good deal dearer, chiefly from the taxes which
have been laid upon them. The quantity of
these, however, which the labouring poor are
under any necessity of consuming, is so very
small, that the increase in their price does not
compensate the diminution in that of so 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 same food,
clothing, and lodging, which satisfied 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 circumstances of
the lower ranks of the people to be regarded
as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to
the society? The answer seems at first abundantly
plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen
of different kinds, make up the far greater
part of every great political society. But
what improves the circumstances of the greater
part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency
to the whole. No society can surely
be flourishing and happy, of which the far
greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
It is but equity, besides, that they
who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body
of the people, should have such a share of the
produce of their own labour as to be themselves
tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Poverty, though it no doubt discourages,
does not always prevent, marriage. It seems
even to be favourable to generation. A half-starved
Highland woman frequently bears more
than twenty children, while a pampered fine
lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is
generally exhausted by two or three. Barrenness,
so frequent among women of fashion,
is very rare among those of inferior station.
Luxury, in the fair sex, while it inflames, perhaps,
the passion for enjoyment, seems always
to weaken, and frequently to destroy altogether,
the powers of generation.
But poverty, though it does not prevent the
generation, is extremely unfavourable to the
rearing of children. The tender plant is produced;
but in so cold a soil, and so severe a
climate, soon withers and dies. It is not uncommon,
I have been frequently told, in the
Highlands of Scotland, for a mother who has
born twenty children not to have two alive.
Several officers of great experience have assured
me, that, so far from recruiting their
regiment, they have never been able to supply
it with drums and fifes, from all the soldiers'
children that were born in it. A greater number
of fine children, however, is seldom seen
anywhere than about a barrack of soldiers.
Very few of them, it seems, arrive at the age
of thirteen or fourteen. In some places, one
half the children die before they are four years
of age, in many places before they are seven,
and in almost all places before they are nine
or ten. This great mortality, however will
everywhere be found chiefly among the children
of the common people, who cannot afford
to tend them with the same care as those of
better station. Though their marriages are
generally more fruitful than those 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 still greater
than among those of the common people.
Every species of animals naturally multiplies
in proportion to the means of their subsistence,
and no species can ever multiply beyond
it. But in civilized society, it is only
among the inferior ranks of people that the
scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the
further multiplication of the human species;
and it can do so 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
consequently to bring up a greater number,
naturally tends to widen and extend those limits.
It deserves to be remarked, too, that it
necessarily does this as nearly as possible in
the proportion which the demand for labour
requires. If this demand is continually increasing,
the reward of labour must necessarily
encourage in such a manner the marriage
and multiplication of labourers, as may enable
them to supply that continually increasing demand
by a continually increasing population.
If the reward should at any time be less than
what was requisite for this purpose, the deficiency
of hands would soon raise it; and if
it should at any time be more, their excessive
multiplication would soon lower it to this necessary
rate. The market would be so much
understocked with labour in the one case, and
so much overstocked in the other, as would
soon force back its price to that proper rate
which the circumstances of the society required.
It is in this manner that the demand for
men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily
regulates the production of men,
quickens it when it goes on too slowly, and
stops it when it advances too fast. 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
progressive in the first, slow and gradual in
the second, and altogether stationary in the
last.
The wear and tear of a slave, it has been
said, is at the expense of his master; but that
of a free servant is at his own expense. The
wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in
reality, as much at the expense of his master
as that of the former. The wages paid to
journeymen and servants of every kind must
be such as may enable them, one with another
to continue the race of journeymen and servants,
according as the increasing, diminishing,