must always turn. If the proportion of capital to population be increased, the population will be better provided for; if it continue the same, the condition of the population will undergo no change; and if it be diminished, that condition will be changed for the worse.

The principles we have thus briefly endeavoured to elucidate render it apparent, on a little reflection, that the condition of the bulk of every people must usually depend more on their own conduct than on that of their rulers. Not that we mean by this to insinuate, that the influence of governments over their subjects is not great and powerful, or that the latter should not be governed in the best possible manner. A people who have the misfortune to be subjected to arbitrary and intolerant rulers, though otherwise possessed of all the powers and capacities necessary for the production of wealth, will, from the want of security and freedom, be most probably sunk in poverty and wretchedness. But in countries where property is secure, industry free, and the public burdens moderate, the happiness or misery of the labouring classes depends almost wholly on themselves. Government has there done for them all that it should, and all in truth that it can, do. It has given them security and freedom. But the use or abuse of these inestimable advantages is their own affair. They may be either provident or improvident, industrious or idle; and being free to choose, they are alone responsible for the consequences of their choice.

It is, we admit, visionary to expect, as some theorists have done, that the progress of population should ever be exactly adjusted to the increase or diminution of the national capital, or that the conduct of the mass of the people should be perceptibly influenced by public considerations, or by a regard to its effects on society at large. The theories of philosophers, and the measures of statesmen and legislators, have reference to the interests and well-being of nations; but those of ordinary men embrace a comparatively narrow range. Their views seldom, indeed, extend even to the class to which they

B

belong. They include only themselves, their families, and near connections; and they are satisfied if they succeed in promoting their interests, without thinking or caring about those of the public. Luckily, however, the two coincide. The industry, the frugality, and the forethought, without which no individual can either hope to improve his condition, if he have little or nothing, or to keep his own, and avoid falling a sacrifice to poverty, if he have anything, are virtues indispensable to the well-being of individuals, and consequently of the community. And it is so ordered, that no sort of combination or co-operation is required to secure these advantages. They are realised to the fullest extent by every one by whom they are practised; and they can be realised by none else.

It is fortunate that those principles, a knowledge of which is of most importance to the interests of mankind, lie on the surface, and are easily understood, and may be practised by all. Every man, if he have any reflection, who proposes entering into a matrimonial engagement, must feel that he is about to undertake a serious responsibility. The wages or resources which may be able to support himself comfortably, may be insufficient for the support of two, or three, or four individuals. And if he have no provision made beforehand, and cannot increase his means by greater economy or greater exertion, what can he expect from his marriage but that he should be reduced to comparative poverty, and be forced, perhaps, to take refuge in a workhouse? There is no denying this conclusion; and a conviction of its truth will not tend to obstruct any really desirable union. It will only tend to lessen the number of those that are improvidently made, and which seldom fail to be ruinous alike to the parties and to the public.

It is not unusual, indeed, for those who have brought themselves into difficulties by their improvidence or misconduct, to throw the blame on the government or the institutions of the country in which they live. But a pretence of this sort cannot impose on any person possessed of the smallest discernment. It is the merest delusion to imagine that it is in the power of any administration to protect

those from suffering and degradation who do not exercise a reasonable degree of industry and forethought. And though it were in its power, its interference in their behalf would be inconsistent with the most obvious dictates of justice and common sense. The lazy, the unskilful, and the improvident workman, whether he belong to Australia or China, England or Russia, will always be poor and miserable. No man can devolve on government, or on others, any portion of that self-responsibility which at once dignifies and constitutes an essential part of human nature. They are not the friends, but the worst enemies of the poor, who seek to conceal or disguise this great truth; and who endeavour to make it be believed that it is possible, by dint of legislation, to provide for the welfare of those who will not use the means which Providence has given them of maintaining themselves in their present position, or of rising to a higher. Such persons are to the poor what a treacherous guide is to a traveller in a strange country. They lead them from the only path that can conduct to comfort and respectability, to one which is sure to terminate in disappointment and disgrace.

