Whether industry has done hurt to population, by augmenting the relative, and diminishing the absolute produce of agriculture; or whether it has done good to it, by encouraging the science in general, and extending the exercise of it over the face of the earth, is a matter of fact which I shall leave to others, better informed than I am, to determine. For my own part, I believe that thousands of examples may be found of the one and the other. I know corn fields, where villages formerly stood, the inhabitants of which fed themselves with the pure produce of absolute agriculture; that is, with a bit of garden ground, and the milk of a cow: there surely is depopulation: but, at a small distance from the place where those villages stood, I see corn fields, where nothing but heath was to be met with; this marks population. I seek no more than to explain from facts the principles I am endeavouring to discover, and shall leave general conclusions to others, as I have already said. There is a maxim in law, which may be extended almost to every thing in this world, _unum quodque eodem modo solvitur quo colligatum est_. Industry forms this species of absolute agriculture; industry destroys it. A military force raised the Roman greatness; a military force destroyed it. A spirit of liberty may form a noble constitution, and a spirit of liberty may break the same to pieces. The States of Denmark restrained the royal power and established a free government; the same States rendered that very power unlimited, and established there the purest monarchy in Christendom. But these reflections are foreign to our subject: _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_. I return. When industry is set on foot, it gives encouragement to agriculture exercised as a trade: and by the allurements of ease, which a large surplus procures to the farmers, it does hurt to that species which is exercised as a method of subsistence. Lands become more generally and less thoroughly laboured. In some countries tillage is set on foot and encouraged; this is an operose agriculture. While industry goes forward, and while a people can remain satisfied with a nourishment consisting chiefly of bread, this system of agriculture will subsist, and will carry numbers very high. If wealth increases, and if those who have it begin to demand a much greater proportion of work than formerly, while they consume no more food, then I believe numbers may diminish from the principles I am now going in quest of. I return to the council of the island where the proposition laid down upon the carpet is, _The scanty subsistence of the inhabitants requires redress_.