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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

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 na-secure room enough, since on the room detion, that regards frugality and industry as pends so much the increase of her people! 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 vacaney 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 heroism 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 that principal means of political grandeur is shown in what manner, and by what causes, 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.

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 people, and their political prosperity in ge

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.

The powerful efficacy of manners in increasing 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. as in Swisserland, the gentry, though one with another they have not one fourth of the income, increase in number.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 be yond 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

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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,

and veterans, and more from the irresistible force a single moral habit, religion, has conferred on troops, frequently neither disciplined nor experienced.

Commerce perfects the arts, but more the mechanical than the liberal, and this for an obvious reason; it softens and enervates the manners. Steady virtue and unbending inThe military manners of the noblesse integrity are seldom to be found where a spirit France, compose the chief force of that king- of commerce pervades every thing; yet the dom, and the enterprising manners and rest-perfection of commerce is, that every thing less 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, though the lower class of people are by no means of a military cast, yet they make better soldiers than even the noblesse of France.

The inhabitants of this country, a few ages back, were to the populous and rich provinces of France, what Canada is now to the British, colonies. It is true, there was less disproportion between their natural strength; but I mean, that the riches of France were a real weakness, opposed to the military manners founded upon poverty and a rugged disposition, than the character of the English; but it must be remembered, that at this time the manners of a people were not distinct from that of their soldiery, for the use of standing armies has deprived a military people of the advantages they before had over others; and though it has been often said, that civil wars give power, because they render all men soldiers, I believe this has only been found true in internal wars following civil wars, and not in external ones; for now, in foreign wars, a small army, with ample means to support it, is of greater force than one more numerous, with less. This last fact has often happened between France and Germany.

The means of supporting armies, and consequently the power of exerting external strength, are best found in the industry and frugality of the body of a people living under a government and laws, that encourage commerce for commerce is at this day almost the only stimulus, that forces every one to contribute a share of labour for the public benefit.

But such is the human frame, and the world is so constituted, that it is a hard matter to possess one's self of a benefit, without laying one's self open to a loss on some other side; the improvements of manners of one sort often deprave those of another: thus we see industry and frugality under the influence of commerce, which I call a commercial spirit, tend to destroy, as well as support, the government it flourishes under.

should have its price. We every day see its progress, both to our benefit and detriment here. Things, that boni mores forbid to be set to sale, are become its objects, and there are few things indeed extra commercium. The legislative power itself has been in commercio, and church livings are seldom given without consideration, even by sincere Christians, and, for consideration, not seldom to very unworthy persons. The rudeness of ancient military times, and the fury of more modern enthusiastic ones are worn off; even the spirit of forensic contention is astonishingly diminished, all marks of manners softening; but luxury and corruption have taken their places, and seem the inseparable companions of commerce and the arts.

I cannot help observing, however, that this is much more the case in extensive countries, especially at their metropolis, than in other places. It is an old observation of politicians, and frequently made by historians, that small states always best preserve their manners.— Whether this happens from the greater room there is for attention in the legislature, or from the less room there is for ambition and avarice, it is a strong argument, among others, against an incorporating union of the colonies in America, or even a federal one, that may tend to the future reducing them under one government.

Their power, while disunited, is less, but their liberty, as well as manners, is more secure; and, considering the little danger of any conquest to be made upon them, I had rather they should suffer something through disunion, than see them under a general administration less equitable than that concerted at Albany.

I take it, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania are both frugal and industrious beyond those of any province in America. If luxury should spread, it cannot be extirpated by laws. We are told by Plutarch, that Plato used to say, It was a hard thing to make laws for the Cyrenians, a people abounding in plenty and opulence.

But from what I set out with, it is evident, if I be not mistaken, that education only can stem the torrent, and, without checking either true industry or frugality, prevent the sordid frugality and laziness of the old Irish, and many of the modern Scotch, (I mean the inhabitants of that country, those who leave it for another being generally industrious) or the industry, mixed with luxury, of this capital, from getting ground, and, by rendering as

cient manners familiar, produce a reconcilia- | of any which can be conceived, as it is groundtion between disinterestedness and commerce; ed on the noblest principle of benevolence. a thing we often see, but almost always in men of a liberal education.

