Book: An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition

A >> Adam Ferguson, L.L.D. >> An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition







SECTION IV.

OF POPULATION AND WEALTH.


When we imagine what the Romans must have felt when the tidings came that
the flower of their city had perished at Cannae; when we think of what the
orator had in his mind when he said, "That the youth among the people was
like the spring among the seasons;" when we hear of the joy with which the
huntsman and the warrior is adopted, in America, to sustain the honours of
the family and the nation; we are made to feel the most powerful motives to
regard the increase and preservation of our fellow citizens. Interest,
affection, and views of policy, combine to recommend this object; and it is
treated with entire neglect only by the tyrant who mistakes his own
advantage, by the statesman who trifles with the charge committed to his
care, or by the people who are become corrupted, and who consider their
fellow subjects as rivals in interest, and competitors in their lucrative
pursuits.

Among rude societies, and among small communities in general, who are
engaged in frequent struggles and difficulties, the preservation and
increase of their members is a most important object. The American rates
his defeat from the numbers of men he has lost, or he estimates his victory
from the prisoners he has made; not from his having remained the master of
a field, or being driven from a ground on which he encountered his enemy. A
man with whom he can associate in all his pursuits, whom he can embrace as
his friend; in whom he finds an object to his affections, and an aid in his
struggles, is to him the most precious accession of fortune.

Even where the friendship of particular men is out of the question, the
society, being occupied in forming a party that may defend itself, or annoy
its enemy, finds no object of greater moment than the increase of its
numbers. Captives who may be adopted, or children of either sex who may be
reared for the public, are accordingly considered as the richest spoil of
an enemy. The practice of the Romans in admitting the vanquished to share
in the privileges of their city, the rape of the Sabines, and the
subsequent coalition with that people, were not singular or uncommon
examples in the history of mankind. The same policy has been followed, and
was natural and obvious wherever the strength of it state consisted in the
arms of a few, and where men were valued in themselves, without regard to
estate or fortune.

In rude ages, therefore, while mankind subsist in small divisions, it
should appear, that if the earth be thinly peopled, this defect does not
arise from the negligence of those who ought to repair it. It is even
probable, that the most effectual course that could be taken to increase
the species, would be, to prevent the coalition of nations, and to oblige
mankind to act in such small bodies as would make the preservation of their
numbers a principal object of their care. This alone, it is true, would not
be sufficient; we must probably add the encouragement for rearing families,
which mankind enjoy under a favourable policy, and the means of subsistence
which they owe to the practice of arts.

The mother is unwilling to increase her offspring, and is ill provided to
rear them, where she herself is obliged to undergo great hardships in the
search of her food. In North America, we are told, that she joins to the
reserves of a cold or a moderate temperament, the abstinencies to which she
submits, from the consideration of this difficulty. In her apprehension, it
is matter of prudence, and of conscience, to bring one child to the
condition of feeding on venison, and of following on foot, before she will
hazard a new burden in travelling the woods.

In warmer latitudes, by the different temperament, perhaps, which the
climate bestows, and by a greater facility in procuring subsistence, the
numbers of mankind increase, while the object itself is neglected; and the
commerce of the sexes, without any concern for population, is made a
subject of mere debauch. In some places, we are told, it is even made the
object of a barbarous policy, to defeat or to restrain the intentions of
nature. In the island of Formosa, the males are prohibited to marry before
the age of forty; and females, if pregnant before the age of thirty six,
have an abortion procured by order of the magistrate, who employs a
violence that endangers the life of the mother, together with that of the
child. [Footnote: Collection of Dutch Voyages.]

In China the permission given to parents to kill or to expose their
children, was probably meant as a relief from the burden of a numerous
offspring. But notwithstanding what we hear of a practice so repugnant to
the human heart, it has not, probably, the effects in restraining; which it
seems to threaten; but, like many other institutions, has an influence the
reverse of what it seemed to portend. The parents marry with this means of
relief in their view, and the children are saved.

