An inquiry into the permanent causes of the decline and fall of powerful and wealthy nations

by William Playfair

CHAP. VI.

Of the Interior Causes of Decline, which arise from the Produce of the Soil becoming unequal to the Sustenance of a luxurious People.-- Of Monopoly.

IT has already been mentioned, and we have seen, in the case of Rome and Italy, that the country which was sufficient to maintain a certain population, when the manners of the people were simple, becomes incapable of doing so, when wealth has introduced luxury.

The case of the Romans, though the most clearly ascertained of any, and the circumstances the best known, is only in part applicable to an inquiry into the effects of luxury at the present day. The nature of luxury, the nature of the wants of man, and the diffusion of that luxury, its distribution amongst the different classes, are so unlike to what they were, that the comparison scarcely holds in any single instance.

A most enormous increase of population (a forced population as it were) in a small country, together with large tracts of land converted from agriculture to the purposes of pleasure were the principal causes why Italy, in latter times, was incapable of supplying itself with corn. Wherever wealth comes in more easily and in abundance, by other means than by agriculture, that is to a certain degree neglected. To cultivate ceases to be an object where it is more easy to purchase. This certainly is, at all times, and in all places, one of the consequences of an influx of wealth, from wheresoever it comes, or by whatever means it is acquired; though, in Italy, it was felt more than perhaps in any other part of the world. The manner in which wealth comes into a nation has a great effect on the consumption of produce, owing to the description of persons into whose hands it first comes. In Rome, the wealth came into the hands of the great. The slaves and servants, though more numerous, were, perhaps, fed in the same manner with the slaves in earlier periods, though probably not with so much economy. In a manufacturing country, [end of page #137] the greatest part of the wealth comes first into the hands of the labouring people, who then live better and consume more of the produce of the earth; not by eating a greater quantity, but by eating of a different quality.

In every manufacturing or commercial country, wealth displays itself in general opulence amongst the lower orders, and the means of supplying that greater consumption is the same as it was in Rome. The money that arrives from other countries enables the community to purchase from other countries the deficiency of provisions, and prevents the evil effects from being felt at the moment.

When, in course of time, there comes to be a difficulty of obtaining the supply, from the want of produce in the country itself, then the decline begins; and as no wealth, arising either from conquest, colonies, or commerce, bears any great proportion to the daily food of a people, its effect is soon felt in a very ruinous and terrible manner.

England is the greatest country for extensive commerce that ever existed, yet the amount of the whole of its foreign trade would not do much more than furnish the people with bread, and certainly not with all the simple necessaries of life. If, therefore, a country, such as this is, were unable to furnish itself with the necessaries of life, the whole balance of trade, now in its favour, would not be sufficient to supply any considerable deficiency.

The desire of eating animal food, in place of vegetables, is very general and, amongst a people living by manufactures, will always be indulged. If the country was fully peopled, before animal food was so much used; that is, if the population was as great as the vegetable produce of the country was able to supply; as the same quantity of ground cannot feed the same number of people with animal food, there will be a necessity of importing the deficiency.

The change that this produces, when once it begins to operate, is a most powerful and effectual cause of decline; and, without the intervention of conquest, or any violent revolution, would of itself be sufficient to impoverish, in the first instance, and, in the second, to depopulate a country.