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those of inferior fertility, to obtain the means of providing for an increasing population: And with every inferior quality of land brought under cultivation, a proportional diminution will be made in the productiveness of industry, and in the rate at which capital and population are advancing. Were cultivation so far extended in Kentucky and Louisiana, as to render the lands last subjected to tillage in them of no greater fertility than those last cultivated in Great Britain, the progress of capital and population would be reduced to precisely the same level there and here.

But while the power of all countries to feed additional inhabitants is thus progressively diminished, according to the diminished fertility of the soils which they must successively bring under cultivation, the power possessed by their inhabitants of adding to their numbers, undergoes no sensible change. That principle, or instinct, which impels man to propagate his species, has appeared in all ages and countries so nearly the same, that it may, in the language of mathematicians, be considered as a constant quantity. The same power that has doubled the population of America in twenty or twenty-five years, is always in operation; and if the supplies of food and other articles necessary for the support of the people continue to increase as fast as they have done, population will most certainly continue to advance in the same proportion in all time to come; or, at all events, until the space required to carry on the operations of industry has become deficient. But the

principle of increase is quite as strong in Yorkshire or Normandy as it is in Kentucky or Illinois, and yet it is plainly impossible that the population of England or France can be doubled in so short a period. Owing to the greater sterility of the soils we are now cultivating, the quantity of produce to be divided between the undertakers of work in Great Britain and their labourers is much less than in America, and both parties have in consequence a less power of providing for the wants of a family. These circumstances have had a corresponding influence on the habits of our people. They have felt that it would be equally ruinous to themselves and their offspring to enter into matrimonial connections until they had some reasonable prospect of being able to provide for the children that might be expected to spring from them. In consequence, marriages are very generally deferred to a later period than in America, and a much larger proportion of the population find it expedient to pass their lives in a state of celibacy. And it is fortunate that this is the case; it is fortunate, that the good sense of the people, and their laudable desire to preserve their place in society, has made them control the violence of their passions, and disregard the dicta of so many spurious advisers. Man cannot possibly increase beyond the means of subsistence provided for his support: And, therefore, it is quite obvious and certain, that if the natural tendency of population to increase, in countries advanced in the career of civilization, and

where there is, in consequence, a considerably increased difficulty of providing supplies of food, be not checked by the prevalence of moral restraint, or by the prudence and forethought of the people, it must be checked by the prevalence of vice, misery and famine. There is no alternative. The population of every country has a power, supposing food to be adequately supplied, to go on doubling every five-and-twenty years: But as the limited extent and limited fertility of the soil render it impossible to go on producing food in this ratio, it necessarily follows, that unless the passions are moderated, and a proportional check given to the increase of population, the standard of human subsistence will not only be reduced to the lowest assignable limit, but famine and pestilence will be perpetually at work to relieve the population of wretches born only to be starved.

The only criterion, then, of a real, and beneficial increase in the population of a country, is the increase in the means of its subsistence. If these means are not increased, an increase in the number of births can be productive only of increased misery and mortality, "Other circumstances being the same,” says Mr Malthus, " it may be affirmed that countries are populous according to the quantity of food they can produce or acquire; and happy, according to the liberality with which this food is divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are more populous than pas

ture countries, and rice countries more populous than corn countries. But, their happiness does not depend either upon their being more or less densely peopled, upon their poverty or their riches, their youth or their age, but on the proportion which the population and the food bear to each other."*

Essay on Population, II. p. 214.

PRINCIPLES

OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

PART III.

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

THE various methods by which that labour which is the only source of wealth may be rendered most productive, and the mutual relation and dependence of the different kinds of industry being previously traced and exhibited, we now proceed to the third division of our subject, or to an investigation of the laws regulating the proportions in which the different products of art and industry are distributed among the various classes of the people.

In treating of the production of wealth it was not necessary to inquire, whether the labour required to appropriate aud produce commodities, and without the expenditure of which they would be wholly destitute of exchangeable value, was the sole limiting principle and measure of that value, or whether it was not partly derived from other causes, and partly only from labour. But an acquaintance with the circumstances which determine the value of commodi

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