POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



Political all direct their efforts; but that this object has not 



Economy, been attained except so far as they are able to fulfil 



""V"'" ' their duties towards the beings whom they call into 



existence : and after obtaining the happiness of being 



fathers, after renewing their families, and giving this 



stay and hope to their declining years, they are no less 



obliged to live chastely with their wives than single 



persons with such as do not belong to them. 



Self-interest powerfully warns men against this in- 

 definite multiplication of their families, to which they 

 have been invited by so fatal a religious error ; and no 

 one ought to be disquieted, if this order is observed re- 

 ncissly. In general, at least three births are required to 

 give two such individuals as arrive at the age of mar- 

 riage ; and the niches of population are not so exactly 

 formed that they cannot by turns admit a little more 

 and a little less. Only government ought to awa- 

 ken the prudence of citizens deficient in it, and never 

 to deceive them by hopes of an independent lot, when 

 this illusory establishment shall leave them exposed to 

 misery, suffering, and death. 



> When peasants are proprietors, the agricultural po- 

 pulation stops of itself, when it has brought about a 

 division of the land, such that each family is invited 

 to labour, and may live in comfortable circumstances. 

 This is the case in almost all the Swiss cantons, which 

 follow nothing but agriculture. When two or more 

 sons are found in one family,- the younger do not mar- 

 ry till they can find wives who bring them some pro- 

 perty. Till then they work day labour, and live by 

 means of it. But among peasant cultivators the trade 

 of day labour does not afford a* rank ; and the workman 

 who has nothing but his limbs, can rarely find a father 

 imprudent enough to give him his daughter. 



When the land, instead of being cultivated by its 

 proprietors, is cultivated by farmers, metayers, day- 

 labourers, the condition of the latter classes becomes 

 more precarious, and their multiplication is not so ne- 

 cessarily adjusted to the demand for their labour. They 

 are far worse informed than the peasant proprietor, 

 and yet they are called to perform a much more com- 

 plicated calculation. Living under the risk of being 

 dismissed at a day's notice from the land they till, it is 

 less a question with them what this land will give, than 

 what is their chance of being employed elsewhere. 

 They calculate probabilities in place of certainties, and 

 commit themselves to fortune with regard to what 

 they cannot investigate. They depend on being happy ; 

 they marry much younger ; they bring into the world 

 many more children, precisely because they know less 

 distinctly how those children are to be established. 



Thus metayers, day-labourers, all peasants depend- 

 ing on a master, being more imperfectly able to judge 

 of their situation by themselves, ought to be guided 

 and protected more carefully by government. Landed 

 proprietors wield all the force of monopoly against 

 them ; whilst day-labourers, acting in competition 

 with each other, are finally reduced to work for the 

 most wretched subsistence. Those measures are wise, 

 therefore, which have been adopted by legislators to fix 

 the minimum share that should fall to each peasant. 

 It would in general be a beneficent law which should 

 permit no division of a metairie below a certain 

 limit, no reduction below a half on the metayer's part. 

 It is a beneficent law which has fixed the peasant's lot 

 in Austria ; a law, which should invariably fix the 

 Russian peasant's capitation to his landlord, would be 

 equivalent to an emancipation from serfage, and free 



from all the convulsions of such a step. The Russian Political 

 nation could not perhaps receive a greater benefit Economy, 

 from its government. The statute of Elizabeth, in fine, x "V^-' 

 was wise in prohibiting a cottage from being built with- 

 out at least four acres of land being allotted to it. Had 

 this law been executed in England and Ireland, no 

 marriage could have happened among" day-labourer* 

 without a cottage to shelter the family, no cottager 

 would have been reduced to the last degree of penu- 

 ry- 



The industrious population which inhabit towns, have 

 still fewer data than those of the country for calculat- 

 ing the lot of the succeeding generation. The work- 

 man knows only that he has lived by his labour ; he 

 naturally believes that his children will do so likewise. 

 How can he judge of the extent of the market, or the 

 general demand for labour in his country, whilst the 

 master who employs him is incessantly mistaken on these 

 points ? Accordingly this class, more dependent than 

 any other on chances of every kind for its subsistence, 

 is exactly the class which calculates those chances least 

 in the formation of a family. They are the people who 

 marry soonest, produce most children, and consequent- 

 ly lose most ; but they do not lose their children, till 

 after being themselves exposed to a competition which 

 deprives them successively of all the sweets of life. 



At the time, when all towns were distributed into 

 bodies of tradesmen, when a calling could not be exer- 

 cised till the applicant had been united to a corporation, a 

 workman never marriedtill after he had been passed mas- 

 ter. A reception into the trade gave him the certain- 

 ty of being able to maintain his family ; an excessive 

 competition did not expose the great mass of the 

 population to the danger of dying from hunger. Thus, 

 all the institutions created in the republics of the 

 middle ages, and reproduced in Queen Elisabeth's 

 statute of apprenticeship, though keenly attacked by 

 Adam Smith for establishing a monopoly contrary to 

 the consumer's interest, may be defended, not in re- 

 gard to the increase of riches, but as forming a 

 necessary obstacle to the immoderate increase of po- 

 pulation. 



Yet because the system which we follow has made 

 us experience a calamity, we ought not to imagine 

 that no escape is to be found except by rushing into 

 the opposite extreme. It is not by the suppression of 

 corporations alone, that we have disproportionately 

 increased the manufacturing population. It is much, 

 more by the inordinate encouragement which all go- 

 vernments at the same time have given to production 

 without attending to consumption. We have already 

 pointed out the results of this imprudent struggle in 

 regard to the increase of wealth. They have been still 

 more disastrous in producing and supporting with 

 deceitful hopes a population, which has afterwards been 

 abandoned to all the horrors of want. 



A state ought doubtless to receive with gratitude, 

 whatever new industry the wants of consumers may 

 develope ; but it also ought to allow the industry, which 

 is quitting it, to depart without any effort to the con- 

 trary. When the profits of a manufacture diminish, 

 new workmen do not engage in it ; former workmen 

 withdraw ; and after some years of suffering, too long 

 and too cruel, by any mode of treatment, the level is 

 again established. But if the favours of government 

 keep up the staggering manufacture ; if trying to sav 

 it, government offers bounties for the discovery of any 

 machine which shall spare manual labour, it will pro- 



