I have said, that without the assistance of one of the three principles of multiplication, to wit, slavery, industry, or charity, there was no possibility of making mankind subsist, so as to be serviceable to one another, in greater numbers than those proportioned to the spontaneous fruits of the earth. Slavery and industry are quite compatible with the selfish nature of man, and may therefore be generally established in any society: charity again is a refinement upon humanity, and therefore, I apprehend, it must ever be precarious. Now I take slavery and industry to be equally compatible with great multiplication, but incompatible with one another, without great restrictions laid upon the first. It is a very hard matter to introduce industry into a country where slavery is established; because of the unequal competition between the work of slaves and that of free men, supposing both equally admitted to market. Here is the reason: The slaves have all their particular masters, who can take better care of _them_, than any statesman can take of the industrious freemen; because their liberty is an obstacle to his care. The slaves have all their wants supplied by the master, who may keep them within the limits of sobriety. He may either recruit their numbers from abroad, or take care of the children, just as he finds it his advantage. If the latter should prove unprofitable, either the children die for want of care, or by promiscuous living few are born, or by keeping the sexes asunder, they are prevented from breeding at all. A troop of manufacturing slaves, considered in a political light, will be found all employed, all provided for, and their work, when brought to market by the master, may be afforded much cheaper, than the like performed by freemen, who must every one provide for himself, and who may perhaps have a separate house, a wife, and children, to maintain, and all this from an industry, which produces no more, nay not so much, as that of a single slave, who has no avocation from labour. Why do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but by coming nearer to the simplicity of slaves. Could the sugar islands be cultivated to any advantage by hired labour? Were not the expences of rearing children supposed to be great, would slaves ever be imported? Certainly not: and yet it is still a doubt with me, whether or not a proper regulation for bringing up the children of slaves might not turn this expedient to a better account, than the constant importation of them. But this is foreign to the present purpose. All I intend here to observe is, the consequences of a _competition_ between the work of slaves and of free men; from which competition I infer, that, without judicious regulations, it must be impossible for industry ever to get the better of the disadvantages to which it will necessarily be exposed at first, in a state where slavery is already introduced.