In some countries you find every farm-house surrounded with small huts, possessed by numbers of people, supposed to be useful to the farmer. These in Scotland are called cottars, (cottagers) because they live in cottages. If you consider them in a political light, they will appear to be inhabitants appropriated for agriculture. In one sense they are so, if by that you understand the gathering in of the fruits; in another they are not, if by agriculture you understand the turning up the surface. I bring in this example, and shall enlarge a little upon it, because I imagine it to be, less or more, the picture of Europe 400 years ago.
The Scotch farmer must have hands to gather in a scanty produce, spread over a large extent of ground. He has six cottars, I shall suppose; but these cottars must have wives, and these wives will have children, and all must be fed before the master’s rent can be paid. It never comes into the cottar’s head to suppose that his children can gain money by their labour; the farmer never supposes that it is possible for him to pay his rent without the assistance of his cottars to tend his cattle, and gather in his crop; and the master cannot go against the custom of the country, without laying his land waste. All these children are ready at the farmer’s disposal; he can, without any expence, send what parcels of sheep he pleases, to different distances of half a mile or more, to feed upon spots of ground which, without the conveniency of these children, would be entirely lost. By this plan of farming, landlords who have a great extent of country which they are not able to improve, can let the whole in a very few farms, and at the same time all the spontaneous produce of the earth is gathered in and consumed. If you compare the rent of these lands with the extent, it appears very small; if you compare it with the numbers fed upon the farm, you will find that an estate in the highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times as many people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province. Thus it is in some estates as in some convents of the begging order, the more mouths the better cheer.
I shall now suppose our modern policy to inspire an ingenious or public spirited lady to set up a weaver or two at a farm-house. The cottars begin to spin; they will be a long time in attaining to a dexterity sufficient to appear at the weaver’s house, in competition with others who are accustomed to the trade; consequently this manufacture will be long in a languishing condition; but if the undertaking is supported with patience, these obstacles will be got the better of. Those who tended herds of cattle for a poor maintenance, will turn themselves to a more profitable occupation; the farmer will find more difficulty in getting hands, he will complain, perhaps give way; the master will lose a year’s rent, and no body will take so extensive a farm; it must be divided, then it must be improved, and then it produces more grain upon one tenth, than perhaps formerly was produced upon the whole. This grain is bought with the price of spinning; the parents divide with the children, who are fed, and spin in their turn. When this is accomplished, what is the revolution? Why, formerly the earth fed all the inhabitants with her spontaneous productions, as I may call them; now more labour is exercised upon turning up her surface, this she pays in grain, which belongs to the strong man for his labour and toil; women and children have no direct share, because they have not contributed thereto, as they did in feeding cattle. But they spin, and have money to buy what they have not force to produce; consequently they live; but as they become useless as cottars, they remove from their mother earth, and gather into villages. When this change is effected the lands appear less inhabited; ruinous huts (nay, villages I may call them) are found frequently, and many would be apt to conclude, that the country is depopulated; but this is by no means found to be the case, when the whole is taken together.
The spirit therefore of the principal people of a country determines the employment of the lower classes; the employment of these determines their usefulness to the state, and their usefulness, their multiplication. The more they are useful, the more they gain, according to the definition of the contract of society; the more they gain, the more they can feed; and consequently the more they will marry and divide with their children. This increases useful population, and encourages agriculture. Compare the former with the present situation, as to numbers, as to ease, as to happiness!
Is it not plain, that when the earth is not improved it cannot produce so much nourishment for man as when it is? On the other hand, if industry does not draw into the hands of the indigent, wherewith to purchase this additional nourishment, no body will be at a considerable first expence to break up grounds in order to produce it. The withdrawing therefore a number of hands from a trifling agriculture forces, in a manner, the husbandman to work the harder; and by hard labour upon a small spot, the same effect is produced as with slight labour upon a great extent.