However important the object of population may be held by mankind, it will
be difficult to find, in the history of civil policy, any wise or effectual
establishments, solely calculated to obtain it. The practice of rude or
feeble nations is inadequate, or cannot surmount the obstacles which are
found in their manner of life. The growth of industry, the endeavours of
men to improve their arts, to extend their commerce, to secure their
possessions, and to establish their rights, are indeed the most effectual
means to promote population: but they arise from a different motive; they
arise from regards to interest and personal safety. They are intended for
the benefit of those who exist, not to procure the increase of their
numbers.

It is, in the mean time, of importance to know, that where a people are
fortunate in their political establishments, and successful in the pursuits
of industry, their population is likely to grow in proportion. Most of the
other devices thought of for this purpose, only serve to frustrate, the
expectations of mankind or to mislead their attention.

In planting a colony, in striving to repair the occasional wastes of
pestilence or war, the immediate contrivance of statesmen may be useful;
but if, in reasoning on the increase of mankind in general, we overlook
their freedom and their happiness, our aids to population become weak and
ineffectual. They only lead us to work on the surface, or to pursue a
shadow, while we neglect the substantial concern; and in a decaying state,
make us tamper with palliatives, while the roots of an evil are suffered to
remain. Octavius revived or enforced the laws that related to population at
Rome; but it may be said of him, and of many sovereigns in a similar
situation, that they administer the poison, while they are devising the
remedy; and bring a damp and a palsy on the principles of life, while they
endeavour, by external applications to the skin; to restore the bloom of a
decayed and sickly body.

It is indeed happy for mankind, that this important object is not always
dependent on the wisdom of sovereigns, or the policy of single men. A
people intent on freedom, find for themselves a condition in which they may
follow the propensities of nature with a more signal effect, than any which
the councils of state could devise. When sovereigns, or projectors, are the
supposed masters of this subject, the best they can do, is to be cautious
of hurting an interest they cannot greatly promote, and of making breaches
they cannot repair.

"When nations were divided into small territories, and petty commonwealths,
where each man had his house and his field to himself, and each county had
its capital free and independent; what a happy situation for mankind," says
Mr. Hume; "how favourable to industry and agriculture, to marriage and to
population!" Yet here were, probably no schemes of the statesman, for
rewarding the married, or for punishing the single; for inviting foreigners
to settle, or for prohibiting the departure of natives. Every citizen
finding a possession secure, and a provision for his heirs, was not
discouraged by the gloomy fears of oppression or want; and where every
other function of nature was free, that which furnished the nursery could
not be restrained. Nature has required the powerful to be just; but she has
not otherwise intrusted the preservation of her works to their visionary
plans. What fuel can the statesman add to the fires of youth? Let him only
not smother it, and the effect is secure. Where we oppress or degrade
mankind with one hand, it is vain, like Octavius, to hold out in the other,
the baits of marriage, or the whip to barrenness. It is vain to invite new
inhabitants from abroad, while those we already possess are made to hold
their tenure with uncertainty; and to tremble, not only under the prospect
of a numerous family, but even under that of a precarious and doubtful
subsistence for themselves. The arbitrary sovereign who has made this the
condition of his subjects, owes the remains of his people to the powerful
instincts of nature, not to any device of his own.

Men will crowd where the situation is tempting, and, in a few generations,
will people every country to the measure of its means of subsistence. They
will even increase under circumstances that portend a decay. The frequent
wars of the Romans, and of many a thriving community; even the pestilence,
and the market for slaves, find their supply, if, without destroying the
source, the drain become regular; and if an issue is made for the
offspring, without unsettling the families from which they arise. Where a
happier provision is made for mankind, the statesman, who by premiums to
marriage, by allurements to foreigners, or by confining the natives at
home, apprehends, that he has made the numbers of his people to grow, is
often like the fly in the fable, who admired its success in turning the
wheel, and in moving the carriage: he has only accompanied what was already
in motion; he has dashed with his oar, to hasten the cataract; and waved
with his fan, to give speed to the winds.

