interfering with their mother conutry in trades, that depend on labour, manufactures, &c. is too remote to require the attention of Great Britain.

10. But, in proportion to the increase of the colonies, a vast demand is growing for British manufactures; a glorious market, wholly in the power of Britain, in which foreigners cannot interfere, which will increase, in a short time, even beyond her power of supplying, though her whole trade should be to her colonies

12. It is an ill grounded opinion, that by the labour of slaves, America may possibly vie in cheapness of manufactures with Britain. The labour of slaves can never be so cheap here, as the labour of working men is in Britain. Any one may compute it. Interest of money is in the colonies from 6 to 10 per cent. Slaves, one with another, cost 301. sterling per head. Reckon then the interest of the first purchase of a slave, the insurance or risk on his life, his clothing and diet, expenses in his sickness, and loss of time, loss by his neglect of business, (neglect is natural to the man, who is not to be benefited by his own care or diligence) expense of a driver to keep him at work, and his pilfering from time to time, almost every slave being, from the nature of slavery, a thief, and compare the whole amount with the wages of a manufacturer of iron or wool in England, you will see, that labour is much cheaper there than it ever can be by negroes here. Why then will Americans purchase slaves? Because slaves may be kept as long as a man pleases, or has occasion for their labour, while hired men are continually leaving their master (of ten in the midst of his business) and setting up for themselves. § 8.

marry and raise families. If the nation be deprived of any branch of trade, and no new employment is found for the people occupied in that branch, it will soon be deprived of so many people. 4. Loss of food: suppose a nation has a fishery, which not only employs great numbers, but makes the food and subsistence of the people cheaper: if another nation becomes master of the seas, and prevents the fishery, the people will diminish in proportion as the loss of employ and dearness of provision makes it more difficult to subsist a family. 5. Bad government and insecure property: people not only leave such a country, and, settling abroad, incorporate with other nations, lose their native language, and become foreigners; but the industry of those that remain being discouraged, the quantity of subsistence in the country is lessened, and the support of a family becomes more difficult. So heavy taxes tend to diminish a people. 6. The introduction of slaves: the negroes brought into the English sugar islands have greatly diminished the whites there; the poor are by this means deprived of employment, while a few families acquire vast estates, which they spend on foreign luxuries; and educating their children in the habit of those luxuries, the same income is needed for the support of one, that might have maintained one hundred. The whites, who have slaves, not labouring, are enfeebled, and therefore not so generally prolific; the slaves being worked too hard, and ill fed, their constitutions are broken, and the deaths among them are more than the births; so that a continual supply is needed from Africa. The northern colonies, having few slaves, increase in whites. Slaves also pejorate the families that use them; the white children become 13. As the increase of people depends on proud, disgusted with labour, and, being eduthe encouragement of marriages, the follow-cated in idleness, are rendered unfit to get a ing things must diminish a nation, viz. 1. The living by industry. 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 substance of the natives discourages their marriages, and so 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, insufficient to support such 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 some foreign nation, there would, in a few years, be no more Englishmen in Britain, than there are now people in Wales. 3. Loss of trade: manufactures, exported, draw subsistence from foreign countries for numbers, who are thereby enabled to

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, increasing employment, improving land by more or better tillage, providing more food by fisheries, securing property, &c., and the man that invents new trades, arts or manufactures, or new improvements in husbandry, may be properly called fathers of their nation, as they are the cause of the generation of multitudes, by the encouragement they afford to marriage.

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

16. Foreign luxuries, and needless manu

the expulsion of the Moors, or to the making of new settlements.

22. There is, in short, no bound to the pro

factures, imported and used in a nation, do, by the same reasoning, increase the people of the nation, that furnishes them, and diminish the people of the nation, that uses them.lific nature of plants or animals, but what is Laws, therefore, that prevent such importa- made by their crowding and interfering with tions, and on the contrary, promote the ex- each other's means of subsistence. Was the portation of manufactures to be consumed in face of the earth vacant of other plants, it foreign countries, may be called (with respect might be gradually sowed and overspread with to the people that make them) generative one kind only, as for instance, with fennel; and laws, as, by increasing subsistence, they en- were it empty of other inhabitants, it might, in courage marriage. Such laws, likewise, a few ages, be replenished from one nation strengthen a country doubly, by increasing only, as for instance, with Englishmen. Thus its own people, and diminishing its neighbours. there are supposed to be now upwards of one 17. Some European nations prudently re- million of English souls in North America fuse to consume the manufactures of East In- (though it is thought scarce 80,000 have been dia:-they should likewise forbid them to their brought over sea) and yet perhaps there is not colonies; for the gain to the merchant is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather many more, to be compared with the loss, by this means, on account of the employment the colonies of people to the nation. afford to manufactures at home. This million doubling, suppose but once in twenty-five years, will, in another century, be more than the people of England, and the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this side the water. What an accession of power to the British empire by sea as well as land! What increase of trade and navigation! What numbers of ships and seamen! We have been here but little more than a hundred years, and yet the force of our privateers in the late war, united, was greater, both in men and guns, than that of the whole British navy in queen Elizabeth's time. How important an affair then to Britain is the present treaty* for settling the bounds between her colonies and the French and how careful should she be to secure room enough, since on the room depends so much the increase of her people!

