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 a loss to fix one’s attention too much upon any one object, however important. No body 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 almost every body in the state should be employed in it; that would be inverting the order of things, and turning the servant into the master. The duty and business of man is not to feed; he is fed, in order to do his duty, and to become useful.
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 determined number of men, and I 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.