23.15. 15. Of the Number of Inhabitants with relation to the Arts.
When there is an agrarian law, and the lands are equally divided, the country
may be extremely well peopled, though there are but few arts; because
every citizen receives from the cultivation of his land whatever is
necessary for his subsistence, and all the citizens together consume all
the fruits of the earth. Thus it was in some republics.
In our present situation, in which lands are unequally distributed,
they produce much more than those who cultivate them are able to
consume; if the arts, therefore, should be neglected, and nothing minded
but agriculture, the country could not be peopled. Those who cultivate,
or employ others to cultivate, having corn to spare, nothing would
engage them to work the following year; the fruits of the earth would
not be consumed by the indolent; for these would have nothing with which
they could purchase them. It is necessary, then, that the arts should be
established, in order that the produce of the land may be consumed by
the labourer and the artificer. In a word, it is now proper that many
should cultivate much more than is necessary for their own use. For this
purpose they must have a desire of enjoying superfluities; and these
they can receive only from the artificer.
The machines designed to abridge art are not always useful. If a
piece of workmanship is of a moderate price, such as is equally
agreeable to the maker and the buyer, those machines which would render
the manufacture more simple, or, in other words, diminish the number of
workmen, would be pernicious. And if water-mills were not everywhere
established, I should not have believed them so useful as is pretended,
because they have deprived an infinite multitude of their employment, a
vast number of persons of the use of water, and great part of the land
of its fertility.
