Taking mankind as they are, and not as we may desire them to be, domestic slavery offered the best relation which has yet been found, between labour and capital. It is not asserted that it would be best for a _Utopia_, where we might imagine the humblest citizen virtuous, intelligent, and provident. But there are no such societies on earth. The business of the legislator, whether human or divine, is with mankind as they are; and while he adapts his institutions to their defects, so as to avoid making them impracticable or mischievous, he should also shape them to elevate and reform as far as possible. The legislator, therefore, in devising a frame of society, should adapt it to a state in which the rich are selfish and the poor indolent and improvident. For, after all that has been boasted of human improvement, this is usually man's condition. Now, in adjusting social institutions, it is all-important to secure physical comfort; because in a state of physical misery and degradation, moral and intellectual improvement are hopeless; and the business of the legislator is more especially to take care of the weak: the strong will take care of themselves. Property is the chief element of political strength; it is this which gives to individuals power in society; for "money answereth all things;" it commands for its possessor whatever he needs for his physical comfort and safety. The great _desideratum_ in all benign legislation is to sustain the class which has no property, against the social depression and physical suffering to which they always tend. That there will always be such a class, at least till the _millennium_, is certain, for reasons already stated. Now all civilized communities exhibit a natural law which tends to depress the physical condition of those who have no property, who are, usually, the laboring classes. That law is the tendency of population to increase. The area of a country grows no larger, while the number of people in it is perpetually increasing, unless that tendency is already arrested by extreme physical evils. The same acres have, therefore, more and more mouths to feed, and backs to clothe. Consequently, each person must receive a smaller and smaller share of the total proceeds of the earth. The demand perpetually increases in proportion to the supply; and therefore the price of those productions rises, as compared with the price of labour. Hence in every flourishing community, the relative proportion between the price of land, its rents, and the food and clothing which it produces, on the one hand, and the price of manual labour on the other, is perpetually, though slowly, changing. The former rises, the latter sinks. Improvements in agriculture and the arts, extensive conquests, emigrations, or some other cause, may for a time arrest, or even reverse, this process; but such is the general law, and the constant tendency. The very prosperity and growth of the community work this result.