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 ., The Gornell University, 1869, 
 
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 Regius Profeffor of Hiftoiy in the 
 Univerfity of Oxford. 
 
Cornell university Library 
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 3 1924 031 254 505 
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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031254505 
 
POPU'LATION 
 
 CAPITAL; 
 
 A COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 IN 1858-4. 
 
 GEORGE K.^RICKARDS, M.A., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 " La pensee qui mit l'jabmonie dans le mouvement des corps 
 celestes a, sn la mettre aussi dans le mecanisme interne de la soci^te." 
 
 Bastiat. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 LONGMAN, BB.OWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 
 
 1854. 
 
 [The Author reserves to himself the right cf translation (if this Work.l 
 
/cornell\ 
 
 U^iiVERSiTYi 
 ■s^ LIBRARY^ 
 
 V 
 
 Lately published, by the same Author, price 2s, 6d., 
 
 THREE INTBODUCTOEY LECTTJEES ON POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY. 
 
 Delivered before the University of Oxford.' 
 
 Lecture 1. The Harmonies of the Social Economy. 
 Lectuke 2. The Operation of Self-interest. 
 Lecture 3. The Operation of Competition.* 
 
 J. H. Parker : Oxford, and Strand, London. 
 
 Ko 
 
 London : 
 
 A* and G. A. Spottiswoods, 
 
 New-street-Square. 
 
THE KIGHT HONOUKABLE 
 
 WILLIAM EWAET QLADSTOT^E, 
 
 CHANCELLOR Of THE EXCHEQUER, 
 
 AND ONE OP THE BUKGESSES IN PARLIAMENT FOB 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 ONE WHO HAS GIVEN EFFECT AS A STATESMAN 
 TO HIS ENLIGHTENED VIEWS AS AN ECONOMIST, 
 
 W'f)t4e ULettuteg Hxe inStvibets 
 
 WITH SENTIMENTS OF COBDIAL RESPECT AND ESTEEM. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be deemed a sufficient apology 
 for submitting these Lectures to the public, that 
 the statute under which the Professorship is founded 
 requires the publication of a part of those delivered 
 in each year. Although the contents of this volume 
 considerably exceed the statutory limit, I believe 
 I shall incur no blame, in the eyes either of the 
 Founder or of the University, in following in this 
 respect the example of most of my predecessors in 
 the Chair of Political Economy. 
 
 The Lecture which stands first in the volume, 
 " On the Nature and Functions of Capital," treats 
 of matters which are, it is true, elementary in their 
 nature, and familiar to all proficients in the science. 
 But, although the subject is one on which the forma- 
 tion of clear and precise ideas is peculiarly need- 
 ful, the notions held respecting it among persons 
 of average intelligence and information are, to say 
 the least, extremely vague and inaccurate. The 
 opinions frequently advanced, and allowed to pass 
 
 A 3 
 
■VI PREFACE. 
 
 current in society, respecting the effects of private 
 expenditure on the employment of labour and on 
 the interests of the working-classes, are such as 
 not only must offend those who have any regard 
 for economical truth, but are practically mis- 
 chievous and demoralising in their tendency. 
 The revolting doctrine that " private vices are 
 public benefits,'' is involved in the apology, con- 
 stantly urged on behalf of others, and no doubt 
 frequently applied to their own consciences by the 
 parties themselves, — that extravagance and prodi- 
 gality furnish employment for labour, encourage 
 trade, and benefit the community, by putting 
 money into active circulation. In attempting the 
 exposure of a fallacy so plausible and inveterate 
 as this, I conceived that I should discharge no su- 
 perfluous task, and might render an acceptable 
 service to the cause of truth and morals. 
 
 The remainder of the Lectures, nine in number, 
 are devoted mainly to the subject of Population. 
 My attempt has been to discriminate between the 
 truth and the errors contained in Mr. Malthus' cele- 
 brated Essay. Giving credit to that eminent person 
 for much that is valuable and sound in his researches 
 and reasonings, I have endeavoured to demonstrate 
 the fallacy of his cardinal maxim, that " population 
 has everywhere a tendency to increase in a greater 
 ratio than subsistence," and that the greater part 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 of the sufferings endured in all societies is attribut- 
 able to this tendency. Nothing that is said in these 
 Lectures will, I hope, be deemed inconsistent with 
 the respect which I unfeignedly entertain for the 
 talents, the integrity of purpose, and the manifest 
 ^ilanthropy of this writer. But I am bound to 
 ^press my conviction, that the doctrine which he 
 laboured to inculcate, of the constant tendency of 
 all societies to over-population, is untenable in 
 principle, irreconcileable with facts, and, I must 
 add, while fuUy acquitting Mr. Malthus himself 
 of any approach to impiety or presumption, de- 
 rogatory to the Author of those laws by which the 
 economy of society is regulated. If' the conclusion 
 of the Essay on Population be true, it seems to me 
 to involve this inevitable consequence — that there 
 has been a miscalculation of means to ends in the 
 arrangements of the universe — either man has 
 been made too prolific, or the earth too sterile. 
 
 In discussing and illustrating the various branches 
 of this subject, I have freely availed myself of the 
 labours of other well-known writers on population, 
 particularly M. Say, M. Bastiat, Mr. Senior, 
 Mr. McCulloch, Sir Archibald Alison, Mr. Sad- 
 ler, Mr. Carey, the American economist, and 
 Mr. W. E. Hickson.* To Sir A. Alison's work, 
 
 * Author of an iible article on Population, in No. 102. of the 
 Westminster Review. 
 
Vm PEEFACE. 
 
 entitled " Principles of Population," I am indebted 
 for many of the observations drawn from the 
 present condition of various coimtries in the world, 
 which will be found in my Sixth and Seventh 
 Lectures. To Mr. Sadler's work I am bound to 
 acknowledge a still greater obligation in respect to 
 the facts and arguments made use of in my Pourrai 
 Lecture. Indeed, I should scarcely over-state the 
 truth in describing that Lecture as little more than 
 an abridgment of the " Essay upon the Balance of 
 Pood and Numbers of Animated Nature," contained 
 in the appendix to Mr. Sadler's book. The matter 
 of that essay appeared to me so interesting in itself, 
 and so valuable a contribution to the argument, that 
 T did not scruple to avail myself of it, subject to 
 such alteration of shape and such additions and mo- 
 difications as my own judgment or information de- 
 rived from other sources induced me to adopt. Nor, 
 with this full acknowledgment of Mr. Sadler's lite- 
 rary rights, have I thought it incumbent upon me to 
 omit the Lecture, of which the credit, if any, is due 
 to him, from this publication. It may be proper, in 
 order to prevent misconception, to add, that I do not 
 at aU concur in the theory of population propounded 
 by Mr. Sadler as his own ; but for which, in my 
 opinion, he failed to adduce any substantial grounds. 
 In assailing the theory of Mr. Malthus, indeed, he 
 appears to me to have been far more successful ; and. 
 
PEfeFACE. ix 
 
 but for the warmth of temper and asperity of tone 
 which disfigure his work, I believe that the contro- 
 versial ability it displays would have received much 
 greater credit, and have told with far more damaging 
 effect upon his opponent- 
 While admitting my obligations to other writers 
 for the aid thus derived from them, I must not for- 
 bear at the same time to assert the claim on my own 
 behalf, without which the present publication would 
 be without excuse. Had I been aware of any other 
 work which places the laws that regulate the increase 
 of mankind in the same point of view, and offers the 
 same solution for the difficulties which have given 
 rise to the controversy about population, I should 
 certainly have abstained from entering on the sub- 
 ject. But I was not acquainted when I undertook 
 these Lectures with any other treatise, among the 
 many written by persons opposed to Mr. Malthus, in 
 which a sound or satisfactory exposition of the laws 
 of population was offered in substitution for the 
 theory of that writer. It was not until I had vir- 
 tually completed my Lectures, that I met with a 
 small tract by Mr. Alexander Everett, the distin- 
 guished diplomatist of the United States, published 
 in London in 1823, and entitled " New Ideas on 
 Population, with Remarks on the Theories of 
 Malthus and Godwin." This publication, small in 
 bulk and modest in pretension, does not appear to 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 have met with the attention or produced the effect 
 which the candour, ability, and judgment displayed 
 in its few pages deserved. It may be, that the concur- 
 rence of the writer's views with my own has biassed 
 me in its favour ; but I cannot refrain from express- 
 ing my opinion, whatever it may be worth, that in no 
 treatise which has come under my notice have the 
 laws of popula,tion been so unexceptlonably laid 
 down, or so successfully harmonised with the re- 
 cognised principles of political economy. So far as 
 my acquaintance with American economists extends, 
 I believe that the theories of Malthus and Ricardo, 
 which have for some time reigned paramount in the 
 English school of political economy, have not generally 
 found acceptance in the United States. There is an 
 obvious explanation of this circumstance which I am 
 inclined to regard as the true one — the theories in 
 question are not found to square with the facts pre- 
 sented by the new world ; — they are founded mainly 
 upon certain phenomena of society occasionally ob- 
 served in old countries ; but they are entirely out of 
 place in a community in which both production and 
 population are yet in the infancy of their growth, 
 and seem to admit of an almost boundless expansion 
 and development.* In the Third Lecture of this 
 
 * I cannot refrain here from expressing my opinion as to the 
 great advantage to be derived by tlie English student from 
 the writings of the American economists, as well on account of 
 
PEEFACE. XI 
 
 volume I have pointed out the marked contradiction 
 afforded by the experience of the United States to 
 the argument of Mr. Malthus ; and in a former Course 
 of Lectures* I have investigated the sources of Rent 
 and the origin of the value of land in a new settle- 
 ment under circumstances to which Mr. Ricardo's 
 hypothesis is totally inapplicable. It is on the foun- 
 dation of facts furnished by American experience, 
 and by the light afforded by the rise and growth of 
 new communities, that Mr. Carey has built some of 
 his powerful arguments against Ricardo, which have 
 met with an answer, in my opinion, by no means 
 satisfactory, from Mr. J. S. Mill, while they have 
 received countenance from one of the master minds 
 of modern political economy, M. Bastiat. 
 
 But if it be true that the theories of Rent and 
 Population which our English writers have laid down 
 find no counterpart in the actual face of things on 
 the other side of the Atlantic, where we are enabled 
 to survey society in its primitive elements, and to 
 watch the rise and progress of economical phenomena 
 in their simplest form, this circumstance in itself 
 appears to me to afford a strong presmnption against 
 their truth. For the laws of political economy, pro- 
 
 the opportunity enjoyed by those writers of observing the early 
 and simpler phases of society, as on account of the inde- 
 pendence of their views, unfettered by adherence to the re- 
 ceived doctrines of the English school. 
 * Unpublished. 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 perly so called, must be (exceptional causes being 
 allowed for) of universal application, and not in 
 discordance with the facts presented by any of the 
 widely varying conditions of human society. The 
 origin of rent, if it be reducible to a single law, 
 must be the same in America as in Europe, in a 
 new settlement, and in an old community. The 
 same with regard to population. If by the con- 
 stitution of our nature there be a tendency to 
 excess of numbers incompatible with the well- 
 being of society, the same cause . would produce 
 similar effects on both sides of the Atlantic; popu- 
 lation would not be found to outrun production on 
 the one side, and production to maintain the lead of 
 population on the other. 
 
 In the last Lecture of this volume, in which the 
 conclusions from the preceding Lectures are summed 
 up, I have endeavoured to exhibit the true law of 
 population as a self -regulating power, capable of 
 adjusting itself to the most opposite phases of society, 
 and, in the absence of disturbing causes, proportion- 
 ing the supply of life to the demand under all the 
 infinitely varying circumstances of human nature. 
 
 The freedom with which I have canvassed opinions 
 held by some of the great masters of economical 
 science, will not, I hope, expose me to the charge of 
 presumption. Towards those from whom I dissent 
 most widely I have endeavoured always to observe 
 
PEEFACE. Xlll 
 
 a tone of courtesy and respect, not forgetting how 
 much easier it is to criticise a system than to con- 
 struct one ; but remembering also, that there could 
 be no progress in the science, if deference for 
 authority, however high, should restrain inquirers 
 from questioning doctrines which have received the 
 sanction of illustrious names. 
 
 G. K. R. 
 
 Queen's College, Oxfbrd, October, 1854. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 FACE 
 
 On the Nature and Functions of Capital - ] 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Introduction to the Subject of Population. — Mr. Mal- 
 thus's Essay — Its merits and Defects — The Maxim, that 
 " Population is limited by the Means of Subsistence," 
 explained and qualified - - - - - 28 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 The Dictum of Mr. Malthus, that " Population has a Ten- 
 dency to increase in a greater Ratio than Subsistence." 
 — The grounds of this Statement examined - - 54 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 On the relative Rates of increase of Population and Sub- 
 sistence, physically considered ----- 78 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 On the relative Rates of increase of Population and Sub- 
 sistence, historically considered - - - - - 105 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 On the Connection between the Malthusian Theory of 
 Population, and the Ricardo Theory of Rent - - 126 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 On the Effect of increased Population upon Production - 153 
 
 LECTURE VIIL 
 On tlie Checks to Population, and on Moral Restraint - 179 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 On the Necessity of the actual Power of Population to the 
 Preservation and Progress of the Human Race - - 208 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 On the Adaptation of the actual Laws of Population to the 
 various Stages of Society. — Conclusion ... 236 
 
ON THE 
 
 NATUEE AND FUNCTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 CAPITAL. 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 ON CAPITAL. 
 
 I PROPOSE in the present Lecture to treat of the 
 nature and functions of Capital. There is scarcely 
 any subject in political economy on which it is more 
 essential to possess distinct and accurate conceptions; 
 indeed, we shall find that the root of some of the 
 most inveterate popular errors that prevail is to be 
 found in a misapprehension or confusion of ideas 
 with respect to capital. I shall refer, in passing, to 
 some of these current fallacies, distributiag my 
 remarks under three principal heads, with a view to 
 elucida,te, — 1st. What Capital is. 2nd. How it is 
 formed. 3rd. How it is employed. 
 
 Let us first endeavour clearly to ascertaia what 
 we mean by capital. To many minds, the notion 
 that the term presents is that of money ; but 
 money, as we shall presently see more plainly, is 
 but the repi'esentative of capital. The possessor 
 
 B 
 
2! POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 of a sum of money has the command of capital by 
 the convertibility of the gold, silver, or other circu- 
 lating medium which he holds, into any of those 
 articles which he may desire to use as capital. But 
 until so converted, the circulating medium is quite 
 incapable of serving that purpose which constitutes 
 the proper function of capital, viz., the production 
 of wealth. It is with reference to this, its special 
 characteristic, that I would define capital as consists 
 ing in those articles of wealth which are employed in 
 the reproduction of wealth. 
 
 The constituents of all production are correctly de- 
 scribed by the highest economical authorities as 
 three, viz.. Natural Agents, Labour, and Capital. The 
 earth, including in that term all the powers of the ma- 
 terial universe, is the original source of production. 
 Labour is the instrument by which commodities 
 useful to man are extracted from that source ; but 
 there is still a third agent, without which labour is 
 comparatively impotent. Set a man with the full 
 use of his physical and mental powers down in an 
 uncultivated island, and, however great its natural 
 fertility might be, he would scarcely be able to 
 maintain his own existence, much less to accumulate 
 any surplus after supplying his immediate wants. 
 He would have neither seed to sow, nor imple- 
 ments of any kind to till the ground; nor tamed 
 animals to assist him with their strength or speed; 
 nor even, if he had the means of cultivating the 
 earth, would he have any store of provisions to 
 sustain his life until the produce arrived at maturity. 
 In one word, he would have no capital. But, pro- 
 vide the same man, like Robinson Crusoe, with 
 
CAPITAL. 3 
 
 some waifs from the wreck from which he has been 
 cast ashore, such as carpenters' tools, fire-arms and 
 ammunition, a supply of bread, biscuit, spirits, flour 
 and corn for seed, a quantity of clothes, and similar 
 articles of prime necessity ; — famish him with these 
 requisites, and he will have a capital, by means 
 of which he will be enabled, not only to maintain 
 himself tUl his industry can produce a new stock of 
 necessaries, but to make continually fresh additions 
 to his stores, and, finally, to become, like Defoe's 
 hero, when he left his island, the owner of a con- 
 siderable stock of valuable property. One thing 
 alone saved from the vessel, though identified almost 
 indissolubly in our minds with associations of value, 
 was found utterly worthless to the shipwrecked 
 mariner, — a purse of money ; — a clear illustration of 
 the fact, that where, from the absence of society, 
 there can be no exchange, that commodity which is 
 only the representative of value for the purposes of 
 exchange, becomes whoUy valueless ; it is of no use 
 whatever for purposes of production, — in other words, 
 it is not capital. 
 
