On the contrary, the prolific fertility of country life has poured its
superfluity of population into the canals, and into other public works,
which of late years have been undertaken to so amazing an extent, and
which have not only not been discontinued, but, beyond all expectation,
pushed on with redoubled vigor, in a war that calls for so many of our
men and so much of our riches. An increasing capital calls for labor,
and an increasing population answers to the call. Our manufactures,
augmented both for the supply of foreign and domestic consumption,
reproducing, with the means of life, the multitudes which they use and
waste, (and which many of them devour much more surely and much more
largely than the war,) have always found the laborious hand ready for
the liberal pay. That the price of the soldier is highly raised is true.
In part this rise may be owing to some measures not so well considered
in the beginning of this war; but the grand cause has been the
reluctance of that class of people from whom the soldiery is taken to
enter into a military life,--not that, but, once entered into, it has
its conveniences, and even its pleasures. I have seldom known a soldier
who, at the intercession of his friends, and at their no small charge,
had been redeemed from that discipline, that in a short time was not
eager to return to it again. But the true reason is the abundant
occupation and the augmented stipend found in towns and villages and
farms, which leaves a smaller number of persons to be disposed of.
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