Thoughts on the mechanism of societies

by marquis de Charles Casaux

The annual sum of 110,000,000, divided amongst 9,350,000 inhabitants, will produce daily little less than 8 pence per head, from the Monarch down to the meanest subject.

The observations I have made in several parts of France, from documents, it is true, no ways comparable to those of Mr. Young, could not justify my allowing so large a revenue to each individual in that kingdom. Yet France and England are the two richest and most flourishing countries in Europe.

Mr. Young rates the clear profits of the Manufactories and Trade of England alone at 37 millions; but as these two objects have apparently been trebled in regard to the exports, they cannot be supposed to have exceeded 12 millions in the reign of William and Mary. To this let us add, in a proportion rather exaggerated, 5 millions for the landed and commercial revenues of Scotland; and it will appear, that, including the 32 millions of landed produce, as computed by Mr. King, the total amount of the revenue, land and trade of both countries included, could hardly be equal to 49 millions in the beginning of the present century. Now, from the same author, both kingdoms contained at that period 7,200,000 inhabitants, who, if admitted to a brotherly share, would have claimed only 4½d. each per day. I do not confine myself to a nicer exactness in the fractions: the object is not to calculate the precise instant of an eclipse; or at least, that of English prosperity appearing to me no ways probable, I think myself justified in neglecting every thing that might impede my operations, without influencing, in the least, my arguments.

Yet the wages of a journeyman were nevertheless rated then at 8d. per day: but let it be observed, that the number of working-days, when balanced with the holidays, sickness, and want of employment, those eight pence, distributed in the journeyman’s family, were often reduced to two; just as the sixteen pence, the present price of labour, according to Mr. Young’s Estimate, commonly amount to 4d. only, although the brotherly share of each man nearly amounts to 8d. If any one should be inclined to call this, injustice, let him consider that this very multitude of reductions from 4d. to 2d. and from 8d. to 4d. from William III. to this present time, has been the only means of accumulating by degrees that immense stock of 600 millions and upwards, manifestly laid out by the State in less than a century, and of which the National Debt makes a part. It is evident that if each individual, from William III. had only spent at the rate of 5d. per day, there would be no National Debt; but as each man of the nation could, generally speaking, and upon an equal proportion, lay out only 4½d. per day, the exceeding halfpenny must have long ago swallowed up the whole principal, the produce of former reductions.

Not one of the monuments erected since that period would now exist, nor would a single trace be left of the stocks to which the nation owes its present wealth: each portion of the national stock, every monument posterior to that era, prove as many persons reduced in the origin from 4d. to 2d. and then from 8d. to 4d. as either of the above two sums are oftener told in the value of such monument, or such stock as might be made the subject of inquiry. No country in the world can boast of a more respectable source of its opulence.⸺This opulence must either be given up, or the inconveniences that attend it be submitted to. In all parts of the world the labourer earns a livelihood, and very little above that: yet this very trifle is sufficient to make him happy, wherever he cannot be compelled to work without pay. He feels little, never takes the trouble of thinking, and leaves off work only to eat, make merry, or go to rest.—Is our lot better, with that fatal degree of reflection by which our whole life so often centers within a single point?

But is the nation in general as happy in our days as it was in those of William III? Have those causes, which tend to produce a decrease in the population, no manner of influence on the people’s happiness? And is not the reality of such causes more self-evident, than the pretended proofs adduced universally in favour of its increase?

Without entering into any dispute on the merits of the researches concerning population, which would lead to some truths perhaps unthought of hitherto; here follow the arguments which will occur to any man who stands not in need of a fixed and precise number of thinking heads, laborious hands, and well-digesting stomachs.

1st. It is not easy to conceive how, the landed revenue being nearly double, there should be a less number of husbandmen; for it is not with agriculture as we find it in several manufactories, where the invention of engines, and an alteration in the mode of working, can so advantageously supply the supposed decrease in the number of hands to work after the primitive manner. The valuable number of husbandmen seems therefore, in my opinion, placed beyond even the idea of a decrease.

2dly. It is no less impossible to imagine, that the number of sailors being nearly in a triple proportion to what it was, and the quantity of exports probably augmented on account of the burden of the outward-bound ships, a diminution should have taken place among that class of people, equally precious to the State, for establishing and ascertaining its wealth and strength, as the cultivation is indispensable to secure and support its very existence.