of national care and encouragement, is universally preferable to pasturage, because the kind of provi sion which it yields, goes much farther in the sustentation of human life. Tillage is also recommended by this additional advantage, that it affords employment to a much more numerous peasantry. Indeed, pasturage seems to be the art of a nation, either imperfectly civilized, as are many of the tribes w 'ch cultivate it in the internal parts of Asia; or of a nation, like Spain declining from its summit by luxury and inactivity.

The kind and quality of provision, together with the extent and capacity of the soil from which it is raised, being the same, the quantity procured will principally depend upon two circumstances,-the ability of the occupier, and the encouragement which he receives. The greatest misfortune of a country is an indigent tenantry. Whatever be the native advantages of the soil, or even the skill and industry of the occupier, the want of a sufficient capital confines every plan, as well as cripples and weakens every operation, of husbandry. This evil is felt, where agriculture is accounted a servile or mean employment; where farms are extremely subdivided, and badly furnished with habitations; where leases are unknown; or are of short or precarious duration. With respect to the encouragement of husbandry; in this, as in every other employment, the true reward of industry is in the price and sale of the produce. The exclusive right to the produce is the only incitement which acts constantly and universally; the only spring which keeps human labour in motion. All therefore that the laws can do, is to secure this right to the occupier of the ground, that is, to constitute such a system of tenure, that the full and entire advantage of every improvement go to the benefit of the improver; that every man work for himself, and not for another; and that no one share in the profit who does not assist in the production. By the occupier I here mean, not so much the person who performs the work, as him who procures the labour and directs the management and I consider the whole profit as received by the occupier, when the occupier is benefited by the whole value of what is

produced, which is the case with the tenant who pays a fixed rent for the use of land, no less than with the proprietor who holds it as his own.

The one has the same interest in the produce, and in the advantage of every improvement, as the other. Likewise the proprietor, though he grant out his estate to farm, may be considered as the occupier, insomuch as he regulates the occupation by the choice, superintendency, and encouragement, of his tenants, by the disposition of his lands, by erecting buildings, providing accommodations, by prescribing conditions, or supplying implements and materials of improvement; and is entitled, by the rule of public expediency abovementioned, to receive, in the advance of his rent, a share of the benefit which arises from the increased produce of his estate. The violation of this fundamental maxim of agrarian policy constitutes the chief objection to the holding of lands by the state, by the king, by corporate bodies, by private persons in right of their offices or benefices. The inconveniency to the public arises not so much from the inalienable quality of lands thus holden in perpetuity, as from hence; that proprietors of this description seldom contribute much either of attention or expense to the cultivation of their estates, yet claim, by the rent, a share in the profit of every improvement that is made upon them. This complaint can only be obviated by "long leases at a fixed rent," which convey a large portion of the interest to those who actually conduct the cultivation. The same objection is applicable to the holding of lands by foreign proprietors, and in some degree to estates of too great extent being placed in the same hands.

III. Beside the production of provision, there reinains to be considered the DISTRIBUTION.-It is in vain that provisions abound in the country, unless I be able to obtain a share of them. This reflection belongs to every individual. The plenty of provision produced, the quantity of the public stock, affords subsistence to individuals, and encouragement to the formation of families, only in proportion as it is distributed, that is, in proportion as these individuals are allowed to draw from it a

supply of their own wants. The distribution, therefore, becomes of equal consequence to popula tion with the production. Now there is but one principle of distribution that can ever become universal, namely, the principle" of exchange;” or, in other words, that every man have something to give in return for what he wants. Bounty, how. ever it may come in aid of another principle, however it may occasionally qualify the rigour, or supply the imperfection, of an established rule of dis tribution, can never itself become that rule or principle; because men will not work to give the produce of their labour away. Moreover, the only equivalents that can be offered in exchange for provision are power and labour. All property is power. What we call property in land, is the power to use it, and to exclude others from the use. Money is the representative of power, because it is convertible into power: the value of it consists in its faculty of procuring power over things and persons. But power which results from civil conventions (and of this kind is what we call a man's fortune or estate,) is necessarily confined to a few, and is withal soon exhausted; whereas the capacity of labour is every man's natural possession, and composes a constant and renewing fund. The hire, therefore, or produce of personal industry, is that which the bulk of every community must bring to market, in exchange for the means of subsistence; in other words, employment must, in every country, be the medium of distribution, and the source of supply to individuals. But when we consider the production and distribution of provision, as distinct from, and independent of, each other; when, supposing the same quantity to be produced, we inquire in what way, or according to what rule, it may be distributed; we are led to a conception of the subject not at all agreeable to truth and reality: for, in truth and reality, though provision must be produced before it be distributed, yet the production depends, in a great measure, upon the distribution. The quan

