Thus it is that wealthy nations let the means by which the wealth [end of page #135] was acquired go out of their hands; each individual in a new state, or in an old, follows his own interest and disposition in the disposal of his property.  In the new state, the individual interest and that of the country are generally the same; in the old one, they are in opposition to each other, and that opposition is greatly increased by the unequal division of property.  The middling class of proprietors never seek the most profitable employment for their money; the very wealthy are always inclined to seek for good security and certain payment, without any consideration of the interest of their country.

To counteract the tendency of property to accumulate, without infringing on the rights of individuals, will be found desirable.  In the Fourth Book =sic—­there is none.=, a mode of doing this shall be attentively taken into consideration.

[end of page #136]

CHAP.  VI.

Of the Interior Causes of Decline, which arise from the Produce of the Soil becoming unequal to the Sustenance of a luxurious People.—­ Of Monopoly.

It has already been mentioned, and we have seen, in the case of Rome and Italy, that the country which was sufficient to maintain a certain population, when the manners of the people were simple, becomes incapable of doing so, when wealth has introduced luxury.

The case of the Romans, though the most clearly ascertained of any, and the circumstances the best known, is only in part applicable to an inquiry into the effects of luxury at the present day.  The nature of luxury, the nature of the wants of man, and the diffusion of that luxury, its distribution amongst the different classes, are so unlike to what they were, that the comparison scarcely holds in any single instance.

A most enormous increase of population (a forced population as it were) in a small country, together with large tracts of land converted from agriculture to the purposes of pleasure were the principal causes why Italy, in latter times, was incapable of supplying itself with corn.  Wherever wealth comes in more easily and in abundance, by other means than by agriculture, that is to a certain degree neglected.  To cultivate ceases to be an object where it is more easy to purchase.  This certainly is, at all times, and in all places, one of the consequences of an influx of wealth, from wheresoever it comes, or by whatever means it is acquired; though, in Italy, it was felt more than perhaps in any other part of the world.  The manner in which wealth comes into a nation has a great effect on the consumption of produce, owing to the description of persons into whose hands it first comes.  In Rome, the wealth came into the hands of the great.  The slaves and servants, though more numerous, were, perhaps, fed in the same manner with the slaves in earlier periods, though probably not with so much economy.  In a manufacturing country, [end of page #137] the greatest part of the wealth comes first into the hands of the labouring people, who then live better and consume more of the produce of the earth; not by eating a greater quantity, but by eating of a different quality.