POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



71 



Thus the idle population of Rome in vain calls for 

 labour ; the waste Campagna cli Hotna in vain calls for 

 labourers : the social organization is bad ; and so long 

 a- tliis shall remain unchanged, the day-labourer will 

 finish from penury, on the surface of fields which, 

 for want of culture, are returning to their wild state; 

 and the population, far from increasing, will diminish. 



On the same principle in manufactures, the rich 

 proprietors of Poland will in vain require all the pro- 

 ilucf of luxury ; the bad condition of the roads, prohi- 

 biting every distant transport, will in vain present 

 superior advantages to national industry ; oppression 

 and servitude destroy all energy, all spirit of enter- 

 prise in the lower class. Elsewhere ruinous mono- 

 polies, absurd privileges, affrighting advances, igno- 

 rance, barbarity, and want of security, will render the 

 progress of manufactures impossible ; no capital will 

 be accumulated to animate them. In those cases, to 

 increase the population will not increase industry. 

 The births will in vain be doubled, be quadrupled, 

 luring a certain number of years; they will not af- 

 ibrd an additional workman, they will only be follow- 

 ed by a proportionably quicker mortality. The social 

 organization is bad ; so long as this shall remain un- 

 changed, population cannot increase. 



The guardian population is fed as well as recruited 

 by the other classes. It is not sufficient that many 

 children are born ; unless their parents enjoy a certain 

 degree of opulence, they can never bring them up to 

 the age of men ; the prince can never make soldiers of 

 them. In this case, wars by land or sea will devour the 

 population : whilst they employ only its superfluity, 

 the social organization is good. 



The population is always measured, in the long run, 

 by the demand for labour. Wherever labour is requir- 

 ed, and a sufficient wage offered, the workmen will 

 arise to earn it. The population, with its expansive 

 force, will occupy the place which is found vacant. 

 Subsistence will also arise for the workmen, or in case 

 of need, be imported. The same demand which calls 

 a man into existence, will likewise recompense the 

 agricultural labour which provides him with food. If 

 the demand for labour cease, the workman will perish, 

 yet, not without a struggle, in which not he alone will 

 suffer, but all his brethren and his rivals. The sub- 

 sistence which enabled him to live, and which hence- 

 forth he cannot pay for, and cannot demand, will in its 

 turn cease to be produced. Thus, national happiness 

 rests on the demand for labour, but on a regular and per- 

 petual demand. For, on the contrary, a demand which 

 is intermittent, after having formed workmen, con- 

 demns them to suffering and death : it would be far 

 better if they never had existed. 



We have seen that the demand for labour, the cause 

 of production, must be proportional to revenue which 

 supports consumption ; that this revenue, in its turn, 

 originates in the national wealth, which wealth is form- 

 ed and augmented by labour. Thus, in political eco- 

 nomy, all things are linked together, we move constant- 

 ly in a circle, since each effect becomes a cause in its 

 turn. Yet all things are progressive, provided that each 

 movement is adjusted to the rest; but all stops, all re- 

 trogrades, whenever one of the movements which ought 

 to be combined is disordered. According to the na- 

 tural march of things, an augmentation of wealth will 

 produce an augmentation of revenue ; from this will 

 arise an increase of consumption, next an increase of 

 labour for reproduction, and therewith of population ; 

 and, finally, this new labour will, in its turn, increase 



the national wealth. But if, by unreasonable measures, Politic*) 

 any one of those operations is hastened without regard Economy, 

 to all the rest, the whole system is deranged, tnd the - -Y** ' 

 poor are weighed down with suffering inbU-ad of the 

 happiness which was anticipated for them. 



The object of society is not fulfilled, so long as the 

 country occupied by this society presents means of sup- 

 porting a new population, of enabling it to live in hap- 

 piness and abundance, whilst yet those means are not 

 resorted to. The multiplication of happiness over the 

 earth, is the object of Providence ; it is stamped in all 

 his works, and the duty of men in their human society 

 is to co-operate in it. 



The government which, by oppression of its sub- 

 jects, by its contempt for justice and order, by the 

 shackles it puts on agriculture and industry, condemns 

 fertile countries to be deserts, sins not against its own 

 subjects alone ; its tyranny is a crime against human 

 society, on the whole of which it inflicts suffering ; it 

 weakens its rights over the country occupied by it, and 

 as it troubles the enjoyments of all other states, it give* 

 to all others the right of controlling it. All men are 

 mutually necessary to each other. Europe has a dou- 

 ble need of the subsistence which it might procure 

 from Barbary, if this magnificent shore of Africa were 

 given back to civilization, and from the consumers 

 we should soon find there. The institution of pro- 

 perty is the result of social conventions. In a society 

 subjected to laws and a regulating government, the 

 interest of each may be implicitly relied on for pro- 

 ducing the advantage of all, because the aberrations 

 of this private interest are in every case of need li- 

 mited by public authority. But, in the great human 

 society formed among independent nations, there is 

 no law or general government to repress the passions 

 of each sovereign : besides, the interest of those sove- 

 reigns is not necessarily conformable to that of their 

 subjects ; or, to speak more correctly, the one is con- 

 trary to the other, whenever the object of the rulers is to 

 maintain their tyranny. Thus, respect for the pretended 

 right of property claimed by each government over its 

 territory, is not referable to the right of private pro- 

 perty, and, besides, it cannot be reciprocal. The same 

 circumstances which cause a tyrannical government to 

 impede its own civilization, render it equally incapa- 

 ble of respecting that of its neighbours, and submitting 

 to the laws of nations. 



But whilst more than three quarters of the habitable 

 globe are, by the faults of their governments, deprived 

 of the inhabitants they should support, we, at the pre- 

 sent day, in almost the whole of Europe, experience 

 the opposite calamity, that of not being able to main- 

 tain a superabundant population, which surpasses the 

 proportion of labour required, and which, before dying 

 of poverty, will diffuse its sufferings over the whole 

 class of such as live by the labour of their hands. For 

 our part, we owe this calamity to the imprudent zeal of 

 our governments. With us, religious instruction, legis- 

 lation, social organization, every thing has tended to 

 produce a population, the existence of which was not 

 provided for beforehand. The labour was not adjust, 

 ed to the number of men ; and, frequently, the same 

 zeal with which it was attempted to multiply the 

 number of births, was afterwards employed in all arts 

 to diminish the required number of hands. The pro- 

 portion which should subsist in the progress of the 

 different departments of society has been broken, and 

 the suffering has become universal. 



Mr. Mai thus, the first writer who awakened public 