Good intentions are often frustrated by letting them remain indigested; on this consideration Mr. Dalrymple was induced to put the outlines on paper, which are now published, that by an early communication there may be a better opportunity of collecting all the hints, which can conduce to execute effectually the benevolent purpose of the expedition, in case it should meet with general approbation.

On this scheme being shown to Dr. Franklin, he communicated his sentiments, by way of introduction, to the following effect:

To conclude: when we would form a people, soil and climate may be found at least sufficiently good; inhabitants may be encouraged to settle, and even supported for a while; a good government and laws may be framed, and even arts may be established, or their produce imported: but many necessary moral habits are hardly ever found among those who voluntary offer themselves in times of quiet at home, to people new colonies; besides, that the moral, as well as mechanical "Britain is said to have produced originally habits, adapted to a mother country, are fre- nothing but sloes. What vast advantages quently not so to the new settled one, and to have been communicated to her by the fruits, external events, many of which are always seeds, roots, herbage, animals, and arts of unforeseen. Hence it is we have seen such other countries! We are by their means befruitless attempts to settle colonies, at an im-come a wealthy and a mighty nation, aboundmense public and private expense, by several of the powers of Europe: and it is particularly observable, that none of the English colonies became any way considerable, till the necessary manners were born and grew up in the country, excepting those to which singu. lar circumstances at home forced manners fit for the forming a new state.—I am, sir, &c.

R. J.

Plan, by Messieurs Franklin and Dalrymple, for benefiting distant unprovided Countries.*

Aug. 29, 1771.

THE Country called in the maps New Zealand, has been discovered by the Endeavour, to be two islands, together as large as Great Britain: these islands, named Acpy-nomawée, and Tovy-poennammoo, are inhabited by a brave and generous race, who are destitute of corn, fowls, and all quadrupeds, except dogs. These circumstances being mentioned lately in a company of men of liberal sentiments, it was observed, that it seemed incumbent on such a country as this, to communicate to all others the conveniences of life, which we enjoy.

,,

Dr. Franklin, whose life has ever been directed to promote the true interest of society, said, "he would with all his heart subscribe to a voyage intended to communicate in general those benefits which we enjoy, to countries destitute of them in the remote parts of the globe." This proposition being warmly adopted by the rest of the company, Mr. Dalrymple, then present, was induced to offer to undertake the command on such an expedition.

On mature reflection, this scheme appears the more honourable to the national character

* These proposals were printed upon a sheet of paper, and distributed. The parts written by Dr. Franklin and Mr. Dalrymple are easily distinguished.

ing in all good things. Does not some duty hence arise from us towards other countries, still remaining in our former state?

"Britain is now the first maritime power in the world. Her ships are innumerable, capable by their form, size, and strength, of sailing on all seas. Our seamen are equally bold, skilful, and hardy; dextrous in exploring the remotest regions, and ready to engage in voyages to unknown countries, though attended with the greatest dangers. The inhabitants of those countries, our fellow men, have canoes only; not knowing iron, they cannot build ships; they have little astronomy, and no knowlege of the compass to guide them; they cannot therefore come to us, or obtain any of our advantages. From these circumstances, does not some duty seem to arise from us to them? Does not Providence, by these distinguishing favours, seem to call on us, to do something ourselves for the common interest of humanity!

"Those who think it their duty, to ask bread and other blessings daily from heaven, would they not think it equally a duty, to communicate of those blessings when they have received them, and show their gratitude to their great Benefactor by the only means in their power, promoting the happiness of his other children?

"Ceres is said to have made a journey through many countries to teach the use of corn, and the art of raising it.-For this single benefit the grateful nations deified her. How much more may Englishmen deserve such honour, by communicating the knowledge and use not of corn only, but of all the other enjoyments the earth can produce, and which they are now in possession of. Communiter bona profundere, Deum est.

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Many voyages have been undertaken with views of profit or of plunder, or to gratify resentment; to procure some advantage to ourselves, or do some mischief to others: but a

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