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fruits of the earth, but producing nothing, as they increase, in every country where wealth prevails, may be considered as a cause of depopulation, confined to no part of the world.  Thus we find either the same cause acting throughout, or different causes producing the same effect in different countries; thereby reducing them all much more nearly to an equality than we could at first imagine.

It has been observed, that when wealth comes to the working orders, and makes them indulge in animal food, it produces a greater effect, with respect to the consumption of produce, than if the same wealth came into the hands of the rich; this is, however, in some degree, compensated by their not keeping pleasure horses, the greatest of all consumers of the produce of the earth.  One horse will consume as much as a family of four persons living on corn, and the ordinary vegetables used in England; and as much as two families, living as they do in Ireland or Scotland, on oat-meal, milk, and potatoes.

As we find depopulation one of the effects that is universally occasioned by decline, it must originate in some cause equally general, and that cause must be one attending the state of wealth and greatness, for it does not appear to be a necessary effect of decline.  We can very easily conceive a people, degraded and numerous, reduced to live poorly, as they do in Naples, Cairo, and some other particular spots:  but taking the whole of those countries together, we find evident marks of a falling off in population; and we find it not progressive, but of long standing.  Those countries seem to have found a new maximum of population, far inferior to the former standard, immediately after they ceased to be wealthy and flourishing.

Perhaps it was from this cause that the idea of sumptuary laws originated; for though, in some cases, the pride of being distinguished might occasion the sovereign to enact, or the higher orders of society to solicit them, yet they were always considered as tending to prevent ruinous extravagance.  When states become very wealthy, they may consider such regulations as ridiculous, and perhaps they may neither be necessary nor effectual; yet, nevertheless, there must be some cause for the general opinion of their utility.  Though it is not the fashion of the present times to hold an opinion as good be-[end of page #142] cause it is general, and its prevalence in ignorant times is considered as a mark of its being erroneous; yet, observation and common sense have never been wanting at any period, and it is from those sources that such maxims and opinions arise.  Any man who had travelled, first through Italy and Spain, and then through England and America, would be very likely to invent sumptuary laws, if he had never heard of such a thing before.  In the application of sumptuary laws, as a device, for preventing decline, the traveller might, perhaps, be very whimsical; sometimes forbidding what would never be attempted; but there would be nothing at all ridiculous in his general intention. {117}