden on the husbandman, as formerly hired of them their
labour or service, must pay them with money, and this money in
their hands will serve as an equivalent for the superfluity of
nourishment produced by additional agriculture.
    When once this imaginary wealth (money) becomes well
introduced into a country, luxury will very naturally follow; and
when money becomes the object of our wants, mankind become
industrious, in turning their labour towards every object which
may engage the rich to part with it; and thus the inhabitants of
any country may increase in numbers, until the ground refuses
farther nourishment. The consequences of this will make the
subject of another chapter.
    Before we proceed, something must be said, in order a little
to restrain these general assertions.
    We have supposed a very rapid progress of industry, and a
very sudden augmentation of inhabitants, from the introduction of
money. But it must be observed, that many circumstances have
concurred with the money to produce this effect.
    We have supposed a country capable of improvement, a
laborious people, a taste for refinement and luxury in the rich,
an ambition to become so, and an application to labour and
ingenuity in the lower classes of men. According to the greater
or less degree of force, or concurrence of these and like
circumstances, will the country in question become more or less
cultivated, and consequently peopled.
    If the soil be vastly rich, situated in a warm climate, and
naturally watered, the productions of the earth will be almost
spontaneous: this will make the inhabitants lazy. Laziness is the
greatest of all obstacles to labour and industry. Manufactures
will never flourish here. The rich, with all their money, will
not become luxurious with delicacy and refinement; for I do not
mean by luxury the gratification of the animal appetites, nor the
abuse of riches, but an elegance of taste and in living, which
has for its object the labour and ingenuity of man; and as the
ingenuity of workmen begets a taste in the rich, so the
allurement of riches kindles an ambition, and encourages an
application to works of ingenuity, in the poor.
    Riches therefore will here be adored as a god, but not made
subservient to the uses of man; and it is by the means of swift
circulation only (as shall be observed in its proper place) that
they become productive of the effects mentioned above.(6*)
    When money does not circulate, it is the same thing as if it
did not exist; and as the treasures found in countries where the
inhabitants are lazy do not circulate, they are rather ornamental
than useful.
    It is not therefore in the most fruitful countries of the
world, nor in those which are the best calculated for nourishing
great multitudes, that we find the most inhabitants. It is in
climates less favoured by nature, and where the soil produces to
those only who labour, and in proportion to the industry of every
one, where we may expect to find great multitudes; and even these
multitudes will be found greater or less, in proportion as the
turn of the inhabitants is directed to ingenuity and industry.
    In such countries where industry is made to flourish, the
free hands (of whom we have spoken above) will be employed in
useful manufactures, which, being refined upon by the ingenious,
will determine what is called the standard of taste; this taste
will increase consumption, which again will multiply workmen, and
these will encourage the production of food for their
nourishment.
    Let it therefore never be said, that there are too many
manufacturers employed in a country; it is the same as if it were
said, there are too few idle persons, too few beggars, and too
many husbandmen.
    We have more than once endeavoured to shew, that these
manufacturers never can be fed but out of the superfluity of the
farmers. It is a contradiction, I think, to say, that those who
are fed upon the surplus of those who cultivate the soil are
necessary for producing a sufficiency to themselves. For if even
this surplus were to diminish, the manufacturers, not the
labourers, would be the first to be extinguished for want of
nourishment.
    The importance of the distributive proportion of mankind into
labourers and free hands appears so great, and has so intimate a
connection with this subject, that it engages me to seek for an
illustration of the principles I have been laying down, in an
example drawn from facts, as they are found to stand in one of
the greatest and most flourishing nations in Europe. But before I
proceed farther in this part of my subject, I must examine the
consequences of slavery with regard to the subject we are now
upon. Relations here are so many and so various, that it is
necessary to have sometimes recourse to transitions, of which I
give notice to my reader, that he may not lose the connection.

Chap. VII

The Effects of Slavery upon the Multiplication and Employment of
Mankind

    Before I go on to follow the consequences of the above
reasoning, I must stop to consider a difference of no small
importance between ancient and modern times, which will serve to
illustrate the nature of slavery, with regard to population and
the employment of mankind.
    We have endeavoured to lay down the principles which seem to
influence this question, supposing all to be free. In this case,
I imagine the human species will multiply pretty much in
proportion to their industry; their industry will increase
according to their wants, and these again will be diversified
according to the spirit of the times.
    From this I conclude, that the more free and simple the
manners of any country are, caeteris paribus, the fewer
inhabitants will be found in it. This is proved by experience
every where. The Tartars, who freely wander up and down a country
of vast extent, multiply but little; the savages in America, who
live upon hunting, in a state of great independence; the
inhabitants of several mountainous countries in Europe, where
there are few manufactures, and where the inhabitants do not
leave the country; in all such places mankind do not multiply.
What is the reason of this? One would imagine, where there is a
great extent of ground capable of producing food, that mankind
should multiply until the soil refused to give more. I imagine
the answer may be easily discovered from the principles above
laid down.
    Where mankind have few wants, the number of free hands
necessary to supply them is very small, consequently very little
surplus from the farmers is sufficient to maintain them. When
therefore it happens, that any poor family in the class of free
hands is very numerous, division there comes to be carried to its
utmost extent, and the greatest part become quite idle, because
there is no demand for their work. As long as they can be fed by
the division of the emoluments arising from the labour of their
parents, or by the charity of others, they live; when these
resources fail, they become miserable. In so wretched a situation
it is not easy to find bread. The farmers will not double their
diligence from a charitable disposition. Those who have land will
not allow those indigent people a liberty to raise grain in it
for nothing; and although they should, the poor are not in a
capacity to provide what is necessary for doing it. All other
work is fully stocked, the wretched die, or extinguish without
multiplying.
    To make this more evident, let us suppose the wants of
mankind, in any polite nation of Europe, which lives and
flourishes in our days upon the produce of its own soil, reduced
all at once to the simplicity of the ancient patriarchs, or even
to that of the old Romans. Suppose all the hands now employed in
the luxurious arts, and in every branch of modern manufactures,
to become quite idle, and all foreign trade to be cut off, how
could they be subsisted? What oeconomy could be set on foot, able
to preserve so many lives useful to the state? Yet it is plain by
the supposition, that the farmers of the country are capable of
maintaining them, since they actually do so. It would be absurd
to propose to employ them in agriculture, since there are enough
employed in this, to provide food for the whole.
    If it be certain that such people would die for want without
any resource; must it not follow that, unless their parents had
found the means of maintaining them when children, and they
themselves the means of afterwards subsisting by their industry
in supplying wants, they could not have existed beyond their
first infancy?
    This seems to strike deep against the populousness of the old
world, where we know that the wants of mankind, with regard to
trades and manufactures, were so few.
    But in those days the wants of mankind were of a different
nature. At present, there is a demand for the ingenuity of man;
then, there was a demand for his person and service. Now,
provided there be a demand for man, whatever use he be put to,
the species will multiply; for those who stand in need of them
will always feed them, and, as long as food is to be found,
numbers will increase.
    In the present times food cannot, in general, be found, but
by labour, and that cannot be found but to supply wants. Nobody
will feed a free man, more than he will feed the wild birds or
beasts of the field, unless he has occasion for the labour of the
one or flesh of the other.
    In the old world the principles were the same, but the spirit
of nations was different. Princes wanted to have numerous armies.
Free states sought for power in the number of their citizens. The
wants of Mankind being few, and a simplicity of manners
established, to have encouraged industry, excepting in
agriculture, which in all ages has been the foundation of
population, would have been an inconsistency. To make mankind
labour beyond their wants, to make one part of a state work to
maintain the other gratuitously, could only be brought about by
slavery, and slavery was therefore introduced universally.
Slavery was then as necessary towards multiplication, as it would
now be destructive of it. The reason is plain. If mankind be not
forced to labour, they will labour for themselves only; and if
they have few wants, there will be little labour. But when states
come to be formed, and have occasion for idle hands to defend
them against the violence of their enemies, food at any rate must
be procured for those who do not labour; and, as by the
supposition, the wants of the labourers are small, a method must
be found to increase their labour above the proportion of their
wants.
    For this purpose slavery was calculated: it had two excellent
effects with respect to population. The first, that, in
unpolished nations, living upon the spontaneous fruits of the
earth, and almost continually in war, lives were preserved for
the sake of making slaves of the captives. These, sold to private
people, or different states, were sure of being fed; whereas,
remaining in their own country, they occupied a place only,
which, by the force of the generative faculty, as has been
observed, was soon to be filled up by propagation: for it must
not be forgot, that when numbers are swept off, by any sudden
calamity, which does not proportionally diminish subsistence, a
new multiplication immediately takes place. Thus we perceive the
hurt done by plagues, by war, and by other devastations, either
among men, or cattle, repaired in a few years, even in those
countries where the standard number of both is seldom found to
increase. What immense quantities of cattle are yearly
slaughtered ! Does any body imagine that if all were allowed to
live, numbers would increase in proportion? The same is true of
men.
    The second advantage of slavery was, that in countries where
a good police prevailed, and where the people had fewer wants by
far than are felt in modern times, the slaves were forced to
labour the soil which fed both them and the idle freemen, as was
the case in Sparta; or they filled all the servile places which
freemen fill now, and they were likewise employed, as in Greece
and in Rome, in supplying with manufactures those whose service
was necessary for the state.
    Here then was a violent method making mankind laborious in
raising food; and provided this be accomplished, (by any means
whatever,) numbers will increase.
    Trade, industry, and manufactures, tend only to multiply the
numbers of men, by encouraging agriculture. If it be therefore
supposed, that two states are equally extended, equally fruitful,
and equally cultivated, and the produce consumed at home, I
believe they will be found equally peopled. But suppose the one
laboured by free men, the other by slaves, what difference will
be found in making war? In the first, the free hands must, by
their industry and labour, purchase their food, and a day lost is
in a manner a day of fasting: in the last, the slaves produce the
food, they are first fed, and the rest costs nothing to the body
of free men, who may be all employed in war, without the smallest
prejudice to industry.
    From these principles it appears, that slavery in former
times had the same effect in peopling the world that trade and
industry have now. Men were then forced to labour because they
were slaves to others; men are now forced to labour because they
are slaves to their own wants.
    I do not, however, pretend, that in fact slavery in ancient
times did every where contribute to population, any more than I
can affirm that the spirit of industry in the Dutch is common to
all free nations in our days. All that is necessary for my
purpose is, to set forth the two principles, and to shew the
natural effects of the one and the other, with respect to the
multiplication of mankind and advancement of agriculture, the
principal objects of our attention throughout this book.
    I shall at present enlarge no farther upon this matter, but
return to where I left off in the preceding chapter, and take up
the farther examination of the fundamental distribution of
inhabitants into labourers and free hands.

Chap. VII

What Proportion of Inhabitants is necessary for Agriculture, and
what Proportion may be usefully employed in every other
Occupation?

    I have proposed this question, not with an intention to
answer it fully, but to point out, how, with the proper lights
given, it may be answered.
    As I write under circumstances not the most favourable for
having recourse to books, I must employ those I have. The article
Political Arithmetic, of Mr Chambers's Cyclopedia, furnishes me
with some extracts from Sir William Petty, and Dr Davenant, which
I here intend to employ, towards pointing out a solution of the
question proposed. These authors consider the state of England as
it appeared to them, and what they say is conclusive with respect
to that state only.
    Sir William Petty supposes the inhabitants of England to be
six millions, the value of grain yearly consumed by them ten
millions sterling, the bushel of wheat reckoned at 5s., and that
of barley at 2s. 6d. If we cast the two together, and reckon upon
an average, this will make the quarter, or eight bushels of
grain, worth 1l. 10s.: but in regard, the barley cannot amount to
one half of all the grain consumed, especially as there is a good
quantity of rye made use of, which is worth more than the barley,
though less than the wheat; let us suppose the grain worth 32s.
per quarter, at a medium; then ten millions sterling will
purchase six millions of quarters of grain, or thereabouts;
which, used for nourishment, in bread and beer, gives the mean
quantity of one quarter, or 512 pounds troy of grain for every
inhabitant, including the nourishment of his proportional part of
animals; supposing that Sir William attended to this
circumstance, for it is not mentioned by Chambers. And I must
observe, by-the-bye, that this computation may hold good as to
England, where people eat so little bread; but would not answer
in France, nor in almost any other country I have seen.
    Dr Davenant, correcting Sir William's calculation, makes the
inhabitants 5,545,000. These, according to Sir William's prices
and proportions, would consume to the amount of 8,872,000l.
sterling. but the Dr carries it, with reason, a little higher,
and states it at 9,075,000l. sterling; the difference, however,
is inconsiderable. From this he concludes the gross produce of
the corn-fields to be about 9,075,000l. sterling. I make no
criticism upon this computation. 
    Next, as to the value of other lands; I find Sir William
reckons the gross produce of them in butter, cheese, milk, wool,
horses yearly bred, flesh for food, tallow, hides, hay, and
timber, to amount to 12,000,000l. sterling: The amount therefore
of the gross produce of all the lands in England must be equal to
these two sums added together, that is, to 21,075,000l. sterling.
    From these data, the Dr values the yearly rent of corn-lands
at two million sterling, and those of pasture, &c. at seven
millions; in all, nine millions.
    From this it appears, that the land-rents of England are to
the gross produce, as nine is to twenty-one, or thereabouts.
    Let me now examine some other proportions. 
    The rents of the corn-lands are to the gross produce of them,
as two is to nine; those of pasture, as seven to twelve.
    Now it is very certain, that all rents are in a pretty just
proportion to the gross produce, after deducting three principal
articles.
    First, The nourishment of the farmer, his family, and
servants. 
    Secondly, The necessary expences of his family, for
manufactures, and instruments for cultivating the ground.
    Thirdly, His reasonable profits, according to the custom of
every country.
    Of these three articles, let us distinguish what part implies
the direct consumption of the pure produce, from what does not.
    Of the first sort are the nourishment of men and cattle, wool
and flax for clothing, firing, and other smaller articles.
    Of the second are all manufactures bought, servants' wages,
the hire of labourers occasionally, and profits, either spent in
luxury, (that is, superfluity,) lent, or laid up.
    The three articles above mentioned (which we have distributed
under two heads) being deducted from the gross produce, the
remaining value shews the land-rent.
    This being the case, I am next to examine the cause of the
great disproportion between the rents of corn-lands, and those of
pasture, when compared with the gross produce, in order to draw
some conclusion, which may lead to the solution of the question
here proposed.
    This difference must proceed from the greater proportion of
labouring and other inhabitants employed in consequence of
tillage; which makes the expence of it far greater than that of
pasture. And since, in the one and the other, every article of
necessary expence or consumption ought naturally to be
proportionally equal among those concerned in both, that is,
proportional to the number of labouring inhabitants; it follows,
that the proportion of people employed in agriculture, and upon
the account of it, in different countries, is nearly in the ratio
of the gross produce, to the land-rent; or, in other words, in
the proportion of the consumption made by the farmers, and by
those employed necessarily by them, to the net produce, which is
the same thing.
    Now as the consumption upon corn-farms is 7/9, and that upon
pasture 5/12, the proportion of these two fractions must mark the
ratio between the populousness of pasture-lands, and those in
tillage; that is to say, tillage-lands in England were, at that
time, peopled in proportion to pasture-lands, as 84 is to 45, or
as 28 to 15.
    This point being settled, I proceed to another: to wit, the
application of this net produce or surplus of the quantity of
food and necessaries remaining over and above the nourishment,
consumption, and expence, of the inhabitants employed in
agriculture; and which we have observed above to be equal to the
land-rents of England, that is to say, to nine millions yearly.
    Must not this of necessity be employed in the nourishment,
and for the use of those whom we have called the free hands; who
may be employed in manufactures, trades, or in any other way,
according to the taste of the times?
    Now the numbers of a people, I take to be very nearly in the
proportion of the quantity of food they consume; especially when
a society is taken thus, in such accumulative proportion, and
when all are supposed to be under the same circumstances as to
the plenty of the year.
    The whole gross produce of England we have said to be
21,000,000 l. sterling, of which 9 millions have remained for
those not employed in agriculture; the farmers, therefore, and
their attendants, must annually consume 12 millions; consequently
the last class is to the first as 12 is to 9. If, therefore,
according to Dr Davenant, there be 5,545,000 people in that
kingdom, there must be about 3,168,571 employed or dependent upon
agriculture, and 2,376,429 free hands for every other occupation.
But this proportion of farmers will be found far less, if we
reflect, that we have reckoned for them the total amount of the
three articles above mentioned, that is to say, the total
consumption they make, as well in manufactures, profits upon
their labour, &c. as for food and necessaries: whereas there has
been nothing reckoned for the free hands, but the land-rent;
consequently there should be added to the number of the latter as
many as are employed in supplying with all sorts of manufactures
the whole of the farmers of England, and all those who depend
upon them; and this number must be taken from one and added to
the other class. If this number be supposed to amount to four
hundred thousand, it will do more than cast the balance upon the
opposite side.
    From these matters of fact (so far as they are so) we may
conclude:
    First, That the raising of the rents of lands shows the
increase of industry, as it swells the fund of subsistence
consumed by the industrious; that is, by those who buy it.
    Secondly, That it may denote either an increase of
inhabitants, or the depopulation of the land, in order to
assemble the superfluous mouths in villages, towns, &c, where
they may exercise their industry with greater convenience.
    While the land-rents of Europe were very low, numbers of the
inhabitants appeared to be employed in agriculture; but were
really no more than idle consumers of the produce of it. This
shall be further illustrated in the subsequent chapters.
    Thirdly, The more a country is in tillage, the more it is
inhabited, and the smaller is the proportion of free hands for
all the services of the state. The more a country is in pasture,
the less it is inhabited, but the greater is the proportion of
free hands.
    I do not pretend, as I have said above, that there is any
calculation to be depended on in this chapter; I have only
endeavoured to point out how a calculation might be made, when
the true state of England comes to be known.
    This question not being of a nature to enter into the chain
of our reasoning, may be considered rather as incidental than
essential; I have therefore treated it superficially and chiefly
for the sake of the conclusions.
    Our next inquiry will naturally be into the principles which
determine the residence of inhabitants, in order to discover why,
in all flourishing states, cities are now found to be every where
on the growing hand.

Chap. IX

What are the Principles which regulate the Distribution of
Inhabitants into Farms, Hamlets, Villages, Towns, and City?

    Having pointed out the natural distribution of inhabitants
into the two capital classes of which we have been treating, I am
going to examine how far their employment must decide as to their
place of residence.
    First, When mankind is fed upon the spontaneous fruits of the
earth, the distribution of their residence depends upon the
division of the lands. If these are in common to all, then the
inhabitants will be scattered abroad, or gathered together,
according as the productions of the earth are equally distributed
over the face of the country, or confined to some fruitful spots
only.
    Hence the Tartars wander with their flocks and feed upon
them: hence the hunting Indians are scattered in small societies,
through the woods, and live upon game: hence others, who feed
upon the fruits of the earth, are collected in greater numbers
upon the sides of rivers, and in watered valleys.
    Where therefore the surface of the earth is not appropriated,
there the place producing the food determines the place of
residence of every one of the society, and there mankind may live
in idleness, and remain free from every constraint.
    Secondly, When the earth is not in common to those who live
upon her spontaneous fruits, but is appropriated by a few, there
either slavery or industry must be introduced among those who
consume the surplus of the proprietors; because these will expect
either service or work in return for their superfluity. In this
case, the residence of the inhabitants will depend upon the
circumstances we are going to consider; and the object of
agriculture in countries where the surface of the earth is not
broken up, being solely directed towards the gathering in of
fruits, will determine the residence of those only who are
necessary for that purpose: consequently it will follow, that in
climates where the earth produces spontaneously, and in vast
abundance, there may be found large cities; because the number of
those who are necessary for gathering in the fruits is small in
proportion to the quantity of them; whereas in other countries,
where the earth's productions are scanty, and where the climate
refuses those of the copious and luxuriant kind, there will
hardly be found any considerable town, because the number of
those who are necessary for collecting the subsistence, bears a
great proportion to the fruits themselves. I do not say, that in
the first case there must be large towns, or that in the other
there can be none; but I say that, in the first case, those who
may be gathered into towns, bear a great proportion to the whole
society; and that, in the second, they bear a small one.
    I think I have found this principle confirmed by experience.
When I compare the bulk and populousness of the cities of
Lombardy, and still more, those of the watered provinces of
Spain, with the inhabitants of the territory which maintains
them, I find the proportion of the first vastly greater than in
those of France and England; and still more again in these two
last mentioned kingdoms, than in the more northern countries and
provinces, where the earth's productions bear a less proportion
to the labour bestowed in producing them. Now, although I allow
that neither the one or the other is fed by spontaneous
productions, yet still it may be inferred, that the more the
climate contributes to favour the labour of man, the more the
productions participate of the spontaneous nature.(7*)
    Again, in countries where labour is required for feeding a
society, the smaller the proportion of labourers, the greater
will be that of the free hands. Fruits which are produced by
annual labour, and still more, such as are the consequence of a
thorough cultivation, (such as luxuriant pasture,) give returns
far superior to the nourishment of those employed in the
cultivation; consequently, all the surplus is consumed by people
not employed in agriculture; consequently, by those who are not
bound to reside upon the spot which feeds them, and who may
choose the habitation best adapted for the exercise of that
industry which is most proper to produce an equivalent to the
farmers for their superfluities.
    From this it is plain that the residence of the farmers only
is essentially attached to the place of cultivation. Hence, farms
in some provinces, villages in others.
    I now proceed to the other class of inhabitants; the free
hands who live upon the surplus of the farmers.
    These I must subdivide into two conditions. The first, those
to whom this surplus directly belongs, or who, with a revenue in
money already acquired, can purchase it. The second, those who
purchase it with their daily labour or personal service.
    Those of the first condition may live where they please;
those of the second, must live where they can. The residence of
the consumers determines, in many cases, that of the suppliers.
In proportion, therefore, as those who live where they please
choose to live together, in this proportion must the others
follow them. And in proportion as the state thinks fit to place
the administration of government in one place, in the same
proportion must the administrators, and every one depending upon
them, be gathered together. These I take to be principles which
influence the swelling of the bulk of capitals, and smaller
cities.
    When the residence of the consumer does not determine that of
him who supplies it, other considerations are allowed to operate.
This is the case in what may properly be called manufactures,
distinguished from trades, whether they be for home-consumption,
or foreign exportation. These considerations are,
    First, Relative to the place and situation of the
establishment; which gives a preference to the sides of rivers
and rivulets, when machines wrought by water are necessary; to
the proximity of forests and collieries, when fire is employed;
to the place which produces the substance of the manufacture; as
in mines, collieries, brick-works, &c.
    Secondly, Relative to the convenience of transportation, as
upon navigable rivers, or by great roads.
    Thirdly, Relative to the cheapness of living, consequently
not (frequently) in great cities, except for their own
consumption. But it must be observed, that this last
consideration can hardly ever be permanent: for the very
establishment being the means of raising prices, the advantage
must diminish in proportion as the undertaking comes to succeed.
The best rule therefore is, to set down such manufactures upon
the banks of navigable rivers, where all necessary provisions may
be brought from a distance at a small cost. This advantage is
permanent, the others are not; and may prove in time hurtful, by
a change in those very circumstances which decided as to the
choice of the situation. From the establishment of manufactures
we see hamlets swell into villages, and villages into towns.
    Sea-ports owe their establishment to foreign trade. From one
or other of these and similar principles, are mankind gathered
into hamlets, villages, towns, and cities.

