crease of their number must lead, not indeed to starvation, but to the forfeiture of their position as land-owners. Thus, in Switzerland, which is, in the main, a country of small proprietors, the Population increases so slowly, that, at its present rate, it is estimated that it would not double itself in less than 227 years. In France, where also the land is cut up into very small estates, but where the peasantry are less prudent, less disposed to make calculations respecting the future, than the Swiss, the estimated period of duplication varies from 115 to 138 years.

The general effect in the Old World, then, may be thus stated, that the numbers of the poor increase most rapidly, of the middle classes more slowly, and of the upper or wealthier ones, either not at all, or so slowly as hardly to be perceptible. "By a singular anomaly," says Alison, "the rapidity of increase is in the inverse ratio of the means which are afforded of maintaining a family in comfort and independence. It is greatest when these means are least, and least when they are the greatest." This is strikingly illustrated in Sweden, where the census and the registration of births, deaths, and marriages are taken with reference to the division of the people into three classes. The official returns for 1835 give the following results: The yearly excess of births over deaths among the persons reckoned as belonging to the nobility was only one for every 1,508. For those who are described as persons of property and station," the yearly excess was one for every 640; while for the peasantry it was one for every 107. In other words, the rate of increase for the peasantry is nearly six times greater than that of the middle class, and over fourteen times greater than that of the nobles. Thus do the laws of nature itself operate against a permanent or hereditary aristocracy.

If we compare different countries with each other, we still find, in every case, that the lowest classes increase most rapidly, and that the rate of increase diminishes as we ascend in the social scale. But we also observe that this law becomes more prominent and conspicuous according as these social distinctions are more fixed and unalterable, that is, as they approach the nature of castes; and also, it becomes more marked in proportion to the degree of poverty and wretchedness of the lowest class. Thus, we can discern the operation of the law even in this country; where

it is matter of common observation, that laborers, mechanics, small tradesmen, and farmers generally marry at an early age, and have large families; while educated men, members of the professions, and sons of wealthy parents often defer "establishing themselves in life," as the phrase goes, till a comparatively late period. But owing to the general well-being of all classes here, and to the frequency and rapidity of transitions from one class to another, these differences are less obvious than in the Old World.

In France, where the land is minutely divided, and the peasantry are vastly better off than in England, the rate of increase of the population, for ten years, is only 5 per cent; in England it is 15 per cent; and in Connaught, the sink of Irish misery and degradation, from 1821 to 1831, it was as high as 22 per cent. In the province of Ulster, the rate is 14, while in the county. of Donegal it rises to 20 per cent. "And this is precisely the county which official reports represent as forming an exception to the general condition of Presbyterian Ulster, and affording an instance of poverty little less extreme than that of Connaught. In the latter province, we find Galway and Mayo, notoriously the two most destitute counties, exhibiting, the one an increase of 27, and the other of 25, per cent." Excluding the effects of emigration, this rate is nearly as high as in the United States; so that the two extremes, of general misery and general well-being, produce very nearly the same effect on the movement of the population, a fact utterly irreconcilable with the theory of Malthus.

The probable result for our own country may now be very clearly seen. So long as land continues abundant and cheap, and the wages of labor high, so long the Population will continue. to increase with great rapidity. Barbarous tribes will die out before its advancing wave, and the desert will be peopled. But as the country fills up, and the wages of labor fall, it will become more difficult to rise from one class of society to another, and the rate of increase will diminish. When the land becomes as thickly settled as Belgium now is, a result which centuries will be required to accomplish, the Population will advance as slowly as it now does in Belgium. I see nothing in this prospect which need alarm even those who are most apt to be apprehensive of the future.

Mr. Senior has very happily illustrated the truth, that the

Preventive check upon marriages is the fear, not of lacking the necessaries of life, or of positive starvation, but of being deprived of those comforts and enjoyments which custom has marked out as appropriate for every condition in life, or every rank in the social scale.

"Though an apprehended deficiency of some of the articles of wealth is substantially the only Preventive check to the increase of Population, it is obvious that fear of the want of different articles operates; with all men, very differently; and even that an apprehended want of the same article will affect differently the minds of the individuals of different classes. It appears to us, therefore, convenient to divide for this purpose the articles of wealth into the three great classes of Necessaries, Decencies, and Luxuries, and to explain the different effects produced by the fear of the want of the articles of wealth falling under each class. It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers that these are relative terms, and that some person must always be assigned with reference to whom a given commodity or service is a Luxury, a Decency, or a Necessary.

