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by which the natural and healthy state of the public economy is vitiated and deranged.*

SECTION V.-Population always proportioned to the means of Subsistence-Capacity of the principle of Population to repair the ravages of Plagues and Famines-Comparative increase of Capital and Population.

THE circumstances most favourable for the production of wealth being thus traced and exhibited, we shall now shortly investigate those that determine the increase and diminution of man himself.

From the remotest antiquity down to our own times, it had been the uniform policy of legislators to give an artificial stimulus to population, by encouraging early marriages, and bestowing rewards on those who had reared the greatest number of children. But the researches of Mr. Malthus, who, though not the original discoverer of the principles of population, was certainly the first to establish it on a secure foundation, have shown the mischievous nature of all such interference. They have shown, that every increase in the numbers of the people, occasioned by artificial expedients, and which is not either preceded or accompanied by a corresponding increase in the means of subsistence, can be productive only of misery, or of increased mortality : -that the difficulty never is to bring human beings into the world, but to feed, clothe, and educate them when there ;-that mankind do everywhere increase their numbers, till their multiplication is restrained by the difficulty of providing subsistence, and the consequent poverty of some part of the society;—and that, consequently, instead of attempting to strengthen the principle of increase, we should invariably endeavour to control and regulate it.

If the extraordinary pains most governments have taken to encourage the increase of population had not been positively pernicious, it is pretty evident they were at any rate quite uncalled for and unnecessary. Man does not require any adventitious inducement to stimulate him to enter into the matrimonial state. Wherever two persons have the

*M. Say was the first who showed, in a satisfactory manner, that effective demand depends upon production (see his chapter de Debouchès ;) and that gluts are the result of the misapplication, and not of the increase, of productive power. The same important principle was soon after developed by Mr. Mill; who has illustrated it with his accustomed talent, both in his admirable tract entitled, Commerce Defended, (p. 8o.) and in his Elements, (p. 222.)

But, although the establishment of this principle is wholly due to the distinguished authors just mentioned, it had been noticed by Dean Tucker, in a pamphlet published in 1752, Queries on the Naturalisation Bill, p. 13;) and is very clearly stated in a Tract published in 1795 -- Demand,' says the writer, 'is at all times regulated by production, which it never can exceed, and which it must always accompany. While there is production there must be demand, nor is it possible to conceive the one without the other. To suppose that there may be a production of commodities without a demand-provided these commodities be of the right species, and no individual can have any interest in producing any other-is as absurd as to suppose, that the revenues of the several individuals composing the society may be too great for their consumption.'-Sketch of the Advance and Decline of Nations, p. 82.

means of subsisting, a marriage invariably takes place. The demand for men,' says Adam Smith, ‘like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men ; quickens it when it goes on too slowly; and stops it when it advances too fast. It is this demand which regulates and determines the state of population in all the different countries of the world-in North America, in Europe, and in China ; which renders it rapidly progressive in the first, slow and gradual in the second, and altogether stationary in the last.' (p. 14.) The widest and most comprehensive experience confirms the truth of this remark. Those who inquire into the past and present state of the world, will find, that the population of all countries has been invariably proportioned to their means of subsistence. Whenever these means have been increased, population has also been increased, or been better provided for; and when they have been diminished, the population has been worse provided for, or has sustained an actual diminution of numbers, or both effects have followed.

But the principle of increase in the human race is so powerful as not only to keep the population of the most favoured countries, and where industry is most productive, up to the means of subsistence, but to give it a strong tendency to exceed them. Not a few of the inhabitants of those countries that are making the most rapid advances in the accumulation of wealth, have to maintain a constant struggle with poverty, and are but insufficiently supplied with the articles necessary to provide for the wants of a numerous family. Subsistence is the grand desideratum. If it be supplied in sufficient abundance, population may safely be left to take care of itself. So far from there being the least risk of its falling below the means of subsistence, the danger is all on the other side. There are no limits to the prolific power of plants and animals. They are all endued with a principle which impels them to increase their numbers beyond the nourishment prepared for them. The whole surface of the earth might be gradually covered with shoots derived from a single plant; and though it were destitute of all other inhabitants, it might, in a few ages, be replenished from a single nation, or even from a single pair.

'Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms,' says Mr. Malthus, 'nature has scattered the seeds of life with a most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develope themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the race of animals, shrink under this great restrictive law; and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.' (Essay on Popul., vol. i. p. 3, 5th ed.)

