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BOOK pretend to determine is what are the most ufual;

I..

and experience feems to show that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to do fo.

The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the neceffaries and conveniencies of life which it can procure to the labourer, has, during the course of the prefent century, increased per haps in a ftill greater proportion than its money price. Not only grain has become fomewhat cheaper, but many other things, from which the induftrious poor derive an agreeable and wholefome variety of food, have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes, for example, do not at prefent, through the greater part of the kingdom, coft half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The fame thing may be faid of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raifed by the plough. All fort of garden ftuff too has become cheaper. The greater part of the apples and even of the onions confumed in Great Britain were in the laft century imported from Flanders. The great improvements in the coarfer manufactures of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers with cheaper and better cloathing; and thofe in the manufactures of the coarfer metals, with cheaper and better inftruments of trade, as well as with many agreeable and convenient pieces of houfhold furniture. Soap, falt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors, have, indeed, become a good deal dearer; chiefly from the taxes which have

been

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been laid upon them. The quantity of thefe, CHA P. however, which the labouring poor are under any neceffity of confuming, is so very small, that fo the increase in their price does not compensate the diminution in that of fo many other things. The common complaint that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the fame food, cloathing and lodging which fatisfied them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real recompence, which has augmented.

Is this improvement in the circumftances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the fociety? The answer feems at firft fight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers and workmen of dif ferent kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political fociety. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No fociety can furely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miferable. It is but equity, befides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, fhould have fuch a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

Poverty, though it no doubt difcourages, does not always prevent marriage. It feems even to be favourable to generation. A half-ftarved

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BOOK Highland woman frequently bears more than I. twenty children, while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally exhausted by two or three. Barrennefs, fo frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of inferior station. Luxury in the fair fex, while it inflames perhaps the paffion for enjoyment, feems always to weaken, and fre

quently to destroy altogether, the powers of ge

neration.

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in fo cold a foil, and fo fevere a climate, foon withers and dies. It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive. Several officers of great experience have affured me, that fo far from recruiting their regiment, they have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes from all the foldiers children that were born in it. A greater number of fine children, however, is feldom feen any where than about a barrack of foldiers. Very few of them, it feems, arrive at the

age of thirteen or fourteen. In fome places one half the children born die before they are four years of age; in many places before they are feven; and in almost all places before they are nine or ten. This great mortality, however, will every where be found chiefly among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with the fame care as those

of

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of better station. Though their marriages are C HA P. generally more fruitful than thofe of people of fashion, a smaller proportion of their children arrive at maturity. In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities, the mortality is ftill greater than among thofe of the common people.

Every fpecies of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their fubfiftence, and no fpecies can ever multiply beyond it. But in civilized fociety it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of fubfiftence can fet limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do fo in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.

The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their children, and confequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen and extend thofe limits. It deferves to be remarked too, that it neceffarily does this as nearly as poffible in the proportion which the demand for labour requires. If this demand is continually increafing, the reward of labour must neceffarily encourage in fuch a manner the marriage and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to fupply that continually increasing demand by a continually increafing population. If the reward fhould at any time be lefs than what was requifite for this purpose, the deficiency of hands would foon raise it; and if it should at any time be more, their exceffive multiplication would foon lower it to

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BOOK this neceffary rate. The market would be fo much under-ftocked with labour in the one cafe, and fo much over-stocked in the other, as would foon force back its price to that proper rate which the circumstances of the fociety required. It is in this manner that the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, neceffarily regulates the production of men; quickens it when it goes on too flowly, and ftops it when it advances too faft. It is this demand which regulates and determines the state of propagation in all the different countries of the world, in North America, in Europe, and in China; which renders it rapidly progreffive in the firft, flow and gradual in the second, and altogether stationary in the laft,

The wear and tear of a flave, it has been faid, is at the expence of his mafter; but that of a free fervant is at his own expence. The wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the expence of his mafter as that of the former. The wages paid to journeymen and fervants of every kind must be fuch as may enable them, one with another, to continue the race of journeymen and fervants, according as the increafing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the fociety may happen to require. But though the wear and tear of a free fervant be equally at the expence of his mafter, it generally cofts him much lefs than that of a flave. The fund deftined for replacing or repairing, if I may fay fo, the wear and tear of the flave, is commonly managed by a negligent mafter or careless overfeer. That deftined for performing the

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