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 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 that 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 inconveniencies 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 only useful in consideration 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 1000l. 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 are only employed, for who ever 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 1000l. spent at the end of the year. Neither (A) nor (B) do any work; nor 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 be 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, in place 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 only idle consumers, 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 determined number of rich idle consumers necessary to employ a determined number of industrious people, no more than of masters to employ a fixt 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 are calculated, as I hope to be able to shew, 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 their 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.