CHAP. XII.
Of the great Advantage of combining a well digested Theory and a perfect Knowledge of Facts with the practical Part of Government, in order to make a People multiply.
We have the happiness to live in an age where daily opportunities offer, of perceiving the difference between exercising an art according to the mechanical received practice, and according to the principles which study and refinement have introduced for bringing it to perfection. This will appear in the strongest light to one who compares the operation of building an ordinary house, with that of executing a great public work, where the most able architects are employed; the making a common parish road, with that of a military way, through mountains, forests, and marshes. In the first, every difficulty appears unsurmountable: in the second, the greatest obstacles are made to vanish. By comparing these things, we distinguish between the artist, who proceeds by the rules of the science, and the ordinary tradesman, who has no other resource than common practice, aided by his own ingenuity.
Every branch of science must be carried to perfection by a master in it, formed by the hand of nature, and improved by application and experience. The great genius of Mr. de Colbert saw through the confusion and perplexity of the administration of the French finances; he invented resources for swelling the public treasure, which never would have been liable to so many inconveniencies as are complained of, had the administration been conducted with as much disinterestedness, as it was set on foot with ability. The genius of Mr. Law was original as to figures and paper credit. Sir Robert Walpole discovered new principles of taxation, he extended the plan of public credit, and reduced the application of it to a science. These were born statesmen, they were creators of new ideas, they found out new principles for the government of men, and led them by their interest to concur in the execution of their plans. Men of a speculative disposition may broach hints, although the force of theory, destitute of practice, and unassisted by experiment, be not sufficient to carry them the length of forming a plan. A great genius, with power and authority, has occasion for no more than a hint to strike out the system, and to carry it, with success, into execution.
No problems of political oeconomy seem more obscure than those which influence the multiplication of the human species, and which determine the distribution and employment of them, so as best to advance the prosperity of each particular society.
I have no where found these matters treated to my wish, nor have I ever been able to satisfy myself concerning them. There are many clouds which still cover the fruitful fields of this science; and until these be dissipated, the political eye cannot take in the whole landscape, nor judge of the deformities which appear in the many representations which our modern painters are daily giving of it.
I may here, without an imputation of vanity, put myself so far upon a level with the great Montesquieu, as to adopt the saying of Correggio, Io anche son pittore; I am also a dawber; for I frankly acknowledge my own insufficiency to treat this subject with perspicuity: my frequent repetitions, and my often returning to it at different times, in order to clear up my ideas and those of my readers, shews plainly, that I am sensible of my own insufficiency. By setting it in different lights, and viewing it as it were from different stations, perhaps both my reader and I may come at last to see a little clearer.
In a former chapter, I have endeavoured to lay down the principles which influence multiplication; but alas! they are all so general, that they can be considered only as the most remote. They may satisfy a slight speculation, but can be of little use in practice. I have principally insisted upon those which are found to operate at all times among societies where primitive simplicity prevails. Now this matter comes to be examined in a more complex light, as relative to the modern manners of mankind, which no statesman, however able, can change, where trade, industry, luxury, credit, taxes, and debts, are introduced. In these the most polite nations of Europe are involved. This is a chain of adamant, it hangs together by a cohesion, which the successive revolutions of three centuries have so cemented with the spirit of nations, that it appears to be indissoluble. It is not my business to examine how far the modern system is to be preferred to the antient; my point of view is, to investigate how a statesman may turn the circumstances which have produced this new plan of oeconomy to the best advantage for mankind, leaving the reformation of such plan to time and events, of which I am not the master. Schemes of recalling antient simplicity, and of making mankind honest and virtuous, are beautiful speculations: I admire them as much as any body, but not enough to believe them practicable in our degenerate age.
If therefore the principles I here lay down appear contradictory to so amiable a system of policy, let no man thence conclude any thing to my disadvantage upon the account of my particular opinion of it, which is a matter of no importance whatsoever. My object is to examine the consequences of what we feel and see daily passing, and to point out how far the bad may be avoided, and the good turned to the best advantage.
The loss of antient simplicity, and the introduction of this complicated scheme of living, has rendered the mechanism of government infinitely more difficult, and almost every disorder in the political body affects multiplication. Depopulation is as certain a mark of political diseases, as wasting is of those in the human body. The increase of numbers in a state shews youth and vigour; when numbers do not diminish, we have an idea of manhood, and of age when they decline.