Projects of mighty settlement, and of sudden population, however successful
in the end, are always expensive to mankind. Above a hundred thousand
peasants, we are told, were yearly driven, like so many cattle, to
Petersburgh, in the first attempts to replenish that settlement, and yearly
perished for want of subsistence. [Footnote: Strachlenberg.] The Indian
only attempts to settle in the neighbourhood of the plantain, [Footnote:
Dampier.] and while his family increases, he adds a tree to the walk.

If the plantain, the cocoa, or the palm, were sufficient to maintain an
inhabitant, the race of men in the warmer climates might become as numerous
as the trees of the forest. But in many, parts of the earth, from the
nature of the climate, and the soil, the spontaneous produce being next to
nothing, the means of subsistence are the fruits only of labour and skill.
If a people, while they retain their frugality, increase their industry,
and improve their arts, their numbers must grow in proportion. Hence it is,
that the cultivated fields of Europe are more peopled than the wilds of
America, or the plains of Tartary.

But even the increase of mankind which attends the accumulation of wealth,
has its limits. The _necessary of life_ is a vague and a relative
term: it is one thing in the opinion of the savage; another in that of the
polished citizen: it has a reference to the fancy, and to the habits of
living. While arts improve, and riches increase; while the possessions of
individuals, or their prospects of gain, come up to their opinion of what
is required to settle a family, they enter on its cares with alacrity. But
when the possession, however redundant, falls short of the standard, and a
fortune supposed sufficient for marriage is attained with difficulty,
population is checked, or begins to decline. The citizen, in his own
apprehension, returns to the state of the savage; his children, he thinks,
must perish for want; and he quits a scene overflowing with plenty, because
he has not the fortune which his supposed rank, or his wishes, require. No
ultimate remedy is applied to this evil, by merely accumulating wealth; for
rare and costly materials, whatever these are, continue to be sought; and
if silks and pearl are made common, men will begin to covet some new
decorations, which the wealthy alone can procure. If they are indulged in
their humour, their demands are repeated; for it is the continual increase
of riches, not any measure attained, that keeps the craving imagination at
ease.

Men are tempted to labour, and to practise lucrative arts, by motives of
interest. Secure to the workman the fruit of his labour, give him the
prospects of independence or freedom, the public has found a faithful
minister in the acquisition of wealth, and a faithful steward in hoarding
what he has gained. The statesman, in this, as in the case of population
itself, can do little more than avoid doing mischief. It is well, if, in
the beginnings of commerce, he knows how to repress the frauds to which it
is subject. Commerce, if continued, is the branch in which men, committed
to the effects of their own experience, are least apt to go wrong.

The trader, in rude ages, is short sighted, fraudulent and mercenary; but
in the progress and advanced state of his art, his views are enlarged, his
maxims are established: he becomes punctual, liberal, faithful, and
enterprising; and in the period of general corruption, he alone has every
virtue, except the force to defend his acquisitions. He needs no aid from
the state, but its protection; and is often in himself its most intelligent
and respectable member. Even in China, we are informed, where pilfering,
fraud, and corruption, are the reigning practice with all the other orders
of men, the great merchant is ready to give, and to procure confidence:
while his countrymen act on the plans, and under the restrictions, of a
police adjusted to knaves, he acts on the reasons of trade, and the maxims
of mankind.

If population be connected with national wealth, liberty and personal
security is the great foundation of both: and if this foundation be laid in
the state, nature has secured the increase and industry of its members; the
one by desires the most ardent in the human frame, the other by a
consideration the most uniform and constant of any that possesses the mind.
The great object of policy, therefore, with respect to both, is, to secure
to the family its means of subsistence and settlement; to protect the
industrious in the pursuit of his occupation; to reconcile the restrictions
of police, and the social affections of mankind, with their separate and
interested pursuits.

In matters of particular profession, industry, and trade, the experienced
practitioner is the master, and every general reasoner is a novice. The
object in commerce is to make the individual rich; the more he gains for
himself, the more he augments the wealth of his country. If a protection be
required, it must be granted; if crimes and frauds be committed, they must
be repressed; and government can pretend to no more. When the refined
politician would lend an active hand, he only multiplies interruptions and
grounds of complaint; when the merchant forgets his own interest to lay
plans for his country, the period of vision and chimera is near, and the
solid basis of commerce withdrawn. He might be told, that while he pursues
his advantage, and gives no cause of complaint, the interest of commerce is
safe.

