antiquity. Without regard to phyfical and territorial improbabilities, let an intelligent reader go and fearch for a criterion, by which the credibility of old authors, as to population, may be fixed. Let him peruse hiftorians of equal credit, living in different or the fame countries at one time. What con tradiction will he not find among them in matters that require fcarcely any degree of political inveftigation! An English writer living at the juncture, fpeaks with great confidence of forty thousand men being killed or made prifoners in a battle. A Scotch cotemporary hiftorian of equal authority, reduces the number to the fourth part, or lefs. What numerous armies grow under the pen of one writer! how they dwindle under that of another! We are afraid that more enlightened times are not blameless in this refpect, witness the different accounts that have been published of the numbers and loffes of armies, fince the beginning of the prefent century. While this author's principles, therefore, remain firm, they are not to be fhaken by remote or doubtful antiquity. Perhaps the very beft vindication of our author's principles would be to investigate. the population of England, under the reigns of the firft Norman kings, from Doomsday Book, the Red Book of the Exchequer, and other records, where the data for political arithmetic are ascertained from the number of inhabitants upon every fee, and its other valuations. This writer next points out a method of estimating the proportion of numbers between the farmers of a country and its free hands, by whom he means all its inhabitants not employed in agriculture. His theory upon this head is very ingenious, and may be applicable to the purposes of legiflation. He next confiders the principles which determine the place of refidence to each condition of life. He thinks that the farmers ought to live upon or near the spot they labour; that landed or monied gentlemen may live where they please; and the working part of the people where they can. He confiders the collecting fuch numbers of inhabitants as at present live in cities, as a late revolution in the political economy of Europe, and therefore examines the confequences which refult from fuch collections ; and he obferves, that government has becoms thereby more complex. Before we proceed farther, we cannot help expreffing fome concern that this writer did not illuftrate the juftness of his remarks with regard to the difference between our present political economy, and that of our ancestors. He has fuppofed (or at least he has given no reason why we should not suppose) the feudal constitutions to be the fame all over Europe, and he has reafoned from that datum. This we apprehend was not the cafe; and it is easy to prove, that long after the time of the Conqueft, no fewer than three modes of the feudal law exifted in Europe. The firft was that which had all the imperfections of its original on its head, and prevailed in Scotland, great part of Germany, the Milanese, and other parts of Italy, where the imperial vicars had found means to erect themselves into a set of independent princes. This fpecies of the feudal law, though the most imperfect, is the most ancient, and was calculated for the aggrandizement of the great landholders and heads of clans, as well as for fortifying them against the power of the king or leader of the fociety. The next mode was that introduced by Hugh Capet and his defcendents, and carried over into England by the Conqueror: the primary view of this mode was to ftrengthen the prerogative, and to fecure the dependency of the great landholders upon the crown. The laft and the moft excellent fpecies was that which was formed by the Guiscards, who conquered Naples and Sicily, and whose institutions, equally calculated for the benefit of the fovereign and the subject, for fome ages banished the shades of barbarism from those countries, and introduced in their ftead the funfhine of learning and fcience, with all the fweets of induftry and agriculture. We do not bring this omiflion as any charge against the author; we only wish that his subject had led him to confider it. We We are the more follicitous on this head, becaufe the refearch must be attended with a variety of doubts and difficulties, and evidences even fometimes contradictory. In England, for instance, we are doubtful whether, under the AngloSaxon government, when thaneships and land-eftates were not hereditary, the country was not as well peopled as now. are certain that Scotland, in no period within these hundred years, could have borne the evacuations of blood fhe is faid to have fuffered under the three Edwards of England; and yet. fhe rofe always more dreadful from her defeats. We are even uncertain from hiftory, whether Ireland, whofe old conftitutions differ from the other modes of the feudal law, and were the most unfavourable of any other to industry, was not as populous formerly as now, when its foil is improved, and its people have acquired habits of industry to a most surprising degree. We have thrown out the above obfervations for information only, without impeaching this author's enquiries, which, in the present fituation of our domeftic policy, we think are extremely proper and pertinent. His fpeculations upon vicious propagation, which happens when people are lefs provident than ra. tional, and who beget an offspring which they cannot maintain, require require great elucidation. For our own part, we cannot at prefent fee any danger threatened to England by this vicious propagation; an epithet we wish our author had not made use of, because he means by it no more than a propagation impolitic with regard to the state, and imprudent with respect to themfelves. The law of England does not admit the fuppofition of such a propagation, because the public is taxed with the maintenance of the iffue, and the expence is always repaid by the encrease of hands in the community. Foreigners, or writers who are chiefly converfant in foreign policy, can scarcely believe that there is no fuch perfon in England, from the first to the last day of the longest life, as a beggar, but by choice; and that even age and infirmity have as much right and as legal a claim to a livelihood as the most induftrious fubject in the kingdom. The father of a child who is the iffue of what our author in another place calls abusive propagation, is indeed, if he is able, obliged by law to maintain the child as long as it is not of fervice to the public; but his ability or difability to do this never can affect the circumftances of the child, which in all events must be provided for, till put out to fome occupation. Perhaps the humanity and wisdom of this inftitution has contributed more than any other cause to the ftrength, riches, and manufactures of England. We should