Chap. X

Of the Consequences which result from the Separation of the two
principal Classes of a People, the Farmers and the Free Hands,
with regard to their Dwelling

    I am next going to examine the consequences resulting to the
state, to the citizens, and to the landed interest, from this
kind of separation, as I may call it, between the parent earth
and her laborious children, which naturally takes place every
where in proportion to the progress of industry, luxury, and the
swift circulation of money.
    As to the state, it is, I think, very plain, that, without
such a distribution of inhabitants, it would be impossible to
levy taxes. For as long as the earth nourishes directly those who
are upon her surface, as long as she delivers her fruits into the
very hand of him who consumes them, there is no alienation, no
occasion for money, consequently no possibility of establishing
an extensive taxation, as shall in its place be fully explained.
From this principle is, I imagine, to be deduced the reason, why
we find taxation so little known under the feudal form of
government.
    The personal service of the vassals, with their cattle and
servants upon all occasions, made the power and wealth of the
lords, and their rents were mostly paid in kind. They lived upon
their lands, were commonly jealous of one another, and had
constant disputes. This was a very good reason to keep them from
coming together. Towns were situated round their habitations.
These were mostly composed of the few tradesmen and manufacturers
that were in the country. The lord's judge, his fiscal, and his
court of record, added to these numbers; lawsuits, and the lord's
attendance, brought the vassals frequently together; this gave
encouragement to houses of entertainment; and this I take to be
the picture of the greatest part of small towns, if we ascend
three or four hundred years from the present time.
    Cities were the residence of bishops. These lords were very
independent of the civil government, and had at the same time the
principal direction in it. They procured privileges to their
cities, and these communities formed themselves by degrees into
small republics: taxes here have ever been familiar. The feudal
lords seldom appeared here, and the inferior classes of the
people enjoyed liberty and ease in these cities only.
    In some countries of Europe, as in Germany, the principal
citizens, in time, became patricians. In France certain offices
of public trust sometimes procured nobility to those who bore
them, and always consideration. The representatives of the
citizens were even admitted into the states, and formed the tiers
êtat. Elsewhere they received casual marks of distinction from
the sovereign, as the Lord Mayor of London does to this day
usually receive knighthood. In short, the only dawning of public
liberty to be met with during the feudal government, was in the
cities; no wonder then if they increased.
    Upon the discovery of America and the East-Indies, industry,
trade, and luxury, were soon introduced in the kingdoms of Spain,
France, and England: the grandeur and power of the Hanstowns had
already pointed out to sovereigns the importance of these
objects.
    The courts of princes then became magnificent; the feudal
lords insensibly began to frequent them with more assiduity than
formerly. The splendor of the prince soon eclipsed those rays
which shone around them upon their own lands. They now no more
appeared to one another as objects of jealousy, but of emulation.
They became acquainted, began to relish a court life, and every
one proposed to have a house in the capital. A change of
habitation made a change of circumstances, both as to city and
country. As to the city; so far as inhabitants were increased, by
the addition of the great lords, and of those who followed their
example, so far demand increased for every sort of provision and
labour; and this quickly drew more inhabitants together. Every
one vied with another in magnificence of palaces, clothes,
equipages. Modes changed and by turns enlivened the different
branches of ingenuity. Whence came so great a number of
inhabitants all of a sudden? He who would have cast his eyes on
the deserted residences of the nobility, would quickly have
discovered the source; he would there have seen the old people
weeping and wailing, and nothing heard among them but complaints
of desolation: the youth were retired to the city: there was no
change as to them.
    This is no doubt a plain consequence of a sudden revolution,
which never can happen without being attended with great
inconveniences. Many of the numerous attendants of the nobility
who uselessly filled every house and habitation belonging to the
great man, were starving for want. He was at court, and calling
aloud for money, a thing he was seldom accustomed to have
occasion for, except to lock up in his chest. In order to procure
this money, he found it expedient to convert a portion of the
personal services of his vassals into cash: by this he lost his
authority. He then looked out for a farmer (not a husbandman) for
an estate which he formerly consumed in its fruits. This
undertaker, as I may call him, began by dismissing idle mouths.
Still greater complaints ensued. At last, the money spent in the
city began to flow into the hands of the industrious: this raised
an emulation and the children of the miserable, who had felt the
sad effects of the revolution, but who could not foresee the
consequences, began to profit by it. They became easy and
independent in the great city, by furnishing to the extravagance
of those under whose dominion they were born.
    This progression is perhaps too minutely traced to be exact;
I therefore stop, to consider the situation of affairs at that
period, when all the inconveniences of the sudden revolution had
ceased, and when things were come to the state in which we now
find them. Capitals swelled to a great extent; Paris and London
appearing monstrous to some, as being a load upon the rest of the
country. This must be examined.
    We agree, I suppose, that the inhabitants of cities are not
employed in agriculture, and we may agree that they are fed by
it: we have examined into the causes of the increase of cities,
and we have seen the fund provided for their subsistence, to wit,
the surplus of fruits produced by husbandmen.
    What are then the advantages resulting to the citizens from
this great increase of their city? I cannot find any great
benefit resulting to each individual from this circumstance; but
I conclude, that the same advantages which many find in
particular, must be common to great numbers, consequently great
numbers are gathered together.
    The principal objections against great cities are, that
health there is not so good, that marriages are not so frequent
as in the country, that debauchery prevails, and that abuses are
multiplied.
    To this I answer, that these objections lie equally against
most cities, and are not peculiar to those complained of for
their bulk; and that the evils proceed more from the spirit of
the inhabitants, than from the size of the capital.
    It is further urged, that the number of deaths exceeds the
number of births in great cities; consequently smaller towns, and
even the country, is stripped of its inhabitants, in order to
recruit these capitals.
    Here I first deny, that in all capitals the number of deaths
exceeds the number of births; for in Paris it is otherwise. But
supposing the assertion to be true, what conclusion can be drawn
from it, except that many people who are born in the country die
in town. That the country should furnish cities with inhabitants
is no evil. What occasion has the country for supernumerary
hands? If it has enough for the supply of its own wants, and of
the demands of cities, has it not enough? Had it more, the
supernumeraries would either consume without working, or, if
added to the class of labourers, instead of being added to the
number of free hands, would overturn the balance between the two
classes; grain would become too plentiful, and that would cast a
general discouragement upon agriculture: whereas, by going to
cities, they acquire money, and therewith purchase the grain they
would have consumed, had they remained in the country; and this
money, which their additional labour in cities will force into
circulation, would otherwise have remained locked up, or at least
would not have gone into the country, but in consequence of the
desertion of the supernumeraries. The proper and only right
encouragement for agriculture, is a moderate and gradual increase
of demand for the productions of the earth: this works a natural
and beneficial increase of inhabitants; and this demand must come
from cities, for the husbandmen never have occasion to demand; it
is they who offer to sale.
    The high prices of most things in large cities is a benefit
surely, not a loss to the country. But I must observe, that the
great expence of living in capitals does not affect the lower
classes, nor the moderate and frugal, in any proportion to what
it does the rich. If you live on beef, mutton, bread, and beer,
you may live as cheap in London and in Paris as in most cities I
know. These articles abound, and though the demand be great, the
provision made for supplying it is in proportion. But when you
come to fish, fowl, and game; delicacies of every kind brought
from far, by the post, by ships, and by messengers; when you have
fine equipages, large houses, expensive servants, and abundance
of waste in every article, without one grain of oeconomy in any,
it is no wonder that money should run away so fast. I do not,
from what has been said, conclude, that there is any evident
advantage in having so overgrown a capital as London in such a
kingdom as England; but that I do not find great force in the
objections I have met with against it. That there may be others
which I do not know, I will not deny, because I am not
sufficiently acquainted with that kingdom to be a competent judge
of the matter.
    Let me now conclude this chapter, by mentioning in what
respects I think cities an advantage, in general, to a country;
and, as I go along, I shall point out wherein they prove a
disadvantage, in particular, to some parts of it.
    The general advantages of them are:
    First, To remove the necessary load upon the land; those idle
people, who eat up a part of the produce of labour without
contributing to it.
    Secondly, The opportunity of levying taxes, and of making
these affect the rich, in proportion to the consumption they
make, without hurting industry or exportation.
    Thirdly, The advantages resulting to the landed interest are
no less considerable. This is proved by universal experience; for
we see every where, that the moment any city, town, or village,
begins to encrease, by the establishment of trade or
manufactures, the lands round about immediately rise in their
value. The reason of this seems easily deduced from the above
principles.
    When a farmer has got his oeconomy under right regulations,
not one supernumerary, nor useless mouth, but abundance of hands
for every kind of labour, which is generally the case near towns
and cities, the proximity of them discharges him of every
superfluity. His cattle consume the exact quantity of grain and
of forage necessary; what remains is money, a superfluous egg is
money; a superfluous day of a cart, of a horse, a superfluous
hour of a servant, is all money to the farmer. There is a
constant demand for every thing he can do or furnish. To make
this the more sensibly perceived, remove into a province, far
from a town, and compare situations. There you find abundance of
things superfluous, which cannot be turned into money, which
therefore are consumed without much necessity, and with little
profit. It is good to have an estate there, when you want to live
upon it; it is better to have one near the great town, when you
do not.
    It may be alleged, that the disadvantages felt by the distant
farmer and proprietor, when they compare situations with those
residing near the town, proceed from the town: this must be
examined.
    If the town consume the produce of this distant farm, it must
consume it in competition with every place at a smaller distance;
consequently this competition must do more good than harm to the
distant farm. If the city consume none of the produce, wherein
does it affect it? It may be answered, that, by entering into
competition with the distant farmer for the labouring
inhabitants, these desert agriculture, in favour of a more
lucrative occupation, to be found in the city. Scarcity of hands
in the country raises the price of labour on one hand, while it
diminishes the price of subsistence on the other; consequently
the farmer suffers a double disadvantage. Of this there can be no
doubt; but as these revolutions cannot by their nature be sudden,
it becomes the duty of the statesman, whom I suppose constantly
awake, directly to set on foot some branch of industry in every
such distant part of the country; and as prices of subsistence
will diminish for a while, for the reasons above-mentioned, this
will prove an encouragement to the establishment; this again will
accelerate propagation, as it will prove an outlet for children,
and, in a short time, the farmer will find himself in a better
situation than ever. But even without this assistance from
industry the state, a few years will set all to rights, provided
the spirit of is kept up: for cities, by swelling, extend their
demand to the most distant corners of a country; the inhabitants
who desert do not cease to consume, and thereby they repair the
hurt they do by their desertion. I appeal to experience for the
truth of this. Do we not perceive demand extending every year
farther and farther from great capitals? I know places in France
which, twenty years ago, never knew what it was to send even a
delicacy to Paris, but by the post, and which now send thither
every week loaded waggons, with many thousand weight of
provisions, so much that I may almost say, that a fatted chicken
in the most distant province of that country can be sold with
great profit in the Paris market during all the winter season;
and cattle carry thither their own flesh cheaper than any waggon
can. What distant farm then can complain of the greatness of that
noble city? There is however a case, where a distant part of a
country may suffer in every respect, to wit, when the revolution
is sudden; as when a rich man, who used to spend his income in
his province, for the encouragement of industry, goes to Paris or
London, and stays away for a year or two, without minding the
interest of the estate he abandons. No doubt this must affect his
province in proportion; but in every revolution which comes on
gradually by the desertion of such only as lived by their
industry, new mouths are born and supply the old. The only
question is about employing them well: while you have superfluous
food and good oeconomy, a country will always reap the same
benefit from her natural advantages.
    Fourthly, Another advantage of cities is, the necessity
arising from thence of having great roads, and these again prove
a considerable encouragement to agriculture.
    The miserable condition of roads over all Europe almost, till
within these hundred years, is a plain proof of the scanty
condition of the cities, and of the small encouragement formerly
given towards extending the improvement of the soil.
    Let any one examine the situation of the landed interest
before the making of great roads in several provinces in France,
and compare it with what it is at present. If this be found a
difficult inquiry, let him compare the appearance of young
gentlemen of middling fortune, as he finds them at Paris, or in
their regiment, with that of their fathers, who live in their
province in the old way, and he will have a very good opportunity
of perceiving the progress of ease and refinement in this class,
which has proceeded from no other cause than the improvement of
the soil. People complain that prices are risen; of this there is
no doubt with regard to many articles. Is not this quite
consistent with our principles? It is not because there is now a
larger mass of money in the kingdom, though I allow this to be
true, and also that this circumstance may have contributed to
raise prices; but the direct principle which has influenced them,
and which will always regulate their rise and fall, is the
increase of demand. Now the great roads in a manner carry the
goods to market; they seem to shorten distances, they augment the
number of carriages of all sorts, they remove the inconveniences
above-mentioned resulting from the distance of the city. The more
distant parts of the country come to market, in competition with
the farmers in the neighbourhood of the cities. This competition
might make the rents of lands lying round such cities as were the
first to encourage industry, sink in their value. But the hurt in
this respect done to the proprietors of these lands would soon be
repaired. The cities would increase in bulk, demand would
increase also, and prices would rise a-new. Every thing which
employs inhabitants usefully promotes consumption; and this again
is an advantage to the state, as it draws money from the
treasures of the rich into the hands of the industrious. The easy
transportation of fruits produces this effect: the distant farmer
can employ his idle hours in providing, and the idle days of his
servants and cattle in sending things to market, from farms which
formerly never knew what it was to sell such productions.
    I shall carry these speculations no farther, but conclude by
observing, that the making of roads and navigable canals must
advance population, as they contribute to the advancement of
agriculture.

Chap. XI

Of the Distribution of Inhabitants into Classes; of the
Employment and Multiplication of them

