Political Economy [19]
a man whom he fed badly. Such was the patriarchal mode of cultivation, that of the golden days of Italy and Greece; such is that of free America; such appears to be that of Africa, in its interior; and such, finally, but without slavery, and therefore with still more domestic comfort, is that of Switzerland, where the peasant proprietor is happier than in any other country of the world. Among the states of antiquity, the farms under cultivation were small; and the number of freemen labouring in the fields, always greatly surpassed that of slaves. The former had a full enjoyment of their persons and the fruits of their labour; the latter, degraded rather than unhappy, like the ox, man's companion, which interest teaches him to spare, seldom experienced suffering, want still more rarely. The head of each family alone receiving the total crop, did not distinguish the rent from the profit or the wages; with the excess of what he wanted for food, he procured the produce of the town in exchange, and this excess supported all other classes of the nation. But the progress of wealth, of luxury, and idleness, in all the states of antiquity, substituted the servile for the patriarchal mode of cultivation. The population lost much in happiness and number by this change; the earth gained little in productiveness. The Roman proprietors extending their patrimonies by the confiscated territories of vanquished states; the Greeks by wealth acquired from trade,first abandoned manual labour, and soon afterwards, despised it. Fixing their residence in towns, they entrusted the management of their estates to stewards and inspectors of slaves; and from that period, the condition of most part of the country population became intolerable. Labour, which once been a point of communion betwixt the two ranks of society, now became a barrier of separation; contempt and severity succeeded to affectionate care; punishments were multiplied as they came to be inflicted by inferiors, and as the death of one or several slaves did not lessen the steward's wealth. Slaves who were ill-fed, ill-teated, ill-recompensed, could not fail to lose all interest in their master's affairs, and almost all understanding. Far from attending to their business with affection, they felt a secret joy every time they saw their oppressors' wealth diminished, or his hopes deceived. The study of science, accompanied with habits of observation, certainly advanced the theory of agriculture: but its practice, at the same time, rapidly declined; a fact, which all the agricultural writers of antiquity lament. The cultivation of land was entirely divested of all that intelligence, affection, and zeal, which had once hastened its success. The revenues were smaller, the expenses greater; and from that period, it became an object to save labour, more than to augment its produce. Slaves, after having driven every free cultivator from the fields, were themselves rapidly decreasing in number. During the decline of the Roman empire, the population of Italy was not less reduced than that of the Agro Romano is in our days; while, at the same time, it had sunk into the that degree of wretchedness and penury. The cultivation of the colonies situated on the Mexican Gulf was founded, in like manner, on the baneful system of slavery. it has, in like manner, consumed the population, debased the human species, and deteriorated the system of agriculture. The negro trade has of course filled up those voids, which the barbarity of planters annually produced in the agricultural population; and doubtless, under a system of culture, such that the man who labours is constantly reduced below the necessaries of life, and the man who does not labour keeps all for himself, the net produce has always been considerable; but the gross produce, with which alone the nation is concerned, has uniformly been inferior to what would have arisen from any other system of cultivation, whilst the condition of more than seven-eighths of the population has continued to be miserable. The invasions of the Roman empire,