The guardian population presents the same species of suffering in another rank of society. War multiplies the commissions of officers in the army and navy ; the com plicacy of administration multiplies the places of judges and civil agents of all kinds. Religious zeal multiplies the places for pastors. All of them live on pensions with •a certain degree of opulence ; none of them knows, or is able to insure the fund which affords him subsistence. They reckon on ushering their children into the same career with themselves ; they bring them up, multiply their families in proportion to their actual opulence, and blindly repose on the future. Their pension, however, finishes with their life ; and at death they leave their chil dren in a state of indigence, the suffering of which is farther aggravated by the possession of a liberal education. The laws which obstruct the marriage of officers, judges, clergymen, and generally of all such as live on pensions, how hard soever those laws may appear at their first es tablishment, are justifiable, because they save from po • verty the class to which its torments would he most piercing.
But an inordinate increase of population is not the only cause of this national suffering. The demand for labour may decrease, and the population continue stationary. Consumption may be arrested, revenues dissipated, capi tal destroyed, and the number of hands formerly occupied may no longer be able to find a sufficient employment. The population immediately follows the revolution of the capitals destined to support it. As day-labourers are more eager to receive even the smallest wan than merchants to employ their nioney, the former are laid under condi tions more and more hard, as the demand on the capital diminishes; and they conclude by contenting themselves with so miserable a remuneration, as is scarcely sufficient to maintain them alive. No enjoyment is any longer at tached to the existence of this unhappy class; hunger and suffering stifle in them all the moral affections. When every hour is a struggle for life, all passions are concen trated in selfishness; each forgets the pain of others in what himself suffers; the sentiments of nature are blunted ; a constant, obstinate, uniform labour, debases all the facul ties. One blushes for the human species, to see how low on the scale of degradation it can descend; how much be neath the condition of animals it can voluntarily submit to maintain life ; and, notwithstanding all the benefits of social order, notwithstanding the advantages which man has gained from the arts, one is sometimes tempted to exe crate the division of labour, and the invention of manu factures, on beholding to what extremes of wretched ness they have reduced beings created equal with our selves.
The misery of the savage hunter, who dies so frequent ly of hunger, is not equal to that of millions of families, whom a manufacturer sometimes dismisses; because at least there remains to the former all the energy, and all the intelligence, which he has put to proof during all his life. When he dies for want of finding game, he yields to a ne cessity which nature herself presents, and to which he knew, from the beginning, he must submit, as to sickness, or to old age. But the artisan, dismissed from his work shop, with his wife and children, has beforehand lost the strength of his soul and his body ; he is still surrounded with riches ; he still sees beside him, at every step, the food which he requires; and if society refuses him the la bour by which he offers, till his last moment, to purchase bread, it is men, not nature, that he blames.
Even when persons do not actually die of hunger ; even when the aids of charity are eagerly administered to all indigent families, discouragement and suffering produce their cruel effects on the poor, the diseases of the soul are communicated to the body, epidemics are multiplied, chil dren die in a few months after their birth, and the sup pression of labour causes more cruel ravages than the cruellest war : besides, fatal habits, either of mendicity or idleness, take root in the population ; another course is given to trade, another direction to fashion, and even after death has cleared the ranks of workmen, those who remain are no longer in a condition to support the competition of foreigners The causes of diminution in the demand for labour, of ten belong to polity, properly so called, rather than to po litical economy. There is, perhaps, none more efficacious than the loss or diminution of liberty. When a nation begins to alienate this precious possession, each thinks himself less secure of his fortune, or the fruits of his labour; each abates something of the activity of his mind, and his spirit of industry. The virtues which ac company labour,—sobriety, constancy, economy,—give place to the vices of idleness, to intemperance, dissipation, and forgetfulness of the future. Trade, industry, activity, are regarded with contempt, in a state where the people arc nothing, whilst all distinction, all honours, arc reserved for noble indolence. Favour, intrigue, flattery, and all the arts of courtiers, which debase the soul, are roads to for tune, much more sure and rapid than strength of charac ter, bold and enterprising activity, or a spirit of specula tion. Intriguers are multiplied daily ; they regard with contempt those who follow the only honourable path to fortune, that in which none makes progress except by his merit or his labour.