18. Home luxury in the great, increases the nation's manufactures 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 expense of any rank of people, the more cautious they are of marriage. Therefore luxury should never be suffered to become common.

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

20. If there be a sect, therefore, in our nation, that regards frugality and industry as religious duties, and educate their children 23. In fine, a nation well regulated is like therein, more than others commonly do, such a polypus,† take away a limb, its place is soon sect must consequently increase more by na- supplied; cut it in two, and each deficient. tural generation than any other sect in Britain. part shall speedily grow out of the part re21. The importation of foreigners into a maining. Thus, if you have room and subcountry, that has as many inhabitants as the sistence enough, as you may say, by dividing, present employments and provisions for sub- make ten polypuses out of one, you may, of sistence will bear, will be in the end no in-one, make ten nations, equally populous and crease of people, unless the new-comers have powerful; or, rather, increase a nation tenmore industry and frugality than the natives, fold in numbers and strength. and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out.-Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country; for such vacancy (if the laws are good, 14, 16) will soon be filled by natural generation.

Who can now find the vacancy made in Sweden, France, or other warlike nations, by the plague of her roism 40 years ago; in France, by the expulsion of the Protestants; in England, by the settlement of her colonies; or in Guinea, by a hundred years exportation of slaves, that has blackened half America? The thinness of the inhabitants in Spain is owing to national pride, and idleness, and other causes, rather than to

R. Jackson, of London, to Dr. Franklin. Remarks on some of the foregoing Observations.

DEAR SIR,-It is now near three years since I received your excellent Observations on the Increase of Mankind, &c. in which you have with so much sagacity and accuracy shown in what manner, and by what causes, that principal means of political grandeur is best promoted; and have so well supported those just inferences you have occasionally

*The treaty of Utrecht, in 1751.

↑ A water insect, well known to naturalists,

drawn, concerning the general state of our American colonies, and the views and conduct of some of the inhabitants of Great Britain.

You have abundantly proved, that natural fecundity is hardly to be considered, because the vis generandi, as far as we know, is unlimited, and because experience shows, that the numbers of nations is altogether governed by collateral causes, and among these none of so much force as the quantity of subsistence, whether arising from climate, soil, improvement of tillage, trade, fisheries, secure property, conquest of new countries, or other favourable circumstances.

the ultimate end of political society; and political welfare, or the strength, splendour, 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.

As I perfectly concurred with you in your sentiments on these heads, I have been very desirous of building somewhat on the foundation you have there laid; and was induced, by your hints in the twenty-first section, to trouble you with some thoughts on the influence manners have always had, and are always likely to have, on the numbers of a The powerful efficacy of manners in inpeople, and their political prosperity in ge- creasing a people is manifest from the instance neral. you mention, the quakers; among them inThe end of every individual is its own pri-dustry and frugality multiply and extend the vate good. The rules it observes in the pursuit of this good are a system of propositions, almost every one founded in authority, that is, derive their weight from the credit given to one or more persons, and not from demonstration.

And this, in the most important as well as the other affairs of life, is the case even of the wisest and philosophical part of the human species; and that it should be so is the less strange, when we consider, that it is perhaps impossible to prove, that being, or life itself, has any other value than what is set on it by authority.

use of the necessaries of life; to manners of a like kind are owing the populousness of Holland, Swisserland, China, Japan, and most parts of Hindustan, &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 have contributed much to the production of subsistence in Swisserland, 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, A confirmation of this may be derived from that those families, including all superior ones, the observation, that, in every country in the are gradually becoming extinct, affords the universe, happiness is sought upon a different clearest proof, that luxury (that is, a greater plan; and, even in the same country, we see expense of subsistence than in prudence a man it placed by different ages, professions, and ought to consume) is as destructive as a disranks of men, in the attainment of enjoy-proportionable want of it; but in Scotland, ments utterly unlike.

These propositions, as well as others framed upon them, become habitual by degrees, and, as they govern the determination of the will, I call them moral habits.

There are another set of habits, that have the direction of the members of the body, that I call therefore mechanical habits. These compose what we commonly call the arts, which are more or less liberal or mechanical, as they more or less partake of assistance from the operations of the mind.

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

as in Swisserland, 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 bye, 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.

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 country, 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 a 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 the 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.

The quantity of subsistence in England has unquestionably become greater for several 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 counties 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 Eng-supported, and afterwards overthrew their emland 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.

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

pire, 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 however frugality may supply the place, or prodigality counteract the effects, of the natural or acquired subsistence of a coun- But corruption of manners did not only try, industry is, beyond doubt, a more effica- thin the inhabitants of the Roman empire, cious cause of plenty than any natural advan- but it rendered the remainder incapable of tage of extent or fertility. I have mentioned defence, long before its fall, perhaps before instances of frugality and industry united with the dissolution of the republic; so that withextent and fertility. In Spain and Asia Mi-out standing disciplined armies, composed of nor, 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, VOL. II.... 3 H 36*

men, whose moral habits principally, and mechanical habits secondarily, made them dif ferent 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,