The effect of plagues and epidemic disorders illustrates the powerful

operation of the principle of population in a very striking manner. However afflicting these scourges may be to humanity, there is no reason to suppose that the world would have been more populous than it really is, had they been entirely unknown. So long as the means of subsistence are not impaired, the principles of increase speedily fills up the vacuum caused by any unusual mortality. The diminution of the population improves the circumstances of those who survive. By lessening the number of people without lessening the capital that is to feed and maintain them, it gives them an increased power over subsistence. The period of marriage is, in consequence, accelerated, and the number of births proportionally increased. It appears from the tables given by M. Messance, in his valuable work on the Population of France, that the ravages occasioned by the plague of Marseilles, in 1720, were very soon repaired; and that, notwithstanding the diminution of the population, the marriages became more numerous, and were also more fruitful, immediately after the mortality had subsided. But the effects which followed the pestilence that desolated the Prussian dominions, and the middle parts of Europe, in 1710 and 1711, are still more remarkable. Sussmilch, whose accuracy is well known, mentions that, previously to this pestilence, the average annual number of marriages, in a district of Prussia which had been carefully surveyed, amounted to about 6000; and, though the pestilence is supposed to have swept off a full third of the inhabitants, yet, in the year immediately following this excessive mortality, the marriages amounted to double their former number, or to about 12,000! (Malthus on Population, vol. ii. p. 170, 5th ed.) It would be easy to produce a thousand similar instances of the prodigious activity of the principle of population, and of its capacity to repair the most dreadful ravages. It might, for example, have been supposed, that the massacres of the revolution, and the bloody wars in which France was constantly engaged for more than twenty years, would have made a serious inroad on her population. But, instead of being diminished, the population of France was considerably increased in the interval between the expulsion and restoration of the Bourbons. The abolition of the feudal privileges of the nobility, and of the tithes, gabelle, corvées, and other odious and oppressive burdens, improved the condition, and stimulated the industry of the people. The means of subsistence were greatly increased; and the new impulse that was thus given to the principle of population, was sufficient, not only to repair the waste occasioned by the ravages of the guillotine and the sword, but to make a further addition, in the course of twenty-five years, of about three millions to the numbers existing in 1790. The effects of the dreadful plague that raged in London, in 1666, were not perceptible fifteen or twenty years afterwards. It may even be doubted, whether Turkey and Egypt are upon an average much less populous

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for the plagues which periodically lay them waste. If the number of people which they contain be considerably less now than formerly, it is rather to be attributed to the tyranny and brutal oppression of the Turkish government, which destroys their industry, than to the losses they sustain by the plague. The traces of the most destructive famines in China, Hindostan, Egypt, and other countries, are very soon obliterated; and the most tremendous convulsions of nature, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, if they do not happen so frequently as to frighten away the inhabitants, or to destroy their industry, have been found to produce almost no effect on the average population. (Malthus, vol. ii. p. 198.)

The extreme importance of controlling the principle of population, may be shown by comparing the natural ratio of its increase, with the natural ratio of the increase of capital. We have already seen, that that portion of the accumulated produce or capital of a country which consists of food and clothes, or of the various materials that can be made available to the support of man, forms the only fund from which the inhabitants of a civilised country can derive any portion of their subsistence. And hence it is plain, that if capital has a natural tendency to increase faster than population, the condition of society must, generally speaking, become more and more prosperous: while, on the other hand, if population has a tendency to increase faster than capital, and if this tendency be not checked by the prevalence of moral restraint, or by the prudence and forethought of the people, it is equally plain, that the condition of the people must become gradually more and more wretched, until the portion of subsistence, falling to the share of the majority, be reduced to the lowest pittance that can possibly support mere animal existence.

It is not possible to obtain any very accurate estimate of the absolute quantity of capital in a country at different periods; but the capacity of that capital to feed and support human beings, and the rate of its increase, may, notwithstanding, be learned with sufficient accuracy, for our purpose, by referring to the progress of population. It is clear from the previous statements, that the inhabitants of a country, supposing them to have the same, or about the same, command of the necessaries and conveniences of life, cannot increase without a corresponding increase of capital. Whenever, therefore, we find the people of a country increasing without any, or with but very little, variation taking place in their condition, we may conclude, that the capital of that country is increasing in the same, or very nearly the same proportion. Now, it has been established beyond all question, that the population of several of the States of North America has, after making due allowance for immigrants, continued to double for a century past in so short a period as twenty, or at most twenty-five years; and as the quantity of necessaries and conveniences, falling to the share of an in

habitant of the United States, has not been materially increased or diminished during the last century, this increase of population is a proof, that the capital of the country has advanced in a corresponding ratio. But in all old settled countries, the increase of capital, and, consequently, of population, is much slower. The population of Scotland, for example, is supposed to have amounted to 1,050,000 in 1700; and as it amounted to 3,062,294 in 1861, it would follow, or the principle already stated, that the capital of the country had required about 160 years to treble.* In like manner, the population of England and Wales amounted to 6,064,000 in 1740, and to 20,068,224 in 1861, showing that the population, and, therefore, the capital of that country, applicable to the support of man, or the supply of food, clothes, and other articles required for the support of human life, had more than trebled in 120 years.

The cause of this discrepancy in the rates at which capital and population advance in different countries, is to be found in the circumstance of industry being more productive in some than in others. It is obvious, that the increase of that portion of the capital of a country, which consists of the food and other raw products required for the subsistence and accommodation of man, must be very materially influenced by the fertility of the soils that are under tillage. Suppose the science of agriculture to be equally advanced in two different countries if the fertility of the soils under cultivation was twice as great in the one as in the other, it is evident, that the power of adding to that portion of capital which consists of food and other raw materials, and which is always the most important, would be twice as great in the country where the soil was of the highest, as in that where it was of the lowest fertility. It is on this principle, that we are enabled to account for the extraordinarily rapid increase of capital, and, consequently, of population, in the United States, and generally in all colonies, planted in fertile and thinly-peopled countries. America possesses a boundless extent of fertile, and hitherto unoccupied land; and her agriculturists, who are acquainted with all the arts and sciences of Europe, apply themselves only to the cultivation of the finest soils. Their industry is, in consequence, extremely well rewarded. Each farmer has a great deal more produce than is required for his own consumption, or that of his family; and as he accumulates the surplus as capital, there is a proportionally rapid increase of capital, and, consequently, also of population.

But the situation of Great Britain, and of all old settled and comparatively populous countries, is entirely different. Our most fertile lands have long since been brought under tillage; and we are now obliged to raise whatever additional supplies of food we require, either

*It has more than trebled in this period; for the condition of all classes of people has been exceedingly improved.

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