The real recompense of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries and conveniences of life which it can procure to the labourer, has, during the course of the present century, increased perhaps in a still greater proportion than its money price.Not only grain has become somewhat cheaper, but many other things from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food have become a great deal cheaper.
Potatoes, for example, do not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago.The same thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raised by the plough.All sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper.The greater part of the apples and even of the onions consumed in Great Britain were in the last century imported from Flanders.The great improvements in the coarser manufactures of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers with cheaper and better clothing; and those in the manufactures of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade, as well as with many agreeable and convenient pieces of household furniture.
Soap, salt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors have, indeed, become a good deal dearer; chiefly from the taxes which have been laid upon them.The quantity of these, however, which the labouring poor are under any necessity of consuming, is so very small, that the increase in their price does not compensate the diminution in that of so many other things.The common complaint that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same food, clothing, and lodging which satisfied them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real recompense, which has augmented.
Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain.Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society.But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole.No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not always prevent marriage.It seems even to be favourable to generation.Ahalf-starved Highland woman frequently bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally exhausted by two or three.
Barrenness, so frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of inferior station.Luxury in the fair ***, while it inflames perhaps the passion for enjoyment, seems always to weaken, and frequently to destroy altogether, the powers of generation.
But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children.The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive.Several officers of great experience have assured me, that so far from recruiting their regiment, they have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes from all the soldiers' children that were born in it.Agreater number of fine children, however, is seldom seen anywhere than about a barrack of soldiers.Very few of them, it seems, arrive at the age of thirteen or fourteen.In some places one half the children born die before they are four years of age; in many places before they are seven; and in almost all places before they are nine or ten.This great mortality, however, will everywhere be found chiefly among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with the same care as those of better station.Though their marriages are generally more fruitful than those of people of fashion, a smaller proportion of their children arrive at maturity.In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities, the mortality is still greater than among those of the common people.
Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it.But in civilised society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species;and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.