The general police of France, proceeding on a supposition, that the
exportation of corn must drain the country where it has grown, had, till of
late, laid that branch of commerce under a severe prohibition. The English
landholder and the farmer had credit enough to obtain a premium for
exportation, to favour the sale of their commodity; and the event has
shown, that private interest is a better patron of commerce and plenty,
than the refinements of state. One nation lays the refined plan of a
settlement on the continent of North America, and trusts little to the
conduct of traders and shortsighted men: another leaves men to find their
own position in a state of freedom, and to think for themselves. The active
industry and the limited views of the one, made a thriving settlement; the
great projects of the other were still in idea.

But I willingly quit a subject in which I am not much conversant, and still
less engaged by the object for which I write. Speculations on commerce and
wealth have been delivered by the ablest writers; and the public will
probably soon be furnished with a theory of national economy, equal to what
has ever appeared on any subject of science whatever. [Footnote: Mr. Smith,
author of the Theory of Moral Sentiment] But in the view which I have taken
of human affairs, nothing seems more important than the general caution
which the authors to whom I refer so well understand, not to consider these
articles as making the sum of national felicity, or the principal object of
any state. In science we consider our objects apart; in practice it were an
error not to have them all in our view at once.

One nation, in search of gold and of precious metals, neglect the domestic
sources of wealth; and become dependent on their neighbours for the
necessaries of life: another so intent on improving their internal
resources, and on increasing their commerce, that they become dependent on
foreigners for the defence of what they acquire. It is even painful in
conversation to find the interest of merchants give the tone to our
reasonings, and to find a subject perpetually offered as the great business
of national councils, to which any interposition of government is seldom,
with propriety, applied, or never, beyond the protection it affords.

We complain of a want of public spirit; but whatever may be the effect of
this error in practice, in speculation it is none of our faults: we reason
perpetually for the public; but the want of national views were frequently
better than the possession of those we express: we would have nations, like
a company of merchants, think of nothing but monopolies, and the profit of
trade, and, like them too, intrust their protection to a force which they
do not possess in themselves.

Because men, like other animals, are maintained in multitudes, where the
necessaries of life are amassed, and the store of wealth is enlarged, we
drop our regards for the happiness, the moral and political character of a
people; and, anxious for the herd we would propagate, carry our views no
farther than the stall and the pasture. We forget that the few have often
made a prey of the many; that to the poor there is nothing so enticing as
the coffers of the rich; and that when the price of freedom comes to be
paid, the heavy sword of the victor may fall into the opposite scale.

Whatever be the actual conduct of nations in this matter, it is certain,
that many of our arguments would hurry us, for the sake of wealth and of
population, into a scene where mankind, being exposed to corruption, are
unable to defend their possessions; and where they are, in the end, subject
to oppression and ruin. We cut off the roots, while we would extend the
branches, and thicken the foliage.

It is possibly from an opinion that the virtues of men are secure, that
some, who turn their attention to public affairs, think of nothing but the
numbers and wealth of a people: it is from a dread of corruption, that
others think of nothing but how to preserve the national virtues. Human
society has great obligations to both. They are opposed to one another only
by mistake; and even when united, have not strength sufficient to combat
the wretched party, that refers every object to personal interest, and that
cares not for the safety or increase of any stock but its own.




SECTION V.

OF NATIONAL DEFENCE AND CONQUEST.


It is impossible to ascertain how much of the policy of any state has a
reference to war, or to national safety. "Our legislator," says the Cretan
in Plato, "thought that nations were by nature in a state of hostility: he
took his measures accordingly; and observing that all the possessions of
the vanquished pertain to the victor, he held it ridiculous to propose any
benefit to his country, before he had provided that it should not be
conquered."