I have said, that I imagined the state of agriculture in the Scotch farm, was a pretty just representation of the general state of Europe about 400 years ago: if not in every province of every country, at least in every country for the most part. Several reasons induce me to think so: first, where there is no industry, nothing but the earth directly can feed her children, little alienation of her fruits can take place. Next, because I find a wonderful analogy between the way of living in some provinces of different countries with what I have been describing. Pipers, blue bonnets, and oat meal, are known in Swabia, Auvergne, Limousin, and Catalonia, as well as in Lochaber: numbers of idle, poor, useless hands, multitudes of children, whom I have found to be fed, no body knows how, doing nothing at the age of fourteen, keeping of cattle and going to school, the only occupations supposed possible for them. If you ask why they are not employed, they tell you because commerce is not in the country: they talk of commerce as if it was a man, who comes to reside in some countries in order to feed the inhabitants. The truth is, it is not the fault of these poor people, but of those whose business it is to find out employment for them.
Another reason I derive from the nature of the old tenures, where we find lands which now produce large quantities of grain, granted for a mere trifle, when at the same time others in the neighbourhood of cities and abbies are found charged with considerable prestations. This I attribute to the bad cultivation of lands at that time, From which I infer, a small population. In those days of trouble and confusion, confiscations were very frequent, large tracts of lands were granted to the great lords upon different revolutions, and these finding them often deserted, as is mentioned in history, (the vassals of the former, being either destroyed or driven out to make place for the new comers) used to parcel them out for small returns in every thing but personal service. Such sudden and violent revolutions must dispeople a country; and nothing but tranquillity, security, order and industry, for ages together, can render it populous.
Besides these natural causes of population and depopulation (which proceed, as we have observed, from a certain turn given to the spirit of a people) there are others which operate with irresistible force, by sudden and violent revolutions. The King of Prussia, for example, attempted to people a country all at once, by profiting of the desertion of the Saltzburgers. America is become very poorly peopled in some spots upon the coast, and in some islands, at the expence of the exportation of millions from Europe and from Africa; such methods never can succeed in proportion to the attempt. Spain, on the other hand, was depopulated by the expulsion of its anti-christian inhabitants. These causes work evident effects, which there is little occasion to explain, although the more remote consequences of them may deserve observation. I shall, in another place, have occasion to examine the manner of our peopling America. In this place, I shall make a few observations upon the depopulation of Spain, and finish my chapter.
That country is said to have been antiently very populous under the government of the Moors. I am not sufficiently versed in the politics, oeconomy and manners of that people, to judge how far these might be favourable to population: what seems, however, to confirm what we are told, is, the large repositories they used for preserving grain, which still remain entire, though never once made use of. They watered the kingdoms of Valencia, Murcia and Granada. They gathered themselves into cities of which we still can discover the extent. The country which they now possess (though drier than Spain) furnishes Europe with considerable quantities of grain. The palace of the Moorish King at Granada, shews a taste for luxury. The mosque of Cordoua speaks a larger capital. All these are symptoms of population, but they only help one to guess. The numbers which history mentions to have been driven out, is a better way still of judging, if the fidelity of historians could be depended upon, when there is any question about numbers.
Here was an example of a country depopulated in a very extraordinary manner: yet I am of opinion, that the scarcity of inhabitants complained of in that country, for a long time after the expulsion, did not so much proceed from the effects of the loss sustained, as from the contract between the spirit of those christians who remained after the expulsion, and their catholic deliverers. The christians who lived among the Moors, were really Moors as to manners, though not as to religion. Had they adopted the spirit of the subjects of Castile, or had they been governed according to their own, numbers would soon have risen to the former standard. But as the christian lord governed his Murcian, Andalousian, and Granada subjects, according to the principles of christian policy, was it any wonder that in such an age of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, the country (one of the finest in the world) should be long in recovering? Recover, however, it did; and sooner perhaps than is commonly believed: for I say it was recovered so soon as all the flat and watered lands were brought into cultivation; because I have reason to believe that the Moors never carried their agriculture farther in these southern provinces.