But

It will, we presume, be universally admitted, that practically it is impossible to increase the supplies of food and other articles necessary for the support of a family, so rapidly in Great Britain and France as they may be, and in fact are, increased in the United States and Australia. how can those who admit this proposition deny its inevitable consequence, that were our people to marry as early and universally as the Americans and Australians, we should have, first a great increase of poverty, and then of mortality? It is true that capital, or the means of supporting and employing labour, will, supposing other things equal, increase most under a just and liberal government. But experience sufficiently proves, that the power which men possess of increasing their numbers, is sufficiently strong to make population keep pace with the progress of capital, in nations possessed of boundless tracts of fertile and unoccupied land, and

of the most liberal institutions. And as this power does not fluctuate with the fluctuating circumstances of society, but remains constant, it evidently follows, that if it be not controlled by the good sense and prudence of individuals, it must necessarily in the end sink the inhabitants of denselypeopled countries into the most helpless and abject poverty.

The influence of the different rates at which capital and population increase in different countries over the condition of their inhabitants, may be set in a striking light by referring to the instances of Ireland and Great Britain. No one doubts that the capital of the former has increased considerably during the last fifty or a hundred years, though, when we compare the slow growth of the towns and manufactures, the fewness of the public works, and the scanty improvements effected on the land in Ireland, during that period, with the comparatively rapid growth of the towns and manufactures, and the prodigious extension of all sorts of improvements, in Great Britain, it is apparent that the increase of capital must have been, at least, four or five times as great in the interval in this as in the sister kingdom. But the increase of population in the two countries, previously to 1840, was nearly in the inverse ratio of the increase of their capital, or of their means of supporting and employing labour. Thus, it appears that the population of Great Britain, which amounted to about 7,000,000 in 1740, had increased to above 18,000,000 in 1840, being an increase in the interval of rather more than 255 per cent.; whereas the population of Ireland, which amounted to about 2,000,000 in 1740, had increased to above 8,000,000 in 1840, being an increase of no less than 400 per cent., or of 145 per cent. more than in Britain, notwithstanding the vastly greater increase of capital in the latter !

1

We shall not at present stop to inquire into the causes which led to this extraordinary disparity in the increase of population in the two great divisions of the empire, compared with the increase of their capitals. But it is obvious

1 See these causes specified in the Statistical Account of the British Empire, Vol. I., pp. 438-445.

that its excessive augmentation in Ireland has been the immediate cause of the want of demand for the labour of the Irish people, and of their abject poverty. Had population increased less rapidly, fewer individuals would have been seeking for employment, their wages would consequently have been higher, and their situation so far improved. And such being the cause of the evil, it is plain that, without its being obviated or mitigated, and without the numbers of the Irish people becoming more commensurate with the funds for their support, nothing could be more futile than to expect that their wages should be increased, or their condition be sensibly changed for the better. It is obvious, too, that any people whose numbers continue for any very considerable period to increase faster than the means of providing for their comfortable subsistence, must eventually sink to the same low condition as the people of Ireland. And this increase cannot fail to take place in all old settled countries in which the standard of living is not sufficiently elevated, or in which the principle of augmentation is not powerfully countervailed by the operation of moral restraint, or of a proper degree of prudence and forethought in the formation of matrimonial engagements.

During the last half-dozen years, Ireland has been subjected to a terrible ordeal. The ravages of famine and disease, occasioned by the potato rot of 1845-46 and 1846-47, combined with the efforts of the landlords to clear their estates, and the greatly increased emigrations to this country and the United States, have had an astonishing effect upon the population, which fell off between 1841, or rather 1845, and 1851, from 8,175,124 to 6,515,794. It would be idle to indulge in conjectures in regard to the consequences of this sudden and unprecedented decline of population, but we would fain hope that they may be beneficial; and that, like the fire of London in 1666, the French Revolution of 1789, and other dreadful catastrophes and convulsions, it may, though distressing in the meantime, be productive of great ultimate good. The establishment of a compulsory provision