    Having deduced the effects of modern policy, in assembling so
large a proportion of inhabitants into cities, it is proper to
point the principles which should direct the statesman to the
proper means of providing, supporting, and employing them.
Without this they neither can live nor multiply. Their parent,
Earth, has in a manner banished them from her bosom; they have
her no more to suckle them in idleness; industry has gathered
them together, labour must support them, and this must produce a
surplus for bringing up children. If this resource should fail,
misery will ensue: the depopulation of the cities will be
followed by the ruin of the lands, and all will go to wreck
together. We have already laid down the principles which appear
the most natural to engage mankind to labour, supposing all to be
free and we have observed how slavery, in former times, might
work the same effect, as to peopling the world, that trade and
industry do now; men were then forced to labour because they were
slaves to others, men are forced to labour now because they are
slaves to their own wants: provided man be made to labour, and
make the earth produce abundantly, and provided that either
authority, industry, or charity, can make the produce circulate
for the nourishment of the free hands, the principle of a great
population is brought to a full activity.
    I shall now suppose these principles to be well understood.
Wants promote industry, industry gives food, food increases
numbers: the next question is, how numbers are to be well
employed?
    It is a general maxim in the mouth of every body; increase
the inhabitants of the state: the strength and power of a state
is in proportion to the number of its inhabitants.
    I am not fond of condemning opinions; but I am very much for
limiting general propositions. I have hardly ever escaped being
led into error by every one I have laid down. Nothing is so
systematical, nothing so pretty in a treatise as general maxims;
they facilitate the distribution of our ideas, and I have never
been able to dash them out but with a certain regret.
    As I often recur to private oeconomics for clearing up my
ideas it be a general rule, that concerning the political, I have
asked myself, if it be a general rule, that, the master of a
family should increase the mouths of it, to the full proportion
of all he can feed? Now it is my opinion, that in a small family
well composed, and where every one is properly employed, both
master and servants are much happier than in others vastly more
numerous, where the same order and regularity is not kept up; and
that a small number of well disciplined soldiers is more
formidable, and really stronger, than the numerous populace of a
large city.
    The use of inhabitants is to be mutually serviceable one to
another in particular, and to the society in general.
Consequently, every state should, in good policy, first apply
itself to make the inhabitants they have answer this purpose,
before they carry their views towards augmenting their numbers. I
think it is absurd to wish for new inhabitants, without first
knowing how to employ the old; and it is ignorance of the real
effects of population, to imagine that an increase of numbers
will infallibly remove inconveniences which proceed from the
abuses of those already existing.
    I shall then begin by supposing that inhabitants require
rather to be well employed than increased in numbers.
    If I know the number of inhabitants, I may know the
proportion which die every year: consequently, I know how many
pairs of breeders are necessary to keep up the stock. If I want
to raise twenty bushels of grain only, I do not sow my lands with
twenty bushels. If I have as many children born as there are
people who die, I have enough by the supposition. But these
children must be raised proportionally, from the different
classes of inhabitants, which I here consider as distributed into
two conditions; those who do not labour, and those who do. May I
not venture to say, that there is no absolute necessity that
those of the first class should multiply in order to recruit the
second. If then the second class is kept up to its proper
standard by its own multiplication, and if their work be all
consumed, will it not be found that the diminution of those
mouths who do not work, and which appear useful in consideration
only of the consumption they make, is no real loss to the nation?
But to this it is objected, that if the number of the first class
be diminished, the work of the second will lie upon hand.
    Here I look for my answer from what daily experience points
out. Two persons (A) and (B) have each 1000 l. a year; (A) has
many children, (B) has none: they both spend their income; (A)
upon the necessaries of life for his family, and for the
education of his children; for the supplying of which, those of
the working class only are employed, for whoever does or gives
any thing for money, I consider as a worker: (B) spends his
income as a fashionable young gentleman: he has a fine chariot,
abundance of footmen in laced liveries; in short, without
examining into the particulars of his expence, I find the whole
1000 l. spent at the end of the year. Neither (A) or (B) do any
work; or are any of (A's) children necessary as a supply to the
working hands, by the supposition. Is it not true then, that (B)
has consumed as much work or service, for these I consider as the
same thing, as (A) with his family? Nay, I may still go farther,
and affirm, that (B) has contributed as much, if not more, to
population than (A). For if it he true, that he who gives food
gives numbers, I say, that the expence of (B) has given food to
the children of the industrious employed by him: consequently,
instead of having directly contributed to the increase of the
idle of the state, which is the case with (A), he has indirectly
contributed to the multiplication of the industrious. What good
then does the state reap from (A's) children, from his marriage,
from his multiplication? Indeed, I see no harm although he had
remained a batchelor: for those who produce idle consumers only,
certainly add neither riches, strength, or ease to a state. And
it is of such people alone that there is any question here.
    From this I conclude, that there can be no determinate number
of rich idle consumers necessary to employ a determinate number
of industrious people, no more than of masters to employ a fixed
number of menial servants. Do we not see a single man frequently
attended by more servants than are necessary when he gets a wife
and family? nay, it many times happens, that a young man, upon
his marriage, diminishes the number of his domestics, in order to
give bread to his children.
    If riches be calculated, as I hope to prove, for the
encouragement of industry; if circulation is to be accelerated by
every method, in order to give bread to those who are disposed to
work, or, in other words, who are disposed to become vigorous
members of the commonwealth, by contributing with their strength,
their ingenuity, or their talents, to supply her wants, to
augment her riches, to promote and administer a good government
at home, or to serve it abroad: then, I say, the too great
multiplication of those who come under none of these classes, the
idle consumers as I have called them, contribute directly to make
the other part languish.
    There is no governing a state in perfection, and consequently
no executing the plan for a right distribution of the
inhabitants, without exactly knowing their situation as to
numbers, their employment, the gains upon every species of
industry, the numbers produced from each class. These are the
means of judging how far those of a particular trade or
occupation are in a situation to bring up a family. To examine,
on the other hand, the state of the higher classes who do not
labour, the ease of their circumstances, and the use the state
has for their service; this may appear superfluous; since those
who do not work, must be supposed to have wherewithal to live;
and consequently, not to stand in need of assistance. But this is
not every where, nor always the case; and many excellent subjects
are lost to a state, for want of a proper attention in the
statesman to this object.
    I have observed how necessary a thing it is to govern a
people according to their spirit; now by governing I understand,
protecting, cherishing, and supporting, as well as punishing,
restraining, and exacting. If, therefore, there be found in any
country, a very numerous nobility, who look upon trade and the
inferior arts as unbecoming their birth; a good statesman must
reflect upon the spirit of former times, and compare it with that
of the present. He will then perceive, that these sentiments have
been transmitted from father to son, and that six generations are
not elapsed since, over all Europe, they were universally
adopted: that, although the revolution we talked off in the 10th
chapter has in effect rendered them less adapted to the spirit of
the present times, they are however productive of excellent
consequences; they serve as a bulwark to virtue, against the
allurements of riches; and it is dangerous to force a set of men
who form a considerable body in a state, from necessity, to
trample under foot, what they have been persuaded from their
infancy to be the test of a noble and generous mind.
    About two hundred years ago, the nobility of several nations,
(I mean, by this term, all people well born, whether adorned with
particular marks of royal favour or not,) used to live upon the
produce of their lands. In those days there was little luxury,
little circulation; the lands fed numbers of useless mouths, in
the modern acceptation of useless, consequently produced a very
moderate income in money to the proprietors, who notwithstanding
were the most considerable persons in the state. This class of
inhabitants remaining inactive in the country, during the
revolution above mentioned, have, in consequence of the
introduction of industry, trade and luxury, insensibly had the
balance of wealth, and consequently of consideration turned
against them. Of this there is no doubt. This class however has
retained the military spirit, the lofty sentiments; and
notwithstanding their depression in point of fortune, are found
calculated to shine the brightest, when set in a proper
elevation. In times of peace, when trade flourishes, the lustre
of those who wallow in public money, the weight and consideration
of the wealthy merchant, and even the ease and affluence of the
industrious tradesman, eclipse the poor nobility; they become an
object of contempt to bad citizens, an object of compassion to
the good; and political writers imagine they render them an
important service, when they propose to receive them into the
lower classes of the people. But when danger threatens from
abroad, and when armies are brought into the field, compare the
behaviour of those conducted by a warlike nobility, with those
conducted by the sons of labour and industry; those who have
glory, with those who have gain for their point of view. Let the
state suffer only this nobility to languish without a proper
encouragement, there is no fear but they will soon disappear;
their lands will become possessed by people of a way of thinking
more à-la-mode, and the army will quickly adopt new sentiments,
more analogous to the spirit of a moneyed interest.
    I find nothing more affecting to a good mind, than to see the
distress of a poor nobility in both sexes. Some have proposed
trade for this class. Why do you not trade? I answer, for the
nobility; because, in order to trade, I must have money. This
objection is unanswerable. Why then do you not apply to other
branches of industry? If it is the state who is supposed to ask
the question, I ask, in my turn, What advantage she can reap from
their industry? What profit from their becoming shop-keepers,
weavers, or taylors? Are not, or ought not all these employments
to be provided with hands from their own multiplication? What
advantage can she reap by the children of one class taking the
bread out of the mouths of another?
    If the sentiments in which the nobility have been educated,
prove detrimental to the state, throw a discouragement upon them.
If birth is to be no mark of distinction, let it not be
distinguished by any particular privilege, which in appearance
sets this class above the level of those with whom the state
intends it should be incorporated. You do not make your
valet-de-chambre get behind your coach, though upon an occasion
it might be convenient, and though perhaps he had been your
footman the day before; you would even turn him out of doors, did
he not change his company with his rank.
    If you cannot afford to have a nobility, let it die away:
grant, as in England, the title of noble to one of a family only,
and let all the rest be commoners; that is to say, distinguished
by no personal privilege whatsoever from the lowest classes of
the people. But if you want them to serve you as soldiers, and
wish they should preserve those sentiments you approve of in a
soldier, take care at least of their children. If these appear to
you poor and ragged, while they are wandering up and down their
father's lands, chasing a wretched hare or a partridge compare
them, when in the troops, with those of your wealthy neighbours,
if any such you have.
    The establishment of an hôtel militaire shews that there are
some people at least who lend an ear to such representations. I
do not propose that a prince should divert into this channel
those streams of wealth which flow from every part of the state,
though nothing is more reasonable than for men to pay in order to
protect their gains; but let a tax be imposed upon noble
property, and let it be appropriated for the education of the
generous youth from their earliest years. There the state will
have all under her eye, they are her children, her subjects, and
they ask no more than to be taken from the obscurity of their
habitations, and rendered capable of being employed while young
and vigorous. When they have done their task, the country which
produced them will receive them back into her warm bosom; there
they will produce others like themselves, and support the spirit
and propagation of their own class, without becoming any charge
upon others.
    A statesman should make it his endeavour to employ as many of
every class as possible, and when employment fails in the common
run of affairs, to contrive new outlets for young people of every
denomination. The old and idle are, in many particulars, lost
beyond recovery.
    The mutual relations likewise, through industry, between
class and class, should be multiplied and encouraged to the
utmost. Relations by marriage, I am apt to believe, prove here
more hurtful than beneficial. That is to say, I would rather
discourage the intermarriage of the persons of different classes;
but I would encourage, as much as possible, all sorts of mutual
dependences between them, in the way of their trades. The last
tends to keep every one employed, according to the wants and
spirit of his class; the first is productive in general of no
good effect that I can perceive; which is reason sufficient for a
state to give at least no encouragement to such marriages, and
this is all the restraint proper to be imposed.
    Such members of the society as remain unemployed, either from
natural infirmities or misfortunes, and who thereby become a load
upon others, are really a load upon the state. This is a disease
which must be endured. There is no body, no thing, without
diseases. A state should provide retreats of all sorts, for the
different conditions of her decayed inhabitants: humanity, good
policy, and christianity, require it. Thus much may be said in
general upon the principles which direct the employment and
distribution of inhabitants, which in every state must be
different, according to circumstances relating to the extension,
situation, and soil of the country, and above all, to the spirit
of the people. I am next to offer some considerations with regard
to the proper methods of augmenting numbers.

Chap. XII

Of the great Advantage of combining a well digested Theory and a
perfect Knowledge of Facts with the practical Part of Government,
in order to make a People multiply

    We have the happiness to live in an age where daily
opportunities offer, of perceiving the difference between
exercising an art according to the mechanical received practice,
and according to the principles which study and refinement have
introduced for bringing it to perfection. This will appear in the
strongest light to one who compares the operation of building an
ordinary house, with that of executing a great public work, where
the most able architects are employed; the making a common parish
road, with that of a military way, through mountains, forests,
and marshes. In the first, every difficulty appears
unsurmountable: in the second, the greatest obstacles are made to
vanish. By comparing these things, we distinguish between the
artist, who proceeds by the rules of the science, and the
ordinary tradesman, who has no other resource than common
practice, aided by his own ingenuity.
    Every branch of science must be carried to perfection by a
master in it, formed by the hand of nature, and improved by
application and experience. The great genius of Mr de Colbert saw
through the confusion and perplexity of the administration of the
French finances; he invented resources for swelling the public
treasure, which never would have been liable to so many
inconveniences as are complained of, had the administration been
conducted with as much disinterestedness, as it was set on foot
with ability. The genius of Mr Law was original as to figures and
paper credit. Sir Robert Walpole discovered new principles of
taxation; he extended the plan of public credit, and reduced the
application of it to a science. These were horn statesmen in the
common acceptation of the word, they were creators of new ideas,
they found out new principles for the government of men, and led
them by their interest to concur in the execution of their plans.
Men of a speculative disposition may broach hints, although the
force of theory, destitute of practice, and unassisted by
experiment, be not sufficient to carry them the length of forming
a plan. A great genius, with power and authority, has occasion
for no more than a hint to strike out the system, and to carry
it, with success, into execution.
    No problems of political oeconomy seem more obscure than
those which influence the multiplication of the human species,
and which determine the distribution and employment of them, so
as best to advance the prosperity of each particular society.
    I have no where found these matters treated to my wish, nor
have I ever been able to satisfy myself concerning them. There
are many clouds which still cover the fruitful fields of this
science; and until these be dissipated, the political eye cannot
take in the whole landscape, nor judge of the deformities which
appear in the many representations which our modern painters are
daily giving of it.
    I may here, without an imputation of vanity, put myself so
far upon a level with the great Montesquieu, as to adopt the
saying of Correggio, Io anche son pittore; I am also a dauber;
for I frankly acknowledge my own incapacity to treat this subject
with all the perspicuity it deserves: my frequent repetitions,
and my often returning to it at different times, in order to
clear up my ideas and those of my readers, shews plainly, that I
am sensible of my own insufficiency. By setting it, however, in
different lights, and viewing it as it were from different
stations, perhaps both my reader and I may come at last to see a
little clearer.
    In a former chapter, I have endeavoured to lay down the
principles which influence multiplication; but alas! they are all
so general, that they can be considered only as the most remote.
They may satisfy a slight speculation, but can be of little use
in practice. I have principally insisted upon those which are
found to operate at all times among societies where primitive
simplicity prevails. Now this matter comes to be examined in a
more complex light, as relative to the manners of modern mankind,
which no statesman, however able, can change; where trade,
industry, luxury, credit, taxes, and debts, are introduced. In
these the most polite nations of Europe are involved. This is a
chain of adamant, it hangs together by a cohesion, which the
successive revolutions of three centuries have so cemented with
the spirit of nations, that it appears to be indissoluble. It is
not my business to examine how far the modern system is to be
preferred to the ancient; my point of view is, to investigate how
a statesman may turn the circumstances which have produced this
new plan of oeconomy to the best advantage for mankind, leaving
the reformation of such a plan to time and to events, of which I
am not the master. Schemes for recalling ancient simplicity and
for making mankind honest and virtuous, are beautiful
speculations: I admire them as much as any body, but not enough
to believe them practicable in our degenerate age.
    If therefore the principles I here lay down appear
contradictory to so amiable a system of policy, let no man thence
conclude any thing to my disadvantage upon the account of my
particular opinion concerning it, which is a matter of no
importance whatsoever. My object is to examine the consequences
of what we feel and see daily passing, and to point out how far
the bad may be avoided, and the good turned to the best
advantage.
    The loss of ancient simplicity, and the introduction of this
complicated scheme of living, has rendered the mechanism of
government infinitely more difficult, and almost every disorder
in the political body affects multiplication. Depopulation is as
certain a mark of political diseases, as wasting is of those of
the human body. The increase of numbers in a state shews youth
and vigour: when numbers do not diminish, we have an idea of
manhood, and of age when they decline.
    The importance of the subject therefore requires me to bring
it once more upon the carpet, in order to inquire into the proper
methods of restoring and preserving youth, and of diffusing
vigour into every articulation, into every vein, into every
nerve, as I may say, of a modern society.
    In the republic of Lycurgus an unmarried man met with no
respect; because no reason but debauchery could prevent his
marrying. Marriage was no load in a state where all were fed and
taken care of at the public charge. A Spartan who did not marry,
was considered as one who refused to contribute towards
recruiting of the army, merely to gratify a vicious habit.
    The jus trium liberorum, and the other encouragements given
by Augustus Caesar to engage the Romans to marry, were calculated
chiefly for the nobility, and for the citizens only, but not at
all for the inferior class (the slaves) bound to labour. The vice
to be corrected, and that which the emperor had in his eye in
those institutions, was the prodigal and dissolute life of rich
men who lived in celibacy. This affected the Roman state, and
deprived it of its principal force, the military power, the
equites. Judge of the force of this class by the numbers of them
destroyed at Cannae. In those days, the chief encouragement to
multiplication was to be directed towards the higher classes: the
lower classes of the people (by far the most numerous in all
countries and in all ages) were easily recruited, by the
importation of slaves, as they are now in the West Indies, where,
consequently, the same principle must naturally operate, which
fixed the attention of the wise emperor. The state of affairs in
Europe, and in England particularly, is changed entirely, by the
establishment of universal liberty. Our lowest classes are
absolutely free; they belong to themselves, and must bring up
their own children, else the state becomes depopulated. There is
no resource to us from importation, whether by ships, or acts of
parliament for naturalization. We shall always have a numerous
and free common people, and shall constantly have the same
inconveniences to struggle with, as long as the lowest classes
remain in such depression as not to be able to support their own
numbers. Here then lies the difficulty. In order to have a
flourishing state, which Sir William Temple beautifully compared
to a pyramid, we must form a large and solid basis of the lowest
classes of mankind. As the classes mount in wealth, the pyramid
draws narrower until it terminate in a point, (as in monarchy,)
or in a small square, as in the aristocratical and mixed
governments. This lowest class therefore must be kept up, and, as
we have said, by its own multiplication. But where every one
lives by his own industry, a competition comes in, and he who
works cheapest gains the preference. How can a married man, who
has children to maintain, dispute this preference with one who is
single? The unmarried therefore force the others to starve; and
the basis of the pyramid is contracted. Let this short sketch of
a most important part of our subject suffice at present; it shall
be taken up and examined at more length, in the chapter
concerning physical necessaries, or natural wants.
    From this results the principal cause of decay in modern
states: it results from liberty, and is inseparably connected
with it.
    Several modern writers upon this subject, recommend marriage,
in the strongest manner, to all classes of inhabitants; yet a
parish priest might, properly enough, be warranted not to join a
couple unless they could make it appear that their children were
not likely to become a burden to the parish. Could any fault be
found, reasonably, with such a regulation? Those who are
gratuitously fed by others are a load upon the state, and no
acquisition, certainly, so long as they continue so. Nothing is
so easy as to marry; nothing so natural, especially among the
lower sort. But as in order to reap, it is not sufficient to plow
and to sow, so in order to bring up children, it is not
sufficient to marry. A nest is necessary for every animal which
produces a helpless brood: a house is the nest for children; but
every man who can beget a child cannot build or rent a house.
    These reflections lead me to make a distinction which I
apprehend may be of use in clearing up our ideas concerning
population. Let me therefore consider the generation of man in a
political light, and it will present itself under two forms. The
one as a real multiplication; the other as procreation only.
    Children produced from parents who are able to maintain them,
and bring them up to a way of getting bread for themselves, do
really multiply and serve the state. Those born of parents whose
subsistence is precarious, or which is proportioned to their own
physical necessary only, have a precarious existence, and will
undoubtedly begin their life by being beggars. Many such will
perish for want of food, but many more for want of ease; their
mendicity will be accompanied with that of their parents, and the
whole will go to ruin; according to the admirable expression of
the Marechal de Vauban, in his Dixime Royale. La mendicite, says
he, est un mal qui tue bientot son homme. He had many examples of
the truth of it before his eyes; whoever has not, must have seen
little of the world.
    When marriage is contracted without the requisites for
multiplication, it produces a procreation, attended with the
above mentioned inconveniences; and as by far the greater part of
inhabitants are in the lower classes, it becomes the duty of a
statesman to provide against such evils, if he intends, usefully
to increase the number of his people.
    Every plan proposed for this purpose, which does not proceed
upon an exact recapitulation of the inhabitants of a country,
parish by parish, will prove nothing more than an expedient for
walking in the dark. Among such recapitulations or lists I would
recommend, as an improvement upon those I have seen in the
Marechal de Vauban's excellent performance above cited, and in
the states of his Prussian Majesty, or elsewhere, to have one
made out, classing all the inhabitants, not only by the trades
they exercise, but by those of their fathers, with a view to
distinguish those classes which multiply, from those which only
procreate. I should be glad also to see bills of mortality made
out for every class, principally to compare the births and deaths
of the children in them.
    Let me take an example. Suppose then, that I have before me a
general recapitulation of all the inhabitants of a country,
parish by parish, where they may appear distributed under the
respective denominations of their fathers' employment. I shall
immediately find a considerable number produced from the higher
classes; from those who live upon an income already provided, and
upon branches of industry which produce an easy and ample
subsistence. These have no occasion for the assistance of the
state in bringing up their children, and you may encourage
marriage, or permit celibacy in such classes, in proportion to
the use you find for their offspring when they are brought up.
When I come to the lower classes, I examine, for example, that of
shoemakers, where I find a certain number produced. This number I
first compare with the number of shoemakers actually existing,
and then with the number of marriages subsisting among them, (for
I suppose recapitulations of every kind,) from which I discover
the fertility of marriage, and the success of multiplication in
this part. When the state of the question is examined, class by
class, I can decide where marriage succeeds, and where it does
not. I have said, that I imagine it an advantage that every class
should support at least its own numbers; and when it does more, I
should wish (were it possible) that the higher classes might be
recruited from the lower, rather than the lower from the higher;
the one seems a mark of prosperity, the other of decay: but I
must confess that the first is by far the most difficult to be
obtained.
    According therefore to circumstances, and in consistence with
these principles, I would encourage marriage by taking the
children off the hands of their parents. Where marriage succeeds
the worst, if it happens to be in a very low class, great
encouragement should be given to it; perhaps the whole children
should be taken care of. Certain trades may be left with the care
of one child, others with two, and so progressively. But of this,
more in another place. I beg it may not here be imagined that I
propose, that the whole of the lower classes of people should
marry and propagate, and that the state should feed all their
offspring. My view extends no farther, than to be assured of
having such a number of children yearly taken care of as shall
answer the multiplication proposed, and that these be
proportionally raised from each class, and from each part of the
country, and produced from marriages protected by the state,
distinguished from the others, which under a free government
never can be prevented, but which must always be found exposed to
the inconveniences of want and misery. To guard against such
evils ought to be another object of public care. Hospitals for
foundlings are an admirable institution; and colonies are an
outlet for superfluous inhabitants. But I insensibly enter into a
detail which exceeds my plan. To lay down a scheme, you must
suppose a particular state to be perfectly known. This lies
beyond my reach, and therefore I shall go no farther, but
illustrate what I have said, by some observations and reflections
which seem analogous to the subject.
    I have not here proposed plans of multiplication inconsistent
with the spirit of the nations with which I am a little
acquainted; nor with the religion professed in Europe, for many
reasons, obvious to any rational man. But principally, because, I
believe, it will be found, that a sufficient abundance of
children are born already; and that we have neither occasion for
concubinage, or polygamy, to increase their numbers. But we want
a right method of taking care of those we have, in order to
produce a multiplication proportioned to the possibility of our
providing nourishment and employment. I have therefore proposed,
that a statesman, well informed of the situation of his people,
the state of every class, the number of marriages found in each,
should say, let a particular encouragement be given to so many
marriages among the lower classes and let these be distributed in
a certain proportion for every parish, city, borough, &c. in the
country; let rules be laid down to direct a preference, in case
of a competition, between different couples; and let the
consequence of this approbation be, to relieve the parents of all
children above what they can maintain, as has been said. I
propose no new limitations upon marriage, because I am a friend
to liberty, and because such limitations would shock the spirit
of the times. I therefore would strongly recommend hospitals for
foundlings over all the country; and still more strongly the
frugal maintenance of children in such hospitals, and their being
bred up early to fill and recruit the lowest classes of the
people.
    From what has been throw out in this chapter, let no one
conclude, that such oeconomical principles would lead to
regulations much too minute to be consistent with a just spirit
of manly freedom and self-government in the common affairs of
life. The regulations I have been recommending, regard those only
who cannot support their families without the assistance of the
state. In vain do we look for self-government or manly freedom
among such classes of inhabitants.

