An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their

maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no

property can have no other interest but to eat as much and to labour as

little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to

purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only,

and not by any interest of his own. In ancient Italy, how much the

cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master,

when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked both by Pliny and

Columella. In the time of Aristotle, it had not been much better in ancient

Greece. Speaking of the ideal republic described in the laws of Plato, to

maintain 5000 idle men (the number of warriors supposed necessary for its

defence), together with their women and servants, would require, he says, a

territory of boundless extent and fertility, like the plains of Babylon.

 

The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so

much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the

law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will

generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen. The planting of

sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave cultivation. The raising

of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. In the English colonies, of

which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is

done by freemen. The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to set

at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot

be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property, such a

resolution could never have been agreed to. In our sugar colonies., on the

contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a

very great part of it. The profits of a sugar plantation in any of our West

Indian colonies, are generally much greater than those of any other

cultivation that is known either in Europe or America ; and the profits of a

tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to

those of corn, as has already been observed. Both can afford the expense of

slave cultivation but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco. The

number of negroes, accordingly, is much greater, in proportion to that of

whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies.

 

To the slave cultivators of ancient times. gradually succeeded a species of

farmers, known at present in France by the name of metayers. They are called

in Latin Coloni Partiarii. They have been so long in disuse in England, that

at present I know no English name for them. The proprietor furnished them

with the seed, cattle, and instruments of husbandry, the whole stock, in

short, necessary for cultivating the farm. The produce was divided equally

between the proprietor and the farmer, after setting aside what was judged

necessary for keeping up the stock, which was restored to the proprietor,

when the farmer either quitted or was turned out of the farm.

 

Land occupied by such tenants is properly cultivated at the expense of the

proprietors, as much as that occupied by slaves. There is, however, one very

essential difference between them. Such tenants, being freemen, are capable

of acquiring property; and having a certain proportion of the produce of the

land, they have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great

as possible, in order that their own proportion may be so. A slave, on the

contrary, who can acquire nothing but his maintenance, consults his own

ease, by making the land produce as little as possible over and above that

maintenance. It is probable that it was partly upon account of this

advantage, and partly upon account of the encroachments which the

sovereigns, always jealous of the great lords, gradually encouraged their

villains to make upon their authority, and which seem, at least, to have

been such as rendered this species of servitude altogether inconvenient,

that tenure in villanage gradually wore out through the greater part of

Europe. The time and manner, however, in which so important a revolution was

brought about, is one of the most obscure points in modern history. The

church of Rome claims great merit in it ; and it is certain, that so early

as the twelfth century, Alexander III. published a bull for the general

emancipation of slaves. It seems, however, to have been rather a pious

exhortation, than a law to which exact obedience was required from the

faithful. Slavery continued to take place almost universally for several

centuries afterwards, till it was gradually abolished by the joint operation

of the two interests above mentioned ; that of the proprietor on the one

hand, and that of the sovereign on the other. A villain, enfranchised, and

at the same time allowed to continue in possession of the land, having no

stock of his own, could cultivate it only by means of what the landlord

advanced to him, and must therefore have been what the French call a

metayer.

 

It could never, however, be the interest even of this last species of

cultivators, to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of

the little stock which they might save from their own share of the produce ;

because the landlord, who laid out nothing, was to get one half of whatever

it produced. The tithe, which is but a tenth of the produce, is found to be

a very great hindrance to improvement. A tax, therefore, which amounted to

one half, must have been an effectual bar to it. It might be the interest of

a metayer to make the land produce as much as could be brought out of it by

means of the stock furnished by the proprietor ; but it could never be his

interest to mix any part of his own with it. In France, where five parts out

of six of the whole kingdom are said to be still occupied by this species of

cultivators, the proprietors complain, that their metayers take every

opportunity of employing their master’s cattle rather in carriage than in

cultivation ; because, in the one case, they get the whole profits to

themselves, in the other they share them with their landlord. This species

of tenants still subsists in some parts of Scotland. They are called

steel-bow tenants. Those ancient English tenants, who are said by

Chief-Baron Gilbert and Dr Blackstone to have been rather bailiffs of the

landlord than farmers, properly so called, were probably of the same kind.

