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.