 The articles, then, of which capital does consist are 
 articles previously produced by the co-operation of 
 the three agents already specified, and accumulated 
 for the purpose of being used in reproducing some- 
 thing else. All production is, in fact, carried on 
 by the consumption of what has been produced 
 before. Every labourer subsists on the produce of 
 past labour : the last year's crop furnishes his sub- 
 sistence while he is preparing the ground to yield a 
 new harvest ; the produce of the next season will 
 be raised from the reserved produce of the present. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 As the labour precedes the harvest, so there must be 
 a fund in hand to sustain the labourer until the 
 ■ harvest. In other words, there must be an accumu- 
 lated fund, or a capital, in existence, as a condition 
 precedent to all production. 
 
 Anything whatever, the result of previous labour, 
 which is used in the work of production, falls within 
 the description of capital. The principal elements 
 of which it consists are three, — E.aw Materials, Im- 
 plements, Provisions for the labourers employed. 
 In agricultural industry, the seed, the plough, and 
 the ploughman's wages, may stand for the repre- 
 sentatives of these three classes of capital. Whether 
 the ploughman be lodged and boarded by the farmer, 
 or the farmer, at the end of the week, put a sum 
 of money into his hand, to be exchanged by himself 
 for food, lodging, and clothing, obviously makes no 
 difference whatever in principle. It is the money's 
 worth that is the capital or instrument of production, 
 not the money, which is merely its sign or token. 
 The second class, which I have termed " imple- 
 ments," must be extended, in an advanced state of 
 industrial improvement, to include a great variety of 
 products, — machinery, buildings, ships, railways, &c., 
 as well as animals reclaimed and made auxiliary to 
 human labour. 
 
 The description of those things which are or may 
 be capital wiU enable us to determine clearly what 
 are not capital. Upon this point strange misconcep- 
 tions have been entertained and propounded, even 
 by men of ability and eminence, who have engaged 
 in the discussion of economical subjects. Professor 
 Hancock, of Trinity College, Dublin, some time 
 
CAPITAL. 5 
 
 Professor of Political Economy in that University, 
 in his able pamphlet entitled " Is there a "Want of 
 Capital in Ireland?" cites two remarkable misap- 
 plications of the term capital from the works of 
 two economical writers in that country. One of 
 these, Mr. Isaac Butt, speaks of the waste lands of 
 Ireland as being capital ; the other. Sir Robert 
 Kane, in his work on the " Industrial Resources 
 of Ireland," contending against the popular belief 
 which ascribes the poverty and dearth of employment 
 ia that country to a want of capital, uses this lan- 
 guage:— 
 
 "We leave our fields in barrenness, our mines 
 unsought, our powers of motion unapplied, waiting 
 for English capital. Labour is capital, intelligence 
 is capital ; combine them, and you more than double 
 your amount of capital. With such capital England 
 cormnenced as Ireland must commence ; and once 
 that we have begun and are in earnest, there will be 
 no lack of money-capital at our disposal."* 
 
 On this passage Mr. Hancock well observes : — 
 " The fundamental notion of capital is, an article 
 of wealth distinct from labour and natural agents. 
 Labour, so far from being capital, would be almost 
 powerless as an instrument of production without 
 the existence of food for the labourer's support and 
 instruments for his use, which form two large classes 
 of capital. To take the common case of agricultural 
 production: — the land must be prepared ia spring 
 with ploughs and harrows, or with spades ; the 
 seed-corn must be in existence ; the labourers cannot 
 
 * P. 388. 
 B 3 
 
6 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 wait till harvest for their dinner ; each day they 
 must have food supplied to them; — nay more, they 
 must be clothed ; the clothes must be made of wool, 
 or flax, or cotton ; hence sheep must have been fed, 
 and flax or cotton grown in previous years. So that, 
 in any state of society with which we are acquainted, 
 production is never carried on by labour alone, but 
 labour is always necessarily assisted by the use of 
 commodities saved from consumption by some one, 
 and ready to be used as capital. This assistance 
 which capital gives to labour cannot be dispensed 
 with — cannot be supplied by any extra amount of 
 labour. During the recent famine, when land was 
 lying untiUed, and labour unfortunately but too 
 abundant, what cruel mockery it would have been 
 to tell the starving labourer, who wainted capital in 
 the shape of food to sustain him until harvest, that it 
 was idle for him to speak of wanting capital, as 
 labour was capital, and that, by using part of his 
 labour as capital, he might employ the rest in culti- 
 vating his land ! 
 
 " Again, to say that land is capital, is as great a 
 confusion of language as to call labour capital. The 
 possession of land does not enable a proprietor to 
 carry on the work of production without the assist- 
 ance of capital. Labourers cannot eat one field 
 while they are cultivating another ; they cannot use 
 land as a spade or a plough. So that if a proprietor 
 had land and labourers only, but no food, no agri- 
 cultural implements, he would find it impossible to 
 raise a grain of produce. When, indeed, land is 
 fertile or improved, and, by the increase of wealth 
 and population, has come to possess permanent 
 
CAPITAL. 7 
 
 value, the ownersMp of land gives a man the means 
 of easily obtaining the loan of capital from others on 
 moderate terms. This case no doubt gave rise to 
 the fallacy I am referring to. But stiU it is a great 
 error to confound the means of obtaining capital 
 with capital itself."* 
 
 Capital, then, is, as we have seen, the produce of 
 past labour saved from immediate consumption, and 
 employed for the purpose of producing something 
 else. It is this reproductive purpose which de- 
 termines it to be capital. It is not the nature of 
 the commodity, but the use to which it is destined to 
 be put, that stamps it with that character. The 
 same sack of corn may be used to make cakes and 
 pastry for a feast, or to sow a field, which may yield 
 twenty or thirty-fold to the farmer next year. The 
 same iron ore may furnish the implements of war, 
 by which human life and property are destructively 
 consumed, or the instruments of agriculture, which 
 afford employment and subsistence to successive 
 generations. If it serve for reproduction, the article 
 is capital ; if it is destined for a consumption which 
 yields no result, leaves no value remaining, but 
 terminates in the using, it is not capital. 
 
 In either event, however, let us observe this fact, 
 which is too often lost sight of, that, be it produc- 
 tive or be it unproductive, consumption equally takes 
 place. All capital is, from the necessity of the case, 
 consumed. It may be well to explain more pre- 
 cisely what we mean by consumption. Not the de- 
 struction of the matter of which the commodity is 
 
 * Hancock, p. 6. 
 B 4 
 
8 POPULATION AND CAPITAL, 
 
 composed, — the destruction of matter, or the creation 
 of it, are equally beyond the power of man. Human 
 industry cannot create, it can only transmute and 
 alter the particles of which commodities are com- 
 posed; but it does create the value which is 
 attached to them. So, too, consmnption destroys 
 not a single atom of the substances which undergo 
 that change : the value indeed that belonged to the 
 former product is annihilated, while the particles of 
 which it is composed remain, and take a new shape, 
 either more valuable or less valuable than the former, 
 as the case may be. To a great proportion of those 
 articles that are used for reproduction the analogy of 
 the seed sown in the earth is strictly applicable, 
 " That which thou sowest is not quickened except it 
 die." The grain, before it is put into the ground, pos- 
 sesses value as corn ; being deposited there, the pro- 
 cess of decomposition begins, and its former value is 
 destroyed; if taken up from the ground it would 
 be good for nothing. But in course of time a new 
 product reappears, and a new value, which not 
 only replaces the value of the corn sown, but yields 
 an increase which returns to the farmer the value of 
 all the advances that he has made for labour and im- 
 plements, together with a surplus over and above 
 these, which forms his profit. Such is the process of 
 the reproduction of capital from the soil. It is pre- 
 cisely the same in manufactures. The raw material, — 
 the cotton or the flax, — for which a price has been 
 paid to the grower, is reduced in the intermediate 
 stages of the production to a state of utter valueless- 
 ness, — ^it is flax or cotton no more ; but, finally, at the 
 completion of the process, it comes out, transmuted 
 
CAPITAL. 9 
 
 by the labour that has been employed upon it, a new 
 product, — a bale of calico or a piece for cambric, pos- 
 sessing, in its altered shape, a value which represents 
 not only the first value of the consumed material, but 
 also the other elements of the cost of producing it. 
 What is true of the raw material is still more obviously 
 true with regard to the second element, the human 
 labour which the production has absorbed. The 
 money with which wa;ges are paid is, as I said before, 
 only the representative of some other things. The 
 shape which the portion of capital paid for labour 
 really takes is that of food, clothing, and necessaries 
 for the labourer. Now, all these things are consumed; 
 all their values are destroyed during the time that the 
 operation of manufacture is going on; the finished 
 articles must yield a new value, which will replace 
 them to the capitalist. The third element is what is 
 commonly termed by economists \}siq fixed capital, — the 
 buildings, machinery, and implements, which, unlike 
 the raw material and the wages, are not consumed in 
 each successive act of reproduction, but, possessing 
 more or less of durability, require only periodical 
 renewal or repair to enable them to outlast many 
 repetitions of the process for which they are em- 
 ployed. Still, even with regard to the most durable 
 of these, it is only a question of time. Even here, 
 consumption, more or less rapid, is incessantly taking 
 place. The plough, each time that it is used, leaves 
 a fraction of its value .in the soil. The price of the 
 finished article, if it is fuUy to remunerate the manu- 
 facturer, must comprise, among other items, some per- 
 centage for deterioration of machinery. At every 
 revolution of the wheel of industry, a certain value 
 
10 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 perishes, and is reproduced. With regard to the 
 most enduring fabrics and instruments, as well as the 
 human agents employed in production, the invari- 
 able truth holds good — 
 
 " Omnia paulatim eonsumit longior setas, 
 Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo." * 
 
 " The growth of capital," it has been justly ob- 
 served by Mr. Mill, " is similar to the growth of po- 
 pulation. Every individual who is born dies, but in 
 each year the number born exceeds the number who 
 die: the population, therefore, always increases, 
 though not one person of those composing it was 
 alive at a very recent date."t 
 
 Thus we see that everything that is produced is 
 destiaed to be consumed, either more slowly or more 
 speedily, subject, however, to an essential distinction, 
 which involves some of the most important laws 
 and instructive lessons of political economy. For 
 there are two sorts of consumption, attended by very 
 different consequences to society. The one, an un- 
 productive consumption, which terminates in the act 
 itself, — a destruction of value which is followed by no 
 renovation of the matter consmned, either in the 
 same or in any other shape ; the other, a reproduc- 
 tive consumption, — a temporary destruction of value 
 succeeded by a new and increased value in an 
 altered shape. Let us exemplify this distinction by 
 an example. A. expends a given sum of money in 
 
 *V(J' By time's slow waste all earthly things decay, 
 
 Dying we live, and perish day^by day." 
 t Mill, Prin. of Polit. Econ. book i. chap. 5. s. 6. 
 
CAPITAL. 11 
 
 a costly entertainment, B. expends the same sum in 
 converting a piece of undrained morass into a potato- 
 garden. Each gives employment, by that one act of 
 expenditure, to a certain amount of labour, and contri- 
 butes to the maintenance of a certain munber of 
 families, — belonging, indeed, in the two cases, to a 
 different class, but we will assume the benefit con- 
 ferred in this respect to be equal. The value thus 
 expended is in both instances consumed, but with 
 how different a result I In the former case the viands 
 are eaten, the music ceases, the garlands fade, the 
 guests have enjoyed their revel. Nothing beyond 
 the pleasure of the hour has been the result of that 
 profitless expenditure^* No fund survives for employ- 
 ing a new series of wine-growers, serving-men, confec- 
 tioners, and musicians. So much value has been irreco- 
 verably sunk and lost. To that extent A. has become 
 a poorer man than he was before. On the other hand, 
 B., the improver of the soil, is not only as rich as he 
 was before his expenditure commenced, but richer. 
 His potato-ground has returned a produce which not 
 only replaces all that he has paid to his labourers in 
 wages, together with the tithes and taxes, and a per- 
 centage on his' fixed capital, but, over and above these, 
 a profit on his outlay. The money which he sunk in 
 the soil has been replaced with usury. He has the 
 same fund in hand to expend over again in main- 
 taining labourers and their families ; year after year 
 this process of reproductive consumption may go on ; 
 the same capital may be again and again employed, 
 consumed, and replaced, furnishing in each successive 
 cycle maintenance to the labourer and income to the 
 capitalist. The capital thus appropriated constitutes. 
 
12 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 as Adam Smith says, a "perpetual fund for the 
 maintenance of labour in all time to come." It is a 
 fund, too, which, from the operation of natural mo- 
 tives on the human mind, tends perpetually to increase 
 in amount. The profits of the capitalist furnish the 
 sources of fresh accumulation. If, indeed, he is con- 
 tent with the amount of his acquisitions, he will only 
 re-invest year by year the same amount as before in 
 his business, expending the entire profits as income 
 in the gratification of his wants: in that case his 
 capital will undergo neither diminution nor increase. 
 But if, like the major part of mankind, he is ambi- 
 tious to increase his store, if he partakes in that pre- 
 vailing desire to better his c(iadition, which, as the 
 same author says, " comes with us from the womb, 
 and never leaves us tiU we go to the grave," he will 
 be impelled to add more and more to his capital, by 
 turning into that channel some portion of the an- 
 nually-accruing profits which he might otherwise 
 expend as income. As fast as he does this, fresh 
 employment is created for labour, a larger fund 
 is made the basis of increased gains, which again 
 afibrd a margin for the creation of fresh capital. 
 Whatever be the proportions in which the capitalist 
 appropriates his net returns, whether by spending them 
 as income or adding them to his active capital, — in 
 the former case, it wiU be clearly perceived that the 
 labour employed and the wealth expended are em- 
 ployed and expended once for all — the revenue once 
 enjoyed is sunk and gone; in the latter case, the wages- 
 fund renews itself year by year, and the labourer 
 has the best possible security for the permanency 
 of his income, because it is that very perennial expen- 
 
CAPITAL. 13 
 
 diture that maintains him which yields also a con- 
 stant income to his employer. 
 
 These, perhaps, may appear obvious and familiar 
 truths, but I may be forgiven for attempting to elu- 
 cidate, even at the risk of some reiteration, the es- 
 sential distinction between productive and unproduc- 
 tive consumption, on account of the great strength and 
 obstinacy of the popular fallacy which prevails on the 
 subject of expenditure. It is only necessary to have 
 a clear perception of the fact that, whatever is 
 employed as capital is consumed just as much as what 
 is spent as income, only with this difference, that the 
 one is spent many times over, and the other once 
 for all, in order to explode the mischievous delusion 
 which attaches some sort of eclat to the conduct of 
 the spendthrift. If we may judge from the opinions 
 that are afloat in society, the general sympathy of 
 mankind runs strongly with those who, as the phrase 
 goes, "spend their money freely," no matter what 
 direction their expenditure may take. The opinion 
 has been pushed to its strict logical result by some 
 writers, who have not shrunk from asserting broadly 
 the position, that " private vices are public benefits." 
 I have referred, in a former Lecture, to a modern 
 French writer*, who, while advocating self-indul- 
 gence and luxurious living on economical grounds, 
 consistently maintains that war, heavy taxation, 
 nay, even great conflagrations, such as the fire of 
 London, — on account of the extensive employment 
 to which they give rise, are favourable rather than 
 
 * M. de Saint Chamans. See Introductoi-y Lecture on 
 " The Harmonies of the Social Economy," p. 23. note. 
 
14 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 detrimental to the wealth of nations. The argument 
 is of some value as a reductio ad dbsurdum. But 
 many persons, who would recoil from the abstract 
 proposition just referred to, entertain, and not un- 
 frequently profess, a sort of predilection for the 
 reckless spendthrift. The lavish squanderer of his 
 substance is often spoken of, under a total mis- 
 conception of the social consequences of his conduct, 
 as a person who is " no one's enemy but his own." 
 Nay, so far is this indulgence carried, that it is some- 
 times extended not only to those who spend their 
 whole fortunes on their own personal enjoyment, 
 but even to those who, by running into debt beyond 
 their means of repayment, virtually consume for the 
 same purpose the property of their neighbours. 
 Such excesses are frequently spoken of as venial, on 
 the absurd ground, that, however ruinous to the 
 individual such a course may be, at all events it 
 causes money to be circulated, and furnishes a good 
 deal of employment so long as the expenditure lasts. 
 Now the analysis that has just been made of the 
 destination and employment of capital explodes in 
 a moment all such mischievous illusions ; it shows 
 that the reproductive capitalist is as necessarily an 
 employer of industry, though a far more constant 
 one, as the spendthrift; that it is saving, not 
 self-indulgence, which promotes most effectively the 
 circulation of wealth, — meaning by saving, not the 
 locking up of guineas in a strong-box, but the con- 
 tinued transfer from unproductive to productive ex- 
 penditure of part of the profits derived from the 
 employment of capital. It shows that if any man, 
 not content with spending his whole income on his 
 
CAPITAL. 15 
 
 personal enjoyment, dissipates likewise the whole or 
 part of his capital, he not merely impoverishes him- 
 self, but wrongs the community, by diverting a fund 
 which has been set apart by those who preceded him 
 for the sustenance of industry and the augmentation 
 of the national wealth : in a word, it evinces the 
 truth of Adam Smith's broad assertion, that " every 
 prodigal is a public enemy, and every frugal man a 
 public benefactor." 
 
