and he has little taste for any other, he would be a bankrupt before he had finished the tenth part of it. There ftill remain in both parts of the united kingdom fome great eftates which have continued without interruption in the hands of the fame family fince the times of feudal anarchy. Compare the prefent condition of those estates with the poffeffions of the fmall proprietors in their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument to convince you how unfavourable fuch extensive property is to improvement.

CHA P.

IF little improvement was to be expected from fuch great proprietors, ftill lefs was to be hoped for from those who occupied the land under them. In the ancient ftate of Europe, the occupiers of land were all tenants at will. They were all or almoft all flaves; but their flavery was of a milder kind than that known among the ancient Greeks and Romans, or even in our Weft Indian colonies. They were fuppofed to belong more directly to the land than to their mafter. They could, therefore, be fold with it, but not separately. They could marry, provided it was with the confent of their master; and he could not afterwards diffolve the marriage by felling the man and wife to different perfons. If he maimed or murdered any of them, he was liable to fome penalty, though generally but to a small one. They were not, however, capable of acquiring property. Whatever they acquired was acquired to their mafter, and he could take it from them at pleasure. Whatever cultivation and improvement could be carried

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BOOK carried on by means of fuch flaves, was properly III. carried on by their master. It was at his ex

pence. The feed, the cattle, and the inftruments of husbandry were all his. It was for his benefit. Such flaves could acquire nothing but their daily maintenance. It was properly the proprietor himself, therefore, that, in this cafe, occupied his own lands, and cultivated them by his own bondmen. This fpecies of flavery still fubfifts in Ruffia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other parts of Germany. It is only in the western and fouth-western provinces of Europe, that it has gradually been abolished altogether.

BUT if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are leaft of all to be expected when they employ flaves for their workmen. The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonftrates that the work done by flaves, though it appears to coft only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have no other intereft but to eat as much, and to labour as little as poffible. Whatever work he does beyond what is fufficient to pur chase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by, violence only, and not by any intereft of his own. In ancient Italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofit able it became to the mafter when it fell under the management of flaves, is remarked by both Pliny and Columella. In the time of Ariftotle it had not been much better in ancient Greece. Speaking of the ideal republic described in the

laws of Plato, to maintain five thoufand idle CHA P. men (the number of warriors fuppofed neceffary for its defence) together with their women and fervants, would require, he fays, a territory of boundless extent and fertility, like the plains of Babylon.

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THE pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him fo much as to be obliged to condefcend to perfuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the fervice of flaves to that of freemen. The planting of fugar and tobacco can afford the expence of flave-cultivation. raising of corn, it feems, 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 refolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro flaves, may fatisfy us that their number cannot be very great. very great. Had they made any confiderable part of their property, fuch a refolution could never have been agreed to. In our fugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole work is done by flaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of it. profits of a fugar-plantation in any of our Weft Indian colonies are generally much greater than thofe of any other cultivation that is known either in Europe or America: And the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to thofe of fugar, are fuperior to thofe of corn, as has already been obferved. Both can afford the ex. pence

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it still better than tobacco. The number of

negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion to that of whites, in our fugar than in our tobacco colonies.

To the flave cultivators of ancient times, gradually fucceeded a fpecies of farmers known at present in France by the name of Metayers. They are called in Latin, Coloni Partiarii. They have been fo long in difufe in England that at present I know no English name for them. The proprietor furnished them with the feed, cattle, and inftruments of husbandry, the whole ftock, in fhort, neceffary for cultivating the farm. The produce was divided equally between the proprietor and the farmer, after setting afide what was judged neceffary for keeping up the stock, which was reftored to the proprietor when the farmer either quitted, or was turned out of the farm.

LAND Occupied by fuch tenants is properly cultivated at the expence of the proprietor, as much as that occupied by flaves. There is, however, one very effential 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 intereft that the whole produce should be as great as poffible, in order that their own proportion may be fo. A slave, on the contrary, who can acquire nothing but his maintenance, confults his own eafe by making the land produce as little as poffible over and above that maintenance.

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maintenance. It is probable that it was partly CHAP. upon account of this advantage, and partly upon account of the encroachments which the fovereign, always jealous of the great lords, gradually encouraged their villains to make upon their authority, and which feem at laft to have been fuch as rendered this fpecies of fervitude altogether inconvenient, that tenure in villanage gradually wore out through the greater part of Europe. The time and manner, however, in which fo important a revolution was brought about, is one of the moft obfcure points in modern hiftory. The church of Rome claims great merit in it; and it is certain that fo early as the twelfth century, Alexander III. published a bull for the general emancipation of flaves. 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 feveral 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 fovereign on the other. A villain enfranchised, and at the fame time allowed to continue in poffeffion of the land, having no stock of his own, could cultivate it only by means of what the landlord advanced to him, and muft, therefore, have been what the French call a Metayer.

IT could never, however, be the intereft even of this laft fpecies of cultivators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of the