If this state of things sets in at the proper time,agricultural and industrial productive power will increasereciprocally, and indeed ad infinitum.The demand for agriculturalproducts on the part of the industrial population will be so great,that no greater number of labourers will be diverted toagriculture, nor any greater division of the existing land be made,than is necessary to obtain the greatest possible surplus producefrom it.In proportion to this surplus produce the populationoccupied in agriculture will be enabled to consume the products ofthe workmen employed in manufacturing.A continuous increase of theagricultural surplus produce will occasion a continuous increase ofthe demand for manufacturing workmen.The excess of theagricultural population will therefore continually find work in themanufactories, and the manufacturing population will at length notonly equal the agricultural population in numbers, but will farexceed it.This latter is the condition of England; that which weformerly described is that of part of France and Germany.Englandwas principally brought to this natural division of industrialpursuits between the two great branches of industry, by means ofher flocks of sheep and woollen manufactures, which existed thereon a large scale much sooner than in other countries.In othercountries agriculture was crippled mainly by the influence offeudalism and arbitrary power.The possession of land gaveinfluence and power, merely because by it a certain number ofretainers could be maintained which the feudal proprietor couldmake use of in his feuds.The more vassals he possessed, so manymore warriors he could muster.It was besides impossible, owing tothe rudeness of those times, for the landed proprietor to consumehis income in any other manner than by keeping a large number ofservants, and he could not pay these better and attach them to hisown person more surely than by giving them a bit of land tocultivate under the condition of rendering him personal service andof paying a smaller tax in produce.Thus the foundation forexcessive division of the soil was laid in an artificial manner;and if in the present day the Government seeks by artificial meansto alter that system, in so doing it is merely restoring theoriginal state of things.
In order to restrain the continued depreciation of theagricultural power of a nation, and gradually to apply a remedy tothat evil in so far as it is the result of previous institutions,no better means exists (apart from the promotion of emigration)than to establish an internal manufacturing power, by which theincrease of population may be gradually drawn over to the latter,and a greater demand created for agricultural produce, by whichconsequently the cultivation of larger estates may be rendered moreprofitable, and the cultivator induced and encouraged to gain fromhis land the greatest possible amount of surplus produce.
The productive power of the cultivator and of the labourer inagriculture will always be greater or smaller according to thedegree in which the exchange of agricultural produce formanufactures and other products of various kinds can proceed moreor less readily.That in this respect the foreign trade of anynation which is but little advanced can prove in the highest degreebeneficial, we have shown in another chapter by the example ofEngland.But a nation which has already made considerable advancesin civilisation, in possession of capital, and in population, willfind the development of a manufacturing power of its own infinitelymore beneficial to its agriculture than the most flourishingforeign trade can be without such manufactures, because it therebysecures itself against all fluctuations to which it may be exposedby war, by foreign restrictions on trade, and by commercial crises,because it thereby saves the greatest part of the costs oftransport and commercial charges incurred in exporting its ownproducts and in importing manufactured articles, because it derivesthe greatest advantages from the improvements in transport whichare called into existence by its own manufacturing industry, whilefrom the same cause a mass of personal and natural powers hithertounemployed will be developed, and especially because the reciprocalexchange between manufacturing power and agricultural power is somuch greater, the closer the agriculturist and manufacturer areplaced to one another, and the less they are liable to beinterrupted in the exchange of their various products by accidentsof all kinds.