 It may be worth while to trace in detail the steps 
 by which a capital becomes wasted through the ex- 
 travagance of its proprietor, and the consequences of 
 that waste upon the interests of the community. 
 Let us suppose the case of a young man on whom 
 the ownership of an extensive manufactory has de- 
 volved, with a capital, both fixed and circulating, 
 fuUy adequate to carry on the concern. The annual 
 profits arising from the use of that capital constitute 
 his income. He may either live on a part of this, 
 and throw the remainder into capital, improving his 
 machinery, taking on fresh hands, and thereby in- 
 creasing his returns by means of his surplus profits ; 
 or, secondly, he may carry his unproductive expendi- 
 ture to the extreme verge of his income, but not be- 
 yond it, maintaining his original capital at a station- 
 ary point; or, lastly, he may spend on his table, 
 dress, equipage, and other superfluities, not only his 
 whole net revenue, but also a portion of the capital 
 necessary for carrying on his business as heretofore. 
 In that case, he will be driven either to retrench his 
 business, dismissing some of the workmen whom he 
 has disabled himself to maintain, or else to supply the 
 loss of capital by raising a loan upon his property. 
 
16 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 He probably adopts the latter and more frequent al- 
 ternative; and, if the same course of extravagant 
 expenditure is persevered in, the result is, that, after 
 a shorter or longer period, the property, melted down 
 by successive encumbrances, passes into other hands. 
 The manufacture, notwithstanding, is still carried on 
 as before, the same number of hands is employed, 
 the same amount of capital is circulated by it ; 
 but the capital which now carries on the concern is 
 not the same capital with which the proprietor com- 
 menced business, that is sunk irretrievably — spent 
 on objects which have perished in the usiag. The 
 capital which now sets the works in motion has been 
 furnished by the new owner of the concern ; but 
 he cannot have transferred his capital to that invest- 
 ment without withdrawing that capital from some 
 other employment, in which it formed part of the pro- 
 ductive fund of the country, and furnished, or was 
 capable of furnishing, a distinct and additional employ- 
 ment to labour. In short, there were previously two 
 capitals available for the support of the national in- 
 dustry, — there is now but one ; the one has been 
 annihilated, and the other, though it may take the 
 place of that which has been destroyed, does not 
 reaUy supply the loss, except by making a new 
 void elsewhere. For the capital of the nation — 
 that is, the fund by which its working population is 
 maintained and its annual stock of commodities re- 
 plenished — is only the sum of the capitals of all the 
 individuals in it. Every man, therefore, who wastes 
 his own capital wastes a part of the productive re- 
 sources of the country, stints the labouring class of a 
 portion of their wages-fund, and diminishes the com- 
 
CAPITAL. 17 
 
 mon stock of necessaries and conveniences available 
 for the general consumption. 
 
 This brings me to the consideration of another 
 point in connection with the subject of capital, which 
 is of essential importance, but on which a great deal 
 of misunderstanding and many inveterate fallacies 
 exist. It is a fundamental law of production that 
 industry is limited by capital. In the words of Mr. 
 Mill, " there can be no more industry than is sup- 
 plied with materials to work up and food to eat," — ^to 
 which might be added, also, implements to work with. 
 The proposition so stated appears a truism, but it 
 has been repeatedly denied, both in argument and in 
 practice. It has in many instances been the pohcy 
 of governments to nurse up and foster some parti- 
 cular branch of industry, influenced, it may be, by 
 views of national expediency, that have been sup- 
 posed paramount to mere economical considerations. 
 By means of fiscal bounties or restrictions, capital 
 has been forced into certain favoured employments, 
 and has had an artificial remuneration secured to 
 it. But the fact has been too often overlooked, 
 that capital can never be forced into one employment 
 without being thereby forced out of some other ; and 
 as capital always spontaneously seeks and finds for 
 itself the most profitable field, this forcing never 
 takes place without that waste of the national re- 
 sources which must always result from transferring 
 any part of the fund from a more productive into a 
 less productive channel : in other words, protection 
 to any one trade is proscription to some other, and 
 the gain from those into which capital is artificially 
 
18 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 impelled never equals the loss sustained upon those out 
 of which it is diverted. 
 
 Another common delusion which blinds men's minds 
 to the necessary limitation of labour by capital, arises 
 from the vague and inaccurate notions that prevail on 
 the subject of ere«?i^. Credit, according to the view 
 fondly entertained by some theorists, may be made an 
 effectual substitute for capital: La other words, capital, 
 through the intervention of credit, may be enabled 
 to perform a double office, ■ — to do two things at 
 once, — to serve as an agent of production, both for 
 the 'borrower and for the lender. But credit, if we 
 analyse its nature, is nothing else but the loan of 
 capital, a method by which the temporary use Of a 
 certain quantity of wealth is transferred, upon stipu- 
 lated terms, from the owner to another person. 
 Now, it is obvious that the self-same commodity 
 cannot be at one and the same time transferred to 
 the borrower and retained for his own use by the 
 lender. To take a very simple illustration of a loan 
 of capital: — if I lend my neighbour my plough to till 
 his field with, I cannot use it at the same time to 
 cultivate my own: so, if a capitalist lends to a 
 manufacturer about to set up in business 10,000Z., 
 that transaction is virtually a transfer from the 
 former to the latter, for a given period, of so much 
 machinery, plant, buildings, raw materials, food and 
 necessaries for workmen, &c., inasmuch as the money 
 lent affords the command of these things ; and these 
 things (or other things of an equivalent value) the 
 capitalist might have retained for his own use and 
 profit, if he had been minded so to do ; but he can- 
 not both transfer this capital — these articles possess- 
 
CAPITAL* 19 
 
 ing an intrinsic value, and having a substantial ex- 
 istence- — to another man, and at the same time keep 
 them, or their equivalents, in his own hands, and 
 employ them for his own profit. 
 
 In the necessity of this law, which an insight into 
 the true nature of credit shows to be inevitable, 
 neither reason nor experience will induce some per- 
 sons to acquiesce. The notion that it is possible to 
 reduplicate capital through the agency of credit has 
 taken too firm a hold upon their minds to be dispos- 
 sessed ; it has been the cherished delusion of a cer- 
 taia school of currency-speculators, from John Law, 
 the author of the famous Mississippi scheme, down 
 to the originators of " Land and Labour Banks," 
 and various projects of inconvertible paper curren- 
 cies at the present day. To enter fully into the 
 nature and merits of such plans on this occasion 
 would be besides my purpose : when I proceed, as I 
 hope soon to do, to investigate the subject of money 
 and the different systems of currency, it will be the 
 proper time to examine both the true theory of 
 paper credit, and also some of the fantastic hallucina- 
 tions that have been entertained with regard to it. 
 But it may be as well briefly to point out the process 
 of reasoning on which these chimerical systems rest. 
 The desideratum is to increase the available supply 
 of capital. Now, we see that it is the possession 
 of money which gives a man the command of capital; 
 therefore (it is argued), the thing to be done is to 
 increase the quantity of money. But gold and 
 silver money cannot be multiplied at pleasure ; for 
 gold and silver, like other commodities, must be paid 
 for, by giving some equivalent in exchange. Paper, 
 
 2 
 
20 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 however, presents no such difficulty. Paper money 
 may be increased to any extent without cost ; never- 
 theless, it is conceded that paper money will not 
 circulate unless it be founded on some substantial 
 basis ; it must represent something of intrinsic value 
 or it wUlnot pass current. Now, there is nothing 
 more substantial than land. Land has permanence, 
 and it has also value. Make land, then, the security 
 for your notes. Against so many acres of land issue 
 so many pounds sterling of bank paper, taking care 
 always to leave an ample margin of value in favour 
 of the currency. By this method the available 
 wealth of the community may be nearly doubled; 
 the land may be made to yield its proper produce 
 and profit to the cultivator, while the capital raised 
 on the credit of that same land may be employed by 
 the manufacturer a hundred miles off, in the pro- 
 duction of hats and stockings. Thus credit, it is 
 conceived, may be made in effect to double the pro- 
 ductive powers of capital. 
 
 Now, it is impossible for any one to be deluded by 
 such bubbles as these (bubbles, however, by which 
 thousands have again and again been duped and 
 ruined) who has got a firm grasp of the true notion 
 of capital, as I have endeavoured to explain it, — ^who 
 perceives that capital consists neither in money nor 
 in land, nor in stock in the public funds, but in sub- 
 stantial, tangible, and consumable products, — in the 
 materials and implements of labour, — in the things the 
 labourer eats and drinks, — the things he works with, 
 — ^the things he transforms by his labour into new com- 
 modities. To a man who clearly apprehends this, it 
 is a truism to say that these things cannot be used 
 
CAPITAL. 21 
 
 by two persons for two purposes and in two different 
 places at once : they may maintain labour either in 
 Essex or in Lancashire ; they may set in motion 
 either the plough or the cotton mill; but they cannot 
 possibly do both at the same time. The true doc- 
 trine of capital and credit was forcibly stated by a 
 great authority in economical matters, Mr. Ricardo, 
 on the occasion of his examination before a com- 
 mittee of the House of Lords, appelated to consider 
 the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of 
 England in 1819. Mr. Kicardo was asked : — 
 
 " Do you not know, that, when there is a great 
 demand for manufactures, the very credit which that 
 circumstance creates enables the manufacturer to 
 make a more extended use of his capital in the pro- 
 duction of manufactures ? " Answer : " I have no 
 notion of credit being at all effectual in the produc- 
 tion of commodities : commodities can only be pro- 
 duced by labour, machinery, and raw materials, and 
 if these are to be employed in one place they must 
 necessarily be withdrawn from another." 
 
 He was asked : " Is not the capital invested in 
 land, for example, capable of two uses? First. 
 Is it not productively used as vested in the land? 
 Secondly. May not money be raised by credit on 
 that land, which may be applied to the purposes 
 of manufactures ? " Answer : " The question sup- 
 poses two capitals, — the land, and the instruments 
 employed in manufactures." " But," he was asked, 
 " may not a man get credit from a bank on the 
 security of his capital which is profitably employed, 
 whether vested in stock or land ; and may he not, by 
 means of that credit, furnish employment to an ad- 
 c 3 
 
22 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 ditional number of labourers, without dislodging 
 capital from any existing employment in the conn- 
 try?" 
 
 " Impossible ! " was the emphatic answer. " An 
 individual can purchase machinery and raw mate- 
 rials with credit, — he can never create them. 
 If he purchases, it is always of some one else, and, 
 consequently, he displaces some one else from the 
 employment of capital." 
 
 " Are you of opinion, then, that there can never 
 be ia any country two uses of the same capital, — 
 one to acquire an annual revenue by the mode in 
 which it is invested, and the other to acquire a 
 capital or credit, which may also be profitably em- 
 ployed by the person who acquires it, and which 
 wiU be so wherever there is an increased demand for 
 commodities ? " 
 
 Answer : " Capital can only be acquired by saving. 
 It is impossible that one capital can be employed by 
 two persons at the same time, or for two objects." 
 
 But although credit cannot make capital perform 
 double duty, it can and does act as a most useful 
 auxiliary to capital, by increasing its effective power, 
 and by saving that waste of profit which occurs when- 
 ever capital lies idle. By means of credit, the man 
 who can employ capital productively obtains the use 
 of it from the owner at a time when the latter has no 
 occasion for it himself. The advances which the capi- 
 talist makes to the manufacturer enable him to 
 carry on his operations without intermission, instead 
 of being obliged to wait for the time when he 
 may convert some of his commodities into money, 
 wherewith to procure the means of fresh production. 
 
CAPITAL. 23 
 
 Through the medium of credit, in like manner, the 
 wholesale dealer advances the finished commodities 
 to the retailer on the faith of receiving payment out 
 of the proceeds of future sales. But for this arrange- 
 ment, the articles would remain a dead stock in the 
 warehouse until the tradesman had realised the funds 
 to purchase with. Thus, by means of credit, the 
 whole machinery of industry is kept constantly at 
 work, without pause or suspension. Those intervals 
 during which capital would otherwise lie locked 
 up and unproductive are saved, and the waste of 
 profit is reduced to a minimum. StiU, it is essential 
 to observe, that the way in which credit operates 
 is always by an actual transfer, a real substantive 
 advance from one hand to another, of commodities, on 
 the faith of an equivalent to be subsequently given 
 for them. For the time that these commodities are 
 assigned to the borrower the use of them is necessa- 
 rily lost to the lender. In this process, therefore, 
 there is no doubling of capital, only a more constant 
 and productive use of it, — it is fructified, but it is 
 not multiplied. 
 
 Before bringing these remarks on the subject of 
 capital to a close, I think it may be necessary tp 
 obviate a misapprehension to which some part of my 
 argument may have exposed me. I have insisted on 
 the superior advantage, as regards the increase of 
 national wealth, of the productive employment of 
 capital over mere unproductive consumption : I have 
 held up frugality to praise as a social virtue, and 
 represented the prodigal expenditure of individuals as 
 a national loss. It may be asked, "Is there, then, to 
 be no limit to the process of accumulation ? Are wc 
 
 4 
 
24 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 to employ all we get for the sole purpose of getting 
 more ? Is it the summum honum of the social system 
 to stimulate the greatest possible production of corn 
 and turnips, of cotton goods and hardware ? If po- 
 litical economy proscribes all expenditure which is not 
 commercially remunerative, what encouragement will 
 be afforded to the fine arts, to literature, to the 
 elegancies and refinements of life, to every branch 
 of knowledge that is not strictly utilitarian? Is no 
 gratification to be allowed to the higher tastes and 
 emotions of our nature? — ^nothing to be spared for 
 those objects, which, however unproductive in mer- 
 cantile returns, have yet a moral value in so far as 
 they refine the taste and elevate the sentiments of a 
 nation, and, by cherishing a love for whatever is noble, 
 sublime, and beautiful, afford the best antidote to the 
 sordid cares and hardening influences of a life devoted 
 to the pursuit of gain?" 
 
 Now, I do not at all deny that in individuals 
 the incessant and selfish passion of accumulating 
 wealth may, with most hurtfiil effect, absorb the 
 whole mind, to the suppression of all higher aicas 
 and aspirations; but, with regard to communities, 
 I venture to assert this, that the increase of capital 
 has no tendency to discourage the cultivation of the 
 refinements and embellishments of life, but rather 
 the reverse. If we inquire in what countries and 
 at what periods the arts have chiefly flourished, we 
 shall find it to have been not in poor and infant com- 
 munities, possessing little or no capital, and struggling 
 with difficulty for the means of subsistence, but in 
 countries, in which the progress of opulence, derived 
 from the pursuits of industry and commerce, has 
 
CAPITAL. 25 
 
 enabled men to employ their leisure in mental culti-r 
 vation, and to turn a part of their superfluous wealth 
 into unproductive channels. Capital, we must re- 
 member, is increased not simply by the saving from 
 consumption, but by the excess of production over con- 
 sumption. If, then, the productive powers of indus- 
 try be increased, — and this is the special purpose and 
 effect of capital, — ^the result is, that there will be at 
 the same time more to consume and more also to put 
 by. It is a well-known law that every addition to 
 the sum of the capital employed increases the rate at 
 which further augmentations may be made : " Vires 
 acquirit eundo ,•" or, as the same truth is expressed in 
 the popular adage, " Money makes money." The 
 beginnings of capital are always slow and difficult. 
 JN^ations, lilie individuals, emerge by long and painful 
 efforts out of the lower stages of want and poverty; 
 but a certain point once reached, the progress of ac- 
 cumulation becomes constantly accelerated. As 
 more is gained, there is more to spare, not only with- 
 out diminishing the fund applicable to reproduction, 
 but concurrently with the constant increase of that 
 fund. If we observe the features presented by a 
 country or a district in which wealth and population 
 are rapidly increasing, or if we remark the signs of 
 progress in the neighbourhood of a busy and pros- 
 perous town, we shall generally find expenditure in 
 the luxuries and superfluities of life advancing at 
 least in equal ratio with the increase of machinery and 
 the extension of industrial establishments. As long 
 as human nature remains unchanged, we need have 
 no fear but that the taste for personal enjoyment, for 
 recreation, for ornament, and for display, will be 
 
26 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 developed in full proportion to the augmentation of 
 wealth. If, indeed, that proportion should be ex- 
 ceeded ; if any part of the capital required to repro- 
 duce the national income should be wasted in dissipa- 
 tion, then it is an inevitable consequence that the 
 resources of the country wUl diminish, its population 
 will undergo distress, their numbers will decrease; 
 and if that should happen, it is vain to suppose that 
 the arts will not languish, science and literature de- 
 generate, and all that constitutes true civilisation 
 decline concurrently with the downward progress 
 of industry and opulence. 
 