Chap. XIII

Continuation of the same Subject, with regard to the Necessity of
having exact Lists of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, for every
Class of Inhabitants in a modern Society

    Mr Derham has furnished some tables, which shew the
proportion between marriages and births in England, to be as 1 to
4; that of births to burials as 1 12/100 to 1: from which it
appears that multiplication there goes on, though slowly: a mark
of youth and vigour. Dr Davenant values this augmentation at 9000
a year. Could matters be kept at that standard, I should prefer
it by far to a more rapid multiplication: it amounts to about a
million in a century (without entering into accumulations or
exact calculations), and the longer youth is preserved so much
the better. A rapid multiplication will stop at some period, and
this stop, which marks distress, must produce great
inconveniences.
    These calculations, founded on very precarious suppositions,
shew how necessary it is to have authentic recapitulations:
since, precarious as they are, it is from these and the like,
that Dr Halley, and others, have calculated the value of
annuities, which (at a time when all the states of Europe are
borrowing money at the expence of every man's private industry or
property) ought to be valued at their real worth. Now, in all
these calculations of mortality, it appears that what we have
called the abuse of marriage or mere procreation is included.
    If it be true, as I think it is, from what I have seen and
observed, that numbers, especially of children, among the lower
classes, perish from the effects of indigence; either directly by
want of food, or by diseases contracted gradually from the want
of convenient ease; and that others perish for want of care, when
the slightest assistance of a surgeon to let them blood, would be
sufficient to preserve them against the inflammatory distempers
to which they are chiefly exposed: If these things be so, must we
not infer, that calculations formed upon a conclusion drawn from
the births and deaths of mankind in general, cannot possibly be
so exact as if the like were drawn from those of every class of
inhabitants taken separately.
    It may here be answered, that among the rich and easy, there
are found diseases which sweep off numbers, in as great a
proportion as other distempers do among the poor: that we see
very large families brought up among the lowest classes, while a
great man has all the pains in the world to preserve one boy from
the wreck of a number of children.
    All this I agree may be true; but I should be glad to see in
what proportion it is so, and to be made certain of the fact. I
want to know the diseases of the rich and of the poor; I want to
have as particular details of the births and deaths of every
class, as I can have of those of the cities of Paris, London, or
Breslaw. I want to know from what parents are sprung those
multitudes of poor which I find every where; and most of all to
have such accounts from different countries, where different
manners prevail. For no just conclusion can be drawn from the
comparison of facts, without examining circumstances. The most
barren class in one country, may be the most fruitful in another.
As an example of this, let any one compare the state of marriage
among the footmen of London where most of them are single, and of
Paris where most of them have families.
    I find error concealed every where under general
propositions. The children of the poor, says one, thrive better
than those of the rich. If it be so, it ought not to be so in
common reason. But the same person will tell you, I have made my
son a merchant; he will be a rich man Why? Because (A B) was a
merchant, who, from nothing, died worth a hundred thousand
pounds. But if you go through all the letters of the alphabet
following (A B), among those who set out as he did, you will
find, that perhaps every one of them died a bankrupt. Those who
prove successful are remarkable: those who miscarry are never
heard of. It is just so with respect to the question before us.
But to return to our tables, and what are called calculations.
    In England, one marriage produces four children at a medium.
If you reckon 6,000,000 of people in that country, and that 1/30
part dies annually, then to keep up the stock it is sufficient
that 200,000 be annually born; add to this the yearly increase of
9000, the total of births will then be 209,000: for if 200,000
die this year, and if 209,000 be born, this must certainly imply
an increase of 9000, provided we suppose the acquisition of
foreigners to be equal to the exportation of the natives. As this
is meant as an illustration only, I need not examine the matter
of fact. The next question is, How many marriages, properly
contracted or encouraged as above, will give this increase? For
we may know that these subsisting in that kingdom, joined with
the effects of extramatrimonial conjunctions, is just sufficient
to produce it. I imagine that nothing but experiment can give the
solution of this question. Mr King supposes every 104th person in
England to marry yearly, that is, 57,682 persons, or 28,841
couples. If this number of marriages be supposed to subsist with
fertility for seven years, producing a child every year, the
number of 200,000 births would be procured; but I apprehend that
marriages, rightly contracted, subsist much longer in general
than seven years, even with fertility, though not in proportion
to a child every year: consequently the number of marriages
constantly subsisting with fertility in England, where it is
supposed that 28,841 are yearly contracted, must be much greater
than seven times that number, or than 201,887. If we suppose the
whole of the 209,000 births to be produced by marriages, at three
marriages to every child annually produced, then the number of
marriages subsisting will be 627,000. From these speculations
(for I do not pretend to call them calculations) I conclude, that
the more fruitful marriages are rendered, (not with regard to
procreation, merely, but to multiplication, which I have above
distinguished,) the fewer become necessary; and the fewer
unnecessary marriages are contracted, the better for the state,
and the less misery for those who contract them. I shall here
stop, and leave to the reader to draw his conclusions, putting
him in mind of the wide difference that is always found between
theory and practice.
    From this reasoning I infer, that no exact judgement can be
formed, as to the numbers in any society, from the single datum
of the annual number of deaths among them; and although the just
proportion between numbers and deaths may exactly be determined
in one particular place, yet that proportion will not serve as a
general standard, and being taken for granted may lead to error.
    Here are the reasons for my opinion:
    Were nobody to marry but such as could maintain their
children, the bills of births and burials would, I apprehend,
diminish, and yet numbers might remain as before; and were every
body to marry who could procreate, they certainly would increase,
but still numbers would never exceed the proportion of
Subsistence. Could we but see bills of births and deaths for the
city of Rome, while in all its glory or indeed for the
sugar-colonies in America, where slaves are imported, adding the
number of those imported to that of births, and suppossing the
colony neither upon the growing or the declining hand, then the
deaths and births would be equal; but the proportion of them to
all in the colony, I apprehend, would be far less than in any
state in Europe, where slavery does not prevail.
    It may be alleged that, were all to marry, the consequence
would be a great multiplication. I say not; or if it were, what
sort of multiplication would it be? A multitude of children who
never could come to manhood; or who would starve their parents,
and increase misery beyond expression. All therefore that can be
learned from bills of mortality, &c. is, that if the births
exceed the deaths, and that all remain in the country, numbers
are increasing; that if the deaths exceed the births, numbers are
diminishing; but, while they stand at par, no conclusion can be
drawn as to numbers in general: these will be in a less
proportion as abusive procreation goes forward: and, vice versa,
they will be in a greater.
    There still hangs a cloud upon this subject: let me therefore
reason upon an example. Suppose the inhabitants of a country to
stand at 6,000,000; one thirtieth to die every year, and as many
to be born, that is, the births and burials to stand at 200,000;
that every three marriages subsisting produce one child every
year, that is 600,000 marriages; let the quantity of food be
supposed the same, without a possibility of being augmented.
Would not the consequence be, that numbers could not increase?
Now let me suppose marriages carried to 1,000,000, I say the
effect would be, either that they would become in general less
fruitful, or if they suffered no diminution in this particular,
that the bills of births and deaths would rise to 333,333; that
is to say, they would be to the number of inhabitants as 1 to 18,
instead of being as 1 to 30. Now this increase of mortality
proceeding from want of food, either the old would starve the
young, or the young would starve the old; or a third case, more
probable than either, would happen; those who could purchase
subsistence, would starve those who could not. What would be the
consequences in all these three suppositions? In the first, the
number of 6,000,000 would be found to diminish; because the
proportion of large consumers would rise, and mortality would
increase among the children. In the second, the standard number
would augment, because the proportion of small consumers would
rise, and mortality would increase among the parents. In the
third, misery and distress would lay all the lower classes waste.
It is computed that one half of mankind die before the age of
puberty in countries where numbers do not augment; from this I
conclude, that too many are born. If methods therefore are fallen
upon to render certain diseases less mortal to children, all the
good that will be got by it, in general, will be to render old
people of the lower classes more wretched; for if the first are
brought to live, the last must die.
    From these speculations I cannot help wishing to see bills of
mortality made out for different classes, as well as for
different ages. Were this executed, it would be an easy matter to
perceive, whether the mortality among children proceeds from
diseases to which infancy is necessarily exposed, or from abusive
procreation. I am pretty much convinced, before I see the
experiment, that it proceeds from the latter; but should
experience prove it, the principles I have laid down would
acquire an additional force. In the mean time, I must conclude,
that it is not for want of marrying that a people does not
increase, but from the want of subsistence; and it is miserable
and abusive procreation which starves so many, and is the
fountain of so much wretchedness.
    Upon the whole, I may say, that were it possible to get a
view of the general state of births and burials in every class of
the inhabitants of a country, marriage might surely be put upon a
better footing than ever it has been, for providing every year a
determinate number of good and wholesome recruits towards
supporting national multiplication. This is walking in the light,
and is a means of procuring whatever augmentation of hands you
wish for. What difficulties may be found in the execution,
nothing but experience can shew. and this, to a judicious eye,
will point out the remedy. This, in my opinion, will be far
better than a general naturalization, which I take to be a leap
in the dark. For, however easy it may be to naturalize men, I
believe nothing is so difficult as to naturalize customs and
foreign habits; and the greatest blessing any nation can enjoy,
is an uniformity of opinion upon every point which concerns
public affairs and the administration of them.
    When God blesses a people, he makes them unanimous, and
bestows upon them a governor who loves them, and who is beloved,
honoured, and respected by them; this, and this only, can create
unanimity.
    Let this suffice at present, as to the distribution,
employment, and increase of a people. Upon the proper employment
of the free hands, the prosperity of every state must depend:
consequently the principal care of a statesman should be, to keep
all employed, and for this purpose he must acquire an exact
knowledge of the state of every denomination, in order to prevent
any one from rising above, or sinking below that standard which
is best proportioned to the demand made for their particular
industry. As the bad consequences resulting from the loss of this
exact balance are not immediate, a moderate attention, with the
help of the proper recapitulations, will be sufficient to direct
him.
    This and the two preceding chapters have in a manner wholly
treated of the employment of the free hands: I must now consider
the effects of an overcharge of those employed in agriculture.
Here we shall still discover inconveniences, resulting from the
want of that just proportion in the distribution of classes,
which gives health and vigour to a state; and we shall see how it
may happen, that even an overcharge of inhabitants in general may
become a political disease; as an abundance of blood, however
rich and good, may affect the health of the human body.


Chap. XIV

Of the Abuse of Agriculture and Population

    I have taken above of two performances, wherein the authors
with equal ability, have treated of the numbers of manors, with
notice a subject which has a very close connection with political
oeconomy.
    Although (as I have said) I do not pretend to decide between
them as to the point in dispute, I find that in this chapter I
shall be naturally led into a chain of reasoning very
unfavourable to that of Mr Wallace, which is a thing I should
have dispensed with, did not the merit of his performance in the
eyes of the learned world appear sufficient to draw my attention.
    Agriculture is, without all doubt, the foundation of
multiplication, which must ever be in proportion to it; that is,
to the earth's productions, as has been said. But it does not
follow, that in proportion to multiplication those produced must
of course become useful to one another, and useful to the society
in general. Now I consider multiplication as no otherwise useful
to a state, than so far as the additional number becomes so to
those who are already existing, whom I consider as the
body-politic of the society. When it therefore happens, that an
additional number produced do no more than feed themselves, then
I perceive no advantage gained to the society by their
production. If, without rendering any equivalent service, they
are fed by others, there is a loss.
    Agriculture may be said to be carried to its utmost extent,
when the earth is so laboured as to produce the greatest quantity
of fruits possible for the use of man; and in judging of the
improvement of two spots of ground of the same extent, that may
be said to be most improved which produces the greatest quantity
of food: but as to population, the question does not stop here;
for let the quantity be equal on both, yet if the inhabitants of
the one be more frugal livers than those of the other, this
circumstance alone will make an inequality. If agriculture
therefore be considered with respect to population only, we must
consider that country as the best peopled, where productions are
the most abundant, and where the inhabitants are the most sober.
Thus much with regard to the extent of agriculture and
population: we come now to consider the inconveniences which may
result to a society from an over-stretch, or from what I call an
abuse of either the one or the other.
    I call every thing an abuse in society which implies a
contradiction to the spirit of it, or which draws along with it
an inconvenience to certain classes, which is not compensated by
the general welfare.
    The political oeconomy of government is brought to
perfection, when every class in general, and every individual in
particular, is made to be aiding and assisting to the community,
in proportion to the assistance he receives from it. This conveys
my idea of a free and perfect society, which is, a general tacit
contract, from which reciprocal and proportional services result
universally between all those who compose it.
    Whenever therefore any one is found, upon whom nobody
depends, and who depends upon every one, as is the case with him
who is willing to work for his bread, but who can find no
employment, there is a breach of the contract, and an abuse. For
the same reason, if we can suppose any person entirely taken up
in feeding himself, depending upon no one, and having nobody
depending on him, we lose the idea of society, because there are
no reciprocal obligations between such a person and the other
members of the society.
    Those who are for employing the whole of a people in
agriculture may answer, that all their time cannot be employed in
this occupation, and that in the intervals they may apply
themselves to supply reciprocal wants.
    I very readily agree, that any person, who would calculate
his labour in agriculture, purely for his own subsistence, would
find abundance of idle hours. But the question is, whether in
good oeconomy such a person would not be better employed in
providing nourishment for others, than in prodding for any other
want. When he provides food, he surely provides for a want; and
experience shews, that it is better for a man to apply close to
one trade, than to turn himself to several.
    Hence I conclude, that the best way of binding a free society
together is by multiplying reciprocal obligations, and creating a
general dependence between all its members. This cannot be better
effected, than by appropriating a certain number of inhabitants,
for the production of the quantity of food required for all, and
by distributing the remainder into proper classes for supplying
every other want. I say farther, that this distribution is not
only the most rational, but that mankind fall naturally into it;
and misery attends and has ever attended those who have been
found without a particular employment.
    It must not be concluded from this reasoning that abuse is
always implied when we find any of the classes of the free hands
of a state casually employed in agriculture.
    There is such a variety of circumstances in every country,
that without a peculiar talent of laying principles together, so
as to answer every combination, the most perfect theory which can
be proposed must appear defective.
    In countries ill-improved, where industry begins only to take
root, we are not to conclude, that good policy requires a sudden
and immediate separation between the dwellings of the husbandmen
and free hands. Sudden revolutions are constantly hurtful, and a
good statesman ought to lay down his plan for arriving at
perfection by gradual steps.
    If he find, as is the case of rude and uncivilized societies,
that many are occupied, partly, in providing subsistence for
their own family, partly, in other useful pursuits, he may by
degrees attach as many as he can to agriculture alone. The most
wealthy are the most proper to carry this branch to any degree of
perfection. The landed men ought to be encouraged by every means
to apply to the study of farming. This employment has been
considered as honourable in all ages of the world, and very well
suits the rank, the interest, and the amusement of gentlemen.
    The next step is to introduce manufactures into the country,
and to provide a ready market abroad for every superfluous part
of them. The allurement of gain will soon engage every one to
pursue that branch of industry which succeeds best in his hands.
By these means many will follow manufactures and abandon
agriculture; others will prosecute their manufactures in the
country, and avail themselves, at the same time, of small
portions of land, proper for gardens, grass for cows, and even
for producing certain kinds of fruit necessary for their own
maintenance.
    This I do not consider as a species of farming. It is more
properly, in a political light, a sort of village-life; the
village here appears dispersed only over a large extent; and I
call it a village-life, because here the occupation of the
inhabitants is principally directed towards the prosecution of
their trades: agriculture is but a subaltern consideration, and
will be carried on so far only, as it occasions no great
avocation from the main object. It will however, have the effect
to parcel out a small part of the lands into small possessions: a
system admirably calculated for the improvement of a barren soil,
and advantageous to industry is not thereby checked. This is
population, when the spirit of not the case when the possessors
of small lots apply totally to agriculture, and content
themselves with a bare subsistence from it, without industry, or
forming any plan which prosecuting any other branch of may enable
themselves or their children to emerge from so circumscribed a
sphere of life: from this alone proceeds, in most countries, the
inconvenience of a minute subdivision of land-property.
    We shall presently see, by various examples, the truth of
this proposition; and, from what observations I have been able to
make, it appears, that a great inconvenience flows from it; the
property of the lands, and not the bare possession of them, is
vested in the lower classes. While they remain as tenants only,
the interest of the proprietor, on one hand, will lead him to
incorporate these small possessions into larger farms, the moment
the possessors are no longer able to pay a rent above the value
of the grounds when let in farms; and the interest of these
tenants, on the other hand, will frequently lead them to abandon
such small possessions, when the prosecution of their trades,
which ought to be their principal occupation, demands a change of
habitation. Thus the interest of agriculture will go hand in hand
with that of industry, and classes will separate their
habitations according as their respective interests require.
    It is certainly the interest of every landlord whose lands
are ill improved, to multiply the habitations on them; provided
the possessors can be made to live by some other branch of
industry than bare agriculture: and in many cases, it may be his
advantage to incorporate such small possessions into farms, as
soon as they have been sufficiently improved by the possessors;
whose habitations may then be removed to other barren lands. By
following this plan he will improve his estate; he will multiply
the useful inhabitants; and he will, at the same time, share the
profits of their industry beyond the value which any farmer can
pay for the lands which he gives them to possess.
    By these means has the woollen manufacture in England, and
the linen in Ireland and Scotland been greatly augmented. But as
the improvement of land goes on, this oeconomy will decline:
towns will swell in consequence of the principles we are now
going to deduce; the lands will become more thinly inhabited; and
farms will by degrees grow more extensive. I appeal to experience
for the justness of this observation.
    Hence it plainly appears, that, in every light this matter
can be represented, we still find it impossible usefully to
employ in agriculture above a certain part of a people. The next
question is, how to determine the just proportion. For this
purpose we must have recourse to facts, not to theory. We have,
in a former chapter, examined the state of this question with
regard to one country. I shall here only add, that, in proportion
to the culture of the soil, and to the number of crops it is made
to produce, a greater or less number will be required; and in
proportion to the surplus of food above what is necessary to
maintain the labourers, will a number of free hands be provided
for. If therefore a species of agriculture can be found
established, which produces little or no surplus, there little or
no industry can be exercised; few wants can be supplied: this
will produce a wonderful simplicity of manners, will ruin the
system of modern policy, and produce what I must call an abuse.
Let me look for some examples of this, in order to set the
question in a clearer light.
    In the wine-provinces of France, we find the lands which lie
round the villages divided into very small lots, and there
cultivation is carried to a very extraordinary height. These
lands belong, in property, (not by lease,) to the peasants who
cultivate the vines. No frugality can be greater than in the
consumption of this produce, and the smallest weed which comes up
among the grain, is turned to account, for the food of animals.
The produce of such lands, I may say, is entirely consumed by the
proprietor and his family, who are all employed in the
cultivation, and there is no superfluous quantity here produced
for the maintenance of others. Does not this resemble the
distribution of lands made by the Romans in favour of 5000 Sabine
families, where each received two plethra of ground. (See Numbers
of Mankind, p. 117) Now let me examine the political state of
agriculture, and of other labour performed by my French
vine-dresser.
    By the supposition we imply, that the bit of land is
sufficient for maintaining the man and his family, and nothing
more; he has no grain to sell, no food can by him be supplied to
any other person whatever; but the state of other lands capable
of yielding a surplus, such as the vineyard, produces a demand
for his labour. This labour, considered with respect to the
vine-dresser, is a fund for providing all his wants in
manufactures, salt, &c. and what is over must be considered as
his profits, out of which he pays the royal impositions. The same
labour, considered with regard to the proprietor of the vineyard,
enters into that necessary deduction out of the fruits, which,
when deducted, leaves the remainder, which we call surplus, or
what answers to the land-rent. This belongs to the proprietor,
and becomes a fund for supplying all his wants.
    Here we have an idea of society. The vine-dresser depends
upon the proprietor for the price of his labour, the proprietor
upon the vinedresser for his surplus. But did we suppose all the
kingdom parcelled out, and laboured, as the spot which lies round
the village, what would become of the vine-dresser with regard to
all his other wants; there would be no vines to dress, no surplus
nourishment any where to be found, consequently no employment,
not even life, for those who had no land. From this example we
discover the difference between agriculture exercised as a trade
and as a direct means of subsisting: a distinction to be attended
to, as it will very frequently occur in the prosecution of our
subject. We have the two species in the vine-dresser: he labours
the vineyard as a trade, and his spot of ground for subsistence.
We may farther conclude, that, as to the last part, he is useful
to himself only; but, as to the first, he is useful to the
society, and becomes a member of it: consequently, were it not
for his trade, the state would lose nothing, though the
vine-dresser and his land were both swallowed up by an
earthquake. The food and the consumers would both disappear
together, without the least political harm to any body:
consequently, such a species of agriculture is no benefit to a
state; and consequently, neither is that species of
multiplication, implied by such a distribution of property, any
benefit. Thus an over-extension of agriculture and subdivision of
lands become an abuse, and so, consequently, does an
over-multiplication of farmers.
    Here I am obliged to conclude, that those passages of Roman
authors which mention the frugality of that people, and the small
extent of their possessions, cannot be rightly understood,
without the knowledge of many circumstances relative to the
manners of those times. For if you understand such a distribution
of lands to have extended over all the Roman territory, the
number of the citizens would have far exceeded what they appear
to have been by the Census, and even surpass all belief. But
farther, I may be allowed to ask, whether or no it be supposed
that these frugal Romans laboured this small portion of lands
with their own hands and consumed the produce of it? If I am
answered in the affirmative (which is necessary to prove the
advantages of agriculture's being exercised by all the classes of
a people), then I ask, from whence were the inhabitants of Rome,
and other cities, subsisted? who fed the armies when in the
field? If these were fed by foreign grain imported or plundered
from their neighbours, where was the advantage of this
sub-division of lands, and of this extensive agriculture, which
could not feed the inhabitants of the state? If it be said, that
notwithstanding this frugal distribution of property among the
citizens, there were still found surplus enough to supply both
Rome and the armies, will it not then follow, that there was no
necessity for employing all the people in agriculture, since the
labour of a part might have sufficed?
    That number of husbandmen, therefore, is the best, which can
provide food for all the state; and that number of inhabitants is
the best, which is compatible with the full employment of every
one of them.
    Idle mouths are useful to themselves only, not to the state;
consequently, are not an object of the care of the state, any
farther than to provide employment for them; and their welfare
(while they remain useless to others) is, in a free country,
purely a matter of private concern. Let me take another example
for the farther illustration of this matter.
    Those who travel into the southern provinces of Spain, find
large tracts of land quite uncultivated, producing only a scanty
pasture for herds of the lesser cattle. Here and there are found
interspersed some spots of watered lands, which, from the
profusion of every gift which nature can bestow, strike a
northern traveller with an idea of paradise. In such places
villages are found, and numbers of inhabitants. It must be
allowed that industry and labour do not here go forward as in
other countries; but to supply this want charity steps in.
Charity in Spain (in proportion to its extent) is as powerful a
principle towards multiplication as industry and labour. Whatever
gives food gives numbers: but charity cannot extend beyond
superfluity, and this must ever be in proportion to industry.
These watered lands are well laboured and improved. The value of
them, in one sense, is in proportion to their fertility, and the
surplus of the labourers should naturally be given for an
equivalent in money or work: But this equivalent cannot be found;
because the poor of the village have neither the one or the other
to give; and the charitable farmer considers it to be his duty,
to bestow on them gratis whatever he can spare. If the Spaniards
therefore were not the most charitable people upon earth, it is
very plain that the labouring of those watered spots would
diminish until it came upon a level with the demand of such
people of the village only, as could purchase the farmer's
surplus. But here it is otherwise; labour goes on mechanically;
the farmer never complains of the burden of giving, charity; and
the poor live in ease in proportion to plenty of the year.
    Here then is a third principle of multiplication. The first
is slavery, or a violent method of making mankind labour; the
second is industry, which is a rational excitement to it; the
third is charity, which resembles the manna in the desert, the
gift of God upon a very extraordinary occasion, and when nothing
else could have preserved the lives of his people. Whether, in
all cases, this principle of christianity advances the prosperity
of a modern society (when complied with from obedience to
precept, without consulting reason as to the circumstances of
times and situations), is a question which lies out of my road to
examine. The action, considered in the intention of the agent,
must in every case appear highly beautiful; and we plainly see
how far it contributes to multiplication, though we do not so
plainly perceive how such a kind of multiplication can be
advantageous to society.
    Now if we examine the state of agriculture in this Spanish
village, considered as one large family, we find, upon the whole,
no more surplus of fruits than upon the French vine-dresser's
portion of land; consequently, if all Spain was laboured and
inhabited like this village and its small garden, as it is
called, it would be the most populous country in the world, the
most simple in the manner of living; but it never could
communicate the idea of a vigorous or a flourishing state. It is
the employment alone of the inhabitants which can impress this
character.
    Now in this last example, what a number of free hands do we
find! Are not all the poor of this class? Would it not be better
if all these by their labour could purchase their subsistence,
than be obliged to receive it in the precarious manner they do?
Can one suppose all these people industrious, without implying
what I call superfluity of labour? and does not superfluity of
labour imply luxury, according to my definition of it? Where
would be the harm if the Spanish farmer, who gives a third of his
crop in charity, should in return receive some changes of
raiment, some convenient furniture for his house, some
embellishment to his habitation: these things would cost him
nothing; he would receive them in exchange for what he now gives
from a principle of charity, and those who have a precarious,
would have a certain livelihood. Let us travel a little farther
in search of the abuse of population.
    In Germany, we find many small towns, formed into
corporations, which enjoy certain privileges. The freedom of such
towns is not easily purchased; and one, upon considering outward
circumstances, must be not a little surprized to hear of the sums
refused, when offered, to obtain it. Round these towns there is a
small territory divided into very small portions, and not able to
maintain the inhabitants: these lands therefore are infinitely
over-stocked with husbandmen; for every proprietor, less or more,
concerns himself with the cultivation. Here, one who should
aspire to extend his possession, would, according to the
sentiment of Manius Curius Dentatus, certainly be considered as a
dangerous citizen, and a hurtful member of the society. These
lots are divided among the children of the proprietors, who are
free of the town, by which means they are constantly splitting by
multiplication, and consolidating by death, and by marriage:
these nearly balance one another, and property remains divided as
before. A stranger is at a loss to find out the reason, why the
liberty of so poor a little town should be so valuable. Here it
is; first there are certain advantages enjoyed in common, such as
the privilege of pasture on the town-lands, and others of a like
nature; but I find that the charges which the burgesses are
obliged to pay, may more than compensate them. The principal
reason appears to be, that no one who has not the liberty of a
town, can settle in a way of industry so as to marry and have a
family: because without this, his labour can be directed towards
furnishing the wants of peasants only, who live in villages;
these are few, and little ingenuity is required for it. In towns
there is found a greater diversity of wants, and the people there
have found out mechanically, that if strangers were allowed to
step in and supply them, their own children would starve;
therefore the heads of the corporation, who have an interest to
keep up the price of work, have also an interest to hold the
liberty of their town at a high value. This appears to me a
pretty just representation of the present state of some towns I
have seen, relative to the present object of inquiry.
    But as industry becomes extended, and trade and manufactures
are established, this political oeconomy must disappear.
    Such a change, however, will not probably happen without the
interposition of the sovereign, and a new plan of administration;
what else can give a turn to this spirit of idleness, or rather,
as I may call it, of this trifling industry? Agriculture never
can be a proper occupation for those who live in towns: this
therefore is an abuse of it, or rather indeed an abuse of
employment.
    Ease and plenty never can enter a little town, but by the
means of wealth; wealth never can come in but by the produce of
labour going out; and when people labour purely for their own
subsistence, they make the little money only they have to
circulate, but can acquire nothing new and those who with
difficulty can maintain themselves, never can hope to increase
their numbers.
    If in spite of the little industry set on foot in such towns,
the generative faculty shall work its effect and increase
numbers, this will make the poor parents still divide, and misery
will ensue; this may excite compassion, and this again will open
the chests of those who have a charitable disposition: hospitals
are founded for the relief of the poor, they are quickly filled,
and as many necessitous remain as ever. The reason is plain; the
hospital applies a palliative for the abuse, but offers no cure.
A tree is no sooner discharged of its branches than it pushes new
ones. It has been said, that numbers are in proportion to food;
consequently, poor are in proportion to charity. Let the King
give his revenue in charity, he will soon find poor enough to
consume it. Let a rich man spend 100,000 l. a year upon a table,
he will find guests (the best in the kingdom) for every cover.
These things, in my way of considering them, are all analogous,
and flow from the same principle. And the misery found in these
little German towns, is another modification of the abuse of
population. These examples shew the inconveniences and abuses
which result from a misapplication of agriculture, which produces
a population more burthensome than beneficial to a modern state.
    If the simplicity of the ancients be worthy of imitation, or
if it appear preferable to the present system, which it is not my
business to decide, then either slavery must be introduced to
make those subsist who do not labour, or they must be fed upon
charity. Labour and industry can never, I think, be recommended
on one hand, and the effects of them proscribed on the other. If
a great body of warlike men (as was the case in Sparta) be
considered as essential to the well-being of the state; if all
trade and all superfluity be forbid amongst them, and no
employment but military exercises allowed; if all these warriors
be fed at public tables, must you not either have a set of
Helotes to plow the ground for them, or a parcel of charitable
Spanish farmers to feed them gratis.
    Thus much I have thought might be of use to say to illustrate
the principles I have laid down. I find it very unfavourable to
the reasoning which runs through the whole of the performance
which I mentioned above, and which I have had in my eye. A more
particular examination of it might be useful, and even amusing;
but it would engage me in too long a disquisition for the nature
of this work. I cannot however help, in this place, adding one
observation more, in consequence of our principles, which seems
contrary to the strain of our ingenious author's reasoning. I say
seems, because all difference almost of opinion upon such
subjects proceeds from the defect of language in clearly
transmitting our ideas, when complex or abstract.
    The effect of diseases which sweep off numbers of people does
not essentially diminish population, except when they come
suddenly or irregularly, any more than it would necessarily
dispeople the world if all mankind were to be swept off the stage
at the age of forty-six years. I apprehend that in man, as in
every other animal, the generative faculty is more than able to
repair all losses occasioned by regular diseases; and I have
shewn, I think, more than once, that multiplication never can
stop but for want of food. As long then as the labour of man can
continue annually to produce the same quantity of food as at
present, and that motives are found to make him labour, the same
numbers may be fed, and the generative faculty, which from one
pair has produced so many millions, would certainly do more than
keep up the stock, although no person were to pass the age above
mentioned. Here is the proof; were the life of man confined to
forty-six years, the state of mortality would be increased in the
proportion which those who die above forty-six bear to those who
die under this age. This proportion is, I believe, as 1 to 10;
consequently, mortality would increase 1/10, consequently,
numbers would be kept up by 1/10 upon births; and surely the
generative faculty of man far exceeds this proportion, when the
other requisites for propagation, to wit, food, &c. are to be
found, as by the supposition. 