"By Necessaries, then, we express those things, the use of which is requisite to keep a given individual in the health and strength essential to his going through his habitual occupations.

"By Decencies, we express those things which a given individual must use in order to preserve his existing rank in society.

Everything else of which a given individual makes use, or, in other words, all that portion of his consumption which is not essential to his health and strength, or to the preservation of his existing rank in society, we term Luxury.

"It is obvious that, when consumed by the inhabitants of different countries, or even by different individuals in the same country, the same things may be either Luxuries, Decencies, or Necessaries. Shoes are Necessaries to all the inhabitants of England. Our habits are such, that there is not an individual whose health would not suffer from the want of them. To the lowest class of the inhabitants of Scotland, they are Luxuries; custom enables them to go barefoot without inconvenience and without degradation. When a Scotchman rises from the lowest to the middling classes of society, they become to him Decencies. He wears them to preserve, not his feet, but his station in life. To

the higher class, who have been accustomed to them from infancy, they are as much Necessaries as they are to all classes in England. To the higher classes in Turkey, wine is a luxury and tobacco a decency; in Europe, it is the reverse. The Turk drinks and the European smokes, not in obedience, but in opposition, both to the rules of health and to the forms of society.

"The question, whether a given commodity is to be considered as a Decency or a Luxury, is obviously one to which no answer can be given, unless the place, the time, and the rank of the individual using it be specified. The dress which in England was only decent a hundred years ago, would be almost extravagant now; while the house and furniture which now would afford merely decent accommodation to a gentleman would then have been luxurious for a Peer. The causes which entitle a c commodity to be called a Necessary are more permanent and more general. They depend partly upon the habits in which the individual in question has been brought up, partly on the nature of his occupation, on the lightness or the severity of the labors and hardships that he has to undergo, and partly on the climate in which he lives. The fuel, shelter, and raiment, which are essential to a Laplander's existence, would be worse than useless under the tropics. And as habits and occupations are very slowly changed, and climate suffers scarcely any alteration, the commodities which are necessary to the different classes of the inhabitants of a given district may, and generally do, remain for centuries unchanged, while their Decencies and Luxuries are continually varying.

"Among all classes, the check imposed by an apprehended deficiency of mere Luxuries is but slight. The motives, perhaps we might say the instincts, that prompt the human race to marriage, are too powerful to be much restrained by the fear of losing conveniences unconnected with health or station in society. Nor is Population much retarded by the fear of wanting merely Necessaries. In comparatively uncivilized countries, in which alone, as we have already seen, that want is of familiar occurrence, the Preventive check has little operation. They see the danger, but want prudence and self-denial to be influenced by it. On the other hand, among nations so far advanced in civilization as to be able to act on such a motive, the danger that any given person

or his future family shall actually perish from indigence, appears too remote to afford any general rule of conduct.

"The great Preventive check is the fear of losing Decencies; or, what is nearly the same, the hope to acquire, by the accumulation of a longer celibacy, the means of purchasing the Decencies which give a higher social rank. When an Englishman stands hesitating between love and prudence, a family actually starving is not among his terrors; against actual want, he knows that he has the fence of the poor-laws. But however humble his desires, he cannot contemplate without anxiety a probability that the income which supported his social rank while single may be insufficient to maintain it when he is married; that he may be unable to give to his children the advantages of education which he enjoyed himself; in short, that he may lose his caste. Men of more enterprise are induced to postpone marriage, not merely by the fear of sinking, but also by the hope that, in an unencumbered state, they may rise. As they mount, the horizon of their ambition keeps receding, until sometimes the time has passed for realizing those plans of domestic happiness which probably every man has formed in his youth."

CHAPTER IX.

THE THEORY OF RENT.

RENT is the compensation paid to the landlord for permission to hold and use a certain portion of land. As the real ownership is sometimes divided between several parties, for instance, between

several

the government, the nominal landlord, and the occupier, sorts of Rent have come to be distinguished from each other, and called by different names. Moreover, Rent was not always paid in money, but sometimes by rendering military services, sometimes by performing menial or agricultural labor, and sometimes in kind,

that is, by a given portion of the actual products of the soil. A fixed charge payable annually forever, without regard to the greater or less productiveness of the soil, is more properly considered as a case of coproprietorship than of Rent; the owner of one