The cumulus of the moral habits of each individual is the manners of that individual; the cumulus of the manners of individuals makes up the manners of a nation.

The happiness of individuals is evidently the ultimate end of political society; and political welfare, or the strength, splendor, and opulence of the state, have been always admitted, both by political writers, and the valuable part of mankind in general, to conduce to this end, and are therefore desirable.

The causes that advance or obstruct any one of these three objects, are external or internal. The latter may be divided into physical, civil, and personal, under which last head I comprehend the moral and mechanical habits of mankind. The physical causes are principally climate, soil, and number of persons; the civil, are government and laws; and political welfare is always in a ratio composed of the force of these particular causes. A multitude of external causes, and all these internal ones, not only control and qualify, but are constantly acting on, and thereby insensibly, as well as sensibly, altering one another, both for the better and the worse, and this, not excepting the climate itself.

The powerful efficacy of manners in increasing a people is manifest from the instance you mention, the Quakers; among them industry and frugality multiply and extend the use of the necessaries of life; to manners of a like kind are owing the populousness of Holland, Switzerland, China, Japan, and most parts of Hindostan, &c., in every one of which the force of extent of territory and fertility of soil is multiplied, or their want compensated by industry and frugality.

Neither nature nor art has contributed much to the production of subsistence in Switzerland; yet we see frugality preserves and even increases families that live on their fortunes, and which, in England, we call the

gentry; and the observation we cannot but make in the southern part of this kingdom, that those families, including all superior ones, are gradually becoming extinct, affords the clearest proof, that luxury (that is, a greater expense of subsistence than in prudence a man ought to consume) is as destructive, as a disproportionable want of it; but in Scotland, as in Switzerland, the gentry, though one with another they have not one fourth of the income, increase in number.

And here I cannot help remarking, by the by, how well founded your distinction is between the increase of mankind in old and new settled countries in general, and more particularly in the case of families of condition. In America, where the expenses are more confined to necessaries, and those necessaries are cheap, it is common to see above one hundred persons descended from one living old man. In England, it frequently happens, where a man has seven, eight, or more children, there has not been a descendant in the next generation, occasioned by the difficulties the number of children has brought on the family, in a luxurious, dear country, and which have prevented their marrying.

That this is more owing to luxury than mere want, appears from what I have said of Scotland, and more plainly from parts of England remote from London, in most of which the necessaries of life are nearly as dear, in some dearer than London; yet the people of all ranks marry and breed up children.

Again; among the lower ranks of life, none produce so few children as servants. This is, in some measure, to be attributed to their situation, which hinders marriage, but is also to be attributed to their luxury and corruption of manners, which are greater than among any other set of people in England, and is the consequence of a nearer view of the lives and persons of a

superior rank, than any inferior rank, without a proper education, ought to have.

The quantity of subsistence in England has unquestionably become greater for many ages; and yet, if the inhabitants are more numerous, they certainly are not so in proportion to our improvement of the means of support. I am apt to think there are few parts of this kingdom, that have not been at some former time more populous than at present. I have several cogent reasons for thinking so of a great part of the countries I am most intimately acquainted with; but, as they were probably not all most populous at the same time, and as some of our towns are visibly and vastly grown in bulk, I dare not suppose, as judicious men have done, that England is less peopled than heretofore.

The growth of our towns is the effect of a change of manners, and improvement of arts, common to all Europe; and though it is not imagined, that it has lessened the country growth of necessaries, it has evidently, by introducing a greater consumption of them (an infallible consequence of a nation's dwelling in towns), counteracted the effects of our prodigious advances in the arts.

But however frugality may supply the place, or prodigality counteract the effects, of the natural, or acquired subsistence of a country, industry is, beyond doubt, a more efficacious cause of plenty than any natural advantage of extent or fertility. I have mentioned instances of frugality and industry, united with extent and fertility. In Spain and Asia Minor, we see frugality joined to extent and fertility, without industry; in Ireland, we once saw the same; Scotland had then none of them but frugality. The change in these two countries is obvious to every one, and it is owing to industry not yet very widely diffused in either. The effects of industry and frugality in England are surprising; both

the rent and the value of the inheritance of land depend on them greatly more than on nature, and this, though there is no considerable difference in the prices of our markets. Land of equal goodness lets for double the rent of other land lying in the same county, and there are many years' purchase difference between different counties, where rents are equally well paid and secure.

Thus manners operate upon the number of inhabitants; but of their silent effects upon the civil constitution, history, and even our own experience, yields us abundance of proofs, though they are not uncommonly attributed to external causes; their support of a government against external force is so great, that it is a common maxim among the advocates of liberty, that no free government was ever dissolved, or overcome, before the manners of its subjects were corrupted.

The superiority of Greece over Persia was singly owing to their difference of manners; and that, though all natural advantages were on the side of the latter, to which I might add civil ones; for, though the greatest of all civil advantages, liberty, was on the side of Greece, yet that added no political strength to her, other than as it operated on her manners, and, when they were corrupted, the restoration of their liberty by the Romans, overturned the remains of their power.

Whether the manners of ancient Rome were at any period calculated to promote the happiness of individuals, it is not my design to examine; but that their manners, and the effects of those manners on their government and public conduct, founded, enlarged, and supported, and afterwards overthrew their empire, is beyond all doubt. One of the effects of their conquest furnishes us with a strong proof, how prevalent manners are even beyond the quantity of subsistence; for, when the custom of bestowing on the citizens of Rome corn

enough to support themselves and families, was become established, and Egypt and Sicily produced the grain, that fed the inhabitants of Italy, this became less populous every day, and the jus trium liberorum was but an expedient, that could not balance the want of industry and frugality.

But corruption of manners did not only thin the inhabitants of the Roman empire, but it rendered the remainder incapable of defence, long before its fall, perhaps before the dissolution of the republic; so that without standing disciplined armies, composed of men, whose moral habits principally, and mechanical habits secondarily, made them different from the body of the people, the Roman empire had been a prey to the barbarians many ages before it was.

By the mechanical habits of the soldiery, I mean their discipline, and the art of war; and that this is but a secondary quality, appears from the inequality that has in all ages been between raw, though well-disciplined armies, and veterans, and more from the irresistible force a single moral habit, religion, has conferred on troops, frequently neither disciplined nor experienced.

The military manners of the noblesse in France compose the chief force of that kingdom, and the enterprising manners and restless dispositions of the inhabitants of Canada have enabled a handful of men to harass our populous and generally less martial colonies; yet neither are of the value they seem at first sight, because overbalanced by the defect they occasion of other habits, that would produce more eligible political good; and military manners in a people are not necessary in an age and country where such manners may be occasionally formed and preserved among men enough to defend the state; and such a country is Great Britain, where,