Chap. XV

Application of the above Principles to the State of Population in
Great Britain

    A letter from Dr Brakenridge, F.R.S. addressed to George
Lewis Scott, Esq; which I found in the Danish Mercury for March
1758, furnishes me with a very good opportunity of applying the
principles we have been laying down to the state of population in
Great-Britain. I shall therefore, according to my plan, pass in
review that gentleman's opinion, without entering upon any
refutation of it. I shall extract the propositions he lays down,
examine the conclusions he draws from them, and then shew wherein
they differ from those which result from the theory established
in this inquiry.
    The author's calculations and suppositions as to matters of
fact shall be taken for granted, as I believe the first are as
good as any that can be made, upon a subject where all the data
required for solving the problem are quite a piece of guess-work.
    I must follow the Mercury, not having the original. 
    Prop. I. After a very close examination, says our author, I
find, that our islands gain, as to population, absolutely no more
than what is requisite for repairing their losses, and that, in
England itself, numbers would diminish, were they not recruited
from Ireland and Scotland.
    Prop. II. Men, able to carry arms, that is from 18 to 56
years, make, according to Dr Halley, the fourth part of a people;
and when a people increase in numbers, every denomination, as to
age, increases in this proportion: consequently in England, where
the number of inhabitants does not exceed six millions, if the
annual augmentation upon the whole do not exceed 18,000, as I am
pretty sure it does not, the yearly augmentation of those fit to
carry arms will be no more than 4,500.
    Prop. III. In England, burials are to births as 100 is to
113. I suppose, that in Scotland and Ireland, they may be as 100
is to 124. And as there may be in these two last kingdoms about
two millions and a half of inhabitants, the whole augmentation
may be stated at 15,000; and consequently that of such as are fit
to carry arms, at 3,750. Add this number to those annually
produced in England, and the sum total of the whole augmentation
in the British isles will be about 8,250.
    Prop. IV. The strangers, who arrive in England, in order to
settle, are supposed to compensate those who leave the country
with the same intent.
    Prop. V. It is out of this number of 8,250, that all our
losses are to be deduced. If the colonies, wars, and navigation,
carry off from us annually 8,000 men, the British isles cannot
augment in people: if we lose more, numbers must diminish.
    Prop. VI. By calculations, such as they are, our author
finds, that, upon an average of 66 years, from 1690 to 1756, this
number of 8,000 has been annually lost, that is, they have died
abroad in the colonies, in war, or on the account of navigation. 
    Prop. VII. That, since the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland
are about 8,000,000, and that the augmentation is annually about
8,000, we may conclude in general for all Europe, that, for every
million of habitants, there is an annual augmentation of 1,000;
consequently, every thousand men slain in war must destroy all
the augmentation of a million of inhabitants during a year.
Consequently France, which contains 14 millions, according to Sir
William Petty, having lost above 14,000 men a-year, during the
same 66 years, cannot have augmented in population.
    Prop. VIII. That the progress of trade and navigation
augmenting the loss of people by sea, must consequently have
diminished population over all Europe.
    Prop. IX. The exportation of our corn proves what the above
propositions have demonstrated. For supposing the progress of
agriculture to compensate the additional quantity distilled of
late years, there is still one-sixth of the crop exported, which
proves that our numbers are small, and that they do not augment.
    From these propositions our author concludes, that what stops
multiplication in the British isles is, first, That living in
celibacy is become a-la-mode: secondly, That wars have been
carried on beyond the nation's force: thirdly, That the use of
spirituous liquors destroys great numbers of inhabitants.
    I shall now shortly apply the principles I have been laying
down, in order to resolve every phenomenon here described, as to
the population of Great Britain. These phenomena I shall
willingly take for granted, as it is of no consequence to my
reasoning, whether they be exact or not: it is enough that they
may be so; and the question here is only to account for them.
    England, says he, would diminish in numbers, were it not
recruited from Scotland and Ireland. This, I say, is a
contingent, not a certain consequence: for did those grown-up
adventurers cease to come in, the inhabitants of England
themselves would undoubtedly multiply, provided an additional
number of breeders could be found, able to bring up their
children. Now the importation of grown men into a country so far
resembles the importation of slaves into our colonies, that the
one and the other diminishes the price of labour, and thereby
prevents marriage among certain classes of the natives, whose
profits are not sufficient for bringing up a family: and when any
such do marry notwithstanding, they do not multiply, as has been
said. Now were the Scots and Irish to come no more into England,
the price of labour would rise; those who now cannot bring up
children, might then be enabled to do it, and this would make the
English multiply themselves; that is, it would augment the number
of their own breeders. On the other hand, did the price of labour
continue too low to prove a sufficient encouragement for an
additional number of English breeders, the contingent consequence
would take place; that is, numbers would diminish, according to
our author's supposition, and the exportation of grain would
increase, in proportion to that diminution; and did foreign
demand for grain diminish also, then agriculture would suffer,
and every thing would decline.
    The representation he gives of the state of population in
these countries, is one modification of what I have called a
moral incapacity of a people's increasing in numbers. It is just
so in Africa, where the inhabitants are sold: just so in
Switzerland, and in many mountainous countries, where inhabitants
desert in order to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The national
stock remains at an equal standard, and the augmentation upon
births above burials is constantly in proportion to the
exportation of inhabitants. Let this proportion rise ever so
high, an increase of national population is noways essentially to
be implied from this phenomenon alone, but must proceed from
other causes.
    I can find nothing advanced by our author to prove, or even
to induce one to believe, that had the lives of those eight
thousands been yearly preserved from extraordinary dangers,
numbers would have augmented. England enjoyed in a manner 26
years peace after the treaty of Utrecht. For many years before
this treaty, a very destructive war had been carried on. Had the
bills of births been produced from 1701 to 1713, had they been
compared with those from this last period to 1739, when the
Spanish war began, had we seen a gradual augmentation from year
to year during those last 26 years, such as might be expected
from the preservation of a considerable number at least of the
8,250 able healthy men, just in the period of life fit for
propagation, one might be tempted to conclude, that the preceding
war had done hurt to population, by interrupting the propagation
of the species. But if, by comparing the bills of births for a
considerable number of years, in war and in peace, one can
discover no sensible difference, it is very natural to conclude,
either that those wars did not destroy many breeders, or that
others must have slipt in directly, and bred in the place of
those who had been killed. What otherwise can be the reason why
the number which our author supposes to have been destroyed
abroad, should so exactly compensate the annual augmentation, but
only that those nations are stocked to the full proportion of
their subsistence: and what is the reason why, after a
destructive war, which, by the suddenness of the revolution,
sweeps off numbers of the grown men, and diminishes the original
stock, numbers should in a few years get up to the former
standard, and then stop a-new?
    From our author's representation of the bills of births and
deaths, I should be apt to suspect, in consequence of my
principles, that upon a proper examination it will be found,
that, in those years of war, the proportion of births to deaths
had been higher than in years of peace, because more had died
abroad. And, had the slaughter of the inhabitants gone gradually
on, increasing every year beyond the 8,250, I am of opinion, that
the proportion of births might very possibly have kept pace with
it. On the contrary, during the years of peace, the proportion
would have diminished, and had nobody died out of the country at
all, the births and deaths would have become exactly equal.
    From what I have here said, the reader may perceive, that it
is not without reason that I have treated in the general, the
principles relating to my subject, and that I avoid as much as
possible to reason from facts alleged as to the state of
particular countries. Those our author builds upon may be true,
and may be false: the proportion of births and deaths in one
place is no rule for another we know nothing exactly about the
state of this question in the British isles; and it may even
daily vary, from a thousand circumstances. War may destroy
population as well as agriculture, and it may not, according to
circumstances. When the calamity falls upon the breeders, and
when these are supposed the only people in the country in a
capacity of bringing up their children, births will soon
diminish. When it destroys the indigent, who cannot bring up
their children, or who do not marry, births will remain the same.
The killing the wethers of a flock of sheep does not diminish the
brood of lambs next year; the killing of old pigeons makes a
pigeon-house thrive. When the calamity falls upon the farmers,
who make our lands produce, agriculture is hurt, no doubt: does
it fall upon the superfluities of cities, and other classes of
the free hands, it may diminish manufacturers, but agriculture
will go on, while there is a demand for its produce; and if a
diminution of consumption at home be a consequence of the war,
the augmentation upon exportation will more than compensate it. I
do not find that war diminishes the demand for subsistence.
    The long wars in Flanders in the beginning of this century
interrupted agriculture now and then, but did not destroy it.
That in the Palatinate in the end of the last ruined the country
so, that it has hardly as yet recovered it. War has different
effects, according to circumstances.
    OBJ. The population of the British isles is not stopt for
want of food, because one-sixth part of the crop is annually
exported. I answer, that it is still stopt for want of food, for
the exportation marks only that the home demand is satisfied; but
this does not prove that the inhabitants are full fed, although
they can buy no more at the exportation price. Those who cannot
buy, are exactly those who I say die for want of subsistence;
could they buy, they would live and multiply, and no grain
perhaps would be exported. This is a plain consequence of my
reasoning; and my principal point in view, throughout this whole
book, is to find out a method for enabling the indigent to buy up
this very quantity which is at present exported. By this
application of our principles, I have no occasion to call in
question our author's facts. It is no matter what be the state of
the case: if the principles I lay down be just, they must resolve
every phenomenon.


Chap. XVI

Why are some Countries found very populous in respect of others,
equally well calculated for Improvement?

