to time, almost every flave being, from the nature of flavery, a thief; and compare the whole amount with the wages of a manufacturer of iron or wool in England, you will fee that labour is much cheaper there, than it ever can be by negroes here.-Why then will Americans purchase flaves? Because flaves may be kept as long as a man pleases, or has occafion for their labour; while hired men are continually leaving their mafter (often in the midft of his business) and fetting up for themselves. § 8.

13. As the increase of people depends on the encouragement of marriages, the following things must diminish a nation, viz. 1. The being conquered. For the conquerors will engross as many offices, and exact as much tribute or profit on the labour of the conquered, as will maintain them in their new establishment; and this diminishing the fubfiftence of the natives, difcourages their marriages, and fo gradually diminishes them, while the foreigners increase. 2. Loss of territory. Thus the Britons being driven into Wales, and crowded together in a barren country, infufficient to fupport fuch great numbers, diminished, till the people bore a proportion to the produce; while the Saxons increased on their abandoned lands, till the island became full of English. And, were the English now driven into Wales by fome foreign nation, there would, in a few years, be no more Englishmen in Britain, than there are now people in Wales. 3. Lofs of trade. Manufactures exported, draw fubfiftence from foreign countries

for

for numbers; who are thereby enabled to marry and raise families. If the nation be deprived of any branch of trade, and no new employment is found for her people occupied in that branch, it will foon be deprived of fo many people. 4. Lofs of food. Suppofe a nation has a fifhery, which not only employs great numbers, but makes the food and fubfiftence of the people cheaper: if another nation becomes mafter of the feas, and prevents the fishery, the people will diminish in proportion as the lofs of employ, and dearness of provifion, make it more difficult to fubfift a family. 5. Bad government and infecure property. People not only leave fuch a country, and, fettling abroad, incorporate with other nations, lose their native language, and become foreigners; but the industry of those that remain being discouraged, the quantity of fubfiftence in the country is leffened, and the support of a family becomes more difficult. So heavy taxes tend to diminish a people. 6. The introduction of flaves. The negroes brought into the English fugar-iflands, have greatly diminished the Whites there; the poor are by this means deprived of employment, while a few families acquire vaft eftates, which they spend on foreign luxuries; and educating their children in the habit of thofe luxuries, the fame income is needed for the fupport of one, that might have maintained one hundred. The whites who have flaves, not labouring, are enfeebled, and therefore not fo generally prolific; the flaves being worked too hard, and ill fed, their conftitutions

are

are broken, and the deaths among them are more than the births; fo that a continual fupply is needed from Africa. The northern colonies having few flaves, increase in whites. Slaves alfo pejorate the families that use them; the white children become proud, difgufted with labour, and being educated in idlenefs, are rendered unfit to get a living by industry,

14. Hence the prince that acquires new territory, if he finds it vacant, or removes the natives to give his own people room ;-the legislator that makes effectual laws for promoting of trade, increafing employment, improving land by more or better tillage, providing more food by fisheries, fecuring property, &c.-and the man that invents new trades, arts, or manufactures, or new improvements in husbandry; may be properly called the Fathers of their nation, as they are the caufe of the generation of multitudes, by the encouragement they afford to marriage.

15. As to privileges granted to the married, (fuch as the jus trium liberorum among the Romans) they may haften the filling of a country that has been thinned by war or peftilence, or that has otherwise vacant territory; but cannot increase a people beyond the means provided for their fubfiftence.

16. Foreign luxuries and needlefs manufactures, imported and used in a nation, do, by the fame reafoning, increase the people of the nation that furnishes them, and diminish the people of the pation that uses them,Laws, therefore, that

prevent

prevent fuch importations, and, on the contrary, promote the exportation of manufactures to be confumed in foreign countries, may be called (with refpect to the people that make them) generative laws, as by increafing fubfiftence they encourage marriage. Such laws likewife ftrengthen a country doubly, by increasing its own people, and diminishing its neighbours.

17. Some European nations prudently refuse to confume the manufactures of Eaft India: They fhould likewife forbid them to their colo→ nies; for the gain to the merchant is not to be compared with the lofs, by this means, of people to the nation.

18. Home luxury in the great, increases the nation's manufacturers employed by it, who are many, and only tends to diminish the families that indulge in it, who are few. The greater the common fashionable expence of any rank of people, the more cautious they are of marriage. Therefore luxury fhould never be fuffered to be

come common.

19. The great increase of offspring in particular families, is not always owing to greater fecundity of nature, but fometimes to examples of industry in the heads, and induftrious education; by which the children are enabled to provide better for themselves, and their marrying early is encouraged from the profpect of good fubfiftence.

20. If there be a fect, therefore, in our nation, that regard frugality and industry as reli

gious duties, and educate their children therein, more than others commonly do; fuch fect must confequently increase more by natural generation, than any other fect in Britain.

21. The importation of foreigners into country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provifions for fubfiftence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people; unless the new-comers have more induftry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more fubfiftence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it neceffary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occafional vacancy in a country; for fuch vacancy (if the laws are good, §. 14, 16) will foon be filled by natural generation. Who can now find the vacancy made in Sweden, France, or other warlike nations, by the plague of heroifm 40 years ago; in France, by the expulfion of the Proteftants; in England, by the fettlement of her colonies; or in Guinea, by a hundred years exportation of flaves, that has blackened half America The thinness of the inhabitants in Spain, is owing to national pride, and idleness, and other caufes, rather than to the expulfion of the Moors, or to the making of new fettlements.

22. There is, in short, no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of fubfiftence. Was the face of the earth vacant of other plants, it might be gradually

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