第91章

By the circumstance that so many natural resources and naturalpowers are converted by the manufacturing power into productivecapital is the fact chiefly to be accounted for, that protectiveregulations act so powerfully on the augmentation of nationalwealth.This prosperity is not a false appearance, like the effectsof restrictions on the trade in mere natural products, it is areality.They are natural powers which are otherwise quite dead --natural resources which are otherwise quite valueless, which anagricultural nation calls to life and renders valuable byestablishing a manufacturing power of its own.

It is an old observation, that the human race, like the variousbreeds of animals, is improved mentally and bodily by crossings;that man, if a few families always intermarry amongst one another,just as the plant if the seed is always sown in the same soil,gradually degenerates.We seem obliged to attribute to this law ofnature the circumstance that among many wild or half-wild tribes inAfrica and Asia, whose numbers are limited, the men choose theirwives from foreign tribes.The fact which experience shows, thatthe oligarchies of small municipal republics, who continuallyintermarry among themselves, gradually die out or visiblydegenerate, appears similarly attributable to such a natural law.

It is undeniable that the mixing of two quite different racesresults, almost without exception, in a powerful and fine futureprogeny; and this observation extends to the mixing of the whiterace with the black in the third and the fourth generation.Thisobservation seems to confirm more than any other thing the fact,that those nations which have emanated from a crossing of racefrequently repeated and comprising the whole nation, have surpassedall other nations in power and energy of the mind and character, inintelligence, bodily strength, and personal beauty.(2*)We think we may conclude from this that men need notnecessarily be such dull, clumsy, and unintellectual beings as weperceive them to be when occupied in crippled agriculture in smallvillages, where a few families have for thousands of yearsintermarried only with one another; where for centuries it hasoccurred to no one to make use of an implement of a new form, or toadopt a new method of culture, to alter the style of a singlearticle of clothing, or to adopt a new idea; where the greatest artconsisted, not in exerting one's bodily and mental powers in orderto obtain as much enjoyment as possible, but to dispense with asmuch of it as possible.

This condition of things is entirely changed (and for the bestpurposes of the improvement of race of a whole nation) byestablishing a manufacturing power.While a large portion of theincrease of the agricultural population goes over into themanufacturing community, while the agricultural population ofvarious districts becomes mixed by marriages between one anotherand with the manufacturing population, the mental, moral, andphysical stagnation of the population is broken up.The intercoursewhich manufactures and the commerce between various nations anddistricts which is based upon them bring about, brings new bloodinto the whole nation as well as into separate communities andfamilies.

The development of the manufacturing power has no lessimportant an influence on the improvement of the breeds of cattle.

Everywhere, where woollen manufactures have been established, therace of sheep has quickly been improved.Owing to a greater demandfor good meat, which a numerous manufacturing population creates,the agriculturist will endeavour to introduce better breeds ofcattle.The greater demand for 'horses of luxury' is followed bythe improvement of the breeds of horses.We shall then no longersee those wretched primitive breeds of cattle, horses, and sheep,which having resulted from the crippled state of agriculture andeverywhere from neglect of crossing of breeds, exhibit a sidespectacle worthy of their clumsy owners.