    This question comes immediately under the influence of the
principles already laid down, and must be resolved in consequence
of them. It is with a view to make the application of these, that
I have proposed it; and, in the examination, we shall prove their
justness, or discover their defects.
    It may be answered in general, that every such difference
must proceed from what I call the spirit of the government and of
the people, which will not only decide as to numbers, but as to
many other things. I must however observe, that the question in
itself is of little importance, if nothing but numbers be
considered; for of what consequence is it to know how many people
are in a country, when the employment of them does not enter into
the inquiry? Besides, it is by examining the employment only of a
people, that I can form any judgment as to this particular. But
as the numbers of mankind have been thought a point worthy of
examination, I have chosen this title for a chapter, which might
perhaps have more properly stood under another.
    While slavery prevailed, I see no reason to conclude any
thing against the populousness of the world, as I have said
already: when slavery was abolished, and before industry took
place, if my principles be true, that period, I think, should
mark the time of the thinnest population in Europe; for I believe
it will be found, that there never was an example of a country,
however fertile by nature, where every one was absolutely free;
where there was little or no industry; and where, at the same
time, there were many inhabitants, not beggars, nor living upon
charity. I have mentioned this so often, that I am afraid of
tiring my reader with useless repetitions. I have brought it in
here, to give him only an opportunity of applying this principle
to the solution of the question before us.
    I shall begin my inquiry by asking what is understood by a
country's being populous; for this term presents different ideas,
if circumstances are not attended to. I have heard it said, that
France was a desert, and that there was nobody found in it but in
towns; while in England one cannot travel half a mile without
finding a farm, perhaps two together; and in looking round, one
sees the whole country divided into small possessions. The
difference here found, I apprehend, decides nothing in favour of,
or against the real populousness of the one or the other, but
proceeds entirely from circumstances relative to agriculture, and
to the distribution of free hands. These circumstances will be
better understood from the examination of facts, than from the
best theory in the world. Let one consider the state of
agriculture in Picardy and in Beauce, and then compare it with
the practice in many provinces in England, and the contrast will
appear striking. Were there more forest in England, to supply the
inhabitants with fuel, I imagine many inclosures, useful at first
for improving the grounds, would be taken away, and the country
laid more open; were wolves less common in France, there would be
found more scattered farms. Cattle there must be shut up in the
night, and cannot be left in the fields; this is a great
discouragement to inclosing. Where there are no inclosures, there
are few advantages to be found from establishing the farmhouse
exactly upon the spot of ground to be laboured; and then the
advantages which result to certain classes of inhabitants, from
being gathered together, the farmers with the tradesmen, are
found to preponderate. Thus the French farmers are gathered into
villages, and the English remain upon their fields. But farther;
in Picardy and Beauce agriculture has been long established, and,
I imagine, that, at the time when lands were first broken up, or
rather improved, their habitations must have been closer
together.
    This drawing together of inhabitants must leave many ruinous
possessions, and this, by-the-bye, is one reason why people cry
out upon the desolation of France, because ruinous houses (which
may oftentimes be a mark of improvement, not of desertion) are
found in different places in the country. Paris has grown
considerably in bulk, and from this it naturally happens, that
the country round is purged of idle mouths. If this makes labour
dear in the country, it is the city alone which suffers by it;
the country must certainly be the gainers. So much for the two
species of population in two of the best inhabited countries of
Europe. I now come to another in one of the worst.
    In some countries you find every farm-house surrounded with
small huts, possessed by numbers of people, supposed to be useful
to the farmer. These in Scotland are called cottars (cottagers),
because they live in cottages. If you consider them in a
political light, they will appear to be inhabitants appropriated
for agriculture. In one sense they are so, if by that you
understand the gathering in of the fruits; in another they are
not, if by agriculture you understand the turning up the surface.
I bring in this example, and shall enlarge a little upon it,
because I imagine it to be, less or more, the picture of Europe
400 years ago.
    The Scotch farmer must have hands to gather in a scanty
produce, spread over a large extent of ground. He has six
cottars, I shall suppose; but these cottars must have wives, and
these wives will have children, and all must be fed before the
master's rent can be paid. It never comes into the cottar's head
to suppose that his children can gain money by their industry,
the farmer never supposes that it is possible for him to pay his
rent without the assistance of his cottars to tend his cattle,
and gather in his crop; and the master cannot go against the
custom of the country, without laying his land waste. All these
children are ready at the farmer's disposal; he can, without any
expence, send what parcels of sheep he pleases, to different
distances of half a mile or more, to feed upon spots of ground
which, without the convenience of these children, would be
entirely lost. By this plan of farming, landlords who have a
great extent of country which they are not able to improve, can
let the whole in a very few farms, and at the same time all the
spontaneous produce of the earth is gathered in and consumed. If
you compare the rent of these lands with the extent, it appears
very small; if you compare it with the numbers fed upon the farm,
you will find that an estate in the highlands maintains, perhaps,
ten times as many people as another of the same value in a good
and fertile province. Thus it is in some estates as in some
convents of the begging order, the more mouths the better cheer.
    I shall now suppose our modern policy to inspire an ingenious
or public-spirited lady to set up a weaver or two at a
farm-house. The cottars begin to spin; they will be a long time
in attaining to a dexterity sufficient to appear at the weaver's
house, in competition with others who are accustomed to the
trade; consequently this manufacture will be long in a
languishing condition; but if the undertaking is supported with
patience, these obstacles will be got the better of. Those who
tended herds of cattle for a poor maintenance, will turn
themselves to a more profitable occupation; the farmer will find
more difficulty in getting hands, he will complain, perhaps give
way; the master will lose a year's rent, and nobody will take so
extensive a farm; it must be divided, then it must be improved,
and then it produces more grain upon one tenth, than perhaps
formerly was produced upon the whole. This grain is bought with
the price of spinning; the parents divide with the children, who
are fed, and spin in their turn. When this is accomplished, what
is the revolution? Why, formerly the earth fed all the
inhabitants with her spontaneous productions, as I may call them;
now more labour is exercised upon turning up her surface; this
she pays in grain, which belongs to the strong man for his labour
and toil; women and children have no direct share, because they
have not contributed thereto, as they did in feeding cattle. But
they spin, and have money to buy what they have not force to
produce: consequently they live; but as they become useless as
cottars, they remove from their mother earth, and gather into
villages. When this change is effected, the lands appear less
inhabited; ruinous huts (nay, villages I may call them) are
frequently found, and many would be apt to conclude, that the
country is depopulated; but this is by no means found to be the
case, when the whole is taken together.
    The spirit therefore of the principal people of a country
determines the employment of the lower classes; the employment of
these determines their usefulness to the state, and their
usefulness, their multiplication. The more they are useful, the
more they gain, according to our definition of the contract of
society; the more they gain, the more they can feed; and
consequently, the more they will marry and divide with their
children. This increases useful population, and encourages
agriculture. Compare the former with the present situation, as to
numbers, as to ease, as to happiness!
    Is it not plain, that when the earth is not improved, it
cannot produce so much nourishment for man as when it is? On the
other hand, if industry does not draw into the hands of the
indigent, wherewith to purchase this additional nourishment,
nobody will be at a considerable first expence to break up
grounds in order to produce it. The withdrawing therefore a
number of hands from a trifling agriculture forces, in a manner,
the husbandman to work the harder: and by hard labour upon a
small spot, the same effect is produced as with slight labour
upon a great extent.
    I have said, that I imagined the state of agriculture in the
Scotch farm, was a pretty just representation of the general
state of Europe about 400 years ago: if not in every province of
every country, at least in every country for the most part.
Several reasons induce me to think so: first, where there is no
industry, nothing but the earth directly can feed her children,
little alienation of her fruits can take place. Next, because I
find a wonderful analogy between the way of living in some
provinces of different countries with what I have been
describing. Pipers, blue bonnets, and oat meal, are known in
Swabia, Auvergne, Limousin, and Catalonia, as well as in
Lochaber: numbers of idle, poor, useless hands, multitudes of
children, whom I have found to be fed, nobody knows how, doing
almost nothing at the age of fourteen, keeping of cattle and
going to school, the only occupations supposed possible for them.
If you ask why they are not employed, their parents will tell you
because commerce is not in the country: they talk of commerce as
if it was a man, who comes to reside in some countries in order
to feed the inhabitants. The truth is, it is not the fault of
these poor people, but of those whose business it is to find out
employment for them.
    Another reason I derive from the nature of the old tenures,
where we find lands which now produce large quantities of grain,
granted for a mere trifle, when at the same time others in the
neighbourhood of cities and abbeys are found charged with
considerable rents. This I attribute to the bad cultivation of
lands at that time, from which I infer, a small population. In
those days of trouble and confusion, confiscations were very
frequent, large tracts of lands were granted to the great lords
upon different revolutions, and these, finding them often
deserted, as is mentioned in history, (the vassals of the former
being either destroyed or driven out to make place for the new
comers,) used to parcel them out for small returns in every thing
but personal service. Such sudden and violent revolutions must
dispeople a country; and nothing but tranquility, security,
order, and industry, for ages together, can render it populous.
    Besides these natural causes of population and depopulation
(which proceed, as we have observed, from a certain turn given to
the spirit of a people), there are others which operate with
irresistible force, by sudden and violent revolutions. The King
of Prussia, for example, attempted to people, a country all at
once, by profiting of the desertion of the Saltzburgers. America
is become very poorly peopled in some spots upon the coast, and
in some islands, at the expence of the exportation of millions
from Europe and from Africa; such methods never can succeed in
proportion to the attempt. Spain, on the other hand, was
depopulated by the expulsion of its antichristian inhabitants.
These causes work evident effects, which there is little occasion
to explain, although the more remote consequences of them may
deserve observation. I shall, in another place, have occasion to
examine the manner of our peopling America. In this place, I
shall make a few observations upon the depopulation of Spain, and
finish my chapter.
    That country is said to have been anciently very populous
under the government of the Moors. I am not sufficiently versed
in the politics, oeconomy, and manners of that people, to judge
how far these might be favourable to population: what seems,
however, to confirm what we are told, is, the large repositories
they used for preserving grain, which still remain entire, though
never once made use of. They watered the kingdoms of Valencia,
Murcia, and Granada. They gathered themselves into cities, of
which we still can discover the extent. The country which they
now possess (though drier than Spain) furnishes Europe with
considerable quantities of grain. The palace of the Moorish King
at Granada shews a taste for luxury. The mosque of Cordoua speaks
a large capital. All these are symptoms of population, but they
only help one to guess. The numbers which history mentions to
have been driven out, is a better way still of judging; if the
fidelity of historians could be depended upon, when there is any
question about numbers.
    Here was an example of a country depopulated in a very
extraordinary manner: yet I am of opinion, that the scarcity of
inhabitants complained of in that country, for a long time after
the expulsion, did not so much proceed from the effects of the
loss sustained, as from the contrast between the spirit of those
christians who remained after the expulsion, and their catholic
deliverers. The christians who lived among the Moors, were really
Moors as to manners, though not as to religion. Had they adopted
the spirit of the subjects of Castile, or had they been governed
according to their own, numbers would soon have risen to the
former standard. But as the christian lord governed his Murcian,
Andalousian, and Granada subjects, according to the principles of
christian policy, was it any wonder that in such an age of
ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, the country (one of the
finest in the world) should be long in recovering? Recover,
however, it did; and sooner perhaps than is commonly believed:
for I say it was recovered so soon as all the flat and watered
lands were brought into cultivation; because I have reason to
believe that the Moors never carried their agriculture farther in
these southern provinces.
    From this I still conclude, that no destruction of
inhabitants by expulsion, captivity, war, pestilence or famine,
is so permanently hurtful to population, as a revolution in that
spirit which is necessary for the increase and support of
numbers. Let that spirit be kept up, and let mankind be well
governed, numbers will quickly increase to their former standard,
after the greatest reduction possible: and while they are upon
the augmenting hand, the state will be found in more heart and
more vigour, than when arrived even at the former height; for so
soon as a state ceases to grow in prosperity, I apprehend it
begins to decay both in health and vigour.

Chap. XVII

In what Manner and according to what Proportion do Plenty and
Scarcity affect a People

    In a former chapter I have examined this question, relatively
to mankind fed by the hand of nature: I now come nearer home, and
shall keep close to modern times, considering circumstances and
effects which by daily experience we see and feel.
    I have often said, that numbers are in proportion to the
produce of the earth. I now say, that in most countries of
Europe, the food produced in the country is nearly consumed by
the inhabitants: and by nearly I understand, that the part
exported bears a small proportion to the home-consumption. I do
by no means establish this as an universal proposition; but I say
it is true for the most part: and the intention of this chapter
is to enable us to judge how far these limitations should extend.
I allow, for example, that Holland, not producing food for its
inhabitants, must draw it from some country which produces a
superfluity, regularly. but let it be observed that Poland,
Germany, Flanders, and England, with many other countries,
contribute their contingents to supply the demand of the Dutch;
and of several large trading towns which have small territories.
This being the case, the quota furnished by each country, must be
in a small proportion to the respective quantity growing in it.
But these are general conclusions upon vague suppositions, which
throw no light on the question. I shall therefore endeavour to
apply our reasoning to facts, and then examine consequences.
    There are few countries, I believe, in Europe more abounding
in grain than England: I shall therefore keep that kingdom in my
eye while I examine this matter. Nothing is more common than to
hear that an abundant crop furnishes more than three years'
subsistence: nay, I have found it advanced by an author of
consideration, (Advantages and Disadvantages of France and Great
Britain, &c. article Grain,) that a plentiful year produces five
years' nourishment for the inhabitants. If this be a mistake, it
may prove a very hurtful one in many respects. I am, on the
contrary, apt to believe, that no annual produce of grain ever
was so great in England as to supply its inhabitants fifteen
months, in that abundance with which they feed themselves in a
year of plenty. If this be the case, at what may we compute the
surplus in ordinary good years? I believe it will be thought a
very good year which produces full subsistence for fourteen
months; and crops which much exceed this are, I believe, very
rare. Here follow my reasons for differing so widely from the
gentleman whom I have cited. If I am in the wrong, I shall have
the most sensible pleasure in being set right; and nothing will
be so easy to any one who has access to be better informed as to
facts than I can pretend to be.
    I consider all the yearly crop of grain in England as
consumed at home, except what is exported; for I cannot admit
that any considerable quantity is lost: that it may be abused,
misapplied, drunk when it should be eat, I do not deny. These are
questions which do not regard the present inquiry. Whether
therefore it be consumed in bread, beer, spirits, or by animals,
I reckon it consumed; and in a year when the greatest consumption
is made at home, this I call the abundance with which the
inhabitants feed themselves in years of plenty. Now I find in the
performance above cited, a state of exportations for five years,
from 1746 to 1750 inclusive, where the quantity exported amounts
in all to 5,289,847 quarters of all sorts of grain. This is not
one year's provision, according to Sir William Petty's
calculation, of which we have made mention above. The bounties
upon corn (continues the author above mentioned) have amounted in
one year to 500,000l, sterling. He does not mention the year, and
I am little able to dispute that matter with him. I suppose it to
be true; and still farther, let it be understood that the whole
exportation was made out of the produce of one crop. I do not
find that this sum answers to the bounty upon 3,000,000 of
quarters, which, according to Sir William Petty, make six months'
provision. I calculate thus: The bounty upon wheat is 5s. a
quarter, that upon rye 3s. 6d. that upon barley 2s. 6d. these are
the species of grain commonly exported: cast the three premiums
together, and divide by three, the bounty will come to 3s. 8d. at
a medium; at which rate 500,000l. sterling will pay the bounty of
2,727,272 quarters of grain. An immense quantity to be exported!
but a very inconsiderable part of a crop supposed capable to
maintain England for five years. It may be answered, that the
great abundance of a plentiful year is considerably diminished
when a scanty crop happens to precede it, or to follow upon it.
In the first case, it is sooner begun upon; in the last, it
supplies the consumption in the year of scarcity, considerably.
This I allow to be just; but as it is not uncommon to see a
course of good years follow one another, the state of exportation
at such times must certainly be the best, nay, the only method of
judging of the real extent of superfluity.
    On the other hand, I am apt to believe, that there never was
a year of such scarcity as that the lands of England did not
produce greatly above six months, subsistence, such as the people
are used to take in years of scarcity. Were six months of the
most slender subsistence to fail, I imagine all Europe together
might perhaps be at a loss to supply a quantitY sufficient to
prevent the greatest desolation by famine.
    As I have no access to look into records, I content myself
with less authentic documents. I find then by the London
news-papers, that, from the 9th of April to the 13th of August
1757, while great scarcity was felt in England, there were
declared in the port of London no more than 71,728 quarters of
wheat, of which 15,529 were not then arrived. So that the whole
quantity there imported to relieve the scarcity, was 56,199
quarters. Not one month's provision for the inhabitants of that
city, reckoning them at 800,000 souls! One who has access to look
into the registers of the trade in grain, might in a moment
determine this question.(8*)
    Another reason which induces me to believe what the above
arguments seem to prove, I draw from what I see at present
passing in Germany; I mean the universal complaints of scarcity
in those armies which are now assembled (1757). When we compare
the numbers of an army, let it be of a hundred thousand men, and
forty thousand horses; suppose the suit of it to be as many more,
all strangers (for the others I reckon nothing extraordinary);
what an inconsiderable number does this appear, in proportion to
the inhabitants of this vast country of Germany! Yet let us
observe the quantity of provisions of all sorts constantly coming
down the Rhine, the Moselle, and many other rivers, collected
from foreign provinces on all hands; the numbers of cattle coming
from Hungary; the loads of corn from Poland; and all this in a
year which has produced what at any other time would have been
called an excellent crop. After these foreign supplies, must not
one be astonished to find scarcity complained of in the provinces
where the war is carried on, and high prices every where else.
From such circumstances I must conclude, that people are
generally very much deceived in their estimation of plenty and
scarcity, when they talk of two or three years' subsistence for a
country being found upon their lands at once. I may indeed be
mistaken in my conclusions; but the more I have reflected upon
this subject, the more I find myself confirmed in them, even from
the familiar examples of the sudden rise of markets from very
inconsiderable monopolies, and of their sudden fall by
inconsiderable quantities imported. I could cite many examples of
these vicissitudes, were it necessary, to prove what every one
must observe.
    I come now to resolve a difficulty which naturally results
from this doctrine, and with which I shall close the chapter.
    If it be true, that a crop in the most plentiful year is
nearly consumed by the inhabitants, what becomes of them in years
of scarcity? for nobody can deny, that there is a great
difference, between one crop and another. To this I answer,
first, That I believe there is also a very great deception, or
common mistake, as to the difference between crops: a good year
for one soil, is a bad one for another. But I shall not enlarge
on this; because I have no sufficient proof to support my
opinion. The principal reason upon which I found it, is, that it
is far from being true, that the same number of people consume
always the same quantity of food. In years of plenty every one is
well fed; the price of the lowest industry can procure
subsistence sufficient to bear a division; food is not so
frugally managed; a quantity of animals are fatted for use; all
sorts of cattle are kept in good heart; and people drink more
largely, because all is cheap. A year of scarcity comes, the
people are ill fed, and when the lower classes come to divide
with their children, the portions are brought to be very small;
there is great oeconomy upon consumption, few animals are fatted
for use, cattle look miserably, and a poor man cannot indulge
himself with a cup of generous ale. Add to all these
circumstances that in England the produce of pasture is very
considerable, and it commonly happens, that a bad year for grain,
which proceeds from rains, is for the same reason a good year for
pasture; and in the estimation of a crop, every circumstance must
be allowed to enter.
    From what has been said I must conclude in general, that the
best corn country in the world, provided slavery be not
established, does not produce wherewithal fully to maintain, as
in years of plenty, one third more than its own inhabitants; for
if this should be the case, all the policy of man would not be
able to prevent the multiplication of them, until they arose
nearly up to the mean proportion of the produce in ordinary
years, and it is only what exceeds this standard, and proceeds
from unusual plenty, which can be exported.(9*) Were plentiful
years more common, mankind would be more numerous; were scarcity
more frequent, numbers would be less. Numbers therefore must ever
be, in my humble opinion, in the ratio of food, and
multiplication will never stop until the balance comes to be
nearly even.

Chap. XVIII

Of the Causes and Consequences of a Country's being fully peopled

    In the titles of my chapters, I rather seek to communicate a
rough idea of the subject than a correct one. In truth and in
reason, there is no such thing as a country actually peopled to
the full, if by this term numbers only are meant, without
considering the proportion they bear to the consumption they make
of the productions of their country. I have in a former chapter
established a distinction between the physical and moral
impossibility of increasing numbers. As to the physical
impossibility, the case can hardly exist, because means of
procuring subsistence from other countries, when the soil refuses
to give more, seem, if not inexhaustible, at least very
extensive. A country therefore fully peopled, that is, in a
physical impossibility of increasing their numbers, is a
chimerical and useless supposition. The subject here under
consideration is, the situation of a people, who find it their
interest to seek for subsistence from abroad. This may happen,
and commonly does, long before the country itself is fully
improved: it decides nothing as to the intrinsic fertility of the
soil, and proves no more, than that the industry of the free
hands has made a quicker progress in multiplying mouths, than
that of the farmers in providing subsistence. To illustrate this
idea, let me propose the following question: Is multiplication
the efficient cause of agriculture, or is agriculture that of
multiplication?
    I answer, that multiplication is the efficient cause of
agriculture, though I allow, that, in the infancy of society, the
spontaneous fruits of the earth, which are free to all, are the
efficient cause of a multiplication, which may rise to the exact
proportion of them; as has been said above. This I am now to
explain.
    I have already distinguished the fruits of agriculture from
the earth's spontaneous productions: I must farther take notice,
that when I employ the term agriculture in treating of modern
policy, I always consider it to be exercised as a trade, and
producing a surplus, and not as the direct means of subsisting,
where all is consumed by the husbandman, as has been fully
explained above. We have said that it is the surplus produced
from it, which proves a fund for multiplying inhabitants. Mow
there must be a demand for this surplus. Every person who is
hungry will make a demand, but every such demand will not be
answered, and will consequently have no effect. The demander must
have an equivalent to give: it is this equivalent which is the
spring of the whole machine; for without this the farmer will not
produce any surplus, and consequently he will dwindle down to the
class of those who labour for actual subsistence. The poor, who
produce children, make an ineffectual demand, and when they
cannot increase the equivalent, they divide the food they have
with the newcomers, and prove no encouragement to agriculture. By
dividing, the whole become ill fed, miserable, and thus
extinguish. Now because it is the effectual demand, as I may call
it, which makes the husbandman labour for the sake of the
equivalent, and because this demand increases, by the
multiplication of those who have an equivalent to give, therefore
I say that multiplication is the cause, and agriculture the
effect. On the other hand, I think the spontaneous fruits of the
earth, as in the supposition, may be considered as the cause of a
certain limited multiplication; because in this case there is no
equivalent demanded. The earth produces, whether her fruits be
consumed or not: mankind are fed upon these gratuitously, and
without labour, and the existence of the fruits is anterior to
the production of those who are to consume them. Those who are
first fed, draw their vigour from their food, and their
multiplication from their vigour. Those who are produced, live
freely upon their parent earth, and multiply until all the
produce be consumed: then multiplication stops, as we have said;
but establish agriculture, and multiplication will go on a-new.
Consequently, my reader will say, agriculture is as much the
cause of this new multiplication, as the spontaneous fruits were
of the first. Here is a very natural conclusion, which seems
directly to contradict what we have been endeavouring to prove;
but the knot is easily untied. We have seen how the existence of
agriculture depends upon the industry of man; and how this
industry is the only means of establishing agriculture. Now, as
this industry is chiefly promoted by the motive of providing for
our children, the procreation of them must be considered as the
first, or at least the most palpable political cause of setting
mankind to work, and therefore may be considered as anterior to
agriculture; whereas, on the other hand, the earth's spontaneous
productions being in small quantity, and quite independent of
man, appear, as it were, to be furnished by nature, in the same
way as a small sum is given to a young man, in order to put him
in a way of industry, and of making his fortune. The small sum
sets him a-going, but it is his industry which makes the fortune.
From this illustration it appears, that if the demand for food
can be more readily supplied from abroad than from home, it will
be the foreign subsistence, which will preserve numbers, produced
from industry, not from domestic agriculture; and these numbers
will, in their turn, produce an advancement of it at home, by
inspiring a desire in the husbandman to acquire the equivalent
which their countrymen give to strangers.
    Such nations, whose statesmen have not the talent to engage
the husbandmen to wish for the equivalent, which the labour of
their fellow-citizens can produce, or, in other words, who cannot
create reciprocal wants and dependences among their subjects,
must stand in a moral incapacity of augmenting in numbers. Of
such states we have no occasion to treat in this chapter, any
more than of those who are supposed to be in the physical
incapacity of multiplying: our point of view is, to examine the
natural consequences resulting from a demand for subsistence
extending itself to foreign countries. This I take to be the
mother of industry at home, as well as of trade abroad; two
objects which come to be treated of in the second book.
    A country may be fully peopled (in the sense we understand
this term) in several different ways. It may be fully stocked at
one time with six millions, and at another may maintain perhaps
eight or even nine millions with ease, without the soil's being
better cultivated or improved. On the other hand, a country may
maintain twenty millions with ease, and by being improved as to
the soil, become over-stocked with fifteen millions. These two
assertions come next to be explained.
    The more frugal a people are, and the more they feed upon the
plentiful productions of the earth, the more they may increase in
numbers.
    Were the people of England to come more into the use of
living upon bread, and give over consuming so much animal food,
inhabitants would certainly increase, and many rich grass fields
would be thrown into tillage. Were the French to give over eating
so much bread, the Dutch so much the fish, the Flemish so much
garden stuff, and the Germans so much sourkraut, and all take to
the English diet of pork, beef, and mutton, their respective
numbers would soon decay, even although their lands were better
improved than at present. These are but reflections, by-the-bye,
which the reader may enlarge upon at pleasure. The point in hand
is, to know what are the consequences of a country's being so
peopled, no matter from what cause, that the soil, in its actual
state of fertility, refuses to supply a sufficient quantity of
such food as the inhabitants incline to live upon. These are
different according to the diversity of spirit in the people.
    If they be of an indolent disposition, directed in their
political oeconomy by established habits and old prejudices,
which prevent innovations, although a change of circumstances may
demand them, the effect will be to put a stop to population;
which cannot augment without an increase of food on one hand, and
of industry on the other, to make the first circulate. These must
go hand in hand: the precedence between them is a matter of mere
curiosity and speculation.
    If, on the contrary, a spirit of industry has brought the
country to a certain degree of population, this spirit will not
be stopped by the want of food; it will be brought from foreign
countries, and this new demand, by diminishing among them the
quantity usually produced for their own subsistence, will prompt
the industrious to improve their lands, in order to supply the
new demand without any hurt to themselves. Thus trade has an
evident tendency towards the improvement of the world in general,
by rendering the inhabitants of one country industrious, in order
to supply the wants of another, without any prejudice to
themselves. Farther:
    The country fully stocked can offer in exchange for this
food, nothing but the superfluity of the industry of the free
hands, for that of the farmers is supposed to be consumed by the
society; except indeed some species of nourishment or
productions, which, being esteemed at a higher value in other
countries than in those which produce them, bring a more
considerable return than the value of what is exported, as when
raw silk and delicate wines, &c. are given in exchange for grain
and other provisions.
    The superfluity of industry must, therefore, form the
principal part of exportation, and if the nation fully stocked be
surrounded by others which abound in grain and articles of
subsistence, where the inhabitants have a taste for elegance, and
are eager of acquiring the manufactures and improvements of their
industrious neighbours; it is certain, that a trade with such
nations will very considerably increase the inhabitants of the
other, though fully stocked relatively to the production of their
own soil; and the additional inhabitants will increase the number
of manufacturers only, not of husbandmen. This is the case with
Holland, and with many large trading cities which are free and
have but a small territory.
    If, on the contrary, the nation fully stocked be in the
neighbourhood of others who take the same spirit as itself, this
supply of food will become in time more difficult to be had, in
proportion as their neighbours come to supply their own wants.
They must therefore seek for it at a greater distance, and as
soon as the expence of procuring it comes to exceed the value of
the labour of the free hands employed in producing the
equivalent, their work will cease to be exported, and the number
of inhabitants will be diminished to the proportion of the
remaining food.
    I do not say that trade will cease on this account; by no
means. Trade may still go on, and even be more considerable than
before; but it will be a trade which never can increase
inhabitants, because for this purpose there must be subsistence.
It may have however numberless and great advantages: it may
greatly advance the wealth of the state, and this will purchase
even power and strength. A trading nation may live in profound
peace at home, and send war and confusion among her enemies,
without even employing her own subjects. Thus trade, without
increasing the inhabitants of a country, can greatly add to its
force, by arming those hands which she has not bred, and
employing them for her service.

