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 of 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 only by the means of swift circulation from hand to hand, (as shall be observed in its proper place) that they become productive of the effects mentioned above[[I]].
[I]. Every transition of money from hand to hand, for a valuable consideration, implies some service done, something wrought by man, or performed by his ingenuity, or some consumption of something produced by his labour. The quicker therefore the circulation of money is in any country, the more strongly it may be inferred, that the inhabitants are laborious; and vice versa: but of this more hereafter.
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 only produces to those who labour, and in proportion to the industry of every one, where we may expect to find great multitudes; and even these will be found greater or less, in proportion as the turn of the inhabitants is directed to ingenuity and industry.
In such countries where these are 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 nourishment produced by 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 manufactures, not the labourers, would be the first to be extinguished for want of nourishment.