148 History of the English Landed Inte^xst. 



cultivable ■ soil of the kingdom being thus apportioned, we 

 may, without stretching the bounds of possibility, marry the 

 daughters to some of the neighbouring freeholders, and leave 

 the sons to choose between a soldier's and sailor's life in the 

 public service, or some of the various trades required to supply 

 these little farms with building materials, household furniture, 

 and implements. 



From such reasoning Mr. Wallace and his school asserted 

 that the way to render the nation as populous as possible, was 

 to split up the whole country into small freeholds like the 

 above, employing nobody in any arts but those of necessity, 

 throwing the surplus population into the cultivation of fresh 

 lands, and only utilising the ornamental industries for the 

 employment and maintenance of the future increase of popula- 

 tion. But there were men who were not prepared to admit 

 that this increase in population would be unmixed good for 

 the community at large. Some balance would have to be 

 struck betwixt the numbers of the rich and the numbers of the 

 poor. It is not to be imagined that even Wallace would have 

 suggested that labour, entirely unsupported by capital, would 

 benefit any State ; and if no limits were fixed, the increase in 

 the unemployed might grow out of ail proportion with that 

 of the employer. Sir James Stewart had asserted that, " In 

 our days, the principal object is to support the lower classes 

 from their own multiplication, and for this purpose an unequal 

 division of property seems to me the more favourable scheme ; 

 because the wealth of the rich falls naturally into the pockets 

 of the industrious poor ; whereas the produce of a very 

 middling fortune does no more than feed the children of the 

 proprietor, who, in course, becomes very commonly, and very 

 naturally, an useless burthen upon the land. Let us apply this 

 to an example. Do we not familiarly observe, that the con- 

 solidation of small estates, and the diminution of gentlemen's 

 families of middling fortunes, do little harm to a modern Stale? 

 There are always abundance of this class of inhabitants to be 

 found wherever there is occasion for them. When a great 

 man buys up the lands of the neighbouring gentry, or small 

 proprietors, all the complaints which are heard turn upon the 