Crete, which is supposed to have been a model of military policy, is
commonly considered as the original from which the celebrated laws of
Lycurgus were copied. Mankind, it seems, in every instance, must have some
palpable object to direct their proceedings, and must have a view to some
point of external utility, even in the choice of their virtues. The
discipline of Sparta was military; and a sense of its use in the field,
more than the force of unwritten and traditionary laws, or the supposed
engagement of the public faith obtained by the lawgiver, may have induced
this people to persevere in the observance of many rules, which to other
nations do not appear necessary, except in the presence of an enemy.

Every institution of this singular people gave a lesson of obedience, of
fortitude, and of zeal for the public: but it is remarkable that they chose
to obtain, by their virtues alone, what other nations are fain to buy with
their treasure; and it is well known, that, in the course of their history,
they came to regard their discipline merely on account of its moral
effects. They had experienced the happiness of a mind courageous,
disinterested, and devoted to its best affections; and they studied to
preserve this character in themselves, by resigning the interests of
ambition, and the hopes of military glory, even by sacrificing the numbers
of their people.

It was the fate of Spartans who escaped from the field, not of those who
perished with Cleombrotus at Leuctra, that filled the cottages of Lacedemon
with mourning and serious reflection: [Footnote: Xenophon.] it was the fear
of having their citizens corrupted abroad, by intercourse with servile and
mercenary men, that made them quit the station of leaders in the Persian
war, and leave Athens, during fifty years, to pursue, unrivalled, that
career of ambition and profit, by which she made such acquisitions of power
and of wealth. [Footnote: Thucydides, Book I.]

We have had occasion to observe, that in every rude state the great
business is war; and that in barbarous times, mankind being generally
divided into small parties, are engaged in almost perpetual hostilities.
This circumstance gives the military leader a continued ascendant in his
country, and inclines every people, during warlike ages, to monarchical
government.

The conduct of an army can least of all subjects be divided: and we may be
justly surprised to find that the Romans, after many ages of military
experience, and after having recently felt the arms of Hannibal in many
encounters, associated two leaders at the head of the same army, and left
them to adjust their pretensions, by taking the command, each a day in his
turn. The same people, however, on other occasions, thought it expedient to
suspend the exercise of every subordinate magistracy, and in the time of
great alarms, to intrust all the authority of the state in the hands of one
person.

Republics have generally found it necessary, in the conduct of war, to
place great confidence in the executive branch of their government. When a
consul at Rome had proclaimed his levies, and administered the military
oath, he became from that moment master of the public treasury, and of the
lives of those who were under his command. [Footnote: Polybius.] The axe
and the rods were no longer a mere badge of magistracy, or an empty
pageant, in the hands of the lictor; they were, at the command of the
father, stained with the blood of his own children; and fell, without
appeal, on the mutinous and disobedient of every condition.

In every free state, there is a perpetual necessity to distinguish the
maxims of martial law from those of the civil; and he who has not learned
to give an implicit obedience, where the state has given him a military
leader, and to resign his personal freedom in the field, from the same
magnanimity with which he maintains it in the political deliberations of
his country, has yet to learn the most important lesson of civil society,
and is only fit to occupy a place in a rude, or in a corrupted state, where
the principles of mutiny and of servility being joined, the one or the
other is frequently adopted in the wrong place.

From a regard to what is necessary in war, nations inclined to popular or
aristocratical government, have had recourse to establishments that
bordered on monarchy. Even where the highest office of the state was in
common times administered by a plurality of persons, the whole power and
authority belonging to it was, on particular occasions, committed to one;
and upon great alarms, when the political fabric was shaken or endangered,
a monarchical power has been applied, like a prop, to secure the state
against the rage of the tempest. Thus were the dictators occasionally named
at Rome, and the stadtholders in the United Provinces; and thus, in mixed
governments, the royal prerogative is occasionally enlarged, by the
temporary suspension of laws, [Footnote: In Britain, by the suspension of
the _Habeas Corpus_.] and the barriers of liberty appear to be
removed, in order to vest a dictatorial power in the hands of the king.

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