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.