tity of provision raised out of the ground, so far as the raising of it requires human art or labour, will evidently be regulated by the demand: the demand, or, in other words, the price and sale, being that

which alone rewards the care, or excites the diligence, of the husbandman. But the sale of provision depends upon the number, not of those who want, but of those who have something to offer in return for what they want; not of those who would consume, but of those who can buy; that is, upon the number of those who have the fruits of some other kind of industry to tender in exchange for what they stand in need of from the production of the soil.

We see, therefore, the connexion between population and employment. Employment affects population" directly," as it affords the only medium of distribution by which individuals can obtain from the common stock a supply for the wants of their families it affects population "indirectly," as it augments the stock itself of provision, in the only way by which the production of it can be effectually encouraged,-by furnishing purchasers. No man can purchase without an equivalent; and that equivalent, by the generality of the people, must in every country be derived from employment.

And upon this basis is founded the public benefit of trade, that is to say, its subserviency to population, in which its only real utility consists. Of that industry, and of those arts and branches of trade, which are employed in the production, conveyance, and preparation, of any principal species of human food, as of the business of the husbandman, the butcher, baker, brewer, corn-merchant, &c. we acknowledge the necessity; likewise of those manufactures which furnish us with warm clothing, convenient habitations, domestic utensils, as of the weaver, tailor, smith, carpenter, &c. we perceive (in climates, however, like ours, removed at a distance from the sun) the conduciveness to population, by their rendering human life more healthy, vigorous and comfortable. But not one half of the occupations which compose the trade of Europe, fall within either of these descriptions. Perhaps two-thirds of the manufacturers in England are employed upon articles of confessed luxu ry, ornament, or splendour, in the superfluous embellishment of some articles which are useful in their kind, or upon others which have no conceiv

able use or value but what is founded in caprice or fashion. What can be less necessary, or less con nected with the sustentation of human life, than the whole produce of the silk, lace, and plate manufactory? yet what multitudes labour in the different branches of these arts! What can be imagined more capricious than the fondness for tobacco and snuff? yet how many various occupations, and how many thousands in each, are set at work in administering to this frivolous gratification! Concerning trades of this kind, (and this kind comprehends more than half of the trades that are exercised,) it may fairly be asked, "How, since they add nothing to the stock of provision, do they tend to increase the number of the people :" We are taught to say of trade, "that it maintains multitudes:" but by what means does it maintain them, when it produ ces nothing upon which the support of human life depends?-In like manner with respect to foreign commerce; of that merchandise which brings the necessaries of life into a country, which imports, ! for example, corn, or cattle, or cloth, or fuel, we allow the tendency to advance population, because it increases the stock of provision by which the people are subsisted. But this effect of foreign commerce is so little seen in our country, that I believe, it may be affirmed of Great Britain, what Bishop Berkeley said of a neighbouring island, that, if it were encompassed with a wall of brass fifty cubits high, the country might maintain the same number of inhabitants that find subsistence in it at present; and that every necessary, and even every real comfort and accommodation, of human life, might be supplied in as great abundance as they now are, Here, therefore, as before, we may fairly ask, by what operation it is, that foreign commerce, which brings into the country no one arti cle of human subsistence, promotes the multiplication of human life?

The answer to this inquiry will be contained in the discussion of another, viz.

Since the soil will maintain many more than it can employ, what must be done, supposing the country to be full, with the remainder of the inha bitants? They who, by the rules of partition, (and