infancy, a sudden influx of riches from abroad was justly dreaded as an evil alarming to the morals, to the industry, and to the freedom of a people. How different in its tendency is that wealth which, in a commercial country, is the gradual result of national industry! If we survey the countries around us, we uniformly find, that the most wealthy states are those where the people are the most laborious, and where they enjoy the greatest degree of liberty. Nay, it was the general diffusion of wealth among the lower orders of men which first gave birth to the spirit of independence in Modern Europe, and which has produced, under some of its governments, and more especially under our own, a more equal diffusion of freedom and of happiness, than took place under the most celebrated constitutions of antiquity.

I may perhaps appear to have insisted longer than was necessary, on institutions and manners so strikingly contrasted with those which exist at present. But it seemed to me to be of consequence to take the earliest opportunity which my subject afforded, of obviating some of the prepossessions which the study of the classics is apt to inspire in favour of agrarian regulations, to the prejudice of that more comprehensive and enlightened policy, which, giving full scope in all directions to human industry, allows agriculture and commerce to act and re-act on each other, in multiplying the comforts of human life, in developing all the capacities that belong to our nature, and in diffusing as widely as the imperfection of human institutions will permit, the blessings of knowledge and civilisation among all classes of the community.

Independently of the violent operation of Agrarian Laws, some authors have expressed their doubts, whether in some of the countries of Modern Europe, the subdivision of landed property has not been, in certain combinations of circumstances, carried to a pernicious excess, by the operation of natural causes. The following passage from Mr. Young's Agricultural Survey of France,* (in the years 1787-89), will shew, that this doubt rests on something more than mere hypothesis. It is [That is, his Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789.]

proper for me to premise, that, according to his computation, the number of little farms in that kingdom belonging in property to the actual cultivators, was at that time so great as to occupy one-third of the whole territory.

"Before I travelled," says he, "I conceived that small farms. in property were susceptible of good cultivation; and that the occupier of such having no rent to pay might be sufficiently at his ease to work improvements, and carry on a vigorous husbandry; but what I have seen in France has greatly lessened my good opinion of them. In Flanders I saw excellent husbandry on properties of thirty to one hundred acres; but we seldom find here such small patches of property as are common in other provinces. In Alsace, and on the Garonne, that is, on soils of such exuberant fertility as to demand no exertions, some small properties also are well cultivated. In Bearn I passed through a region of little farmers, whose appearance, neatness, and ease, charmed me; it was what property alone could on a small scale effect: but these were by no means contemptibly small; they were, as I judged by the distance from house to house, from forty to eighty acres. Except these, and a very few other instances, I saw nothing on small properties except a most unremitting industry."... "The circumstance which in France produces so immense a number of small farms in property, is the division which takes place after the death of the proprietor, commonly amongst all the children, but in some districts among the sons only. Forty or fifty acres in property are not incapable of good husbandry; but when divided, twenty acres must be ill cultivated; again divided, they become farms of ten acres, of five, of two, and even one; and I have even seen some of half, and even of a quarter of a rood, with a family as much attached to it as if it were an hundred acres. The population flowing from this division is, in some cases, great, but it is the multiplication of wretchedness. Couples marry and procreate, on the idea, not the reality, of a maintenance; they increase beyond the demand of towns and manufactures; and the consequence is distress, and numbers dying of diseases, arising from insufficient nourish

ment. Hence, therefore, small properties much divided, prove the greatest source of misery that can be conceived; and this has operated to such an extent in France, that" (in the opinion of Mr. Young) "a law undoubtedly ought to have been past, to render all division below a certain number of acres illegal."*

"If the industry of towns and manufactures were active enough to demand the surplus of all this population as fast as it arose, the advantages of the system would be clear. . . . It is idle to state in its favour the example of America, where an immensity of fertile land lies open to every one who will accept of it; and where population is valuable to an unexampled degree, as we see in the price of their labour. But what comparison between such a country and France, where the competition for employment is so great, (arising from too great a populousness,) that the price of labour is seventy-six per cent. below that of England, though the prices of provisions are as high in the former country as in the latter."+

