MACHINERY IN AGRICULTURE. 11 



That " the liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the ne- 

 cessary effect, so it is the natural symptom, of increasing na- 

 tional wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, 

 on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a 

 stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast 

 backwards." 



That "servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, 

 make up far the greater part of any great political society. 

 What improves the greater part can never be regarded as an 

 inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourish- 

 ing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are 

 poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that those who 

 feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should 

 have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be 

 themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged." 



That " it deserves to be observed that it is in the progressive 

 state, while society is advancing to further acquisition, rather 

 than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that 

 the condition of the laboring poor, of the great body of the peo- 

 ple, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable." 



" When in any country a demand for those who live by wages 

 laborers, journeymen, servants of every kind is continually 

 increasing ; when every year furnishes employment for a greater 

 number than had been employed the year before, the workmen 

 have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The 

 scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who 

 bid against one another, and thus voluntarily break through the 

 natural combination of masters not to raise wages." 



" But it would be otherwise in a country where the fund des- 

 tined for the maintenance of labor was sensibly decaying. Ev- 

 ery year the demand for servants and laborers would, in all the 

 different classes of employment, be less than it had been the 

 year before. Many who had been in the superior classes, not 

 being able to find employment in their own business, would be 

 glad to seek it in the lowest. The lowest class being not only 

 overstocked with its own workmen, but with the overflowings 

 of all the other classes, the competition for employment would 

 be so great in it as to reduce the wages of labor to the most 



