The National System of Political Economy

THE more that man and the community perfect themselves, the more are they enabled to make use of the natural powers which are within their reach for the accomplishment of their objects, and the more does the sphere of what is within their reach extend itself.

The hunter does not employ the thousandth part, the shepherd not the hundredth part, of those natural advantages which surround him. The sea, foreign climates and countries, yield him either none, or at least only an inconsiderable amount of enjoyment, assistance, or stimulants to exertion.

In the case of a people in a primitive agricultural condition, a large portion of the existing natural resources lies yet unutilised, and man still continues limited to his nearest surroundings. The greater part of the water power and wind power which exists, or can be obtained, is unemployed; the various mineral products which the manufacturers so well understand how to utilise profitably, lie dead; various sorts of fuel are wasted or regarded (as, for instance, peat turf) as a mere hindrance to cultivation; stone, sand, and lime are used but little as building materials; the rivers, instead of being means of freight and transport for man, or of fertilising the neighbouring fields, are allowed to devastate the country by floods; warmer climates and the sea yield to the agricultural country but few of their products.

In fact, in the agricultural State, that power of nature on which production especially depends, the natural fertility of the soil, can only be utilised to a smaller extent so long as agriculture is not supported by manufacturing industry.

Through the establishment of manufacturing power in an agricultural State, roads are made, railways constructed, canals excavated, rivers rendered navigable, and lines of steamers established. By these not merely is the surplus produce of the agricultural land converted into machinery for yielding income, not merely are the powers of labour of those who are employed by it brought into activity, not only is the agricultural population enabled to obtain from the natural resources which it possesses an infinitely greater return than before, but all minerals, all metals, which heretofore were lying idle in the earth are now rendered useful and valuable. Articles which could formerly only bear a freight of a few miles, such as salt, coals, stone, marble, slate, gypsum, lime, timber, bark, &c., can now be distributed over the surface of an entire kingdom. Hence such articles, formerly quite valueless, can now assume a degree of importance in the statistical returns of the national produce, which far surpasses the total of the entire agricultural production in previous times. Not a cubic foot of water-fall will then exist which is not made to perform some service; even in the most distant districts of a manufacturing country, timber and fuel will now become valuable, of which previously no one knew how to make any use.

The loss which the mere agricultural State sustains by not making use of these natural powers, is so much the greater the more it is fitted by nature for carrying on manufactures, and the more its territory is adapted for the production of raw materials and natural powers which manufacturers specially require; that loss will therefore be the greatest in mountainous and hilly countries less suitable for agriculture on the whole, but which offer to manufactures plenty of water power, of minerals, timber, and stone, and to the farmer the opportunity of cultivating the products which are specially required by the manufacturer.

Countries with a temperate climate are (almost without exception) adapted for factories and manufacturing industry. The moderate temperature of the air promotes the development and exertion of power far more than a hot temperature. But the severe season of the year, which appears to the superficial observer as an unfavourable effect of nature, is the most powerful promoter of habits of energetic activity, of forethought, order, and economy. A man who has the prospect before him of six months in which he is not merely unable to obtain any fruits from the earth, but also requires special provisions and clothing materials for the sustenance of himself and his cattle, and for protection against the effects of cold, must necessarily become far more industrious and economical than the one who merely requires protection from the rain, and into whose mouth the fruits are ready to drop during the whole year. Diligence, economy, order, and forethought are at first produced by necessity, afterwards by habit, and by the steady cultivation of those virtues. Morality goes hand in hand with the exertion of one’s powers and economy, and immorality with idleness and extravagance: each are reciprocally fertile sources, the one of power, the other of weakness.

An agricultural nation, which inhabits a country of temperate climate, leaves therefore the richest part of its natural resources unutilised.

The school, inasmuch as, in judging the influences of climate on the production of wealth, it has not distinguished between agriculture and manufacturing industry, has fallen into the gravest errors in respect to the advantages and disadvantages of protective regulations, which we cannot here omit thoroughly to expose, although we have already made mention of them in general terms elsewhere.

Let us first see how they operate on agriculture.

Without here entering on an inquiry whether it would have been possible for the elective kings of Poland, under the circumstances under which they were placed, to introduce such a commercial system as the hereditary kings of England have gradually developed and established, let us imagine that it had been done by them: can we not perceive what rich fruits such a system would have yielded to the Polish nation? By the aid of large and industrious towns, the crown would have been rendered hereditary, the nobility would have been obliged to make it convenient to take part in legislation in a House of Peers, and to emancipate their serfs; agriculture would have developed itself, as it has developed itself in England; the Polish nobility would now be rich and respected; the Polish nation would, even if not so respected and influential in the affairs of the world as the English nation is, would have long ago become so civilised and powerful as to extend its influence over the less cultivated East. Without a manufacturing power she has become ruined and partitioned, and were she not so already she must have become so. Of its own accord and spontaneously no manufacturing power was developed in her; it could not be so, because its efforts would have been always frustrated by further advanced nations. Without a system of protection, and under a system of free trade with further advanced nations, even if Poland had retained her independence up to the present time, she could never have carried on anything more than a crippled agriculture; she could never have become rich, powerful, and outwardly influential.

We think we may conclude from this that men need not necessarily be such dull, clumsy, and unintellectual beings as we perceive them to be when occupied in crippled agriculture in small villages, where a few families have for thousands of years intermarried only with one another; where for centuries it has occurred to no one to make use of an implement of a new form, or to adopt a new method of culture, to alter the style of a single article of clothing, or to adopt a new idea; where the greatest art consisted, not in exerting one’s bodily and mental powers in order to obtain as much enjoyment as possible, but to dispense with as much of it as possible.

This condition of things is entirely changed (and for the best purposes of the improvement of race of a whole nation) by establishing a manufacturing power. While a large portion of the increase of the agricultural population goes over into the manufacturing community, while the agricultural population of various districts becomes mixed by marriages between one another and with the manufacturing population, the mental, moral, and physical stagnation of the population is broken up. The intercourse which manufactures and the commerce between various nations and districts which is based upon them bring about, brings new blood into the whole nation as well as into separate communities and families.

The development of the manufacturing power has no less important an influence on the improvement of the breeds of cattle. Everywhere, where woollen manufactures have been established, the race of sheep has quickly been improved. Owing to a greater demand for good meat, which a numerous manufacturing population creates, the agriculturist will endeavour to introduce better breeds of cattle. The greater demand for ‘horses of luxury’ is followed by the improvement of the breeds of horses. We shall then no longer see those wretched primitive breeds of cattle, horses, and sheep, which having resulted from the crippled state of agriculture and everywhere from neglect of crossing of breeds, exhibit a side spectacle worthy of their clumsy owners.

Science has already done much with regard to the discovery of new plants and the improvement of them; but governments have not yet devoted to this important object so much attention as they ought to have done, in the interests of economy. Quite recently, species of grass are said to have been discovered in the savannas of North America, which from the poorest soil yield a higher produce than any fodder plants, which are as yet known to us, do from the richest soil. It is very probable that in the wild regions of America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, a quantity of plants still vegetate uselessly, the transplantation and improvement of which might infinitely augment the prosperity of the inhabitants of temperate climates.