When the land, instead of being cultivated by its pro prietors, is cultivated by farmers, metayers, day-labourers, the condition of the latter classes becomes more precari ous, and their multiplication is not so necessarily adjusted to the demand for their labour. They are far worse inform ed than the peasant-proprietor, and yet they are called to perform a much more complicated calculation. Living un der the risk of being dismissed at a day's notice from the land they till, it is less a question with them what this land will give, than what is their chance of being employed elsewhere. They calculate probabilities in place of cer tainties, and commit themselves to fortune with regard to what they cannot investigate. They depend on being hap py; they marry much younger ; they bring into the world many more children, precisely because they know less distinctly how those children are to be established.
Thus metayers, day-labourers, all peasants depending on a master, being more imperfectly able to judge of their situation by themselves, ought to be guided and protected by government. Landed proprietors wield all the force of monopoly against them ; whilst day-labourers, acting in competition with each other, are finally reduced to work for the most wretched subsistence. Those measures are wise, therefore, which have been adopted by legislators to fix the minimum share that should fall to each peasant. It would, in general, be a beneficent law which should per mit no division of a metairie below a certain limit, no re duction below a half on the metaycr's part. It is a benefi cent law which has fixed the peasant's lot in Austria ; a law which should invariably fix the Russian peasant's capi tation to his landlord, would be equivalent to an emanci pation from serfage, and free from all the convulsions of such a step. The Russian nation could not, perhaps, re ceive a greater benefit from its government. The statute of Elizabeth, in fine, was wise in prohibiting a cottage from being built without at least four acres of land being allot ted to it. Had this law been executed in England and Ire land, no marriage could have happened among day-labour ers without a cottage to shelter the family, no cottager would have been reduced to the last degree of penury.
The industrious population which inhabit towns have still fewer data than those of the country, for calculating the lot of the succeeding generation. The workman knows only that he has lived by his labour; he naturally believes that his children will do so likewise. How can he judge of the extent of the market, or the general demand for la bour in his country, whilst the master who employs him is incessantly mistaken on these points ? Accordingly, this class, more dependent than any other on chances of every kind for its subsistence, is exactly the class which calcu lates those chances least in the formation of a family.
They are the people who marry soonest, produce most children, and consequently lose most : but they do not lose their children, till after being themselves exposed to a competition which deprives them successively of all the sweets of life.
At the time when all towns were distributed into bodies of tradesmen, when a calling could not be exercised till the applicant had been united to a corporation, a workman never married till after he had been passed master. A re ception into the trade gave him the certainty of being able to maintain his family ; an excessive competition did not expose the great mass of the population to the danger of dying from hunger. Thus, all the institutions created in the republics of the middle ages, and reproduced in Queen Elizabeth's statute of apprenticeship, though keen ly attacked by Adam Smith, for establishing a monopoly contrary to the consumer's interest, may be defended, not in regard to the increase of riches, but as forming a neces sary obstacle to the immoderate increase of population.
Yet because the system we follow has made us experi ence a calamity, we ought not to imagine that no escape is to be found, except by rushing into the opposite extreme. It is not by the suppression of corporations alone, that we lave disproportionately increased the manufacturing popu lation. It is much more by the inordinate encouragement which all governments, at the same time, have given to production without attending to consumption. We have already pointed out the results of this imprudent struggle, in regard to the increase of wealth. They have been still more disastrous in producing and supporting with deceit ful hopes a population, which has afterwards been aban doned to all the horrors of want.
A state ought, doubtless, to receive with gratitude what ever new industry the wants of consumers may developh hut it also ought to allow the industry which is quitting it to depart, without any effort to the contrary. When the profits of a manufacture diminish, new workmen do not engage in it; former workmen withdraw; and after some years of suffering, too long and too cruel, by any mode of treatment, the level is again established. But if the favours of government keep up the staggering manufacture ; if, trying to save it, government offers bounties for the disco very of any machine which shall spare manual labour, it will prolong suffering, and save the manufacturer only at the expense of those whom that manufacturer should sup port.