Those who travel into the southern provinces of Spain, find large tracts of land quite uncultivated, producing only a scanty pasture for herds of the lesser cattle. Here and there are found interspersed some spots of watered lands, which, from the profusion of every gift which nature can bestow, strike a northern traveller with an idea of paradise. In such places villages are found, and numbers of inhabitants. It must be allowed that industry and labour do not here go forward as in other countries; but to supply this want charity steps in. Charity in Spain (in proportion to its extent) is as powerful a principle towards multiplication as industry and labour. _Whatever gives food gives numbers_: but charity cannot extend beyond superfluity, and this must ever be in proportion to industry. These watered lands are well laboured and improved. The value of them in one sense, is in proportion to their fertility, and the surplus of the labourers should naturally be given for an equivalent in money or work: but this equivalent cannot be found, because the consumers have neither the one nor the other. If the Spaniards, therefore, were not the most charitable people upon earth, it is very plain that the labouring of these watered lands would diminish, until it came upon a level with the wealth and industry of the consumers. But here it is otherwise: labour goes on mechanically, and without combination of circumstances, and the poor live in ease, in proportion to the plenty of the year. Here then is a third principle of multiplication. The first is slavery, or a violent method of making mankind labour; the second is industry, which is a rational excitement to it; the third is charity, which resembles the manna in the desert, the gift of God upon a very extraordinary occasion, and when nothing else could have preserved the lives of his people. Whether, in all cases, this principle of christianity advances the prosperity of a modern society (when complied with from obedience to precept, without consulting reason as to the circumstances of times and situations) is a question which lies out of my road to examine. The action, considered in the intention of the agent, must in every case appear highly beautiful, and we plainly see how far it contributes to multiplication, though we do not so plainly perceive how this again is advantageous to society. Now if we examine the state of agriculture in the territory of this Spanish village, we find, upon the whole, no more surplus of fruits than upon the French vine dresser’s portion of land; consequently, if all Spain was laboured and inhabited like this village and its small garden, as it is called, it would be the most populous country in the world, the most simple in the manner of living; but it never could communicate the idea of a vigorous or a flourishing state. It is the employment alone of the inhabitants which can impress that character.