essay1 [14]
living the prices which they offer in the market decide the farmers to all the changes which they make in the employment and use of the land. I do not consider here the variations in market prices which may arise from the good or bad harvest of the year, or the extraordinary consumption which may occur from foreign troops or other accidents, so as not to complicate my subject, considering only a state in its natural and uniform condition.
Chapter Fifteen
The Increase and Decrease of the Number of People in a State chiefly depend on the taste, the fashions, and the modes of living of the proprietors of land
Experience shows that trees, plants and other vegetables can be increased to any quantity which the extent of ground laid out for them can support. The same experience shows that all kinds of the animal creation are to be multiplied to any quantity which the land allotted to them can support. Horses, cattle, sheep can easily be multiplied up to the number that the land will support. The fields which serve for this support may be improved by irrigation as in Milan. Hay may be saved and cattle fed in sheds and raised in larger numbers than if they were left in the fields. Sheep may be fed on turnips, as in England, by which means an acre of land will go further for their nourishment than if it were pasture. In a word, we can multiply all sorts of animals in such numbers as we wish to maintain even to infinity if we could find lands to infinity to to nourish them; and the multiplication of animals has no other bounds than the greater or less means allotted for their subsistence. It is not to be doubted that if all land were devoted to the simple sustenance of man the race would increase up to the number that the land would support in the manner to be explained. There is no country where population is carried to a greater height than in China. The common people are supported by rice and rice water; they work almost naked and in the southern provinces they have three plentiful harvests of rice yearly, thanks to their great attention to agriculture. The land is never fallow and yields a hundredfold every year. Those who are clothed have generally clothing of cotton, which needs so little land for its production that an acre of land, it seems, is capable of producing a quantity full sufficient for the clothing of five hundred grown up persons. The Chinese by the principles of their religion are obliged to marry, and bring up as many children as their means of subsistence will afford. They look upon it as a crime to lay land out in pleasure gardens or parks, defrauding the public of maintenance. They carry travellers in sedan chairs, and save the work of horses upon all tasks which can be performed by men. Their number is incredible if the relation of voyages is to be depended upon, yet they are forced to destroy many of their children in the cradle when they apprehend themselves not to be able to bring them up, keeping only the number they are able to support. By hard and indefatigable labour they draw from the rivers an extraordinary quantity of fish and from the land all that is possible. Nevertheless when bad years come they starve in thousands in spite of the care of the emperor who stores rice for such contingencies. Numerous then as the people of China are, they are necessarily proportioned to their means of living and do not exceed the number the country can support according to their standard of life; and on this footing a single acre of land will support many of them. On the other hand there is no country where the increase of population is more limited than among the savages in the interior parts of America. They neglect agriculture, live in woods, and on the wild beasts they find there. As their forests destroy the sweetness and substance of the earth there is little pasture for animals, and since an Indian eats several animals in a year, 50 or 100 acres supply only enough food for a single Indian. A small tribe of these Indians will have 40 square leagues for its hunting
Chapter Fifteen
The Increase and Decrease of the Number of People in a State chiefly depend on the taste, the fashions, and the modes of living of the proprietors of land
Experience shows that trees, plants and other vegetables can be increased to any quantity which the extent of ground laid out for them can support. The same experience shows that all kinds of the animal creation are to be multiplied to any quantity which the land allotted to them can support. Horses, cattle, sheep can easily be multiplied up to the number that the land will support. The fields which serve for this support may be improved by irrigation as in Milan. Hay may be saved and cattle fed in sheds and raised in larger numbers than if they were left in the fields. Sheep may be fed on turnips, as in England, by which means an acre of land will go further for their nourishment than if it were pasture. In a word, we can multiply all sorts of animals in such numbers as we wish to maintain even to infinity if we could find lands to infinity to to nourish them; and the multiplication of animals has no other bounds than the greater or less means allotted for their subsistence. It is not to be doubted that if all land were devoted to the simple sustenance of man the race would increase up to the number that the land would support in the manner to be explained. There is no country where population is carried to a greater height than in China. The common people are supported by rice and rice water; they work almost naked and in the southern provinces they have three plentiful harvests of rice yearly, thanks to their great attention to agriculture. The land is never fallow and yields a hundredfold every year. Those who are clothed have generally clothing of cotton, which needs so little land for its production that an acre of land, it seems, is capable of producing a quantity full sufficient for the clothing of five hundred grown up persons. The Chinese by the principles of their religion are obliged to marry, and bring up as many children as their means of subsistence will afford. They look upon it as a crime to lay land out in pleasure gardens or parks, defrauding the public of maintenance. They carry travellers in sedan chairs, and save the work of horses upon all tasks which can be performed by men. Their number is incredible if the relation of voyages is to be depended upon, yet they are forced to destroy many of their children in the cradle when they apprehend themselves not to be able to bring them up, keeping only the number they are able to support. By hard and indefatigable labour they draw from the rivers an extraordinary quantity of fish and from the land all that is possible. Nevertheless when bad years come they starve in thousands in spite of the care of the emperor who stores rice for such contingencies. Numerous then as the people of China are, they are necessarily proportioned to their means of living and do not exceed the number the country can support according to their standard of life; and on this footing a single acre of land will support many of them. On the other hand there is no country where the increase of population is more limited than among the savages in the interior parts of America. They neglect agriculture, live in woods, and on the wild beasts they find there. As their forests destroy the sweetness and substance of the earth there is little pasture for animals, and since an Indian eats several animals in a year, 50 or 100 acres supply only enough food for a single Indian. A small tribe of these Indians will have 40 square leagues for its hunting