 Now, to recur once more to the point before insisted 
 on. So far as any individual of the community 
 contributes by his personal extravagance to this 
 waste of capital, so far he promotes the tendency to 
 national deterioration, just as the prodigal son of a 
 private family impoverishes by his thriftless or 
 vicious habits the estate on which the maintenance of 
 its several members depends. Nothing is more 
 clear than this — that mere consumption benefits no- 
 body but the consumer. The available income of the 
 community, the sum of the incomes of all its mem- 
 bers, is a fixed quantity, and the more any individual 
 absorbs to his own share, the less remains to be di- 
 vided among his fellows. But this is a truth which 
 requires to be constantly re-asserted and enforced. 
 We shall render, I am sure, an important service to 
 society by combating on every occasion that may 
 present itself the corrupting sophistry by which a 
 man who pampers his appetite, his love of pleasure, 
 or his thirst for vulgar applause, soothes his con- 
 science with the thought that by such a mode of 
 
CAPITAL. 27 
 
 expenditure he is giving encouragement to industry, 
 and is pursuing a course which, in an economical 
 point of view, is rather meritorious than otherwise. 
 Now, if a man must waste his substance in mere 
 personal gratifications, at all events let him not seek 
 to extenuate his moral responsibility by economical 
 delusions ; let him not flatter himself with the belief 
 that he is doing good to trade and benefiting his 
 species by spending thousands a-year in champagne, 
 pine-apples, costly liveries, gorgeous equipages, 
 opera boxes, racing-studs. The moral contradic- 
 tions involved in such a theory might alone suffice 
 to condemn it. Prudence and frugality are private 
 virtues, and it is equally demonstrable that they 
 are public benefits. There is no opposition, but a 
 perfect accordance, between the doctrines of mora- 
 lity and those economical laws by which society 
 is regulated; and the analysis of the nature and 
 functions of capital affords another illustration of that 
 great principle which, on several occasions, I have 
 endeavoxired to vindicate and exemplify — the har- 
 monies of the social economy. 
 
28 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 In entering upon the consideration of the laws 
 which regulate the numbers of the human species, we 
 approach one of the most perplexing and controyerted 
 branches of political economy. It is nevertheless a 
 study of great interest, and the attainment of sound 
 conclusions respecting it is of vast importance to the 
 welfare of society. Many volumes have been written 
 and various theories propounded on the laws of popu- 
 lation, yet the subject stiU requires, in my opinion, 
 to be more fully elucidated before the great problems 
 which it presents can be deemed to have received a 
 satisfactory solution. The uncertainty which still en- 
 velopes this subject is doubtless attributable chiefly to 
 the imperfection of our knowledge. The facts which 
 should form the basis of aU sound inductions are im- 
 perfectly recorded, or rest on questionable authority, 
 insomuch that we find writers of quite opposite views 
 alike appealing confidently to statistics for their 
 proofs, to the great bewilderment of their readers, 
 and not unfrequently of themselves. Again, there 
 are many points relating to the propagation of the 
 human species important for the political economist 
 to ascertain, but which physiological science has not 
 yet been able to clear up. For my own part, I by 
 
POPULATION. 29 
 
 no means presume, in commencing a course of lectures 
 on Population, to announce any original discoveries, or 
 to add a new theory to the many that are already before 
 the world. But it may not be an useless undertaking 
 to assist those who may have been perplexed with the 
 difficulties of the subject, by an attempt to clear the 
 ground of some prevalent fallacies, and to ascertain 
 what progress has been made towards the estal?lish- 
 ment of sound and trustworthy conclusions. And 
 although it may appear, upon a review of what has 
 been hitherto accomplished in this direction, that 
 there yet remains ample scope for investigation and 
 research, yet it will be found, if I mistake not, that 
 enough has been elucidated respecting the laws of 
 population to vindicate what some crude theories 
 have appeared to call in question — the wisdom and 
 benevolence of the ordinances of Providence, and to 
 evince that harmony of arrangement, that perfect 
 accordance between the economical and the moral 
 laws, which in regard to some other features of the 
 social economy I have endeavoured in former lectures 
 to illustrate. 
 
 In adverting to the writers by whom the science 
 of population has been treated, no doubt exists as to 
 the person to whom the first place should be assigned. 
 The name of Malthus has become inseparably asso- 
 ciated with this branch of political economy. The 
 renown and influence attached to this author in con- 
 nection with the subject which he so peculiarly made 
 his own, have been not unfairly earned. Impressed 
 with the belief that some deep-seated cause existed 
 for the general poverty and distress that he saw pre- 
 vailing among the lower classes in almost all com- 
 
30 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 munitleSj Mr. Malthus applied himself, with re- 
 markable self-devotion, to the task of investigating 
 the sources of this social malady. In the prosecution 
 of that inquiry he spared no exertion. He ex- 
 hausted all the means of information within his reach, 
 which could throw light upon the condition of man- 
 kind in all parts of the world, and ia every stage of 
 civilisation. In several countries he made personal 
 inquiry as a traveller into the circumstances of the 
 poorer classes. At length he announced to the world 
 his discovery, that the root of the evil lay in a mis- 
 conception, and consequent transgression, of the laws 
 which Providence had ordained for regulating the 
 numbers of mankind ; and that the only true remedy 
 was to be found in rectifying the balance of popula- 
 tion, by throwing the weight of moral restraint into 
 the scale. It was evident to all, that in scarcely any 
 part of the world did the produce of the country 
 suffice to Bjaintain in tolerable comfort the whole 
 body of the people. The reason of this was plain, 
 said Malthus: the people were too numerous, and the 
 only sure way to better their condition was to limit 
 their numbers. 
 
 The doctrine thus proclaimed, and stated, it must 
 be owned, in the first instance with some harshness of 
 language, and with that austere determination which 
 sprung from his own strong conviction of. its truth, 
 produced on various miads very different effects. 
 On the one hand, the ability and research displayed 
 by the Essay on Population, engaged at . once nu- 
 merous converts, impressed the opinions of its author 
 on many leading miads, both in this and otter coun- 
 tries, — raised him, in fact, to be the head of a school. 
 
POPULATION. 31 
 
 not large indeed in numbers, but considerable in in- 
 fluence, and gradually brought about an important 
 change in the tendency of public legislation on 
 economical subjects. In contrast to these triumphs, 
 the doctrines, henceforth known as " Malthusian," 
 were received in other quarters with the most vehe- 
 ment opposition. The author was assailed with the 
 language not only of fair controversy, but of unscru- 
 pulous invective, his opinions were misrepresented, 
 and even his character traduced. He was accused 
 not only of inhumanity to the poor, but of impiety 
 towards the Author of those laws, the wisdom and 
 justice of which, as his opponents conceived, were 
 impugned by the new theory. 
 
 That these attacks were eminently unjust, all can- 
 did persons who have read his essay (a predicament 
 which probably excludes some of its warmest as- 
 sailants) will agree. Whatever might be the error 
 of Mr. Malthus' views on population, which are 
 matter for fair and free criticism, the character and 
 motives of the author are beyond impeachment. 
 I venture to say that any man who reads the 
 work in question in a fair spirit, will rise from 
 the perusal of it convinced, if not of the sound- 
 ness of the argument, at least of the philanthropy of 
 its author, of his love of truth, and his faith in the 
 wisdom and justice of the Divine government. The 
 temper and spirit which characterise the work are 
 fairly displayed in the concluding passage of the 
 writer's reply to several of his opponents, which 
 forms an appendix to the later editions of his work. 
 After expressing his surprise, as well as regret, that 
 " no inconsiderable part of the objections which had 
 
32 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 been made to the principles and conclusions of his 
 essay, had come from persons for whose moral and 
 religious character he had so high a respect," and 
 attributing this result to the use of some too harsh 
 expressions in the first edition, Mr. Malthus adds : — 
 
 " It is probable that having found the bow bent too 
 much one way, I was induced to bend it too much 
 the other in order to make it straight. But I shall 
 always be quite ready to blot out any part of the 
 work which is considered by a competent tribunal as 
 having a tendency to prevent the bow from becoming 
 finally straight, and to impede the progress of truth. 
 In deference to this tribunal, I have already ex- 
 punged the passages which have been most objected 
 to, and I have made some few further corrections of 
 the same kind in the present edition. By these 
 alterations I hope and believe that the work has been 
 improved without impairing its principles ; but I 
 still trust that, whether it is read with or without 
 these alterations, every reader of candour must 
 acknowledge that the practical design uppermost in 
 the mind of the writer, with whatever degree of 
 judgment it may have been executed, is to improve 
 the condition and increase the happiness of the lower 
 classes of society." * 
 
 With unfeigned respect both for the talents and 
 the motives of this author, I still believe that the 
 bow, as he left it, admits of being considerably 
 straightened. It will be my object to distinguish, 
 and so far as may be in my power, to reinforce by 
 illustrations drawn from more recent times, those 
 
 * Appendix, 6th edition, page 497. 
 
POPULATION. 33 
 
 important truths which, having been previously 
 unknown or neglected, were by him discovered or 
 placed in a clearer light ; to point out, on the other 
 hand, some palpable" errors in his argument, and, 
 what, in my judgment, is still more material than the 
 actual errors, viz., the omission of some of the leading 
 features of the subject ; the oversight of a good deal 
 of countervailing evidence to his theory ; in a word, 
 the uneven balance in which he has weighed the 
 advantages and the evils of an increasing population. 
 It is this great defect — this one-sided view of a 
 subject that requires to be regarded in both aspects 
 — which has exposed this able work to confutation 
 on many points by inferior writers, has raised a 
 barrier of prejudice against the reception of much 
 valuable truth which it contains, and has pre- 
 vented the book, notwithstanding its unquestion- 
 able merits, from ever finding favour or acceptance 
 with the majority. Let us proceed now to examine, 
 point by point, the conclusions attempted to be 
 established by the Essay. 
 
 In the first place, to Mr. Malthus is due the 
 credit, if not of discovering, at least of impressing, 
 of familiarising, and giving practical effect to the 
 maxim, that the mere increase of population, per se, 
 contributes nothing to the wealth and strength of a 
 nation. Preceding writers had too broadly laid 
 down the proposition that the increase of the people 
 was necessarily the advantage of the State. Adam 
 Smith appears to attach no qualification whatever to 
 this doctrine. " The nlost decisive mark," he says, 
 " of the prosperity of any country is the increase of 
 the number of its inhabitants," If this were the 
 
34 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 whole truth, then should Ireland, previously to the 
 last six years, have been the most prosperous 
 country on the globe. Mr. Malthus observes that, 
 " the prejudices on the subject of population bear a 
 very striking resemblance to the old prejudices about 
 specie. Politicians observing that states which were 
 powerful and prosperous were almost invariably 
 populous, have mistaken an effect for a cause, and 
 have concluded that their population was the cause 
 of their prosperity, instead of their prosperity being 
 the cause of their population ; as the old political 
 economists concluded that the abundance of specie 
 was the cause of national wealth, instead of being the 
 effect of it." * This error has prevailed unquestion- 
 ably, not only in the minds of political philosophers and 
 economists, but among rulers and statesmen, and it 
 has had a powerful influence on the legislative policy 
 of our own country, as well as of other nations. 
 The same principle of stimulating population which 
 dictated the Lex Papia Poppaea at Rome, and 
 the laws of Julius Csesar and the emperors against 
 celibacy, and which in later times has led the 
 governments of China and Turkey to encourage by 
 artificial inducements the multiplication of their 
 subjects, had till within a recent period a firm hold 
 on the minds of the ruling classes in England, f It 
 was intrenched, not only in the opinions, but in the 
 institutions, of this country. What was the English 
 Poor Law under the allowance system but a legal 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 237. The truth is, that population is not only 
 the effect, but the cause also, of prosperity. See Lecture VII., 
 post. 
 
 * See Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. xxxii. p. 710. 
 
POPULATION. 35 
 
 bounty on the procreation of children ? The more 
 numerous the oiFspring, whether legitimate or ille- 
 gitimate, the larger was the share of the parent in the 
 parochial dole. If the great object of a state were 
 to cause an increased supply of hrunan beings to be 
 brought into the world, without reference to the 
 means of supporting them, certainly no better way 
 could be devised than to offer a reward out of a 
 public fund to the parents of large families in pro- 
 portion to the number of their children. 
 
 The doctrine of Mr. Malthus on this subject, is 
 that of sound philosophy and good sense, and to this 
 extent he has been followed by the most judicious 
 economists who have since written upon the subject, 
 among whom it would be unjust to omit M. Say, 
 who is very distinct and sound in his views upon 
 this point. The last-named writer shows that it is not 
 the absolute number of the people of any country, but 
 the ratio of the population to the means of comfortable 
 subsistence, that forms the true test of national pros- 
 perity. A population cannot exist, at least it cannot 
 permanently be maintained, above that number which 
 the resources of the country for the time being 
 are able to support.* It is easy, indeed, by bounties 
 and premiums to encourage marriage and increase 
 the number of births ; but what then ? unless the 
 
 * "What country," he asks, "is to be considered the most 
 prosperous ? That in which the wants of the people find the 
 largest measure of satisfaction. Such a country is not that in 
 which the population bears the largest proportion to the terri- 
 tory, but that of which the products bear the largest propor- 
 tion to the population." — Cows de VEconomie Politique, vol, 
 iv. p. 399. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 means of subsistence be provided for the new-comers 
 into the world, they will go out of it as fast as they 
 came in. As fast as numbers multiply, new channels 
 of mortality will be opened to carry off the redun- 
 dant members. If not the absolute want of food, at 
 all events the diseases which scarcity engenders, — the 
 maladies that arise from bad nursing, bad living, bad 
 lodging, and bad clothing, — will cut short the lives of 
 the weakest and most indigent members, and perforce 
 keep down the numbers to that limit which nature 
 has imposed on population — the limit of the means 
 of existence ; for nature in this, as in other respects, 
 will not endure to be forced, nor suffer that gradual 
 rate of progression which she has prescribed as a law 
 to human beings in society, to be accelerated by 
 artificial expedients. As the produce of a country 
 increases year by year, as it becomes adequate 
 to support a larger number of inhabitants, that 
 addition of numbers, if the laws of nature be only 
 allowed their free scope, will come into existence 
 and occupy the vacant places at her board. The 
 demand for labour being increased concurrently with 
 the increased supply of food, will infallibly beget 
 both hands to work and mouths to eat. The ex- 
 pansive principle of population implanted in the 
 human constitution is amply strong enough to secure 
 this object. Happily for mankind, so potent are the 
 attractions which marriage, and the enjoyments 
 of home and family hold out to the vast majority, 
 that there is no reason to fear lest the produc- 
 tion of human beings should stand still, whenever 
 there appears to be a reasonable prospect of pro- 
 viding for their maintenance. Thus, according to the 
 
POPULATION. 37 
 
 harmonious working of nature's laws, industry and 
 population will go hand in hand: every fresh acre 
 brought under cultivation, every new application of 
 skm or science, every improvement in machinery, by 
 which the results of industry are multiplied, makes 
 room for a new accession of members to the human 
 family. Thus it is that an increasing population is 
 the natural effect and sign of national prosperity. 
 The registers of marriages and births furnish a 
 true index of the progress or decline of states. The 
 most remarkable instances of rapidly increasing 
 numbers that the world has seen in recent times, are 
 those of the United States, and some of the Austra- 
 lian colonies; the countries in which the wealth 
 derived from the mineral treasures of the soil, from 
 agriculture, and commerce, has advanced with such 
 gigantic strides as to surpass all former examples. 
 If we examine the records of population in other 
 nations during the same period, we shall find its 
 movements to have been rapid or slow or retro- 
 grade, very nearly in proportion as the industry, 
 the trade, and resources of each community have 
 been advancing, stationary, or declining. The 
 exceptions which may occasionally be fouiid to this 
 rule, admit of being explained by special causes, to 
 which I shall advert more particularly from time to 
 time in the progress of my subject. 
 
