Political Economy for the People

But every country is not adapted to the pastoral state. Some regions are not naturally productive of grass, or not in sufficient quantity; and man, in his social progress, must pass from the hunter state to the agricultural. Such must have been the destiny of the aborigines of North America which is everywhere, except in the prairies of the West, covered with a dense forest. The Indians had accordingly made more advances towards the agricultural than the pastoral state, as they had succeeded In taming no bird or beast, but had their little patches of tobacco, maize, and cymlings.*

* The "squashes" of the Northern States.

The nations and tribes of Western Asia, spoken of in the five books of Moses, were essentially pastoral. Abraham is mentioned as rich in "cattle, silver, and in gold;" and Lot, his rival in wealth and power, has "flocks, and herds, and tents;" and when the Egyptians were suffering from a drought, Joseph gave them bread in exchange for "horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses." So, when the laws against the invasion of property are stated, "oxen, asses, and sheep" hold a conspicuous place.

In the pastoral state, the character of the population undergoes a great change. From being warlike it has become pacific, though not unfit for war in defense of its rights, and sometimes even for conquest. With manners more humane and civilized, the mental powers are also farther developed by more frequent and varied exercise. Men now had leisure for the simpler manufactures, for which they had new materials and new incentives; and here without doubt, wool was first spun and woven. Exchanges, which had been rare in the hunter state, where everything is consumed as soon as produced, naturally increased with the means. By the greater facility and more abundant supply of subsistence thus afforded, population gradually grew to ten or twenty times what it had been in the hunter state.

But, soon or late, the members of a community would reach the level first of easy, then of difficult subsistence; when the increased demand for food would stimulate to new efforts for a further supply, which could be furnished only by agriculture. The land, indeed, had always made some small direct contribution of human aliment, but the quantity could be greatly multiplied, partly by breaking up and loosening the soil, and partly by ridding it of all noxious or useless plants, and limiting its products exclusively to those articles which afford sustenance to man.

Before the introduction of the useful arts, and especially that of making iron for axes, spades, ploughs, and other tools, the progress of agriculture would be slow. Without those efficient aids, the earth could be rid of its trees and shrubs only by the imperfect process of fire, and be turned up by still inferior substitutes for iron. But after a community had, by means of its own invention, or the exchanges of commerce, acquired the use of this metal, population would obtain a new spring, and be gradually so augmented, that the square mile which had once afforded precarious subsistence to a single savage might, under favorable circumstances, afford an easier and better one to two or three hundred, or even more; for the highest degree of density of numbers which the soil can support has never yet been reached. The growing value of land, and of its annual returns, in this third and last stage of society, we will now proceed to consider.