Part 23 (1/2)

There appears to be no means of preventing capital, when unequally divided, from being invested in the least profitable way that produces revenue. When more equally divided, it is employed in the way that produces the greatest possible income, by setting to work and maintaining the greatest possible quant.i.ty of labour.

If there is not sufficient means of employing capital within a nation or country that has a very unequal division of wealth, there are plenty of opportunities furnished by poorer nations. Accordingly, every one of the nations, states, or towns, that has ever been wealthy, has furnished those who wanted it with capital, at a low interest. Amsterdam has lent great sums to England, to Russia, and France. The French owed a very large sum to Genoa at the beginning of the revolution. Antwerp, Cologne, and every one of the ancient, rich, and decayed towns had vested money in the hands of foreign nations, or lent to German princes, or to the great proprietors of land, on the security of their estates. The American funds found purchasers amongst the wealthy all over Europe, when they could not find any in their own states; and, it is probable, that the far greater portion of their debt is at this time in the hands of foreigners.

Thus it is that wealthy nations let the means by which the wealth [end of page #135] was acquired go out of their hands; each individual in a new state, or in an old, follows his own interest and disposition in the disposal of his property. In the new state, the individual interest and that of the country are generally the same; in the old one, they are in opposition to each other, and that opposition is greatly increased by the unequal division of property. The middling cla.s.s of proprietors never seek the most profitable employment for their money; the very wealthy are always inclined to seek for good security and certain payment, without any consideration of the interest of their country.

To counteract the tendency of property to acc.u.mulate, without infringing on the rights of individuals, will be found desirable. In the Fourth Book =sic--there is none.=, a mode of doing this shall be attentively taken into consideration.

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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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.ses, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 quant.i.ty, 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 quant.i.ty 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.

We find every country that was once wealthy, but that has fallen [end of page #138] into decline, is thinly peopled; and if it were not for the want of information, from which the cause may be traced, a deficiency of food might most probably be found to be one of the most efficient.

Flanders, which is one of the most fertile countries in Europe, and has experienced a partial decline, is probably not near so fully peopled as it once was. Its present population would not support those armies, or give it that rank amongst nations which it at one time maintained. It is true there have been persecutions and emigrations, which must have reduced the population of the country for a time, but not to an extent that would account for such a diminution in its numbers, as there is reason to think has taken place.

Ghent, a town of an amazing size, could, at one time, send out fifty thousand fighting men. It certainly could not now (that is to say, at the time the French subdued the country) have furnished one-fourth part of the number. Ghent is not the only town in this situation, the others have all fallen off in the same manner. When manufactures declined, the people did not go to live in the country, for that also is thinly inhabited, the richness of the soil being taken into consideration.

The peasants of that country lived much better than their French neighbours; they apparently brought up their children with more ease, and fed them more fully; but the country was not so populous, in proportion to its fertility.

In southern climates, where the heat of the sun is great, and vegetation difficult, unless the crop is of a nature to protect the ground from its effects, natural gra.s.s is never luxuriant; and the cattle are neither so large nor so fat as in more northerly lat.i.tudes. Corn, on the other hand, which rises to a sufficient height, before the hot season, to protect the ground from the rays of the sun, is a more profitable crop; and, indeed, the only one that could (potatoes excepted) support a great population.

In such countries, scarcely any degree of general affluence would enable the labouring cla.s.ses to eat animal food. No degree of wealth, that can well be supposed, would enable the inhabitants of the southern parts of France, or of Spain, to live on butcher-meat, which, [end of page #139] if it became to be in general demand, would be dearer than poultry, or even than game. The absolute necessity of living on vegetables, or rather the absolute impossibility of contracting a habit of living on animal food, must, then, in those countries, counteract the taste, and prevent depopulation being produced by that cause.--But it is very different with more northerly countries, where it is almost a matter of indifference, in point of expense, to an individual who enjoys any degree of affluence, whether he lives on vegetable or animal food, and where he gives a decided preference to the former.

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It is probable that nature (so admirable in adapting the manners of the inhabitants to the nature of the country) has made heavy animal food less congenial to the taste of southern nations than to those of the north. There is, indeed, reason to believe it is so, but, whether it is or not, as natural philosophy is not here the study, but political economy, the fact is, that if southern nations had the same propensity, it would be impossible to indulge it to an equal extent.

As wealth and power are intimately connected with population, and depend in a great measure upon it, wherever they are the cause of introducing a taste that will, in the end, depopulate a country, they must, in so far, undermine their own support, and bring on decay. This is a case that applies to all northern nations, and particularly to Britain; in order, therefore, to treat the subject at full length, it will be better to enter into the minute examination when we come to apply the case directly to this country, and seek for a remedy.