to this upon one condition only, that they
should be secured in their possession for such
a term of years as might give them time to
recover, with profit, whatever they should lay
out in the further improvement of the land.
The expensive vanity of the landlord made
him willing to accept of this condition; and
hence the origin of long leases.
Even a tenant at will, who pays the full
value of the land, is not altogether dependent
upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages
which they receive from one another are mutual
and equal, and such a tenant will expose
neither his life nor his fortune in the service
of the proprietor. But if he has a lease for
a long term of years, he is altogether independent;
and his landlord must not expect
from him even the most trifling service, beyond
what is either expressly stipulated in the
lease, or imposed upon him by the common
and known law of the country.
The tenants having in this manner become
independent, and the retainers being dismissed,
the great proprietors were no longer capable
of interrupting the regular execution of
justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country.
Having sold their birth-right, not like
Esau, for a mess of pottage in time of hunger
and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty,
for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the
playthings of children than the serious pursuits
of men, they became as insignificant as
any substantial burgher or tradesmen in a
city. A regular government was established
in the country as well as in the city, nobody
having sufficient power to disturb its operations
in the one, any more than in the other.
It does not, perhaps, relate to the present
subject, but I cannot help remarking it, that
very old families, such as have possessed some
considerable estate from father to son for
many successive generations, are very rare in
commercial countries. In countries which
have little commerce, on the contrary, such as
Wales, or the Highlands of Scotland, they are
very common. The Arabian histories seem
to be all full of genealogies; and there is a
history written by a Tartar Khan, which has
been translated into several European languages,
and which contains scarce any thing
else; a proof that ancient families are very
common among those nations. In countries
where a rich man can spend his revenue in no
other way than by maintaining as many people
as it can maintain, he is apt to run out,
and his benevolence, it seems, is seldom so
violent as to attempt to maintain more than
he can afford. But where he can spend the
greatest revenue upon his own person, he frequently
has no bounds to his expense, because
he frequently has no bounds to his vanity, or
to his affection for his own person. In commercial
countries, therefore, riches, in spite
of the most violent regulations of law to prevent
their dissipation, very seldom remain long
in the same family. Among simple nations,
on the contrary, they frequently do, without
any regulations of law; for among nations of
shepherds, such as the Tartars and Arabs,
the consumable nature of their property necessarily
renders all such regulations impossible.
A revolution of the greatest importance to
the public happiness, was in this manner
brought about by two different orders of people,
who had not the least intention to serve
the public. To gratify the most childish vanity
was the sole motive of the great proprietors.
The merchants and artificers, much less
ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their
own interest, and in pursuit of their own
pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever
a penny was to be got. Neither of them had
either knowledge or foresight of that great
revolution which the folly of the one, and the
industry of the other, was gradually bringing
about.
It was thus, that, through the greater part
of Europe, the commerce and manufactures
of cities, instead of being the effect, have been
the cause and occasion of the improvement
and cultivation of the country.
This order, however, being contrary to the
natural course of things, is necessarily both
slow and uncertain. Compare the slow progress
of those European countries of which
the wealth depends very much upon their
commerce and manufactures, with the rapid
advances of our North American colonies, of
which the wealth is founded altogether in agriculture.
Through the greater part of Europe,
the number of inhabitants is not supposed
to double in less than five hundred
years. In several of our North American colonies,
it is found to double in twenty or five-and-twenty
years. In Europe, the law of
primogeniture, and perpetuities of different
kinds, prevent the division of great estates,
and thereby hinder the multiplication of small
proprietors. A small proprietor, however,
who knows every part of his little territory,
views it with all the affection which property,
especially small property, naturally inspires,
and who upon that account takes pleasure,
not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is
generally of all improvers the most industrious,
the most intelligent, and the most successful.
The same regulations, besides, keep
so much land out of the market, that there
are always more capitals to buy than there is
land to sell, so that what is sold always sells
at a monopoly price. The rent never pays
the interest of the purchase money, and is, besides,
burdened with repairs and other occasional
charges, to which the interest of money
is not liable. To purchase land, is, everywhere
in Europe, a most unprofitable employment
of a small capital. For the sake of the
superior security, indeed, a man of moderate
circumstances, when he retires from business,