 

To this species of tenantry succeeded, though by very slow degrees, farmers,

properly so called, who cultivated the land with their own stock, paying a

rent certain to the landlord. When such farmers have a lease for a term of

years, they may sometimes find it for their interest to lay out part of

their capital in the further improvement of the farm; because they may

sometimes expect to recover it, with a large profit, before the expiration

of the lease. The possession, even of such farmers, however, was long

extremely precarious, and still is so in many parts of Europe. They could,

before the expiration of their term, be legally ousted of their leases by a

new purchaser; in England, even, by the fictitious action of a common

recovery. If they were turned out illegally by the violence of their master,

the action by which they obtained redress was extremely imperfect. It did

not always reinstate them in the possession of the land, but gave them

damages, which never amounted to a real loss. Even in England, the country,

perhaps of Europe, where the yeomanry has always been most respected, it was

not till about the 14th of Henry VII. that the action of ejectment was

invented, by which the tenant recovers, not damages only, but possession,

and in which his claim is not necessarily concluded by the uncertain

decision of a single assize. This action has been found so effectual a

remedy, that, in the modern practice, when the landlord has occasion to sue

for the possession of the land, he seldom makes use of the actions which

properly belong to him as a landlord, the writ of right or the writ of

entry, but sues in the name of his tenant, by the writ of ejectment. In

England, therefore the security of the tenant is equal to that of the

proprietor. In England, besides, a lease for life of forty shillings a-year

value is a freehold, and entitles the lessee to a vote for a member of

parliament ; and as a great part of the yeomanry have freeholds of this

kind, the whole order becomes respectable to their landlords, on account of

the political consideration which this gives them. There is, I believe,

nowhere in Europe, except in England, any instance of the tenant building

upon the land of which he had no lease, and trusting that the honour of his

landlord would take no advantage of so important an improvement. Those laws

and customs, so favourable to the yeomanry, have perhaps contributed more to

the present grandeur of England, than all their boasted regulations of

commerce taken together.

 

The law which secures the longest leases against successors of every kind,

is, so far as I know, peculiar to Great Britain. It was introduced into

Scotland so early as 1449, by a law of James II. Its beneficial influence,

however, has been much obstructed by entails ; the heirs of entail being

generally restrained from letting leases for any long term of years,

frequently for more than one year. A late act of parliament has, in this

respect, somewhat slackened their fetters, though they are still by much too

strait. In Scotland, besides, as no leasehold gives a vote for a member of

parliament, the yeomanry are upon this account less respectable to their

landlords than in England.

 

In other parts of Europe, after it was found convenient to secure tenants

both against heirs and purchasers, the term of their security was still

limited to a very short period ; in France, for example, to nine years from

the commencement of the lease. It has in that country, indeed, been lately

extended to twentyseven, a period still too short to encourage the tenant to

make the most important improvements. The proprietors of land were

anciently the legislators of every part of Europe. The laws relating to

land, therefore, were all calculated for what they supposed the interest of

the proprietor. It was for his interest, they had imagined, that no lease

granted by any of his predecessors should hinder him from enjoying, during a

long term of years, the full value of his land. Avarice and injustice are

always short-sighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must

obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt, in the long-run, the real interest

of the landlord.

 

The farmers, too, besides paying the rent, were anciently, it was supposed,

bound to perform a great number of services to the landlord, which were

seldom either specified in the lease, or regulated by any precise rule, but

by the use and wont of the manor or barony. These services, therefore. being

almost entirely arbitrary, subjected the tenant to many vexations. In

Scotland the abolition of all services not precisely stipulated in the

lease, has, in the course of a few years, very much altered for the better

the condition of the yeomanry of that country.

 

The public services to which the yeomanry were bound, were not less

arbitrary than the private ones. To make and maintain the high roads, a

servitude which still subsists, I believe, everywhere,