more are born, at least they do not marry, or they agree among themselves, which of several brothers shall perpetuate the family. It is not found that in the Swiss Cantons, the patrimonies of the peasants are ever so divided as to reduce `them below an honourable competence, although the habit of foreign service, by opening to the children a career indefinite and uncalculable, sometimes calls forth a superabundant population*."

There is similar testimony respecting Norway. Though there is no law or custom of primogeniture, and no manufactures to take off a surplus population, the subdivision of property is not carried to an injurious extent. "The division of the land among children," says Mr. Laingt, "appears not, during the thousand years it has been in operation, to have had the effect of reducing the landed properties to the minimum size that will barely support human existence. I have counted from five and twenty to forty cows upon farms, and that in a country in which the farmer must, for at least seven months in the year, have winter provender and houses provided for all the cattle. It is evident that some cause or other, operating on aggregation of landed property, counteracts the dividing effects of partition among children. That cause can be no other than what I have long conjectured would be effective in such a social arrangement; viz., that in a country where land is held, not in tenancy merely, as in Ireland, but in full ownership, its aggregation by the deaths of coheirs, and by the marriages of female heirs among the body of landholders, will balance its subdivision by the equal succession of children. The whole mass of property will, I conceive, be found in such a state of society to consist of as many estates of the class of 10007., as many of 1007., as many of 107. a year, at one period as at another." That this should happen, supposes diffused through society a very efficacious.

prudential check to population; and it is reasonable to give part of the credit of this prudential restraint to the peculiar adaptation of the peasant-proprietary system for fostering it.

But the experience which most decidedly contradicts the asserted tendency of peasant proprietorship to produce excess of population, is the case of France. In that country the experiment is not tried in the most favourable circumstances, a large proportion of the properties being too small. The number of landed proprietors in France is not exactly ascertained, but on no estimate does it fall much short of five millions; which, on the lowest calculation of the number of persons to a family, (and for France it ought to be a low calculation,) shows much more than half the population as either possessing, or entitled to inherit, landed property. A majority of the properties are so small as not to afford a subsistence to the proprietors, of whom, according to some computations, as many as three millions are obliged to eke out their means of support either by working for hire, or by taking additional land, generally on metayer tenure. When the property possessed is not sufficient to relieve the possessor from dependance on wages, the condition of a proprietor loses much of its characteristic efficacy as a check to overpopulation: and if the prediction so often made in England had been realized, and France had become a pauper warren," the experiment would have proved nothing against the tendencies of the same system of agricultural economy in other circumstances. But what is the fact? That the rate of increase of the French population is the slowest in Europe. During the generation which the Revolution raised from the extreme of hopeless wretchedness to sudden abundance, a great increase of population took place. But a generation has grown up, which, having been born in improved circumstances, has not learnt to be miserable; and upon them the spirit of thrift operates most conspicuously, in keeping the increase of population within the increase of national wealth. In a table, drawn up by

66

Professor Rau", of the rate of annual increase of the popu

*The following is the table (see p. 168 of the Belgian translation of M. Rau's large work) :

Per cent.

Per cent.

United States ........ 1820-30 ... 2.92 Scotland................ 1821-31.... 1-30 Hungary (according to Rohrer) 2:40 Saxony

1815-30

1.15

1820-30 1:37 and more recently (Moreau de

But the number given by Moreau de Jonnès, he adds, is not entitled to implicit confidence.

The following table given by M. Quetelet (Sur l'Homme et le Developpement de ses Facultés, vol. i., ch. 7) also on the authority of Rau, contains additional matter, and differs in some items from the preceding, probably from the author's having taken, in those cases, an average of different years:

A recent, and very carefully prepared statement, by M. Legoyt, in the Journal des Economistes for May, 1847, which brings up the results for France to the census of the preceding year 1846, is summed up in the following table:

lations of various countries, that of France, from 1817 to 1827, is stated at 3 per cent., that of England during a similar decennial period being 1% annually, and that of the United States nearly 3. According to the official returns as analyzed by M. Legoyt*, the increase of the population, which from 1801 to 1806 was at the rate of 1.28 per cent annually, averaged only 0.47 per cent from 1806 to 1831: from 1831 to 1836 it averaged 0.60 per cent, from 1836 to 1841, 0.41 per cent, and from 1841 to 1846, 0·68 per cent; but M. Legoyt is of opinion that the population was understated in 1841, and the increase between that time and 1846 consequently overstated, and that the real increase during the whole period was something intermediate between the last two averages, or not much more than one in two hundred. Even this slow increase is wholly the effect of a diminution of deaths; the number of births not increasing at all, while the proportion of the births to the population is constantly diminishing†. This slow growth of the numbers of the people, while capital increases much more rapidly, has caused a noticeable improvement in the condition of the

* Journal des Economistes for March and May, 1847. The following are the numbers:

دو

970,617,
983,573,

1 in 35.27

1 in 35.58

1844 and 1845, In the last two years the births, according to M. Legoyt, were swelled by the effects of a considerable immigration. "Cette diminution des naissances," he observes, “en présence d'un accroissement constant, quoique peu rapide, de la population générale et des mariages, ne peut être attribué qu'aux progrès de l'esprit d'ordre et de prévision dans les familles. C'est d'ailleurs la conséquence prévue de nos institutions civiles et sociales, qui, en amenant chaque jour une plus grande subdivision de la fortune territoriale et mobilière de la France, développent au sein des populations les instincts de conservation et de bien-être."

In four departments, among which are two of the most thriving in Normandy, the deaths actually exceed the births.

labouring class. The circumstances of that portion of the class who are landed proprietors are not easily ascertained with precision, being of course extremely variable; but the mere labourers, who derived no direct benefit from the changes in landed property which took place at the Revolution, have unquestionably much improved in condition since that period*. M. Rau testifies to a similar fact in the case of another country in which the subdivision of land is really excessive; the Palatinatet.

* "Les classes de notre population qui n'ont que leur salaire, celles qui, par cette raison, sont les plus exposées à l'indigence, sont aujourd'hui beaucoup mieux pourvues des objets nécessaires à la nourriture, au logement et au vêtement, qu'elles ne l'étaient au commencement du siècle. ., On peut appuyer [ce fait] du témoignage de toutes les personnes qui ont souvenir de la première des époques comparées... S'il restait des doutes à cet égard, on pourrait facilement les dissiper en consultant les anciens cultivateurs et les anciens ouvriers, ainsi que nous l'avons fait nous-mêmes dans diverses localités, sans rencontrer un seul témoignage contradictoire ; on peut invoquer aussi les renseignemens recueillis à ce sujet par un observateur exact, M. Villermé (Tableau de l'Etat Physique et Moral des Ouvriers, liv. ii., ch. 1.)" From an intelligent work published in 1846, Récherches sur les Causes de l'Indigence, par A. Clément, pp. 84-5. The same writer speaks (p. 118) of "la hausse considérable qui s'est manifestée depuis 1789 dans le taux du salaire de nos cultivateurs journaliers ;" and adds the following evidence of a higher standard of habitual requirements, even in that portion of the town population, the state of which is usually represented as most deplorable. "Depuis quinze à vingt ans, un changement considérable s'est manifesté dans les habitudes des ouvriers de nos villes manufacturières : ils dépensent aujourd'hui beaucoup plus que par le passé pour le vêtement et la parure. . . . . Les ouvriers de certaines classes, tels que les anciens canuts de Lyon," (according to all representations, like their counterpart, our handloom weavers, the very worst paid class of artisans,) ne se montrent plus comme autrefois couverts de sales haillons." (Page 164.)

In his little book on the Agriculture of the Palatinate, already cited, He says that the daily wages of labour, which during the last years of the war were unusually high, and so continued until 1817, afterwards sank to a lower money-rate, but that the prices of many commodities having fallen in a still greater proportion, the condition of the people was unequivocally improved. The food given to farm labourers by their employers has also greatly improved in quantity and quality. "Sie heutigen Tages bedeu