Chap. XIX

In the Introduction of Machines into Manufactures prejudicial to
the Interest of a State, or hurtful to Population?

    This I find has been made a question in modern times. The
ancients held in great veneration the inventors of the saw, of
the lathe, of the wimble, of the potter's wheel; but some moderns
find an abuse in bringing mechanism to perfection (see Les
Interets de la France mal entendus, p. 272. 3 13.): the great
Montesquieu finds fault with watermills, though I do not find
that he has made any objection against the use of the plough.
    Did people understand one another, it would be impossible
that such points could suffer a dispute among men of sense; but
the circumstances referred to, or presupposed, which authors
always almost keep in their eye, though they seldom express them,
render the most evident truths susceptible of opposition.
    It is hardly possible suddenly to introduce the smallest
innovation into the political oeconomy of a state, let it be ever
so reasonable, nay ever so profitable, without incurring some
inconveniences. A room cannot be swept without raising dust, one
cannot walk abroad without dirtying one's shoes; neither can a
machine, which abridges the labour of men, be introduced all at
once into an extensive manufacture, without throwing many people
into idleness.
    In treating every question of political oeconomy, I
constantly suppose a statesman at the head of government,
systematically conducting every part of it, so as to prevent the
vicissitudes of manners, and innovations, by their natural and
immediate effects or consequences, from hurting any interest
within the commonwealth. When a house within a city becomes
crazy, it is taken down; this I call systematical ruin: were it
allowed to fall, the consequences might be fatal in many
respects. In like manner, if a number of machines are all at once
introduced into the manufactures of an industrious nation, (in
consequence of that freedom which must necessarily be indulged to
all sorts of improvement, and without which a state cannot
thrive,) it becomes the business of the statesman to interest
himself so far in the consequences, as to provide a remedy for
the inconveniences resulting from the sudden alteration. It is
farther his duty to make every exercise even of liberty and
refinement an object of government and administration; not so as
to discourage or to check them, but to prevent the revolution
from affecting the interests of the different classes of the
people, whose welfare he is particularly bound to take care of.
    The introduction of machines can, I think, in no other way
prove it: and I have hurtful by making people idle, than by the
suddenness of frequently observed, that all sudden revolutions,
let them be ever so advantageous, must be accompanied with
inconveniences. A safe, honourable, and lasting peace, after a
long, dangerous, and expensive war, forces a number of hands to
be idle, and deprives them of bread. Peace then may be considered
as a machine for defending a nation, at the political loss of
making an army idle; yet nobody, I believe, will allege that, in
order to give bread to soldiers, sutlers, and undertakers, the
war should be continued. But here I must observe, that it seems
to be a palpable defect in policy, if a statesman shall neglect
to find out a proper expedient (at whatever first expence it may
be procured) for giving bread to those who, at the risk of their
lives, have gone through so many fatigues for the service of
their country. This expence should be charged to the account of
the war, and a state ought to consider, that as their safety
required that numbers should be taken out of the way of securing
to themselves a lasting fund of subsistence, which would have
rendered them independent of every body, (supposing that to have
been the case,) she becomes bound by the contract of society
which ties all together, to find them employment. Let me seek for
another illustration concerning this matter.
    I want to make a rampart cross a river, in order to establish
a bridge, a mill, a sluice, &c. For this purpose, I must turn off
the water, that is, stop the river: would it be a good objection
against my improvement to say, that the water would overflow the
neighbouring lands? as if I could be supposed so improvident as
not to have prepared a new channel for it? Machines stop the
river; it is the business of the state to make the new channel,
as it is the public which is to reap the benefit of the sluice. I
imagine what I have said will naturally suggest an answer to all
possible objections against the introduction of machines; as for
the advantages of them, they are so palpable that I need not
insist upon them. There is, however, one case, in which I think
they may be disapproved of; but it seems a chimerical
supposition, and is brought in here for no other purpose than to
point out and illustrate the principle which influences this
branch of our subject.
    If you can imagine a country peopled to the utmost extent of
the fertility of the soil, and absolutely cut off from any
communication with other nations; all the inhabitants fully
employed in supplying the wants of one another, the circulation
of money going forward regularly, proportionally, and uniformly
through every vein, as I may call it, of the political body; no
sudden or extraordinary demand at any time for any branch of
industry; no redundancy of any employment; no possibility of
increasing either circulation, industry, or consumption. In such
a situation as this, I should disapprove of the introduction of
machines, as I disapprove of taking physic in an established
state of perfect health. I disapprove of a machine for no other
reason but because it is an innovation in a state absolutely
perfect in these branches of its political oeconomy: and where
there is perfection there can be no improvement. I farther
disapprove of it because it might force a man to be idle, who
would be found thereby in a physical impossibility of getting his
bread, in any other way than that in which he is supposed to be
actually employed.
    The present situation of every country in Europe is so widely
distant from this degree of perfection, that I must consider the
introduction of machines, and of every method of augmenting the
produce or assisting the labour and ingenuity of man, as of the
greatest utility. Why do people wish to augment population, but
in order to compass these ends? Wherein does the effect of a
machine differ from that of new inhabitants?
    As agriculture, exercised as a trade, purges the land of idle
mouths, and pushes them to a new industry which the state may
turn to her own advantage; so does a machine introduced into a
manufacture, purge off hands which then become superfluous in
that branch, and which may quickly be employed in another.
    If therefore the machine proves hurtful, it can only be
because it presents the state with an additional number of hands
bred to labour; consequently, if these are afterwards found
without bread, it must proceed from a want of attention in the
statesman: for an industrious man, made idle, may constantly be
employed to advantage, and with profit to him who employs him.
What could an act of naturalization do more, than to furnish
industrious hands, forced to be idle, and demanding employment?
Machines therefore I consider as a method of augmenting
(virtually) the number of the industrious, without the expence of
feeding an additional numbers: this by no means obstructs natural
and useful population, for the most obvious reasons.
    We have shewn how population must go on, in proportion to
subsistence, and in proportion to industry: now the machine eats
nothing, therefore does not diminish subsistence; and industry
(in our age at least) is in no danger of being over-stocked in
any well-governed state: for let all the world copy your
improvements, they still will be the scholars. And if, on the
contrary, in the introduction of machines you are found to be the
scholars of other nations, in that case you are brought to the
dilemma of accepting the invention with all its inconveniences,
or of renouncing every foreign communication.
    In speculations of this kind, one ought not, I think, to
conclude, that experience must of necessity prove what we imagine
our reasoning has pointed out.
    The consequences of innovations in political oeconomy, admit
of an finite variety, because of the infinite variety of
circumstances which attend them: no reasoning, therefore, however
refined, can point out a priori, what upon such occasions must
indispensibly follow. The experiment must be made, circumstances
must be allowed to operate; inconveniences must be prevented or
rectified as far as possible; and when these prove too many, or
too great to be removed, the most rational, the best concerted
scheme in theory must be laid aside, until preparatory steps be
taken for rendering it practicable.
    Upon the whole, daily experience shews the advantage and
improvement acquired by the introduction of machines. Let the
inconveniences complained of be ever so sensibly felt, let a
statesman be ever so careless in relieving those who are forced
to be idle, all these inconveniences are only temporary; the
advantage is permanent, and the necessity of introducing every
method of abridging labour and expence, in order to supply the
wants of luxurious mankind, is absolutely indispensable,
according to modern policy, according to experience, and
according to reason.

