and his own family will not, perhaps, wear
out six pairs. Unless, therefore, he has the
custom of, at least, 50 such families as his
own, he cannot dispose of the whole produce
of his own labour. The most numerous
class of artificers will seldom, in a large country,
make more than one in 50, or one in a
100, of the whole number of families contained
in it. But in such large countries, as
France and England, the number of people
employed in agriculture has, by some authors,
been computed at a half, by others at a third,
and by no author that I know of, at less than
a fifth of the whole inhabitants of the country.
But as the produce of the agriculture of both
France and England is, the far greater part
of it, consumed at home, each person employed
in it must, according to these computations,
require little more than the custom of
one, two, or, at most, of four such families as
his own, in order in dispose of the whole produce
of his own labour. Agriculture, therefore,
can support itself under the discouragement
of a confined market much better than
manufactures. In both ancient Egypt and
Indostan, indeed, the confinement of the
foreign market was in some measure compensated
by the conveniency of many inland
navigations, which opened, in the most advantageous
manner, the whole extent of the
home market to every part of the produce of
every different district of those countries.
The great extent of Indostan, too, rendered
the home market of that country very great,
and sufficient to support a great variety of
manufactures. But the small extent of ancient
Egypt, which was never equal to England,
must at all times, have rendered the
home market of that country too narrow for
supporting any great variety of manufactures.
Bengal accordingly, the province of Indostan
which commonly exports the greatest quantity
of rice, has always been more remarkable for
the exportation of a great variety of manufactures,
than for that of its grain. Ancient
Egypt, on the contrary, though it exported
some manufactures, fine linen in particular,
as well as some other goods, was always most
distinguished for its great exportation of
grain. It was long the granary of the Roman
empire.
The sovereigns of China, of ancient Egypt,
and of the different kingdoms into which Indostan
has, at different times, been divided,
have always derived the whole, or by far the
most considerable part, of their revenue, from
some sort of land tax or land rent. This
land tax, or land rent, like the tithe in Europe,
consisted in a certain proportion, a fifth
it is said, of the produce of the land, which
was either delivered in kind, or paid in money,
according to a certain valuation, and
which, therefore, varied from year to year,
according to all the variations of the produce.
It was natural, therefore, that the sovereigns
of those countries should be particularly attentive
to the interests of agriculture, upon
the prosperity or declension of which immediately
depended the yearly increase or diminution
of their own revenue.
The policy of the ancient republics of
Greece, and that of Rome, though it honoured
agriculture more than manufactures or
foreign trade, yet seems rather to have discouraged
the latter employments, than to
have given any direct or intentional encouragement
to the former. In several of the
ancient states of Greece, foreign trade was
prohibited altogether; and in several others
the employments of artificers and manufacturers
were considered as hurtful to the
strength and agility of the human body, as
rendering it incapable of those habits which
their military and gymnastic exercises endeavoured
to form in it, and as thereby disqualifying
it, more or less, for undergoing the
fatigues and encountering the dangers of war.
Such occupations were considered as fit only
for slaves, and the free citizens of the states
were prohibited from exercising them. Even
in those states where no such prohibition took
place, as in Rome and Athens, the great body
of the people were in effect excluded from
all the trades which are now commonly exercised
by the lower sort of the inhabitants of
towns. Such trades were, at Athens and
Rome, all occupied by the slaves of the rich,
who exercised them for the benefit of their
masters, whose wealth, power, and protection,
made it almost impossible for a poor freeman
to find a market for his work, when it came
into competition with that of the slaves of the
rich. Slaves, however, are very seldom inventive;
and all the most important improvements,
either in machinery, or in the arrangement
and distribution of work, which
facilitate and abridge labour have been the
discoveries of freemen. Should a slave propose
any improvement of this kind, his master
would be very apt to consider the proposal
as the suggestion of laziness, and of a
desire to save his own labour at the master's
expense. The poor slave, instead of reward
would probably meet with much abuse, perhaps
with some punishment. In the manufactures
carried on by slaves, therefore, more
labour must generally have been employed
to exercise the same quantity of work, than
in those carried on by freemen. The work
of the former must, upon that account, generally
have been dearer than that of the latter.
The Hungarian mines, it is remarked by Mr.
Montesquieu, though not richer, have always
been wrought with less expense, and therefore
with more profit, than the Turkish mines in
their neighbourhood. The Turkish mines
are wrought by slaves; and the arms of those
slaves are the only machines which the Turks
have ever thought of employing. The Hungarian
mines are wrought by freemen, who