BOOK ficiency for themselves, though lefs for exportaI. tion. If the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is any where in the mother country, its real price, the real command of the neceffaries and conveniences of life which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a ftill greater proportion. But though North America is not yet fo rich as England, it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further acquifition of riches. The moft decifive mark of the profperity of any country is the increafe of the number of its inhabitants. In Great Britain, and moft other European coun tries, they are not fuppofed to doublé in less than five hundred years. In the British colonies in North America, it has been found, that they double in twenty or five-and-twenty years. Nor in the present times is this increase principally owing to the continual importation of new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of the fpecies. Those who live to old age, it is faid, frequently fee there from fifty to a hundred, and fometimes many more, defcendants from their own body. Labour is there fo well rewarded, that a numerous family of children, inftead of being a burthen, is a fource of opulence and profperity to the parents. The labour of each child, before it can leave their houfe, is computed to be worth a hundred pounds clear gain to them. A young widow with four or five young children, who, among the middling or inferior ranks of people in Europe, would have fo little chance for a fecond VIII. a fecond husband, is there frequently courted as a CHAP. fort of fortune. The value of children is the greateft of all encouragements to marriage. We cannot, therefore, wonder that the people in North America fhould generally marry very young. Notwithstanding the great increase occafioned by fuch early marriages, there is a continual complaint of the scarcity of hands in North America. The demand for labourers, the funds deftined for maintaining them, increase, it feems, ftill fafter than they can find labourers to employ. Though the wealth of a country fhould be very great, yet if it has been long stationary, we muft not expect to find the wages of labour very high in it. The funds deftined for the payment of wages, the revenue and ftock of its inhabitants, may be of the greatest extent; but if they have continued for feveral centuries of the fame, or very nearly of the fame extent, the number of labourers employed every year could eafily fupply, and even more than fupply, the number wanted the following year. There could feldom be any fcarcity of hands, nor could the mafters be obliged to bid against one another in order to get them. The hands, on the contrary, would, in this cafe, naturally multiply beyond their employment. There would be a conftant scarcity of employment, and the labourers would be obliged to bid against one another in order to get it. If in fuch a country the wages of labour had ever been more than fufficient to maintain the labourer, and to enable him to bring up a family, I. BOOK family, the competition of the labourers and the intereft of the mafters would foon reduce them to this lowest rate which is confiftent with common humanity. China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the moft fertile, best cultivated, moft induftrious, and moft populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long ftationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, defcribes its cultivation, induftry, and populouf nefs, almost in the fame terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. It had perhaps, even long before his time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and inftitutions permits it to acquire. The accounts of all travellers, inconfiftent in many other refpects, agree in the low wages of labour, and in the difficulty which a labourer finds in bringing up a family in China. If by digging the ground a whole day he can get what will purchase a small quantity of rice in the evening, he is contented. The condition of artificers is, if poffible, ftill worse. Instead of waiting indolently in their work-houfes, for the calls of their customers, as in Europe, they are continually running about the ftreets with the tools of their refpective trades, offering their fervice, and as it were begging employment. The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far furpaffes that of the most beggarly nations in Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly faid, many thousand families have no habitation on the VIII. the land, but live conftantly in little fishing boats CHA P. upon the rivers and canals. The fubfiftence which they find there is fo fcanty that they are eager to fish up the naftieft garbage thrown overboard from any European fhip. Any carrion, the carcafe of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and ftinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholefome food to the people of other countries. Marriage is encou raged in China, not by the profitablenefs of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great towns feveral are every night expofed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office is even faid to be the avowed business by which fome people earn their fubfiftence. China, however, though it may perhaps ftand ftill, does not seem to go backwards. Its towns are no-where deferted by their inhabitants. The lands which had once been cultivated, are nowhere neglected. The fame, or very nearly the fame, annual labour must therefore continue to be performed, and the funds destined for maintaining it must not, confequently, be fenfibly diminished. The loweft clafs of labourers, therefore, notwithstanding their fcanty fubfiftence, muft fome way or another make shift to continue their race fo far as to keep up their usual numbers. But it would be otherwife in a country where the funds deftined for the maintenance of labour were fenfibly decaying. Every year the demand for fervants and labourers would, in all the different 4 I. BOOK ferent claffes of employments, be lefs than it had been the year before. Many who had been bred in the fuperior claffes, not being able to find employment in their own business, would be glad to feek it in the loweft. The loweft clafs being not only overstocked with its own workmen, but with the overflowings of all the other claffes, the competition for employment would be fo great in it, as to reduce the wages of labour to the moft miferable and fcanty fubfiftence of the labourer. Many would not be able to find employment even upon these hard terms, but would either ftarve, or be driven to feek a fubfiftence either by begging, or by the perpetration perhaps of the greatest enormities. Want, famine, and mortality, would immediately prevail in that clafs, and from thence extend themselves to all the fuperior claffes, till the number of inhabitants in the country was reduced to what could easily be maintained by the revenue and stock which remained in it, and which had escaped either the tyranny or calamity which had deftroyed the reft. This perhaps is nearly the present state of Bengal, and of fome other of the English fettlements in the East Indies. In a fertile country which had before been much depopulated, where fubfiftence, confequently, fhould not be very difficult, and where, notwithstanding, three or four hundred thousand people die of hunger in one year, we may be affured that the funds deftined for the maintenance of the labouring poor are faft de. caying. The difference between the genius of the |