ON CHAPTER IX. THE THE CAUSES WHICH MAY OBSTRUCT GROWTH OF THE MANUFACTURING AND HIGHER ORDERS. "One incessant struggle renders life One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate.” THOMSON'S SEASONS-Winter, v. 350. We have seen, in a former chapter, how the manufacturing and higher orders are gradually added to society, as improvements in agriculture afford an increasing surplus produce from the land for their support. There are, however, some cases in which the science of agriculture may be considerably improved without creating any fund for the support of persons unconnected with the land. The manufacturing and higher classes may be prevented from rising into existence By the too minute subdivision of property, By the exportation of rent. If a country be divided among a number of small proprietors, and any law or custom prevail having a tendency to create a continual subdivision of properties, the size of these properties will in time be reduced to a point, below which if subdivided, the shares will be insufficient to maintain their cultivators. The more productive the land, the further will it be capable of subdivision,-the greater fertility counterbalancing the smaller extent; and no surplus will remain for the support of manufacturers as a distinct class. Society will now be reduced to nearly the state in which it was in the infancy of agriculture every man will confine his wants within the narrowest compass, and the few articles that necessity requires will be fabricated at home. Now if the land will barely support its present cultivators, and population has as strong a tendency to increase-that is, the births bear the same proportion to the population-as before, it is evident that many must fall back into that class which, from want and misery, are unable to reproduce their numbers. In density of population this country will resemble one that is wealthy and civilized; while, in the proportion of births to the population it will resemble one in which a scanty population is scattered over a large extent of fertile country, a large majority of the population consisting of the most prolific class of society. Where a country is but thinly occupied, every advance of population augments the happiness and resources of the nation, by promoting the cultivation of new lands, by augmenting the produce of those before under cultivation, and thus calling into existence the manufacturing classes. Whilst in this artificial and unnatural state, every addition to the numbers of the population is an addition to their misery. Here the whole population consists of agricultural labourers, the most prolific class of society, with no unprolific classes requiring recruits, with no waste lands requiring tillage, with no manufactures requiring hands. The extensive poverty thus induced will bring down many families to that point in distress at which they are incapable of reproducing their number; a greater proportion of children will perish in infancy; epidemic diseases, the constant attendants upon poverty and privation, will increase in frequency and in virulence. A society so constituted will bear about the same resemblance to the primitive agricultural state, that an old tree, kept artificially clipped and dwarfed, does to a healthy growing plant of the same size. If accurate statistical documents of such a country could be procured, there would be seen a very large proportion of births as compared with the population,—thus shewing the tendency to rapid increase; while the high proportion that the deaths would bear to the population would shew that the tendency to increase was counteracted by the premature mortality induced by want and misery. Had, however, property been unequally distributed, which, if uncounteracted by particular laws, it has a natural tendency to become, the unprolificness of the higher orders would have formed a salutary counterpoise to the superprolificness of the labouring classes. Not only does minute subdivision of land prevent surplus produce being raised for the support of persons unconnected with agriculture, but the exertions of the agriculturists themselves appear to be limited by their immediate wants ; so that, when an unfavourable season occurs, they are liable to suffer from famine. "It will be found, indeed, generally, that in almost all countries which are particularly subject to scarcities and famines, either the farms are small or the labourers principally paid in land. China, Indostan, and the former state of the Highlands of Scotland furnish some proofs, among many others, of the truth of this assertion."* Mr. Young, in his tour in France, with reference to the smallness of the properties there, notices the distress arising from the least failure of the and observes, that such a deficiency as in England passes almost without notice, is crops; * Malthus, vol. ii., Appen. p. 464... |