These remarks of Mr. Young are chiefly levelled at some modern theories of Political Economy, according to which a country is flourishing in proportion to the equal distribution of the people over the territory; and "the greatest possible division of landed property is the best." That these maxims ought to be received with great restrictions appears obvious from this, that "on the supposition such a system were allowed time to operate, a nation would necessarily arrive at the limit beyond which the earth, cultivate it as you please, will feed no more mouths; yet those simple manners which instigate to marriage still continue. What, then, is the consequence, but the most dreadful misery imaginable! You soon would exceed the populousness of China, where the putrid carcases of domestic animals, and every species of vermin, are sought with avidity to sustain the lives of wretches who were born only to be starved."I

[Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, being an Agricultural Survey of the Kingdom, p. 407, seq.]

† [Ibid. p. 410.]

[Ibid. p. 409.]

Some of the foregoing remarks from Young have been suggested to him by the following passage in Sir James Steuart's Political Economy.

"I would recommend in countries where this minute subdivision of lands has taken place, that for the future none under a certain extent or value should be suffered to be divided among the children, but ordered to be sold, and the price divided among them, and that the same regulation should be observed upon the death of such proprietors where lands are not sufficient to produce three times the physical-necessary of the labourers. This would engage a people to exercise agriculture as a trade, and to give over that trifling husbandry which produces no surplus, and which involves so many poor people in the oppression of land-taxes. . . . The principle," he adds, "is so evident, that I never found any one who did not immediately agree to the justness of my observation; although in imposing land-taxes I have nowhere found it attended to."*

I have quoted these passages, because I am always much more anxious to suggest a variety of ideas for your examination, than to establish any particular system. I confess, for my own part, I have no doubt that, in so far as Agriculture and Population alone are concerned, their interests would be most effectually promoted by a perfectly free commerce of land. The evil complained of in France, plainly arose from the artificial value set on landed property, in consequence of prevailing institutions and habits. In a commercial country where there were no perpetuities, and no regard paid to primogeniture, the attachment to land would be nearly proportioned to its intrinsic value, and the natural course of things would bring small estates into the market, upon the death of every proprietor who left a numerous family. Nay more, this free commerce of land would put an end to that monopoly-price which it everywhere bears, and which, by diverting small capitals from such purchases, contributes perhaps more than any other cause to depress agriculture below the level of the commercial arts. In

[Book V. Chap. xii.; Works, Vol. IV. p. 315.]

such a state of things, a law similar to that proposed by Sir James Steuart, would probably be found unnecessary; although I am far from asserting that in a country circumstanced as France then was, it might not have contributed to keep population more on a level with the means of subsistence.

The opinion, however, that we form on this point, is of little consequence, as the evils resulting from too minute a division of land must necessarily be confined to very unusual combinations of circumstances. Those which arise from the opposite extreme of an accumulation of this species of property in the hands of a small number of individuals, is a political disorder much more deeply rooted in our prevailing ideas and institutions, and affecting far more extensively and powerfully the general interests of society.

On this particular branch of our subject, which is perhaps the most important of all, I do not mean to enlarge at present, partly because it will again fall under consideration in the farther prosecution of my general plan; but chiefly because the effects of Entails and of the Law of Primogeniture, in checking the progress of agriculture, have been illustrated very fully by Mr. Smith. The remarks which this author has made on the circumstances from which these institutions naturally arose during the disorders and violence of the feudal times, are more especially deserving of attention, as they throw much light on the origin of that state of society, and system of manners, with which we are connected.

[ii.-Second, of Population (and Agriculture) considered in connexion with Manufactures.]

Having treated, at some length, [from p. 113,] of the relation between Population and Agriculture, in so far as it depends on the condition of the actual cultivators of the soil, and on the distribution of landed property, I proceed now to make some observations on the same subject, considered in connexion with the influence of manufactures.

"The proper and only right encouragement for agriculture," says Sir James Steuart, "is a moderate and gradual increase of demand for the productions of the earth; this works a natural