 From these considerations we are enabled to dis- 
 cover the true solution to the problem " How to 
 make a country populous?" The only sure way to 
 attain this object — a most desirable one, no doubt, 
 because populousness is not only, as Malthus has 
 shown, a sign and effect of public prosperity, but it 
 
 D 3 
 
38 POPULATIOIT AND CAPITAL. 
 
 is also, as he has too much overlooked, a direct cause 
 and instrument of further progress — is to cherish and 
 give full freedom to its industry. The science of the 
 Wealth of Nations is the science of Population. What- 
 ever tends to enlarge the field of labour, to facilitate 
 the interchange of products whether at home or 
 abroad, to encourage the arts, reward ingenuity, 
 stimidate invention, and guarantee the security of 
 property, — knowledge, peace, free iastitutions, im- 
 partial administration of justice, — ^these are the true 
 methods of enabling a people to increase and mul- 
 tiply, because by their means a continual increase of 
 production takes place, afiFording both supplies of 
 food and profitable employment for new members 
 of the commonwealth. A country thus governed 
 requires no special laws to encourage marriage, no 
 financial exemptions or parochial bounties in favour of 
 large families, — useless and mischievous interferences 
 with the course of nature's laws, which attempt to 
 cure a social disease by producing a counterfeit 
 symptom of health, and, which so far as they operate 
 at all, instead of promoting an effective increase of 
 numbers, promote only a waste of life, a more wide- 
 spread indigence, and a more rapid rate of mortality. 
 If the causes above pointed out are those which tend 
 to make nations populous, it is almost needless to 
 designate the opposite methods by which depopula- 
 tion is brought about. The operation of the various 
 evils which produce a declining or stationary condi- 
 tion of population, may be illustrated by the condition 
 of many countries of the world at the present time. 
 We see the influence of misgovernment and financial 
 oppression in some of the provinces of Turkey ; of 
 
POPULATION. 39 
 
 political servitude and rigorous feudal institutions on 
 the dependencies of Russia ; of constant predatory 
 wars on the countries of the Tartars and the Arabs ; 
 of unsettled government and frequent revolutions in 
 South America; of an exclusive regime and com- 
 mercial restrictions on Spain and on the Koman 
 States. Wherever tyranny will not permit the fruits 
 of industry to ripen, or oppression snatches them 
 from the rightful owner, or war, foreign or domestic, 
 sweeps off and wastes them, or narrow commercial 
 jealousy shuts them out, there you will not fail to 
 find a scanty because an impoverished people. Me- 
 lancholy to contemplate, in such instances, are the 
 descending steps of national declension. To attempt 
 to arrest them by remedies addressed to the repro- 
 ductive propensities of man's nature, must be regarded 
 as one of the fondest dreams of political empiricism. 
 In thus specifying the leading and most prevalent 
 causes of populousness on the one hand, and depo- 
 pulation on the other, I am not, however, so pre- 
 sumptuous as to suppose myself to have exhausted 
 the whole philosophy of the subject. The general 
 law is, doubtless, that which I have stated, but I 
 do not pretend to deny that there may be other 
 causes lying . remote from common observation, and 
 which physiology may at some future day be able 
 more fiiUy to unravel, which affect powerfully though 
 mysteriously the springs of human fecundity. In 
 the vegetable world, as well as among the lower ani- 
 mals, we observe that certain species manifest from 
 time to time a tendency to a decline of vitality, and we 
 conclude that some occult causes are at work thwart- 
 ing the best directed efforts to propagate and increase 
 
 D 4 
 
40 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 their numbers. In regard to the family of mankind, 
 there may be other influences besides those of a poli- 
 tical nature, such, for instance, as are involved in the 
 mysterious question of races, which limit the prolific 
 capacity of the species in certain stages and condi- 
 tions. I may refer those who are interested in such 
 speculations to an ingenious paper in the Westminster 
 Keview, No. 102., and also to Mr. Doubleday's lately 
 published " Theory of Population," a work which 
 contains many curious illustrations of the subject; 
 though I must add, that the doctrine which it is 
 written to support rests at present, in my opinion, 
 upon no sufficient induction of facts. Such investi- 
 gations, however, do not, as I conceive, fall within 
 the strict province of political economy, which under- 
 takes to explain the fluctuations in the numbers of 
 mankind only so far as they are influenced by causes 
 of a social character, and such as bear a manifest re- 
 lation to the wealth of nations. 
 
 I proceed now to offer some remarks that appear 
 to me to be necessary to explain and qualify the 
 proposition of Malthus, which, in its general terms, 
 I acknowledge to be true and most important, — that 
 population is limited by the means of subsistence. 
 It will be expedient, in the first instance, to examine 
 the terms of the statement. One objection to the 
 language used strikes us at the outset. It is too 
 narrow, unless in the term subsistence we include — 
 what it does not commonly import — -clothes, lodging, 
 and other necessaries of existence. But not to 
 insist on this objection, let us inquire, first. What 
 are " the limits of subsistence ? " Are they a fixed 
 or a variable quantity ? A moment's reflection 
 
POPULATION. 41 
 
 shows that the standard is an infinitely varying one ; 
 varying among difierent classes of the same com- 
 munity — among different communities — and at dif- 
 ferent periods of society. 
 
 The lowest scale of living in any community, being 
 that which forms the practical limit of increase, is 
 not measured by the minimum of the poorest sus- 
 tenance adequate to sustain life ; but it depends 
 on the habits, manners, and conventional wants of 
 the mass of the labouring population. The means 
 of subsistence for the humblest peasant at the present 
 day in England, include a far greater amount and 
 variety of commodities than they included three or 
 four centuries ago. Even at this day the standard 
 varies widely in different parts of the United King- 
 dom. Hitherto, in Ireland " the means of sub- 
 sistence" have consisted of potatoes, rags, and a mud 
 cabin ; but, in England, the same phrase stands for a 
 thatched cottage, wheaten bread, and decent linen 
 or cotton garments. As long as a small patch of 
 ground, with a wretched hovel upon it, was obtain- 
 able, the Irishman, content with such a miserable 
 pittance as satisfied his neighbours, would rush into 
 matrimony, and multiply his progeny down to star- 
 vation point. In England, on the other hand, if 
 the value of labour were to fall so low as to place 
 bread, and shoes, and a glazed and chimnied cottage 
 beyond his means, the agricultural labourer would 
 either cease to degrade his condition by increas- 
 ing his burthens, or, if he did marry, privations 
 and a lower diet than their constitutions had been 
 inured to bear would generate disease, and thin the 
 numbers of his family. Consider, again, the causes 
 
42 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 which limit the fecundity of those families whose 
 circumstances place them above the labouring class 
 — the middle, and, I may add, the upper ranks of 
 society. Why do so many members of these classes, 
 both male and female, either abstain from marriage 
 altogether, or postpone that event to a comparatively 
 late period of life ? Earely from choice, but far 
 more frequently from the want of means to marry. 
 But of what " means ?" Not surely of the ''means 
 of subsistence " in the literal sense of the terms ? 
 No ; but from the want of a provision adequate to 
 their rank, and to the habits and ideas of their asso- 
 ciates; such a provision as may secure them from 
 sinking to a lower grade in the social scale ; a pros- 
 pect so painful to the mind, that the fear of it is 
 often sufficient to overpower even the strongest and 
 warmest affections of the heart. 
 
 An ingenious writer, but an unsafe guide in econo- 
 mical questions, Sismondi*, in attempting to prove, 
 in answer to Malthus, that it is not the limit of the 
 means of subsistence which restricts population, founds 
 an argument upon the fact that the wealthiest fa- 
 milies are frequently observed to become extinct. 
 " The Montmorencies," he says, " have never been 
 in want of bread ; their multiplication, on Mr. Mal- 
 thus' principle, ought to have been arrested by no 
 obstacle ; their number ought, therefore, to have 
 doubled every twenty-five years. At this rate, 
 supposing that the first founder of the family lived in 
 the year 1000, in the year 1600 his descendants 
 ought to have amounted to 16,777,216 ; a number 
 exceeding at that time the whole population of 
 
 * Quoted by M. Say, iu his " Cours Complet." 
 
POPULATION. 43 
 
 France. Their rate of increase continuing the same, 
 the world would not now have contained the whole 
 family ; for the number of Montmorencies in the 
 year 1800 would have amounted to more than two 
 thousand millions." 
 
 M. Say disposes of this objection by tracing the 
 fallacy to the misapplication of the terms " means of 
 subsistence" for which he proposes to substitute the 
 more comprehensive phrase, " means of existence.'''' 
 He points out the vastly different standard which 
 this expression represents in relation to the rich and 
 to the poor. With respect to the latter, it denotes 
 the mere necessary minimum of food, clothes, and 
 shelter ; but the means required to enable the 
 members of an illustrious family to marry and con- 
 tinue their species, are of a totally different kind. 
 The higher the social rank, the greater is the dread 
 of losing caste by an iU-provided marriage. High 
 birth, territorial possessions, competent endowments 
 for children — these are the "means of existence," 
 the indispensable conditions of an eligible union for 
 the scions of a distinguished family ; and it is the 
 difficulty often found among the highest ranks in 
 satisfying these conventional requirements which 
 limits marriages, and often brings to an early end 
 the posterity of noble houses. " If the Montmoren- 
 cies," continues M. Say, " have never experienced a 
 deficiency of the means of existence, it is precisely 
 because they have refrained from multiplying their 
 numbers. But inasmuch as the means of existence 
 necessary for a nobleman are much more rare to 
 meet with, and more difficult of attainment, than the 
 cabin and the porridge which suffice for the wants o f 
 
44 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 the peasant, hence it is in the highest ranks that 
 families most speedily become extinct. Accordingly, 
 in countries where an order of nobility exists, it is 
 found necessary constantly to recruit its numbers, 
 either by means of new creations, or by forming 
 alliances with the children of commoners."* 
 
 The greater proportionate amount of prudential 
 restraint from marriage practised by the upper and 
 educated classes, as compared with the lower, is cer- 
 tainly a fact well deserving of consideration, throwing 
 light upon many of the phenomena of population, 
 and having a practical bearing on the argument, 
 which will be adverted to in its proper place. 
 
 The difference just referred to between the terms, 
 *' means of subsistence," used by Malthus, and the 
 terms, " means of existence," substituted by Say, 
 is more than a mere verbal difference, or I should 
 not have wasted your time in dwelling on it; it 
 involves an important practical consequence. The 
 latter phrase, besides that it is wider in its mean- 
 ing, represents and keeps before the mind the essen- 
 tial qualification, that the standard of sufficiency 
 for marriage, and therefore the limit to the in- 
 crease of population, is a variable standard — a 
 limit that is constantly shifting at each successive 
 stage in the progress of society. There is nothing 
 more disheartening to the mind in the theory of 
 those economists who adhere to the most rigid sect of 
 the Malthusian school, than the views which they 
 present to us of the irredeemable depression of the 
 labouring classes in that dead level of penury only 
 just above subsistence-point, to which the laws of 
 * Say, " Cours Complet," vol. iv. p. 344. 
 
POPULATION. 45 
 
 nature are described as inexorably confining them. 
 The incessant effort of numbers to overtake food — 
 the tendency of the principle of population to in- 
 creased activity, as soon as ever the pressure of dis- 
 tress is taken off its springs — are represented by 
 these writers as a bar to any permanent amelioration 
 of the condition of the working-classes. Scarcely 
 has some alleviating influence from without — the 
 effect, it may be, of a change in the laws affecting 
 commerce, or of some mechanical discovery, or of 
 improvements in cultivation — dawned upon their 
 hopes, before the transient prosperity begins to sti- 
 mulate their desires in the direction of marriage. 
 Hence, after a brief interval, arises a further increase 
 of numbers — new competitors for food — the labour- 
 market once more over-stocked — wages again re- 
 duced — the last state of the labourer as bad as, 
 or even worse than, the first. " Were the whole 
 mass of human sustenance," says a philosopher of this 
 school, " produced by the soil now imder cultivation, 
 to be increased twofold by the efforts of human 
 ingenuity and industry, we may assert, as an un- 
 doubted truth, that the only effect, after the lapse of 
 a few years, would have been the multiplication in a 
 like proportion of the number of its occupants, with, 
 probably, at the same time, a far increased proportion 
 of misery and crime."* Is there anything in the ope- 
 ration of the laws of nature upon society to warrant 
 
 * " In this view, the labouring population are regarded as so 
 many animals, with definite never-increasing wants, and doomed 
 by eternal laws to remain in the same condition themselves and 
 to beget children who are never to rise above it." — Manual of 
 Political Economy, by E. P. Smith, New York. 
 
46 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 sucli a terrible anticipation as this ? God forbid ! 
 If the assertion just quoted were really " an un- 
 doubted truth," " ignorance" of the principles of the 
 social economy would indeed be " bliss ; " for nothing 
 cotdd be more calculated than such knowledgCj not 
 only to throw the deepest gloom and despondency 
 over the prospects of mankind, but also to damp and 
 discourage all efforts to ameliorate the lot of the 
 many, to improve the gifts of nature, or to increase 
 the fertility of the earth. Happily, the assertion is 
 not only negatived, by experience, but is proved to 
 be at variance with the true laws of human progress. 
 In every country of the world, from the earliest re- 
 cords of its history to the present time, the condition 
 of the working classes has become elevated not tem- 
 porarily, but ■permanently, in proportion to the 
 advancement of civilisation, the increase of wealth, 
 the progress of discovery, and the improvement in 
 arts, agriculture, and manufacturing skiU. Observe ; 
 I do not assert that in all communities the labouring 
 class obtaius a fair or equitable proportion of the 
 increased produce of the territory. It is by no 
 means the case that the distribution of wealth in 
 rich countries is always so adjusted as to produce 
 the widest possible diffusion of social advantages. 
 But I do say that, by the inevitable laws of nature, 
 by a process which I have explained at length in 
 former lectures *, as arising mainly from the agency 
 of competition — a share in the increased wealth and 
 plenty which every new stride in the march of civi- 
 lisation enables a community to make, is inalienably 
 
 * Lecture III., on the " Harmonies of the Social Economy. 
 Competition." 
 
POPULATION. 47 
 
 secured to the humblest portion of its members. 
 Improved production begets abundance, and abund- 
 ance is cheapness, and cheapness is the gain of the 
 poor. Adam Smith has observed — and the remark 
 has become doubly true since his time — that " the 
 accommodation of an European prince does not so 
 much exceed that of an industrious and frugal pea- 
 sant as the accommodations of the latter exceed those 
 of an African king." The poor must share with the 
 rich the benefits of advancing civilisation. They 
 partake — haud passibus mquis it maybe — but still 
 inevitably partake, in the onward movement. There 
 is nothing in the arrangements by which Providence 
 has secured the continuance of the human species 
 at variance with this law. The true doctrine of 
 population explains and harmonises the process which 
 takes place. The scale of the " means of existence " 
 is, as I have already pointed out, an ascending scale. 
 It is regulated not by a fixed quantity or kind of 
 food, but by usage and opinion. The luxuries of one 
 generation become the necessaries of the next. The 
 requisite provision for marriage and a family is con- 
 tinually enlarged as civilisation advances, by the 
 addition of fresh articles to the stock. The English 
 peasant would not increase and multiply upon such 
 means of existence as suffice for the Russian serf 
 or the Hindoo at the present day ; neither would he 
 do so if his scale of comforts were suddenly reduced 
 to that of the villeins who preceded him a few cen- 
 turies ago upon his own soil. It is, besides, an utter 
 fallacy to suppose that the full tide of population at 
 once and immediately rushes in whenever a vacuum 
 is produced, so as to raise the stream of human 
 
48 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 beings for whom some new channel of relief had been 
 lately opened, to the same volume as before. The ar- 
 rangements of Providence have ordained it otherwise. 
 The bringing into existence and raising to maturity 
 of a new generation of human beings, is a work of 
 time, and years must elapse in the course of nature 
 between the impulse communicated to population 
 and its realised effect. Meanwhile, the poorer classes 
 become habituated to comforts which increased 
 abundance has placed within their reach — they ac- 
 quire new tastes and desires — the new commodities 
 which they are able to obtain for their wages are 
 gradually added to their list of wants and become to 
 them necessaries of existence. Increased self-respect 
 follows upon each step that elevates them in the 
 social scale, and the virtues of prudence, economy, 
 and forethought are its fruits. The acquisitions thus 
 made are not by reckless improvidence forfeited and 
 lost; but, on the contrary, become the vantage 
 ground for further advances in the same direction. 
 
 Such, I venture confidently to affirm, in opposition 
 to the melancholy theory above quoted, is a true 
 statement, confirmed by history and experience, of 
 the tendency and progress of society, in every coun- 
 try at least in which civilisation is on the advance, 
 and in which industry and property are permitted to 
 have free spread and growth. In such societies im- 
 provements in production outrun the growth of popu- 
 lation. Wealth increases even faster than men. The 
 amelioration of the condition of the working classes, 
 which the law of nature has thus made progressive, 
 is not subject to be neutralised by the principle of 
 human increase ; for the " means of existence," which 
 
POPULATION. 49 
 
 it is admitted that population can in no case over- 
 pass, are such as the successive improvements in pro- 
 duction make them ; — they expand with the increased 
 abundance and cheapness of commodities — they tend 
 continually to advance — and, unless the country be 
 actually retrograding in wealth and industry, they 
 cannot recede. 
 