therefore have been glad that this author had pointed out, in what degree, or by what means, propagation, in any fenfe of the word, can ever become vicious or abufive in England, as her great political disease at present arifes from the scarcity of farmers and free hands. We wish likewise, that he had been a little more diffufe upon a point he has just started, that is, how far industry may be affected by charity. He has told us, and very properly, that charity may be a friend to multiplication, but that it is none to industry here we think his fpeculations may be realized for the benefit of the public. Parochial provifions for children and poor people do not come under the name of charity, because they may be legally claimed; and charity to individuals, in certain circumftances, particularly in cafes of fractures, and other accidents incident to the human body, is a Christian duty, and falls in with the fpirit of our laws in providing for the poor; but should this fpirit of charity proceed (as we have reafon to dread from its prefent extenfion may be the cafe) to such an extravagant height, as, by becoming an independence for the poor, may shake national industry, it undoubtedly requires public attention. : This writer next applies his general principles to a particular representation given of the ftate of population in the British Y 3 ifles. ifles. Here he attaches himself to the calculations of Dr. Brackenridge, addreffed in a letter to George Lewis Scot, Efq. published in 1758. We fhall with him admit these calculations to be true, though fome have thought, that in matters of fact, they are difputable; but we cannot avoid giving our readers his answer to an objection which may be made to his fuppofing, that the population of Great Britain is ftopped for want of food. This, an objector may fay, cannot be true, because one fixth part of the crop is annually exported. I anfwer, fays the author, that it is ftill ftopt for want of food, for the exportation only marks that the home demand is fatisfied; but this does not prove that the inhabitants are full fed, although they can buy no more at the exportation-price. Thofe who cannot buy, are exactly those who I fay die for want of fubfiftence : could they buy, they would live and multiply, and no grain perhaps would be exported. This is a plain confequence of my reafoning; and my principal point in view throughout this whole. book, is to find out a method for enabling those to buy who at prefent cannot, and who therefore do not multiply; becaufe they can give no equivalent to the farmers for their fuperfluity, which confequently they export. By this application of our principles, I have no occafion to call in queftion our author's facts. It is no matter what be the ftate of the cafe: if the principles I lay down be juft, they muft refolve every phenomenon.' Would not foreigners, from reading this paragraph, which the writer certainly ought to explain, imagine that the English are fuch barbarians as to fuffer the ftreets and fields to groan under the poor, who are ftarved to death, while they were fending their corn to foreigners. Nothing can be better explained than this matter has been, by the various publications upon the prefent fcarcity of provifions which we have had occafion to review. From them it appears, that great numbers of those whom our author calls free hands in the ftate, have been occafionally converted into farmers, and have made an artificial plenty by the importation of corn from other countries, which is a fpecies of employment that this author feems not to have confidered. He thinks that in Britain population is obftructed by its political fituation, which throws that country at prefent into a moral incapacity of augmenting in numbers; and fupposes that the eftablishment of trade and induftry naturally rectifies this mifapplication of agriculture. But how? By purging, fays he, the land of fuperfluous mouths. He conjectures, that were plen tiful years more commen, mankind would be more numerous; that were fca ce years more frequent, numbers would diminifli. We' fhall not follow our author in his calculations of the quantity of grain produced in a plentiful year in England, which he thinks cannot afford fubfiftence to the inhabitants for above fifteen months, because he is candid enough not to pretend to have complete information as to facts; and we perceive from his work, that the part relating to that subject was written fo far back as the year 1757 In the fecond book, the author treats of trade and industry, and introduces the recapitulation of it as follows: • Having paved the way in the first book, for a particular inquiry into the principles of modern political economy; in the introduction to this, I fhew that the ruling principle of the science, in all ages, has been to proceed upon the supposition that every one will act, in what regards the public, from a motive to private intereft; and that the only public fpirited sentiment any statesman has a right to exact of his subjects, is their strict obedience to the laws. The union of every private interest makes the common good: this it is the statesman's duty to promote; this confequently ought to be the motive of all his actions; because the goodness of an action depends on the conformity between the motive and the duty of the agent. We can, therefore, no more fubject the actions of a statesman to the laws of private morality, than we can judge of the difpenfations of providence by what we think right and wrong. CHAP. I. In treating the principles of any fcience, many things must be blended together, at first, which in themselves are very different. In the first book I confidered multiplication and agriculture as the same subject; in the fecond, trade and industry are represented as mutually depending on one another. To point out this relation, I give a definition of the one and the other, by which it appears, that to constitute trade, there must be a confumer, a manufacturer, and a merchant. To conftitute their induftry, there must be freedom in the induftrious. His motive to work must be in order to procure for himself, by the means of trade, an equivalent, with which he may purchase every neceffary, and remain with fomething over, as the reward of his diligence. Confequently, induftry differs from labour, which may be forced, and which draws no other recompence, commonly, than bare fubfiftence. Here I take occafion to fhew the hurtful effects of flavery on the progrefs of industry; from which I conclude, that its progress was in a great measure prevented by the fubordination of claffes under the feudal government; and that the diffolution of that system established it, Whether trade be the cause of industry, or industry the cause of trade, is a question of little importance, but the principle upon |