I very readily agree, that any person, who would calculate his labour in agriculture, purely for his own subsistence, would find abundance of idle hours. But the question is, whether in good oeconomy such a person would not be better employed in providing nourishment for others, than in providing for any other want. When he provides food, he surely provides for a want; and experience shews, that it is better for a man to apply close to one trade, than to turn himself to several.
Hence I conclude, that the best way of binding a free society together, is by multiplying reciprocal obligations, and creating a general dependence between all its members. This cannot be better effected, than by appropriating a certain number of inhabitants, for the production of the quantity of food required for all, and by distributing the remainder into proper classes for supplying every other want. I say farther, that this distribution is not only the most rational, but that mankind fall naturally into it; and misery attends and has ever attended those who have been found without a particular employment.
It must not be concluded from this reasoning, that abuse is always implied when we find any of the classes of the free hands of a state casually employed in agriculture.
There is such a variety of circumstances in every country, that without a peculiar talent of laying principles together, so as to answer every combination, the most perfect theory which can be proposed must appear defective.
In countries ill-improved, where industry begins to take root, we are not to conclude, that good policy requires a sudden and immediate separation between the dwellings of the husbandmen and free hands. Sudden revolutions are constantly hurtful, and a good statesman ought to lay down his plan of arriving at perfection by gradual steps.
If he finds, as is the case of rude and uncivilized societies, that many are occupied, partly, in providing subsistence for their own family, partly, in other useful pursuits, he may by degrees detach as many as he can from every other branch of industry, except that of agriculture. The most wealthy are the most proper to carry this branch to any degree of perfection. The landed men ought to be encouraged by every means to apply to the study of farming. This employment has been considered as honourable in all ages of the world, and very well suits the rank, the interest, and the amusement of gentlemen.
The next step is to introduce manufactures into the country, and to provide a ready market abroad for every superfluous part of them. The allurement of gain will soon engage every one to pursue that branch of industry which succeeds best in his hands. By these means many will follow manufactures and abandon agriculture; others will prosecute their manufactures in the country, and avail themselves at the same time, of small portions of land, proper for gardens, grass for cows, and even for producing certain kinds of fruit necessary for their own maintenance.
This I do not consider as a species of farming. It is more properly, in a political light, a sort of village life, only the village here appears dispersed over a large extent; and I call it a village life, because here the occupation of the inhabitants is principally directed towards the prosecution of their trades: agriculture is but a subaltern consideration, and will be carried on so far only, as it occasions no great avocation from the main object. It will however have the effect to parcel out the lands into small possessions: a system admirably calculated for the improvement of the soil, and advantageous to population, when the spirit of industry is not thereby checked. This is not the case[not the case] when such possessors apply totally to agriculture, and content themselves with a bare subsistence from it, without prosecuting any other branch of industry, or forming any plan of ambition for themselves, or for their children’s emerging from so circumscribed a sphere of life: from this alone proceeds, in most countries, the inconveniency of a minute subdivision of land property.
We shall presently see, by various examples, the truth of this proposition; and from what observations I have been able to make, it appears, that a great inconvenience flows from it; the property of the lands, and not the bare possession of them, is vested in the lower classes. While they only remain as tenants, the interest of the proprietor, on one hand, will lead him to incorporate these small possessions into larger farms, the moment the possessors, by relaxing from their principal occupation, (industry) are no longer able to pay a rent above the value of the grounds when let in farms; and the interest of these tenants, on the other hand, will frequently lead them to abandon such small possessions, when the prosecution of their industry demands a change of habitation. Thus the interest of agriculture will go hand in hand with that of industry, and classes will separate their habitations, according as their respective interests require.
It is certainly the interest of every landlord, whose land is ill improved, to multiply habitations upon it, providing he makes choice of such people as can live by some other branch of industry than bare agriculture: and, in many cases, it may be his advantage to incorporate his lands into farms as soon as they are fully cultivated. By this plan he will advance the improvement of his land; he will multiply the useful inhabitants; and he will at the same time share the profits of their industry beyond the value of the land rent.