 There is another fallacy which, as it appears to 
 me, pervades much of Mr. Malthus' reasoning, and 
 still more, that of some of his followers, and which 
 has been encouraged perhaps, in some degree, by the 
 very terms of the proposition we are at present con- 
 sidering. When it is said that " population is 
 limited by the means of subsistence," we must be 
 careful not to confine our idea of the subsistence of 
 a country to the mere products of its agriculture ; 
 we must not regard a nation like England, as Mr. 
 Malthus has done in one passage of his work*, as 
 if it were a farm of limited extent, the livestock 
 upon which must be proportioned to the quantity of 
 grass, corn, and turnips that will grow upon its sur- 
 face. A great deal more wheat is raised, as M. Say t 
 truly observes, upon a square mUe in Poland than 
 upon the same space in Holland ; yet a square mile 
 in Holland contains many more inhabitants than one 
 in Poland. Why ? Because that space in Holland, 
 though it yields less corn, yields a much greater 
 aggregate of produce. The value of the things 
 which Holland produces enables it to buy the things 
 which it does not produce. Population is regulated 
 by the aggregate productions of a country, not by 
 any particular article of its produce. 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 114. -1- Vol. iv. p. 322. 
 
 E 
 
50 POPrLATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 One condition, however, is necessary to enable a 
 people to multiply their numbers to the fiill measure 
 of their productive powers, including the several 
 sources of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, 
 — I mean free imports. Unquestionably, if you 
 fetter the exchanges, you put a limit upon the num- 
 bers, of a nation. If you adopt an artificial system 
 with regard to trade, you necessarily thwart the laws 
 of nature with regard to population. Whenever a 
 state prohibits its subjects, or in anywise restrains 
 them, from converting the produce of their factories, 
 their forges, or their looms into foreign com or meat, 
 to that extent it restricts their power of multiplying, 
 and the expansive principle of increase must be 
 curbed and checked in one mode or another. But if 
 exchanges are free, and industry is allowed to seek 
 spontaneously, as it always does when let alone, 
 its most profitable field, then the rate of increase is 
 limited by nothing short of the aggregate produce 
 of the nation's industry — the annual income of its 
 labour of every kind: precisely as the expenditure 
 of an individual — ^the munber of persons whom he 
 can maintain — is measured by his income, from what- 
 ever sources, agricultural, mercantile, or professional, 
 it may be derived. Thus, the factories of Lanca- 
 shire may be said to produce com, because they 
 produce corn's worth, and the artificers of London 
 produce the beef and mutton which are sent to the 
 metropolis in exchange for their skilfiil workman- 
 ship. The enormously rapid rate of increase in the 
 manufacturing districts strikingly illustrates this 
 truth. Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow, 
 produce scarcely any food at all, but they produce 
 
POPULATION. 51 
 
 every year and sustain, through the medium of ex- 
 change, a prodigiously increasing number of human 
 beings. The same principles which govern the re- 
 lations of different provinces of the same empire, 
 govern also, where exchanges are free, the relations 
 of different countries with each other. As the agri- 
 cultural districts of England are to Lancashire and 
 the West Riding of Yorkshire, so are Poland and 
 the "Western States of America to Great Britain. 
 Observe, I am not now enteriug into the question of 
 the comparative advantages of agricultural and manu- 
 facturing coromunities : With that controversy I am 
 at present not concerned, though I do not hesitate 
 to express my concurrence in Mr. Malthus' opinion, 
 that a combination of agricultural and manufacturing 
 industry is the condition best adapted to promote 
 the wealth, strength, and security of a nation. But, 
 confining our view to the immediate subject of popu- 
 lation, and discarding as chimerical, after the experi- 
 ence we have had withia the last few years, all 
 apprehension as to the capability of the rest of the 
 world to supply com to the fiill extent of our power 
 to purchase it*, I am warranted in saying that, in 
 the catalogue of the " means of subsistence," which 
 determines the population of a country, we must in- 
 clude the proceeds of her manufactures as well as of 
 her agriculture. The question, in fact, is not of the 
 relative increase of population and food, but of the 
 relative increase of population and capital, because, 
 population being given, capital is the only limit to 
 
 * The apprehensions expressed by Mr. Mill on this point, 
 (Prin. of Polit. Econ. book i. chap, xiii. s. 3.) may be considered 
 as completely disposed of by recent facts. 
 £ 2 
 
52 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 production. These considerations are most important; 
 for nothing can more effectually dissipate such ap- 
 prehensions as were just now adverted to, with re- 
 spect to the prospects of the labouring classes and the 
 possible rate of their multiplication. Grteat as is the 
 fecundity and marvellous the potential increase of the 
 human species, stUl more astounding, in a country 
 adapted for it by nature and the genius of the people, 
 is the progress of the mechanical arts, and the result 
 achieved within a comparatively few years by the ap- 
 plication of natural agents, such as steam-power, to 
 production. I said before, that wealth increases faster 
 than men. I need scarcely appeal to the statistics 
 of our manufacturing system for proof of that fact. 
 Mr. Senior, in a work * written now many years ago, 
 observed, " Sixty years form a short period in the 
 history of a nation, yet what changes in the state of 
 England and in the southern parts of Scotland have 
 the steam-engine and the cotton machinery effected 
 within the last sixty years ! They have almost 
 doubled the population, more than doubled the wages 
 of labour, and nearly trebled the rent of land. They 
 enabled us to endure, not certainly without inconve- 
 nience, but yet to endure, a public debt more than 
 trebled, and a taxation more than quadrupled. They 
 changed us from exporters to importers of raw pro- 
 duce, and consequently changed our corn-laws from 
 a bounty on exportation to nearly a prohibition of 
 importation. They have clad the whole world with 
 a light and warm clothing ; and made it so easy of 
 
 * Treatise on Political Economy, published in the Encyc, 
 Metrop. 
 
POPULATION. 53 
 
 acquisition, that we are perhaps scarcely aware of 
 the whole enjoyment that it aifords." 
 
 He goes on to add some conjectures as to the 
 future: " There appears no reason, unless that reason 
 be to be found among our own commercial institu- 
 tions " (and these have subsequently been altered), 
 " why the improvements of the next sixty years 
 should not exceed those of the preceding. The 
 
 cotton machinery is far from perfection the 
 
 steam-engine is stUl in its infancy .... and it 
 is probable that, many other powers of equal effi- 
 ciency are still undiscovered among the secrets of 
 nature, or, if known, are still unapplied." These 
 anticipations, it is needless to say, have received and 
 are every day receiving a more extended fulfilment. 
 
 It appears, then, from what has been said, that if 
 population depends on the means or necessaries of 
 existence, those means, again, are regulated by the 
 total produce of the labour of a country. 
 
 In my next lecture I propose to examine into the 
 facts and reasonings on which Mr. Malthus has 
 founded his celebrated dictum— that population has a 
 tendency to increase faster than the means of sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 E 3 
 
54 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 OK POPULATION. 
 
 The distinctive doctrine of Mr. Malthus on popula- 
 tion is expressed in one short sentence contained in 
 the first chapter of his Essay. It is this : — " That 
 population has a constant tendency to increase 
 heyond the means of subsistence."* The whole 
 argument in support of this thesis is comprised in 
 the first two chapters of the first hook; all that 
 follows consists either of illustrations drawn from the 
 state of society in difierent countries of the world, or 
 of reasons adduced, either for the purpose of meeting 
 objections or of recommending the adoption of practical 
 remedies. As the statement of the doctrine itself is 
 so brief, I shaU prefer, for the sake of doing it full 
 justice, to express the substance of it in the author's 
 own words ; and shall therefore commence by citing 
 the most material passages from the first and second 
 chapters. 
 
 Mr, Malthus sets out by declaring the object of his 
 Essay to be, "to examine the effects of one ffreat cause" 
 which has " hitherto impeded the progress of mankind 
 towards happiness." " The cause to which I allude," 
 he says, " is the constant tendency in all animated Ufe 
 to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it."t 
 
 " It is observed by Dr. Franldin, that there is no 
 limit to the prolific nature of plants or animals but 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 4. t Vol. i. pp. 1, 2. 
 
POPTTLATION. 55 
 
 what is made by their crowding and interfering 
 with each other's means of subsistence." "Were 
 the face of the earth," he says, " vacant of other 
 plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread 
 with one kind only, as for instance with fennel ; 
 and, were it empty of other inhabitants, it might, 
 in a few ages, be replenished from one nation only, 
 as, for instance, with Englishmen." 
 
 " This," proceeds Mr. Malthus, "is incontrovertibly 
 true. Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms 
 nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the 
 most profuse and liberal hand; but has been com- 
 paratively sparing in the room and the 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 impe- 
 rious, all-pervading law of nature, restrains them 
 withia the prescribed bounds. The race of plants 
 and the race of animals shrink under this great 
 restrictive law; and man cannot by any effort of 
 reason escape from it." 
 
 " In plants and irrational animals the view of the 
 subject is simple. They are all impelled by a powerful 
 instinct to the increase of their species; and this 
 instinct is interrupted by no doubts about providing 
 for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, there is 
 liberty, the power of increase is exerted; and the 
 superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by 
 the want of room and nourishment." * 
 
 " The effects of this check on man are more 
 
 * See this proposition examined in Lecture 4, post. 
 E 4 
 
56 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 complicated. Impelled to the increase of hie species 
 by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts 
 his career, and asks him whether he may not 
 bring beings into the world for whom he cannot 
 provide the means of support. If he attend to this 
 natural suggestion, the restriction too frequently 
 produces vice. If he hear it not, the hmnan race 
 wUl be constantly endeavouring to increase beyond 
 the means of subsistence ; but as, by that law of our 
 nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, 
 population can never actually increase beyond the 
 lowest nourishment capable of supporting it, a strong 
 check on population, from the difficulty of obtaining 
 food, must be constantly in operation. This diffi- 
 culty must fall somewhere, and must necessarily be 
 felt, in some or other of the various forms of misery, 
 or the fear of misery, by a large portion of manliind." 
 
 ''That population has this constant tendency to 
 increase beyond the means of subsistence, and that 
 it is kept to its necessary level by these causes, will 
 sufficiently appear from a review of the different 
 states of society in which man has existed. But, 
 before we proceed to this review, the subject will 
 perhaps be seen in a clearer Hght, if we endeavour 
 to ascertain what would be the natural increase of 
 population, if left to exert itself with perfect freedom ; 
 and what might be expected to be the rate of increase 
 in the productions of the earth under the most 
 favourable circumstances of htmian industry." 
 
 Now, it is upon this comparison about to be in- 
 stituted between the rates of increase of population 
 and food that the whole theory turns. I request 
 your particular attention, therefore, as well to the 
 
POPULATION. 57 
 
 substance of what follows, as to the logical form of the 
 argument, on which I shall have some observations 
 to make presently. 
 
 " It will be allowed," he proceeds, " that no 
 country has hitherto been known where the manners 
 were so pure and simple, and the means of existence 
 so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to 
 early marriages, from the 'difficulty of providing for a 
 family ; and that no waste of the human species has 
 been occasioned by vicious customs, by towns, by 
 unhealthy occupations, or too severe labour. Con- 
 sequently, in no state that we have yet known has 
 the power of population been left to exert itself with 
 perfect freedom." 
 
 So far in Mr. Malthus' own words. He proceeds, 
 then, to refer to authorities and Ulustrations to show, 
 what is the highest theoretical rate of human in- 
 crease, or the shortest period of time in which it is 
 physically possible for a community to double its 
 numbers. Sir W. Petty had supposed a duplication 
 possible in ten years; Euler, in twelve years and 
 four-fifths. But Mr. Malthus prefers to found his 
 hypothesis on the actual experience of the Northern 
 States of America; where, as he asserts, the popula- 
 tion has been found to double itself by procreation 
 alone, for above a century and a half successively, in 
 less than twenty-five years. He considers himself, 
 therefore, clearly on the safe side in assuming the 
 capacity of the human race to go on increasing in 
 what is called a geometric ratio by doubling itself 
 every twenty-five years. 
 
 So much for the power of population. We now 
 come to the other term of the comparison, subsistence. 
 
58 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 Mr. Malthus says, " The rate according to which 
 the productions of the earth may be supposed to 
 increase, it will not be so easy to determine. Of 
 this, however, we may be perfectly certain, that the 
 ratio of their increase in a limited territory must be 
 of a totally different nature from the ratio of the in- 
 crease of population. A thousand millions are just 
 as easily doubled every tVenty-five years by the 
 power of population as a thousand. But the food to 
 support the increase from the greater number will by 
 no means be obtained with the same facility. Man 
 is necessarily confined in room. When acre has 
 been added to acre tlU aU the fertile land is occupied, 
 the yearly increase of food must depend upon the 
 melioration of the land already ia possession. This 
 is a fund which, from the nature of all soUs, instead 
 of increasing, must be gradually diminishing. But 
 population, could it be supplied with food, would go 
 on with unexhausted vigour; and the increase of 
 one period would furnish the power of a greater in- 
 crease the next, and this without any limit."* 
 
 After referring briefly to various countries in illus- 
 tration of his position, Mr. Malthus turns to Eng- 
 land, and proposes " to consider at what rate the pro- 
 duce of this island might be supposed to increase under 
 circumstances the most favourable to improvement." 
 
 " If it be allowed," he says, " that, by the best 
 possible policy and great encouragements to agricul- 
 ture, the average produce of the island could be doubled 
 in the first twenty-five years, it will be allowing, 
 probably, a greater increase than could with reason 
 be expected." 
 
 * P 7. 
 
POPULATION. 59 
 
 " In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to 
 suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It 
 would be contrary to all our knowledge of the pro- 
 perties of land. The improvement of the barren 
 parts would be a work of time and labour; and it 
 must be evident to those who have the slightest ac- 
 quaintance with agricultural subjects that, in propor- 
 tion as cultivation extended, the additions that could 
 yearly be made to the former average produce must 
 be gradually and regularly diminishiag. That we 
 may be the better able to compare the increase of 
 population and food, let us make a supposition 
 which, without pretending to accuracy, is clearly 
 more favourable to the power of production in the 
 earth than any experience we have had of its quali- 
 ties win warrant." 
 
 " Let us suppose that the yearly additions which 
 might be made to the former average produce, instead 
 of decreasing, which they certainly would do, were 
 to remain the same; and that the produce of this 
 island might be increased, every twenty-five years, by 
 a quantity equal to what it at present produces. The 
 most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater 
 increase than this. In a few centiu-ies it would 
 make every acre of land in the island like a garden." 
 
 " If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, 
 and if it be allowed that the subsistence for man 
 which the earth afibrds might be increased every 
 twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at 
 present produces, this wiU be supposing a rate of in- 
 crease much greater than we can imagine that any 
 possible exertions of mankind could make it." 
 
 " It may be fairly pronounced, therefore, that, con- 
 
60 POPULATIOK AND CAPITAL. 
 
 sidering the present average state of the earth, the 
 means of subsistence under circumstances the most 
 favourable to human industry, could not possibly be 
 made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio." 
 
 " The necessary effects of these two different rates 
 of increase, when brought together, wiU be very 
 striking. Let us call the population of this island 
 eleven millions, and suppose the present produce equal 
 to the easy support of such a number. In the first 
 twenty-five years the population would be twenty- 
 two millions, and the food being also doubled, the 
 means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. 
 In the next twenty-five years the population would 
 be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence 
 only equal to the support of thirty-three millions. 
 In the next period the population would be eighty- 
 eight millions, and the means of subsistence just 
 equal to the support of half that number. And, at 
 the conclusion of the first century, the population 
 would be one hundred and seventy-six millions, and 
 the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 
 fifty-five millions, leaving a population of one hun- 
 dred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for." 
 
 " Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, 
 emigration would of coursebe excluded : and, suppos- 
 ing the present population equal to a thousand mil- 
 lions, the human species would increase as the numbers 
 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 
 I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the popu- 
 lation would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 
 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two 
 thousand years the difference would be almost incal- 
 culable." 
 
POPULATION. 61 
 
 " In this supposition no limits whatever are placed 
 to the produce of the earth. It may increase for 
 ever, and be greater than any assignable quantity : 
 yet, stUl the power of population being in every period 
 so much superior, the increase of the human species 
 can only be kept down to the level of the means of 
 subsistence by. the constant operation of the strong 
 law of necessity, acting as a check upon a greater 
 power."* 
 
 Such is Mr. Malthus' statement, based on an 
 estimate which he considers only too favourable to 
 the prospects of society, of the relative powers and 
 tendencies of population and food. It must be 
 owned, that the doctrine thus enunciated comes upon 
 us, at the first view, with a very formidable aspect. 
 
 Supposing the hypothesis to be realised, the con- 
 sequences, as regards our own country in particular, 
 would be at once imminent and terrific. The Essay 
 on Population was first published in 1798 ; and, as 
 the author has calculated the rates of increase, in 
 one hundred years after that time, or in less than 
 fifty years from the present date, no less than 150 
 millions of men out of the 176 millions then supposed 
 to be crowded together upon the surface of this 
 small island, would, to use his own language, be 
 " totally without provision." 
 
 The first reflection — and a most consolatory one it 
 is — which strikes the mind, on reading the passages 
 just cited, is that, fearful as may be the danger 
 apparently arising from the overwhelming strength 
 of the principle of population, happily for mankind 
 one thing is certain, — there is a loophole for escape 
 * Vol. i. p. 11. 
 