Chap. XX

Miscellaneous Observations upon Agriculture and Population

    I have hitherto considered the object of agriculture, as no
more than the raising of grain; the food of mankind has been
estimated by the quantity they consume of this production; and
husbandmen have been supposed to have their residence in the
country. As my subject has but an indirect connection with the
science of agriculture, I have simplified many things complex in
themselves, the better to adapt them to the principal object of
my inquiry, and the better to keep my attention fixed upon one
idea at a time. I am now going to return to some parts of my
subject, which I think I have treated too superficially; and to
examine, as I go along, some miscellaneous questions which will
naturally arise from what is to be said.
    QUEST. I. Every one almost who has written upon population,
and upon agriculture, considered as an essential concomitant of
it, has recommended the equal distribution of the property of
lands as useful to both.. a few reflections upon this question,
after what has been thrown out in the course of the foregoing
chapters, may not be improper; more in order to examine and apply
the principles laid down, than with a view to combat the opinion
of others.
    I have already, upon several occasions, taken notice of the
great difference between the political oeconomy of the ancients,
and that of modern times; for this reason, among others, that I
perceive that the sentiments of the ancients, which were founded
upon reason and common sense, relative to their situation, have
been adopted by some moderns, who have not perhaps sufficiently
attended to the change of our manners, and to the effects which
this change must operate upon every thing relative to our
oeconomy. The ancients recommended strongly an equal distribution
of lands as the best security for liberty, and the best method,
not only to preserve an equality among the citizens, but also to
increase their number.
    In those days, the citizens did not compose one half, perhaps
not one fourth, of the state relatively to numbers; and there was
no such thing almost as an established moneyed interest, which
can nowhere be founded but upon trade, and an extensive industry.
In those days there was no solid income, but in land: and this
being equally divided among the citizens, was favourable to their
multiplication and produced equality. But in our days, riches do
not consist in lands only; nay we sometimes find the most
considerable proprietors of these in very indifferent
circumstances; loaded with debts, and depending upon the
indulgence of men who have not an acre, and who are their
creditors. Let us therefore divide our lands as we please, we
shall never produce equality by it. This, with respect to one
point, is an essential difference between us and the ancients.
Now as to the other; to wit, population.
    The equal division of lands tends greatly, no doubt, to
increase the numbers of one class of inhabitants, to wit, the
landlords. In ancient times, as has been observed, the chief
attention was to increase the citizens, that is, the higher
classes of the state; and the equal division of property so
effectually produced this effect, that some Greek states were
obliged to allow the exposition of children; and Aristotle looked
upon it as a thing indispensably necessary, as M. de Montesquieu
has very judiciously observed. The multiplication of the lowest
classes, that is, of the slaves, never entered into the
consideration of the public, but remained purely a matter of
private concern; and we find it was a question with some, whether
or not it was worth while to breed from them at all. But in our
days the principal object is to support the lower classes from
their own multiplication; and for this purpose, an unequal
division of property seems to me the more favourable scheme;
because the wealth of the rich among us, falls naturally into the
pockets of our industrious poor; whereas the produce of a very
middling fortune does little more than feed the children of the
proprietor, who in course become very commonly and very naturally
an useless burthen upon the land. Let me apply this to an
example. Do we not familiarly observe, that the consolidation of
small estates, and the diminution of gentlemen's families of
middling fortune, do little harm to a modern state. There are
always abundance of this class of inhabitants to be found
whenever there is occasion for them. When a great man buys up the
lands of the neighbouring gentry, or small proprietors, all the
complaints which are heard, turn upon the distress which thence
results to the lower classes, from the loss of their masters and
protectors; but never one word is heard of that made by the
state, from the extinction of the former proprietor's family.
This abundantly shews that the object of modern attention is the
multiplication of the lower classes; consequently it must be an
inconsistency to adopt the practice of the ancients, when our
oeconomy is entirely opposite to theirs.
    QUEST. II. Let this suffice to point out how far the
difference of our manners should influence the division of our
lands. I shall now examine a question relative to the science of
agriculture, not considered as a method of improving the soil,
(this will come in more naturally afterwards,) but of making it
produce to the best advantage, supposing it to be already
improved.
    In treating of the productions of the earth, in consequence
of agriculture, I have all along distinguished them from those
which spontaneously proceed from the force of nature: these are
the immediate gift of God, those are the return of the labour of
his creatures. Every one knows that the labour of mankind is not
in proportion to their numbers, but to their industry. The
produce therefore of agriculture must be estimated, not according
to the quantity of fruits only, but also according to the labour
employed to produce them. These things premised, the question
here proposed to be examined arises, viz. Which species of
agriculture is the most advantageous to a modern society, that
which produces the greatest quantity of fruits absolutely taken,
or that which produces the greatest quantity relatively taken, I
mean to the labour employed?
    This question might easily be resolved, in general, by the
application of principles already deduced; although it cannot
admit of a direct answer, in the manner I have put it. One,
therefore, may say indeterminately, that species is the best
which produces a surplus the best proportioned to the industry,
and to the demands of all the free hands of the state. But as
this solution would not lead me to the object I have in view, I
have thrown in an alternative in order to gain attention to the
principles which I am going to examine, and which influence and
determine the establishment of the one or the other species of
agriculture.
    The principal difficulty I find in the examination of this
question, is to distinguish the effects of agriculture from those
of this spontaneous production of the earth. The returns from
pasture, for example, relatively taken, are, as we have observed,
both from reason and from experience, far greater than those of
corn fields, (vid. supra, chap. 8.) though I little doubt but
that, absolutely taken, the case is quite otherwise; that is to
say, that an acre of the finest corn-land will produce more
nourishment for man, than an equal portion of the finest pasture:
but here we are following the proportion of space and produce,
not of labour; for if the produce of both acres be considered
relatively to the labour necessary for the cultivation, as well
as to the extent, the produce of pasture will be found far
greater, this however I ascribe to the spontaneous operation of
nature, and not to the superior utility of this kind of
agriculture.
    Since therefore it is impossible rightly to separate the
effects of nature from those of art and industry, in this species
of improvement, let us confine our speculations to those only
which have for their object the turning up the surface, and the
sowing or cultivating annual vegetables. For the better conveying
our ideas, let us take an example, and reason from a supposition.
    Let me suppose an island of a small extent and fruitful soil,
suffIciently improved, and cultivated after the manner of the
best lands of England, in the ordinary method of farming.
    In this case we may infer, from what was laid down in the 8th
chapter, that the number of people employed about farming may be
nearly about one half of the whole society. Let the whole
inhabitants of the island be called 1000, that is 500 farmers,
and as many free hands. The 500 farmers must then feed 1000; the
500 free hands must provide for all the other wants of 1000. By
this supposition, and allowing that there is an equal degree of
industry in these two classes, the providing of food will appear
to be an occupation just equal to that of providing for all other
wants.
    One of the society proposes to augment the number of
inhabitants by introducing a more operose species of agriculture,
the produce of which may be absolutely greater, though relatively
less.
    The first question the statesman would naturally put to this
reformer would be: What is your view in increasing the number of
our inhabitants; is it to defend us against our enemies; is it to
supply the wants of strangers, and thereby to enrich ourselves;
is it to supply our own wants with more abundance; or is it to
provide us more abundantly with food? I can hardly find out any
other rational view in wishing for an additional number of people
in any country whatsoever. Let it be answered, that all these
ends may be thereby obtained: and now let us examine how far this
reformation upon agriculture will have the effect of increasing
inhabitants, how far such increase will procure the ends
proposed, and how far the execution of such a plan is a
practicable scheme to an industrious people.
    If the inhabitants be not sufficiently fed, which is the only
thing that can prevent their multiplication, it must proceed from
one of two causes. Either first, that those do procreate who
cannot produce an equivalent for the food of their children; or
secondly, that industry making a quicker progress than
agriculture, the industrious come too strongly in competition
with one another, for the surplus of food to be found; which has
the effect of raising the prices of it, and reducing the portions
too low to suffer a division; and thereby of preventing marriage
and multiplication in the lower classes of the free hands.
    In the first case, it is to no purpose to increase the
produce of agriculture, by rendering it more expensive; for those
who have no equivalent to give when food is cheap, will still be
in greater necessity when it rises in the price. In the second
case, it is hurtful to diminish the surplus of the farmers,
because the supposition proves that the balance is already too
heavy upon the side of the free hands, that is, that the surplus
of the farmers is already become insufficient fully to feed them.
    Two remedies may be proposed for this inconvenience, the one
tending to population, the other to depopulation; and as the end
to be compassed is to set the balance even between husbandmen and
freehands, I shall explain both, and point out how far from
principles it appears, that in either way the end may be
attained.
    The first tending to increase population is the remedy
proposed, and, no doubt, were it possible to introduce a new
system of agriculture of a larger absolute production, although
the relative production should be less, the inhabitants of the
state, becoming thereby better fed, though at a greater cost,
would infallibly multiply. Let me therefore examine this first
part before I say any thing of the other; and for the greater
distinctness I shall return to my example, and examine both the
consequences and the possibility of putting such a plan in
execution.
    Let me suppose, that by using the spade and rake, instead of
the plough and harrow, the lands of our island might be brought
to produce with more abundance; this is a method of increasing
the expence of agriculture, which would require an additional
number of husbandmen.
    Now, by the supposition, 500 farmers fed, though scantily,
the whole of the inhabitants, that is 1000 persons. If therefore
100 of the free hands can be engaged to become farmers, the end
may be attained: more nourishment will be produced; the people
will be better fed; they will multiply. that is, their number
will rise above 1000. Let us next endeavour to form a judgment of
this increase, and of the consequence of the revolution.
    The society will now be composed of 600 farmers and 400 free
hands. The 600 will certainly produce more fruits than formerly;
but as their labour is relatively less productive by the
supposition, it will be impossible for them to furnish a surplus
equal to their own consumption; consequently, the free hands
never will be able to rise to a number equal to theirs; that is,
the society will never get up to 1200. But we supposed, that the
other wants of the society required the industry of one half of
the inhabitants to supply them; that is, of all the 500 free
hands; and, as the number of these has been already reduced, and
can never more rise to the former proportion, as has been said,
must not either the people voluntarily adopt a more simple way of
living; or must not the demand for work rise very considerably?
Let me consider the consequences in both cases. In the first, you
perceive, that if the inhabitants themselves are obliged to
simplify their way of living, for want of hands to supply what
they formerly consumed, three of the four objects proposed by the
reformation become impossible to be attained; to wit, the
defending themselves against their enemies, the supplying the
wants of strangers, and the supplying their own with more
abundance. And with regard to the fourth, the being better fed,
this must cease to be the case, the moment the end is obtained;
that is, the moment the inhabitants are multiplied up to the
proportion of additional food. Consequently, by simplifying their
way of life, and allowing farming to stand upon the new footing,
they compass not any one of the ends they proposed.
    Next, if we suppose, that the inhabitants do not incline to
simplify their way of life, but that the wealthy among them
insist upon purchasing all the instruments of luxury which they
formerly were used to enjoy, must not demand for work greatly
rise, and must not, of consequence, an additional encouragement
be given to that species of labour which had been diminished, in
taking 100 persons from industry, to throw them into the class of
farmers? Will not this make them quickly desert their spade, and
the rather, as they have taken to an employment less lucrative
than that of farming, according to the former system?
    So much for the consequences which would follow, in case the
plan proposed was found practicable; that is, supposing it to be
a thing possible to transport into agriculture a part of an
industrious society, already otherwise employed, and to change
all at once the relative proportion between those who supply
food, and those who purchase it with their industry. We have
begun, by taking this first step for granted; and now I am to
shew what obstacles will be found in the execution.
    We have said, that it is the multiplicity and complexity of
wants which give an encouragement to agriculture, and not
agriculture, or an abundance of food, which inspires mankind with
a disposition to labour. Now, if this principle be true, the
supposition we have proceeded upon is absurd. I am afraid, both
reason and experience will abundantly prove that it is so.
    The natural and necessary effect of industry, in trades and
manufactures, is to promote the increase of relative husbandry;
which by augmenting the surplus, tends of course to increase the
proportion of the free hands relatively to the farmers. A river
may as easily ascend to its source, as a people voluntarily adopt
a more operose agriculture than that already established,
supposing the lands to be fully improved, the spirit of industry
to prevail on one hand, and the farmers to have profit only in
view on the other.
    What farmer could sell the surplus of an expensive
agriculture in competition with another who exercised a species
relatively more productive?
    When lands are improved, the simplification of agriculture is
a necessary concomitant of industry, because diminishing expence
is the only method of gaining a preference at market.
    QUEST. III. When industry is set on foot, it gives
encouragement to agriculture exercised as a trade: and by the
allurements of ease, which a large surplus procures to the
farmers, it does hurt to that species which is exercised as a
method of subsistence. Lands become more generally, and less
thoroughly laboured. In some countries, tillage is set on foot
and encouraged; this is an operose agriculture. While industry
goes forward, and while a people can remain satisfied with a
nourishment consisting chiefly of bread, this system of
agriculture will subsist, and will carry numbers very high. If
wealth increases, and if those who have it begin to demand a much
greater proportion of work than formerly, while they consume no
more food, then I believe numbers may diminish from the
principles I am now going in quest of.
    I return to the council of the island where the proposition
laid down upon the carpet is, The scanty subsistence of the
inhabitants requires redress.
    A Machiavelian stands up (of such there are some in every
country) and proposes, instead of multiplying the inhabitants, by
rendering agriculture more operose, to diminish their number, by
throwing a quantity of corn-fields into grass. What is the
intention of agriculture, says he, but to nourish a state? By our
operose method of plowing and sowing, one half of the whole
produce is consumed by those who raise it; whereas by having a
great part of our island in pasture, one half of the husbandmen
may be saved. Pray what do you propose to do with those whom you
intend to make idle? replies a citizen. Let them betake
themselves to industry. But industry is sufficiently, nay more
than sufficiently, stocked already. If, says Machiavel, the
supernumerary husbandmen be thrown out of a way of living, they
may go where they please; we have no occasion for them, nor for
any one who lives to feed himself alone. But you diminish the
number of your people, replies the citizen, and consequently your
strength; and if afterwards you come to be attacked by your
enemies, you will wish to have those back again for your defence,
whom in your security you despised. To this the other makes
answer: there you trust to the Egyptian reed. If they be
necessary for feeding us at present, how shall we be able to live
while we employ them as soldiers? We may live without many
things, but not without the labour of our husbandmen. Whether we
have our grounds in tillage or in pasture, if this class be
rightly proportioned to the labour required, we never can take
any from it. In those countries where we see princes have
recourse to the land to recruit their armies, we may safely
conclude, that there the land is overstocked; and that industry
has not as yet been able to purge off all the superfluous mouths:
but with us the case is different, where agriculture is justly
proportioned to the number of husbandmen. If I propose a reform,
it is to augment only the surplus, upon which all the state,
except the husbandmen, are fed; if the surplus, after the reform,
is greater than at present, the plan is good, although 250 of our
farmers should thereby be forced to starve for hunger.
    Though no man is, I believe, capable to reason in so inhuman
a style, and though the revolution here proposed be an impossible
supposition, if meant to be executed all at once, the same
effects however must be produced, in every country where we see
corn-fields by degrees turned into pasture: the change is gradual
only, industry is not overstocked anywhere, and subsistence may
be drawn from other countries, where the operose species of
agriculture can be carried on with profit.
    I must now touch again upon another part of my subject, which
I think has been treated too superficially.
    In a former chapter I have shewn how industry has the natural
effect of collecting into towns and cities the free hands of a
state, leaving the farmers in their farms and villages. This
distribution served the purpose of explaining certain principles;
but when examined relatively to other circumstances which at that
time I had not in my eye, it will be found by far too general.
Let me therefore add some farther observations upon this matter.
    The extensive agriculture of plowing and sowing, is the
proper employment of the country, and is the foundation of
population in every nation fed upon its own produce. Cities are
commonly surrounded by kitchen-gardens, and rich grass-fields;
these are the proper objects of agriculture for those who live in
suburbs, or who are shut up within the walls of small towns. The
gardens produce various kinds of nourishment, which cannot easily
be brought from a distance, in that fresh and luxuriant state
which pleases the eye, and conduces to health. They offer a
continual occupation to man, and very little for cattle;
therefore are properly situated in the proximity of towns and
cities. The grass fields again are commonly either grazed by
cows, for the production of milk, butter, cream, &c. which suffer
by long carriage; or kept in pasture for preserving fatted
animals in good order until the markets demand them; or they are
cut in grass for the cattle of the city. They may also be turned
into hay with profit; because the carriage of a bulky commodity
from a great distance is sometimes too expensive. Thus we
commonly find agriculture disposed in the following manner. In
the center stands the city, surrounded by kitchen-gardens; beyond
these lies a belt of fine luxuriant pasture or hay-fields;
stretch beyond this, and you find the beginning of what I call
operose farming, plowing and sowing; beyond this lie grazing
farms for the fattening of cattle; and last of all come the
mountainous and large extents of unimproved or ill improved
grounds, where animals are bred. This seems the natural
distribution, and such I have found it almost every where
established, when particular circumstances do not invert the
order.
    The poorness of the soil near Paris, for example, presents
you with fields of rye-corn at the very gates, and with the most
extensive kitchen-gardens and orchards, even for cherries and
peaches, at a considerable distance from town. Other cities I
have found, and I can cite the example of this which I at present
inhabit (Padoua), where no kitchen-garden is to be found near it,
but every spot is covered with the richest grain; two thirds with
wheat, and the remaining third with Indian corn. The reason of
this is palpable. The town is of a vast extent, in proportion to
the inhabitants; the gardens are all within the walls, and the
dung of the city enables the corn-fields to produce constantly.
Hay is brought from a greater distance, because the expence of
distributing the dung over a distant field, would be greater than
that of transporting the hay by water-carriage. The farm-houses
here appear no larger than huts, as they really are, built by the
farmers, because the space to be laboured is very small, in
proportion to the produce; hence it is, that a farmer here pays
the value of the full half of the crop to the landlord, and out
of the remaining half, not only sows the ground and buys the
dung, but furnishes the cattle and labouring instruments, nay
even rebuilds his house, when occasion requires.
    When first I examined these fertile plains, I began to lament
the prodigal consumption of such valuable lands, in a multitude
of very broad highways, issuing to all quarters; many of which I
thought might be saved, in consideration of the vast advantage
accruing upon such oeconomy. but upon farther rejection I
perceived, that the loss was inconsiderable; for the fertility of
the soil proceeding chiefly from the manure laid upon it, the
loss sustained from the roads ought to be computed at no more
than the value of the land when uncultivated. The case would be
very different, were roads now to be changed, or new ones carried
through the corn-fields; the loss then would be considerable,
though even this would be temporary, and affect particular
persons only; for the same dung, which now supports these lands
in their fertility, would quickly fertilize others in their
place, and in a few years matters would stand as at present.
    These last reflections naturally lead me to examine a
question which has been treated by a very polite French writer,
the author of l'Ami de l'Homme, and which comes in here naturally
enough, before I put an end to this first book. Here it is.
    QUEST. IV. Does an unnecessary consumption of the earth's
productions, either in food, clothing, or other wants; and a
prodigal employment of fine rich fields, in gardens, avenues,
great roads, and other uses which give small returns, hurt
population, by rendering food and necessaries less abundant, in a
kingdom such as France, in its present situation?
    My answer is, That, were France fully cultivated and peopled,
the introduction of superfluous consumption would be an abuse,
and would diminish the number of inhabitants; as the contrary is
the case, it proves an advantage. I shall now give my reasons for
differing in opinion from the gentleman whose performance I have
cited.
    As the question is put, you perceive the end to be compassed
is, to render food and necessaries abundant; because the abuse is
considered in no other light, than relatively to the particular
effect of diminishing the proper quantity of subsistence, which
the king would incline to preserve, for the nourishment and uses
of his people. I shall confine myself therefore chiefly to this
object, and if I shew, that these superfluous employments of the
surface of the earth, and prodigal consumptions of her fruits,
are really no harm, but an encouragement to the improvement of
the lands of France in her present state, I shall consider the
question as sufficiently resolved: because if the abuse, as it is
called, prove favourable to agriculture, it can never prove
hurtful to population; however, from the inattention of
government, it may affect foreign trade: This is an object
entirely foreign to the present question. But before I enter upon
the subject, it is proper to observe, that I am of opinion, that
any system of oeconomy which necessarily tends to corrupt the
manners of a people, ought by every possible means to be
discouraged, although no particular prejudice should result from
it, either to population, or to plentiful subsistence.
    Now in the question before us, the only abuse I can find in
these habits of extraordinary consumption, appears to be relative
to the character of the consumers, and seems in no way to proceed
from the effects of the consumption. The vices of men may no
doubt prove the cause of their making a superfluous consumption;
but the consumption they make can hardly ever be the cause of
this vice. The most virtuous man in France may have the most
splendid table, the richest clothes, the most magnificent
equipages, the greatest number of useless horses, the most
pompous palace, and most extensive gardens. The most enormous
luxury to be conceived, in our acceptation of this term, so long
as it is directed to no other object than the consumption of the
labour and ingenuity of man, is compatible with virtue as well as
with vice. This being premised, I come to the point in hand.
    France, at present, is in her infancy as to improvement,
although the advances she has made within a century excite the
admiration of the world. I shall not go far in search of the
proof of this assertion. Great tracts of her lands are still
uncultivated, millions of her inhabitants are idle. When all
comes to be cultivated, and all are employed, then she will be in
a state of perfection, relatively to the moral possibility of
being improved. The people are free, slavery is unknown, and
every man is charged with feeding himself, and bringing up his
children. The ports of the country are open to receive
subsistence, and this nation, as much as any other, may be
considered as an individual in the great society of the world;
that is, may increase in power, wealth, and ease, relatively to
others, in proportion to the industry of her inhabitants. This
being the case, all the principles of political oeconomy, which
we have been inquiring after, may freely operate in this kingdom.
    France has arrived at her present pitch of luxury, relatively
to consumption, by slow degrees. As she has grown in wealth, her
desire of employing it has grown also. In proportion as her
demands have increased, more hands have been employed to supply
them; for no article of expence can be increased, without
increasing the work of those who supply it. If the same number of
inhabitants in the city of Paris consume four times as much of
any necessary article as formerly, I hope it will be allowed,
that the production of such necessaries must be four times as
abundant, and consequently, that many more people must be
employed in providing them.
    What is it that encourages agriculture, but a great demand
for its productions? What encourages multiplication, but a great
demand for people; that is, for their work? Would any one
complain of the extravagant people in Paris, if, instead of
consuming those vast superfluities, they were to send them over
to Dover, for a return in English gold? Where is the difference
between the prodigal consumption and the sale? The one brings in
money, the other brings in none: but as to food and necessaries,
for providing the poor and frugal, their contingent, in either
case, stands exactly the same.
    But, says one, were it not for this extraordinary
consumption, every thing would be cheaper. This I readily allow;
but will any body say, that reducing the price of the earth's
productions is a method to encourage agriculture; especially in a
country where grounds are not improved, and where they cannot be
improved; chiefly, because the expence surpasses all the profits
which possibly can be drawn from the returns? High prices
therefore, the effect of great consumption, are certainly
advantageous to the extension of agriculture. If I throw my rich
corn fields into gravel-walks and gardens, they will no more, I
suppose, come into competition with those of my neighbour, the
laborious husbandman. Who will then lose by my extravagance? Not
the husbandman. It will perhaps be said, the nation in general
will lose; because you deprive them of their food. This might be
true, were the laying waste the cornfields a sudden revolution,
and extensive enough to affect the whole society and were the
sea-ports and barriers of the kingdom shut: but that not being
the case, the nation, upon the smallest deficiency, goes to
market with her money, and loses none of her inhabitants.
    Obj. But if living is made dear, manufacturers must starve,
for want of employment.
    Answ. Not those who supply home consumption, but those only
who supply foreigners living more cheaply; and of such I know but
few. The interest of this class shall be fully examined in
another place. At present I shall only observe, that the laying
waste corn-fields in an industrious country, where refinement has
set on foot a plan of useful husbandry, will have no other
effect, than that of rendering grain for a while proportionally
dearer: consequently, agriculture will be thereby encouraged; and
in a few years the loss will be repaired, by a farther extension
of improvement. This will make food plentiful and cheap: then
numbers will increase, until it become scarce again. It is by
such alternative vicissitudes, that improvement and population
are carried to their height. While the improvement of lands goes
forward, I must conclude, that demand for subsistence is
increasing; and if this be not a proof of population, I am much
mistaken.
    I can very easily suppose, that a demand for work may
increase considerably, in consequence of an augmentation of
riches only because there are no bounds to the consumption of
work; but as for articles of nourishment, the case is quite
different. The most delicate liver in Paris will not put more of
the earth's productions into his belly, than another: he may pick
and choose, but he will always find, that what he leaves will go
to feed another: victuals are not thrown away in any country I
have ever been in. It is not in the most expensive kitchens where
there is found the most prodigal dissipation of the abundant
fruits of the earth; and it is with such that a people is fed,
not with ortolans, truffles, and oysters, sent from Marenne.
    From what has been said, I must conclude, that while the
consumption of the earth's produce, and of the work of man tends
to excite industry, in providing for extraordinary demands; when
the interest of foreign trade does not enter into the question;
and while there are lands enough remaining unimproved, to furnish
the first matter, namely, subsistence, flax, wool, silk, timber,
etc. there can be no political abuse from the misapplication or
unnecessary destruction of either fruits or labour. The
misapplier, or dissipator, is punished by the loss of his money;
the industrious man is rewarded by the acquisition of it. We have
said, that vice is not more essentially connected with
superfluity, than virtue with industry and frugality. But such
questions are foreign to my subject. I would however recommend it
to moralists, to study circumstances well, before they carry a
pretended reformation so far, as to interrupt an established
system in the political oeconomy of their country.

NOTES:

1. Although in common language we call mimsters of state, and
even such as are eminent for their knowledge in state affairs, by
the name of statesmen, the reader is here advertised to attend
carefully to the definition of this word in the text, because the
term statesman is uniformly taken in the same acceptation through
this whole work.

2. By Roderigo, the last king of the Gothic line.

3. Given by an Austrian officer to a Genoese, which occasioned
the revolt in 1747 by which the Germans were expelled the city.

4. As my subject is different from the doctrine of morals, I have
no occasion to consider the term luxury in any other than a
political sense, to wit, as a principle which produces
employment, and gives bread to those who supply the demands of
the rich. For this reason I have chosen the above definition of
it, which conveys no idea, either of abuse, sensuality, or
excess; nor do I, at present, even consider the hurtful
consequences of it as to foreign trade. Principles here are
treated of with regard to mankind in general, and the effects of
luxury are only considered relatively to multiplication and
agriculture. Our reasoning will take a different turn, when we
come to examine the separate interest of nations, and the
principles of trade.

5. I  beg, therefore, that at present my reasoning may be carried
no farther (from inductions and suppositions) than my intention
is that it should be. I am no patron, either of vice, profusion,
or the dissipation of private fortunes; althogh I may now and
then reason very coolly upon the political consequences of such
diseases in a state, when I consider only the influence they have
as to feeding and multiplying a people. My subject is too
extensive of itself to admit of being confouded with the doctrine
either of morals, or of government, however closely these may
appear connected with it; and did I not begin by simplifying
ideas as nuc as possible, and by banishing combinations of them,
I should quickly lose my way, and involve myself in perplexities
inextricable.

6. Every transition of money from hand to hand, for a valuable
consideration, implies some service done, something wrought by
man, or performed by his ingenity, or some consumption of
something produced by his labour. The quicker therefore the
circulation of money is in any country, the nore strongly it may
be inferred, that the inhabitats are laborious; and vice versa:
but of this more hereafter.

7. Hence we may conclude, that in those countries where the
people live upon the spontaneous fruits, the whole society
(considered in a political light) is found composed of free
hands. Nature there supplies the place of the whole class of
farmers.
    We have said that industry and manufactures are the
occupation of the free hands of a state; consequently, where the
proportion of them is the largest, industry should flourish to
the greatest advantage; that is to say, in countries where the
inhabitants live upon the spontaneous fruits: but this is not the
case. Why? Because there is another circumstance of equal weight
which prevents it. These people are unacquainted with want, and
want is the spur to industry. Let this suffice, in general, as to
the distribution of inhabitants in countries unacquainted with
labour.

8. This question is now with the greatest precision resolved by
the publisher of a pamphlet intitled, Three Tracts on the Corn
Trade and Corn Laws, with a Supplement; Lond. 1766. Second Edit.
(C. Smith).
     We have there, authentic accounts of all the grain exported
from England, or imported into it from abroad, from 1697 to 1765,
from which it appears (p. III.) that the greatest quantity of all
sorts of grain ever exported, viz. of wheat, barley, oats,
oatmeal, and rye, was in the year 1750, and amounted to 1,606,688
English quarters; and (p. 144.) we have an ingenious computation
of the growth, consumption, export, and import of these grains,
upon averages taken from the 68 years above mentioned; where the
ordinary or mean consumption of England is rated at 13,555,850
quarters. So the greatest exportation ever known in one year very
little exceeds 1/8 of the ordinary consumption, and is equivalent
to about 46 days' provision only.
    On the other hand, the greatest importation ever known, was
in the year 1757, when the total quantity inmported, was 151,743
quarters of all sorts of grain as above, which does not amount to
1/89 of the ordinary consumption of the people of England, and is
equivalent to their subsistence for 4 days 2 hours and 24 minutes
(p. 124).
    These facts were unknown to me when I wrote this chapter. I
had at that time been long abroad, and had very little
communication with my own country: and though I very strongly
felt the consequences of my own reasoning, I was so far overawed
by the force of the popular opinion, that I durst not venture to
rate either the surplus or the deficiency otherwise than it is
found in the text.

9. The truth of this, also, is made evident from the tracts cited
in the last note: but to a far greater extent, than I could take
upon me to affirm from theory alone.
    It is there said (p. 144.) that the mean export in England,
is barely 1/33 (1/32) part of the growth exclusive of the seed;
and that the mean import is equal to 1/571 part of the
consumption, and 1/18 part of the export.
    It would be amazing indeed, were a people, so circumstanced
with respect to subsistence, ever found in a real want of foreign
supply. But it is nowise amazing, that those who have no interest
in agriculture, should complain, and cry out for importation,
when a bad policy in the corn trade, and the want of a small
granary, equal to the national consumption during five days only,
make prices occasionally rise, and when the smallest quantity
imported from abroad is found to make them immediately fall,
though at a considerable loss both to the agriculture and the
trade of the nation.
    If it be asked, how so small a deficiency as 1/571 part of
the ordinary consumption, should make so sensible a difference to
a nation, as to raise prices to an exorbitant height? And how an
overplus so small as 1/33 should be considered as great plenty,
and make prices fall universally? I answer, that if in a good
year, after every nman, and every animal has been fully fed,
there shall still remain on hand a quantity equal to 1/33 of what
has been consumed, this overplus, considered by itself, is a very
great quantity, though small if considered relatively to the
total consumption of the kingdom; and were it not exported, it
would sink prices too much and ruin the farmer. That in a bad
year, again, the deficiency of 1/571 part of the ordinary
consumption, though very inconsiderable relatively to the whole,
is still very great when we consider, that before prices can rise
so high as to nmake government think of opening the ports to
importation, the lowest classes of the industrious inhabitants,
whose gains are small, must have been already reduced to the
minimum of their consumption; and when people are brought to the
minimum, a very small diminution upon their food may bring on the
greatest distress.
    In good years, we are therefore to consider the quantity
exported, as that part of the crop which is over and above the
full nourishment for men and cattle: And in bad years, we are to
consider what is imported, to be what is wanting of the scrimply
necessary, for subsisting the lowest classes of our people, at
the price they can afford to pay for it.
    But among all the ingenious inquiries which the English have
made into this subject, I have never seen (till of late in a new
publication intitled the Farmer's Letters) any attempt made, to
compare the prices of subsistence with the rate of the lowest
gains of the industrious who must go to market. From the
exposition of this matter by this ingenious author, it appears
very plain to me, that prices have never risen so high in
England, as to make importation necessary. The very lowest
manufacturer and day-labourer there, may live better at the
highest price of subsistence in any year since the beginning of
this century, than the generality of such of their order actually
do, in any country in Europe which I have seen. From which I
conclude that as long as matters stand in this situation, all
importation of subsistence from foreign nations, not under the
dominion of Great Britain should be intirely suspended.