Theories of population from Raleigh to Arthur Young : lectures delivered in the Galtonian laboratory, University of London, under the Newmarch foundation, February 11 to March 18, 1929, with two additional lectures and with references to authorities, / by James Bonar.
- James Bonar
- Date:
- 1931
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Theories of population from Raleigh to Arthur Young : lectures delivered in the Galtonian laboratory, University of London, under the Newmarch foundation, February 11 to March 18, 1929, with two additional lectures and with references to authorities, / by James Bonar. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![more they are to be classed with farmers, and will have arable fields which must in the nature of things be ill-cultivated, and the national interest consequently suffer.” In other words, the labourer, becoming a farmer, would be running a business, with all the risks and difficulties of business, without the requisite training for business. Hume, touching on the same problem, anticipates a modern incident of our own century: “’Tis a violent method, and in most cases impracticable to raise from the land more than what subsists [a man] himself and family. Furnish him with manu¬ factures and commodities and he will do it of himself. Afterwards you will find it easy to seize some part of his superfluous labour and employ it in the public service without giving him his wonted return.” This is the Exchequer’s view of the matter rather than the cultivator’s; but the idea is that it may lead to the benefit of the cultivator at the expense of his immediate pleasure. Arthur Young was right in appealing to Hume, for this is how Hume proceeds in the same chapter: Tt may seem an odd position that the poverty of the common people in France, Italy, and Spain is in some measure owing to the superior riches of the soil and happiness of the climate; and yet there want not many reasons to justify this paradox.” One man “with a couple of sorry horses” will cultivate in a season “as much land as will pay a pretty considerable rent to the proprietor.” All the art the farmer knows is to leave exhausted](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29931782_0234.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