62 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 somewhere. The tendency of numbers to outgrow 
 food, if it indeed exists, is by some cause or other 
 counteracted. Centuries upon centuries have passed 
 over the earth since this unec^ual race began ; yet, up 
 to this time, famine and starvation have not overtaken 
 the countless myriads of human beings born but to 
 perish, who, according to the calculations just stated, 
 should have found themselves thrust, by the fearful 
 activity of the principle of population, beyond the 
 limits of subsistence. Indigence and misery there 
 may be, and is, more or less extensively prevailing, at 
 all times; but a vast, universal, and constantly in- 
 creasing failure of supplies, as the world grows fuller 
 of inhabitants, is certainly a phenomenon of which 
 we have no experience. On the contrary, the pro- 
 portion of subsistence to population appears, as time 
 goes on, to increase rather than to diminish. These 
 facts, of course, Mr. Malthus cannot fail to recognise ; 
 but he accovmts for the frustration of what he regards 
 as the natural tendency of things In the following 
 manner : — According to him, the " superior power " 
 of population is prevented by the operation of certain 
 definite causes from attaining that full development 
 of which it is physically capable. It is constantly 
 repressed by certain impediments or " checks" 
 These " checks " are of various kinds ; but, with one 
 important exception, they are summed up as " in- 
 cluding every cause, whether arising from vice or 
 misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten 
 the natural duration of human existence." * Fore- 
 most in the list, wars, plague, and famine are 
 enumerated ; extreme poverty, excesses of all kinds, 
 ♦ Vol. i. p, 15. 
 
POPULATION. 63 
 
 severe labour and exposure, great towns and unwhole- 
 some occupations, form other items in the catalogue 
 of " checks." 
 
 There is another check of a very different character, 
 the operation of which is not repressive, but ■pre- 
 ventive ; this Is termed moral restraint. It consists in 
 the operation of those prudential motives which re- 
 strain individuals from marrying without a reason- 
 able prospect of being able to support a family. Upon 
 this checb I shall have some separate observations 
 to offer hereafter. 
 
 Mr. Malthus examines at great length into the 
 effects of the various repressive, or, as he terms them, 
 " positive " checks in various coimtries, and at various 
 periods of the world. He traces the operation of 
 them, in most cases, to the same originating cause — 
 the principle of population. Of the most fatal wars 
 that have devastated mankind, he describes the 
 greater part as occasioned simply by " a struggle for 
 room and food." Famine is, of course, nothing else 
 but a disproportion of ntilnbers to subsistence for the 
 time being ; and pestilence is the handmaid and 
 follower of famine. The miaor depopulating agents 
 — the maladies, privations, and exposures whichj by 
 a more gradual process, diminish families and shorten 
 the term of life — are referred to the one leading 
 cause, poverty ; which, again, is itself but an effect, 
 and a symptom of an excess of numbers relatively to 
 employment and subsistence. Thus, the prolificness 
 of mankind, which at first sight appears in so terrific 
 an aspect, is practically restrained by other agencies 
 stUl more potent; the greater part of which are them- 
 selves generated by that very redundancy of numbers. 
 
64 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 the consequences of which, if unchecked, would be 
 too dreadful to contemplate. 
 
 The account thus given by Mr. Malthus of the 
 effect of the repressive checks upon population, though 
 it may remove some of the difi&culties which facts 
 oppose to his theory, affords, it may be thought, but 
 an imperfect answer to the moral objections to which 
 the constitution of society, according to his repre- 
 sentation of it, would be liable. For the result of 
 his doctrines may be stated thus: — The* fecundity 
 of mankind, if left to its natural operation, is an 
 overmatch for the fecundity of the earth ; the demand 
 for food tends constantly to exceed the supply. 
 That excess is necessarily the occasion of great evil 
 and misery, and would be absolutely destructive of 
 a vast proportion of the species, but for certain 
 causes generated by that very super-fecundity of 
 population upon which they form a check. And of 
 what nature are these causes? All resolvable, by 
 the author's express statement, into " vice and 
 misery." " Every cause," he says, " whether arising 
 from vice or misery, which in any degree contributes 
 to shorten the natural duration of human existence." 
 Thus, the tendency is evil, and the checks which 
 restrain the tendency are likewise evil. "Want and 
 misery are the disease; vice and misery are the 
 correctives. Between the one and the other society 
 is perpetually oscillating. " But why ? — it has been 
 and wUl be asked by the believers in a wise and 
 benevolent government of the universe ; — why has it 
 pleased the Creator to implant in the constitution of 
 our race a tendency so fatally powerful, that, from 
 its inevitable excess are generated the most terrible 
 
POPULATION. 65 
 
 calamities that afflict humanity ? Why has the 
 instinct of human increase been made so strong, 
 or the provision of food and space so scanty, that, 
 for the mere preservation of existence, mankind are 
 driven to resort to means which shorten its term or 
 poison its enjgyment? Wherefore this horrible di- 
 lemma between over-population and the "checks?" 
 — between starvation by over-crowding on the one 
 hand, or decimation by war, dearth, and pestilence 
 on the other ? " 
 
 Such are the a priori objections against Mr. Mal- 
 thus' theory which have impressed themselves very 
 strongly on some minds, and have urged several 
 writers to undertake the task of controverting the 
 facts and reasonings contained in the Essay on 
 Population. I must own that, among his numerous 
 critics and opponents, I do not think any one has 
 achieved very signal success. Some have been more 
 distinguished by zeal than knowledge of the subject; 
 others have tried to set up antagonist systems at 
 least as untenable as that which they sought to over- 
 throw; others — among whom I venture to name Arch- 
 bishop Sumner, in his " Records of Creation," and 
 Mr. Senior — aiming rather to qualify Mr. Malthus' 
 conclusions than to confute them, have, in some 
 measTire, surrendered their vantage ground by too 
 large an admission of his postulates. Any account 
 of the history and progress of the Malthusian theory 
 would be incomplete, which omitted to notice an 
 important correspondence which took place between 
 its author and Mr. Senior, in the year 1829. My 
 distinguished predecessor, in some excellent lectures 
 on population delivered in this place, laid down and 
 
 F 
 
66 I'OPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 enforced the proposition precisely converse to that 
 of Mr. Malthus — that there is a natural tendency in 
 subsistence to increase in a greater ratio than popu- 
 lation. The publication of these lectures led to the 
 correspondence just referred to, conducted by Mr. 
 Senior in a manner which reflected great honour 
 on this chair ; but, as it is too long to be cited at 
 length, I must refer those who are interested in the 
 subject to the published letters. The result, how- 
 ever, of this amicable controversy was rather curious. 
 These two eminent writers set out, as I have said, 
 with the affirmation of precisely opposite propositions : 
 the author of the Essay asserting that mankiad had 
 a tendency to increase faster than food ; the professor, 
 that food had a tendency to increase faster than 
 mankind. In the course of the correspondence, their 
 respective opinions were, indeed, somewhat qualified 
 by each, but were abandoned by neither ; yet the 
 concluding letter of Mr. Senior, the fifth of the 
 series, commences in these terms : " Our controversy 
 has ended, as I believe few controversies ever termi- 
 nated before, in mutua agreement." And yet each 
 maintained his own opinion, and the two doctrines 
 are directly contrary the one to the other. There 
 is evidently but one way of accountiag for such a 
 result : — the affirmative and negative of the same 
 proposition can be held by two persons who are of 
 the same mind only when each understands the 
 language used in a different sense. Now, one 
 ambiguity involved in Mr. Malthus' famous dogma 
 is not difficult to detect ; it has been clearly pointed 
 out by Archbishop Whately as lurking in the word 
 " tendency." The following passage is taken from 
 
POPULATION. 67 
 
 the ninth of the archbishop's published Lectures of 
 Political Economy. 
 
 " By a ' tendency' towards a certain result is some- 
 times meant the existence of a cause which, operating 
 unimpeded, would produce that result. In this sense 
 it may be said with truth, that the earth, or any 
 other body moving round a centre,' has a 'tendency' 
 to fly off at a tangent ; i. e., the centrifugal force ope- 
 rates in that direction, though it is controlled by the 
 centripetal : or, again, that man has a greater ten- 
 tency to fall prostrate than to stand erect ; i. e., the 
 attraction of gravitation and the position of the centre 
 of gravity are such that the least breath of air would 
 overset him, but for the voluntary exertion of mus- 
 cular force : and, again, that population has a ten- 
 dency to increase beyond subsistence ; i. e., there are 
 in men propensities which, if unrestrained, would 
 lead to that result." 
 
 " But sometimes, again, a tendency towards a cer- 
 tain result is understood to mean ' the existence of 
 such a state of things that that result may be expected 
 to take placed Now, it is in these two senses that the 
 word is used in the two premises of the argument in 
 question" (he is here referring to Mr. Malthus). "But 
 in this latter sense the earth has a greater tendency 
 to remain in its orbit than to fly off" from it : man 
 has a greater tendency to stand erect than to fall 
 prostrate ; and (as may be proved by comparing a 
 more barbarous with a more civilised period in the 
 history of any country), in the progress of society, 
 subsistence has a tendency to increase at a greater 
 rate than population. In this country, for instance, 
 much as our population has increased within the last 
 
 X 2 
 
68 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 five centuries, it yet bears a far less ratio to sub- 
 sistence (though still a much greater than could be 
 wished) than it did 500 years ago."* 
 
 Now, if I am asked in which of the two senses, so 
 well discriminated in this passage, the word " ten- 
 dency " is used by Mr. Malthus in reference to popula- 
 tion and to subsistence, I answer, after a carefiil 
 perusal of his entire essay — in both ; i. e., sometimes 
 in the one sense, sometimes in the other. If you 
 bear in mind the passages which I cited at the outset 
 of my lecture, in which he compares the respective 
 tendencies to increase of population and of food, and 
 to which he subsequently refers, as comprising in brief 
 his entire argument, you will find, I think, that my 
 statement is correct — that, in fact, when applied to 
 population, the calculation which he makes of the 
 capacity of increase is founded on " the existence of 
 a cause which, operating unimpeded, would produce 
 that restdt ; " while, in estimating the probable rate 
 of the increase of food, his reasoning is distinctly 
 based on such a state of things that the result (which 
 he there predicates) " may be expected to take place." 
 That such is really his mode of reasoning I shall be 
 enabled presently to make more apparent. 
 
 It is obvious that there are two methods by which 
 the respective rates of increase of man and of sub- 
 sistence may be compared. They may be regarded — 
 I mean, of course, both the one and the other — either 
 in the abstract or in the concrete ; either potentially 
 or practically. "We may investigate, for instance, 
 according to the laws of nature, manifested by ex- 
 
 * Whately's Lectures on Political Economy, Lecture ix. 
 
POPULATION. 69 
 
 perience, what is the stated period within which a 
 given society of human beings are physically capable 
 of doubling their numbers, abstracting the operation 
 of those checks, that impaired longevity and increased 
 mortality, which may be found practically keeping 
 down the numbers of any society. On the other 
 hand, we may estimate the potential rate of increase 
 of those animals or substances which are adapted for 
 human subsistence, assuming no obstacle to their mul- 
 tiplication to arise from the difficulty of finding hands 
 to rear, or space upon the earth to nourish, them. 
 By this method we may ascertain which of the two 
 elements, population or subsistence, is physically 
 capable of the greater expansion in a given time. 
 Or we may adopt another mode of testing their rela- 
 tive rates of increase — we may compare the progress 
 of man and of production in the actual state of any 
 community, or of aU communities together. In all 
 existing societies there are checks in operation upon 
 the multiplication of the human species. There are 
 checks, likewise, upon the indefinite increase of the 
 animal and vegetable world. "We may take the ope- 
 ration of these checks into account on both sides of 
 our calculation. In any given country, or in the 
 world at large, if we like it better, we may compute, 
 with reference to the actual state of things — looking 
 to the experience of the past, and to the circum- 
 stances of the present, to all the causes, social, moral, 
 or political, which restrain the propagation both of 
 man and of his food — what has actually, been, or 
 what probably may be henceforward, the comparative 
 rates of increase of population and of production. 
 Either of these two methods of comparison would be 
 
 F 3 
 
70 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 fair and logical. I need scarcely add, that the latter 
 will be more likely to conduce to a useful practical 
 conclusion. But a third method, which cannot fail 
 to lead us by the road of false logic to an utterly 
 wrong result, is that of comparing the potential in- 
 crease of mankind according to the unchecked laws 
 of nature, with the actual progress in any given 
 country of production, excluding the operation of 
 the counteracting forces on the one side, import- 
 ing them into the estimate on the other. It is no 
 wonder, when we use such a balance as this, if the 
 scales are found to hang prodigiously unequal. 
 
 Now, this last is precisely the mode of argument 
 employed by Mr. Malthus in his famous comparison 
 of the relative ratios of population and subsistence, 
 which I have already quoted from his first chapter. 
 If you examine the passage, you will find that there 
 is some Kttle ambiguity in regard to the calculation 
 of the rate of human increase, because the author has 
 to a certain extent mixed up the question of the 
 potential increase of the species with the actual and 
 experienced increase in North America, StiU it is 
 plain, if we attend closely to the form of his argu- 
 ment, that he uses the case of America merely as an 
 illustration. Setting out, as he professes, to ascer- 
 tain what (in his own words before quoted) " would 
 be the natural increase of population if left to exert 
 itself with perfect freedom" — a state of things, as 
 he afterwards admits, of which no known country 
 furnishes an example — he adverts next to the theo- 
 retical estimates of some economical writers, and 
 finally decides on adopting the term of twenty-five 
 years as the period of human duplication, because 
 
POPULATION. 71 
 
 that term, having been actually realised in some of 
 the United States, he feels safe in the modesty of an 
 estimate which is confirmed by authenticated facts. 
 If in the country where, at all events, some checks to 
 multiplication existed, the inliabitants, nevertheless, 
 had doubled their numbers in a quarter of a century, 
 he is on the safe side (such is in effect his argument) 
 in assuming that human beings can go on increasing 
 in a geometrical ratio at periods of twenty-five years, 
 when " the natural power of population is left to 
 exert itself with perfect freedom." " Perfect free- 
 dom," therefore — in other words, the absence of 
 checks — is clearly, as regards population, the basis 
 of his estimate. The statistics of the United 
 States, as I observed just now, are used simply as an 
 illustration to defend that estimate from cavil. It 
 is hardly necessary, but for the great- importance of 
 this point to our argument, to use more words to 
 show this. To have assumed the progress of popula- 
 tion in the United States, a new country starting 
 with all the advantages of civiHsation, and with a 
 boundless extent of fertile territory to expand itself 
 in, as the standard of practicable increase foi: mankind 
 at large, would have been too manifest a fallacy to 
 have escaped either his reader's notice, or his own. 
 
 Now, we may admit at once, that Mr. Malthus' 
 period of twenty-five years is not only a fair, but 
 even a low estimate, of what may be termed 
 " the organical or physical power of multiplication" 
 as distinguished from the actual rate of human 
 increase. Supposing, if we can suppose, an entire 
 absence of all the existing checks to population, the 
 means of existence in abundance, no obstacle to early 
 
 r 4 
 
72 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 marriages from deficient means, no crowded towns 
 or unhealthy occupations, no wasting wars or pesti- 
 lence, there can be little doubt that a still more 
 rapid expansion of population than that upon which 
 Malthns has buUt his argument might take place. 
 There were several causes, noticed by the author 
 himself in other parts of his work, which im- 
 peded the natural rate of increase in the United 
 States. And, indeed, as M. Bastiat has observed, we 
 have authentic record of a stiU more rapid multipli- 
 cation than the American. In the Book of Genesis * 
 it is recorded that the number of Jacob's family who 
 went down into Egypt were seventy souls. About 
 200 years afterwards f, when Moses took the number 
 of the people, they amounted, according to the ac- 
 count given in the book of Numbers, to more than 
 600,000 fighting men upwards of twenty years of age, 
 which, according to ordinary computation, would imply 
 a total population exceeding two miUions. Hence, it 
 would appear, that the Israelites had gone on doubling 
 their numbers for two centuries, within successive pe- 
 riods of about fourteen years. Of all the instances on 
 record, this probably is the one in which the actual in- 
 crease of the species has made the nearest approach 
 to the potential. But, as the author last mentioned 
 observes, it is in truth a superfluous task to ascertain 
 what is the utmost abstract power of human increase, 
 exclusive of all check and limitation whatever ; a con- 
 dition of things which never has been, or can be, 
 realised. Suffice it to know that, in the case of 
 human beings, as of aU other organised existences, 
 
 * Chap. 46. V. 27. t Numbers, chap. 1. 
 
POPULATION. 73 
 
 the physical capacity of increase surpasses in an enor- 
 mous proportion all the phenomena of rapid multipli- 
 cation which have been witnessed in past times, or 
 are likely to occur in times to come. Viewing, how- 
 ever, the ratio of population adopted by Mr. Malthus 
 as, what it professes to be, viz., that of the physical 
 capacity of human increase, I have no objection to 
 make to it on the score of excess ; provided always 
 that it is carefully borne in mind, that it is a theo- 
 retical standard only, and makes no pretension to be 
 regarded as a practical rule for mankind in general. 
 
