exchanged for something for which there is
some demand at home. But whether the capital
which carries this surplus produce abroad
be a foreign or a domestic one, is of very little
importance. If the society has not acquired
sufficient capital, both to cultivate all its lands,
and to manufacture in the completest manner
the whole of its rude produce, there is even a
considerable advantage that the rude produce
should be exported by a foreign capital, in
order that the whole stock of the society may
be employed in more useful purposes. The
wealth of ancient Egypt, that of China and
Indostan, sufficiently demonstrate that a nation
may attain a very high degree of opulence,
though the greater part of its exportation
trade be carried on by foreigners. The
progress of our North American and West
Indian colonies, would have been much less
rapid, had no capital but what belonged to
themselves been employed in exporting their
surplus produce.
According to the natural course of things,
therefore, the greater part of the capital of
every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture,
afterwards to manufactures, and,
last of all, to foreign commerce. This order
of things is so very natural, that in every society
that had any territory, it has always, I
believe, been in some degree observed. Some
of their lands must have been cultivated before
any considerable towns could be established,
and some sort of coarse industry of
the manufacturing kind must have been carried
on in those towns, before they could well
think of employing themselves in foreign commerce.
But though this natural order of things must
have taken place in some degree in every such
society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe,
been in many respects entirely inverted.
The foreign commerce of some of their cities
has introduced all their finer manufactures, or
such as were fit for distant sale; and manufactures
and foreign commerce together have
given birth to the principal improvements of
agriculture. The manners and customs which
the nature of their original government introduced,
and which remained after that government
was greatly altered, necessarily forced
them into this unnatural and retrograde order.
CHAP. II.
OF THE DISCOURAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN
THE ANCIENT STATE OF EUROPE, AFTER THE
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
When the German and Scythian nations overran
the western provinces of the Roman empire,
the confusions which followed so great a
revolution lasted for several centuries. The
rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised
against the ancient inhabitants, interrupted
the commerce between the towns and
the country. The towns were deserted, and
the country was left uncultivated; and the
western provinces of Europe, which had enjoyed
a considerable degree of opulence under
the Roman empire, sunk into the lowest state
of poverty and barbarism. During the continuance
of those confusions, the chiefs and
principal leaders of those nations acquired, or
usurped to themselves, the greater part of the
lands of those countries. A great part of
them was uncultivated; but no part of them,
whether cultivated or uncultivated, was left
without a proprietor. All of them were engrossed,
and the greater part by a few great
proprietors.
This original engrossing of uncultivated
lands, though a great, might have been but a
transitory evil. They might soon have been
divided again, and broke into small parcels,
either by succession or by alienation. The
law of primogeniture hindered them from being
divided by succession; the introduction of entails
prevented their being broke into small
parcels by alienation.
When land, like moveables, is considered
as the means only of subsistence and enjoyment,
the natural law of succession divides it,
like them, among all the children of the family;
of all of whom the subsistence and enjoyment
may be supposed equally dear to the father.
This natural law of succession, accordingly,
took place among the Romans, who
made no more distinction between elder and
younger, between male and female, in the inheritance
of lands, than we do in the distribution
of moveables. But when land was considered
as the means, not of subsistence merely,
but of power and protection, it was thought
better that it should descend undivided to one.
In those disorderly times, every great landlord
was a sort of petty prince. His tenants were
his subjects. He was their judge, and in some
respects their legislator in peace and their
leader in war. He made war according to
his own discretion, frequently against his
neighbours, and sometimes against his sovereign.
The security of a landed estate, therefore,
the protection which its owner could afford
to those who dwelt on it, depended upon
its greatness. To divide it was to ruin it, and
to expose every part of it to be oppressed and
swallowed up by the incursions of its neighbours.
The law of primogeniture, therefore,
came to take place, not immediately indeed,
but in process of time, in the succession of
landed estates, for the same reason that it has
generally taken place in that of monarchies,
though not always at their first institution.
That the power, and consequently the security
of the monarchy, may not be weakened by division,
it must descend entire to one of the