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If the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is

anywhere in the mother-country, its real price, the real command

of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it conveys to

the labourer, must be higher in a still greater proportion.

But though North America is not yet so rich as England, it is

much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to

the further acquisition of riches. The most decisive mark of the

prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its

inhabitants. In Great Britain, and most other European countries,

they are not supposed to double in less than five hundred years.

In the British colonies in North America, it has been found that

they double in twenty or five-and-twenty years. Nor in the

present times is this increase principally owing to the continual

importation of new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication

of the species. Those who live to old age, it is said, frequently

see there from fifty to a hundred, and sometimes many more,

descendants from their own body. Labour is there so well

rewarded, that a numerous family of children, instead of being a

burden, is a source of opulence and prosperity to the parents.