 But it requires nothing more than a careful at- 
 tention to this poiut to bring out in a clear point of 
 view the fandamental fallacy of the whole argu- 
 ment. What is that' ratio in regard to the multipli- 
 cation of subsistence which Mr. Malthus has placed 
 in contrast with the potential iacrease of human 
 beings ? Not the potential increase of animal and 
 vegetable existences proper for the food of men under 
 the like favourable conditions ; " the power left to 
 exert itself with perfect freedom," limited by no 
 check or obstacle, — which formed his datum in regard 
 to population. He enters into no estimate as to the 
 periods in which, according to the laws of Nature, 
 the fruits of the earth, the corn, the olive, and the 
 vine, are capable — it is vain to talk of duplication in 
 such cases, but — of multiplication, some thirty fold, 
 some sixtyfold, some an hundredfold. He omits 
 to consider the almost marvellous fecundity of 
 some of those animals which form, in civilised com- 
 munities, the chief subsistence of the mass of the 
 people; — to compare with the productiveness of 
 man, — a being of comparative sterility among ani- 
 
74 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 mated creatures, taking many years to arrive at 
 puberty, reproducing his kind at considerable in- 
 tervals and in limited number — ^with the fecundity of 
 those animal tribes of the earth, the water, and the 
 air, which, in a less number of months than man 
 requires of years, attain maturity; which breed 
 several times xa the year, and produce several of 
 their kind at a birth. I shall enter more fully in a 
 future lecture upon this part of the subject. At 
 present I only stop to point out that Mr. Malthus 
 has altogether omitted the comparison which the 
 exigency of his argument absolutely demanded, be- 
 tween the abstract powers of increase of man and 
 food. Nay, more, he has not even adopted, in his 
 computation of the possible increase of food, that 
 analogy which would have given a semblance of justice 
 to his comparison, though it would have led him cer- 
 tainly to an opposite conclusion from that which he 
 ■embraced: I mean the illustration of the United 
 States. If we are to take American experience as 
 affording a standard of the possible increase of popu- 
 lation, may we not refer to it also as an illustration, 
 though a very inadequate one, of the potential fe- 
 cundity of the soil, and of the tendency of the fruits 
 of labour to accumulation ? If the multiplication of 
 human beings in those young and vigorous offshoots 
 of a great nation is to be taken as representing the 
 normal power and tendency of population, let us be 
 allowed at least to assume, as a sample of the normal 
 . rate of production, that prodigious development of 
 the resources of nature and wonderful growth of 
 wealth, which have made North America at this day 
 the granary of her parent state, and the most pro- 
 
POPULATION. 75 
 
 sperous community on the globe. But to say this of 
 the United States is only to say, in other words, 
 that, rapidly as men have there increased and multi- 
 plied — a result to which, it should not be forgotten, 
 that emigration has largely contributed — still more 
 rapid has been the increase of subsistence in a land 
 where want and poverty are almost unknown. For 
 an argument to support the dogma, that " population 
 tends to increase in a greater ratio than subsistence," 
 no illustration could be more unfortunate than that 
 of the United States.* Nor could any comparison 
 be less just than one drawn between the prolificness 
 of man in a new community so remarkably circum- 
 stanced, and the productive capacities of an old and 
 fully peopled country, with an agriculture consider- 
 ably advanced, and a soil long since entirely appro- 
 priated. 
 
 Yet this is precisely the comparison which Mr. 
 Malthus has instituted. His calculation as to the 
 ratio in which subsistence may be multiplied is 
 founded upon the state of things then actually exist- 
 ing in England. He compares the abstract with 
 the concrete — nature, in the region of hypothesis, 
 acting in " perfect freedom," with nature obstructed 
 by all the " checks" which restrain production in the 
 actual world. Or, again, so far as his argument 
 turns on the illustrations employed, he contrasts the 
 march of population, expanding itself without let or 
 hindrance in the vast untenanted regions of the New 
 World, with subsistence developed by the gradual 
 
 * Hence the fact is not surprising that of the political eco- 
 nomists of America nearly all, I believe, reject the theory of 
 Malthus. 
 
(b POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 improvement of arts and agriculture in tliis narrow 
 and long-settled island. Even here, indeed, if the 
 terms of the comparison be but fairly taken, we need 
 have no apprehension in comparing the relative ad- 
 vances of man and food upon the same soil. I intend 
 to exhibit hereafter the details of their respective 
 progresses during the half-century which has passed 
 since Mr. Malthus wrote. The conclusion may be 
 anticipated by those who, independently of figures 
 and statistics, can read in every sign that they see 
 around them, pregnant evidence of the fact, that the 
 more populous England of to-day is a much wealthier 
 country, both collectively and individually, than the 
 less populous England of fifty years ago ; or, to ex- 
 press the same proposition in equivalent terms, that 
 subsistence in this country has increased in a greater 
 ratio than population. 
 
 I have shown you, I think, that the language in 
 which Mr. Malthus has expressed his famous maxim, 
 is ambiguous, and that he himself has applied it to 
 population and to subsistence in different senses. 
 The maxim, in fact, forms two distinct propositions, 
 according to the sense in which the word "ten- 
 dency" is understood. It may mean that man has a 
 physical capacity to reproduce his kind at a more 
 rapid rate than the subsistence on which his life 
 depends can physically be increased. Or it may 
 mean, that in the actual state of things in any given 
 community, or in the world at large, the production 
 of subsistence, subject as it is to checks and dis- 
 turbing causes, may be expected to fall short of that 
 ratio in which population increases, notwithstanding 
 the positive checks by which it also is restrained. 
 
POPULATION. 77 
 
 Now, among the later economical writers who have 
 treated of population, some appear to admit the 
 truth of the former of these propositions, contenting 
 themselves with the denial of the latter. Thus, in 
 the very passage cited from Archbishop Whately, he 
 seems to imply that Mr. Malthus would be well 
 founded in his assertion if he had used the word 
 " tendency " in its first sense only ; i. e. as meaning 
 that " there are in man propensities which, if unre- 
 strained, would increase his numbers beyond the 
 means of subsistence." True, indeed, if the means of 
 subsistence are restrained and man unrestrained ; 
 but how if the propensities of the lower animals and 
 the powers of the vegetable world were "unre- 
 strained " also ? 
 
 Other writers seem to fall into the same view ; 
 that is to say, they conceive of man propagating his 
 race ad libitum, while, subsistence being checked, as 
 it actually is, in all countries, the former would of 
 course outrun the latter. What is this but to com- 
 pare the two powers together under whoUy different 
 conditions ? viz. man, as he might, by physical possi- 
 bility, increase ; food as it may, under actual circum- 
 stances, be expected to increase. I shall endeavour, 
 in subsequent lectures, to show that, applying the 
 term " tendency," either in the one or the other 
 sense, alike to population and to subsistence, the 
 latter is, both in physical capacity, and, by the 
 operation of the laws of social progress, the superior 
 power, and tends to increase in the more rapid ratio 
 of the two. 
 
78 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 In my last lecture, I endeavoured to expose the 
 fallacy involved In the introductory chapter of Mr. 
 Malthus' Essay, in which he attempts to show that 
 the natural increase of population exceeds in an 
 enormous ratio — accumulating in the course of two 
 centuries, in the proportion of 256 to 9 — the natural 
 rate of increase in the materials of subsistence. I 
 pointed out that he arrives at this portentous result 
 by weighing together the two forces of popula- 
 tion and of production under different conditions; 
 putting into the one scale the abstract or potential 
 capacity of human increase — into the other the 
 probable augmentation, under actual circumstances, 
 of the productions of a particular country. I stated 
 my own conviction to be, that a fair comparison 
 between the two forces, either in the abstract, or in 
 the concrete, would negative Mr. Malthus' conclusion, 
 that population is the superior power of the two; 
 that whether we examine the question physically, 
 with reference to their natural capacities of increase, 
 or historically with reference to the respective 
 ■degrees of their actual development in the world, 
 we should find there is no foundation for the alleged 
 tendency of mankind to an excess of numbers 
 relatively to subsistence. In the present lecture 
 
POPULATION. 79 
 
 I propose to enter upon the first branch of the 
 argument, and to show, from a reference to the 
 laws of nature, that an abundant provision has been 
 made by the Creator for the necessities, as well 
 as for the increase, of our race ; a provision contin- 
 gent only upon the condition that we perform the 
 labour of appropriating the supplies prepared for us, 
 and, furthermore, that we conform to those laws 
 which the same power has ordained, and which he 
 has plainly indicated to us, in regard to the multi- 
 plication of our race. 
 
 My argument, on this occasion, will be, in a great 
 measure, founded on analogy ; the application of 
 which, in the present instance, is not likely to be 
 questioned, seeing that the principles which govern 
 the relations of subsistence to fecundity in the case 
 of man are manifestly but an exemplification of those 
 general laws by which, in the system of the world 
 in which we live, all animated existences are regu- 
 lated. Mr. Malthus himself ascribes an equal uni- 
 versality to that principle of superfecundity which 
 his work is intended to support. He sets out with 
 affirming " the constant tendency of all animated life 
 to increase beyond the nourishment provided for its 
 subsistence," and he describes the irrational animals 
 as exerting instinctively the power of increase 
 wherever they have liberty to do so, the super- 
 abundant effects being afterwards repressed by want of 
 room and nourishment."* Now, undoubtedly, if such 
 a tendency as here supposed really exists, it would fur- 
 nish a strong analogical argument in support of the 
 doctrine of human superfecundity. If, to the lower 
 * Pane 3. 
 
80 POPULATION AND CAPITAIi. 
 
 animals, multiplying their kind in simple obedience 
 to a blind instinct, the consequence of that obedience 
 is an excess of numbers to subsistence, followed and 
 chastised by its inevitable correctives, suffering and 
 death, — there would be great reason to infer that Man 
 would enjoy no immunity from the penalties of a 
 law which the reason and foresight that he alone is 
 gifted with, might enable him to anticipate and to 
 guard against. If to the irrational creatures Nature 
 has been niggardly in her gifts, there would be no 
 inconsistency, at least, in her operations, if they 
 manifested the same parsimony towards man. But 
 if an investigation into the laws of the animal 
 economy should lead to an opposite conclusion, — if 
 towards the inferior tribes of creation the care and 
 bounty of nature are alike conspicuous — if the pro- 
 vision for their sustenance and preservation has 
 been studiously secured — if there be apparent in 
 the arrangements of the natural world what Paley 
 calls a " compensatory scheme," — a balance between 
 food and numbers, marvellously devised and upheld, 
 so that not one species can be lost, nor even one indi- 
 vidual fall unheeded — then shall we see strong reason 
 to infer that the supposed danger to man from a dis- 
 proportion between his fecundity and his subsistence, 
 is an unfounded apprehension. In this branch of the 
 argument, which I propose now briefly to examine, 
 we find ourselves at one of the many points of 
 contact, highly interesting and instructive, wherever 
 they occur, between political economy and natural 
 theology. The facts which I am about to adduce to 
 illustrate the laws of the former science with respect 
 to population, furnish no less forcible illustrations of 
 
POPULATION. « 1 
 
 the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator and 
 Ruler of the universe. They are instances of de- 
 sign, proving, at the same time, the infinite resources 
 and omnipotent skUl of the great Artificer, and also 
 manifestly directed to the prevention of those very 
 evils which are represented as flowing inevitably 
 from the natural fecundity of animated beings — an 
 object which, as I shall presently show, is perfectly 
 accomplished by these means. 
 
 In adducing the illustrations about to be taken 
 from natural history, a science with which I am 
 myself but slightly conversant, I shall avail myself 
 of the laboiu'S of other writers, who have collected 
 them from the works of naturalists and travellers ; 
 and in particular, I shall borrow largely from the 
 instances given by Mr. Sadler, in the learned and 
 ingenious dissertation subjoined to the second volume 
 of his work on Population. To all who feel an 
 interest in the subject, I would confidently re- 
 commend the perusal of this portion of Mr. Sadler's 
 work. In my present Lecture I can venture to offer 
 no more than a brief summary of a most fertile and 
 comprehensive argument. My limits will compel 
 me to pass over altogether a great number of the 
 familiar examples which natural history afibrds of 
 the sedulous care manifested by Nature for the pre- 
 servation of animated beings by the provision made 
 for their support at various stages of existence. 
 Such, for instance, as the instinct which prompts 
 animals to couple at such periods, varying according 
 to the different species, as will cause parturition to 
 take place at the precise time when the supply of their 
 peculiar food will be most available ; or, in oviparous 
 
 G 
 
82 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 animals, the provision ■which, makes the egg a store- 
 house of food to support the embryo bird during 
 incubation ; or " that constant wonder," as Paley calls 
 it, the lacteal system in viviparous animals, by which, 
 at the precise juncture when it is wanted, at the 
 moment of birth, the female parent is supplied with 
 nourishment for her young ; or, again, the twofold 
 resource provided against the danger which would 
 otherwise threaten the lives of large tribes of creatures 
 during the winter season — for some a state of torpor 
 that supersedes food, for others the marvellous 
 instinct of migration ; or, again, the various and 
 admirable apparatus with which each creature is 
 supplied for securing its appropriate food, or for 
 escaping the dangers it is exposed to ; or the great 
 diversity of appetites * which Nature has implanted 
 in the different spedes — a fact from which I shall 
 draw an important inference hereafter, but which I 
 here advert to, in reference to that economy and 
 distribution of the general fund of food available for 
 the whole animal community which it induces ; or, 
 again, the conversion of death itself into the elements 
 of life — " carrion rendered the fit sustenance of cer- 
 tain species of beasts, birds and insects — the rottmg 
 fibre that of other species, and the entire vegetable 
 kingdom employed in reproducing, and in greater 
 abundance than before, from the dead animal sub- 
 stances, which are the best manure of plants, the 
 materials destined ultimately to form the flesh and 
 
 * Take, as an example of this, the fact mentioned by Paley, 
 that among the numerous kinds of caterpillars, one kind will 
 not touch the leaves of the trees that another feeds on. 
 
POPULATION. 83 
 
 blood of new living organizations." * In all these and 
 other instances, far too numerous to dweU. upon, are 
 evinced the care and forethought of Nature for the 
 sustenance of her innumerable progeny ; her parental 
 solicitude for the safety not only of every species, but 
 of each individual existence ; her nicely balanced cal- 
 culation — for it is to this end that all her diversified 
 resources and arrangements point — between numbers 
 and subsistence. But omitting to dwell on these, 
 I pass on to one great prominent fact adverted to by 
 all naturalists, and which, contemplated in aU its bear- 
 ings and in its great result, appears to me conclusive, 
 as an answer to the assumption that the tendency of 
 the inferior orders of creation is to increase beyond 
 the nourishment provided for them, or, in other 
 words, that the supply of food has not been duly 
 proportioned to the prolificness of each species. 
 
 The fact I refer to is this: that we find through- 
 out the animal kingdom a varying ratio of fecundity ; 
 a graduated scale of increasing prolificness, as we 
 descend from the highest to the lowest species. In 
 the largest, the most long-lived, and the most de- 
 structive kinds, we find comparative sterility ; thus, 
 the elephant produces but one calf at a time, after a 
 gestation of twenty-two to twenty-three months; 
 the lioness. Bacon says, " ordinarily bringeth forth 
 one," though recent travellers have stated, with more 
 accuracy, that though she may have three whelps, 
 not more than one is reared. So birds of prey seldom 
 produce more than two eggs ; the largest species of 
 all, the gir-falcon, is said never to have more than 
 
 * See Westminster Review, No. 102., Article 6. 
 G 2 
 
84 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 one. Again, among fishes of prey, the larger kinds 
 are yiviparous, and increase slowly. The whale 
 generally brings forth one at a birth, sometimes, but 
 rarely, two. 
 
 As we descend in the scale of being, we find a 
 gradually increasing fecundity. Those species which 
 are subject to the most numerous and formidable 
 enemies, or to a large human consmnption, as the hare, 
 the rabbit, the domestic fowl, the cod, the herring, are, 
 in an extraordinary degree, prolific ; and, finally, when 
 we descend to the insect tribes, we find the power of 
 increase stiU more abundantly developed, from the 
 butterfly, which lays 500 eggs, to the aphides, which, 
 " in the space of twenty-four hours, cover the plants 
 in a hop-garden with a population greater than that 
 of Europe ; " and from these downwards still to more 
 roinute and multitudinous forms of insect life im- 
 perceptible to human vision.* 
 
 That this graduated scale of fecundity is not for- 
 tuitous or purposeless, it needs little reflection to 
 perceive. It cannot be doubted, as Paley and 
 numerous other writers have pointed out, that the 
 prolific power in the animal world bears an exact re- 
 lation to another propensity which exists in it — that 
 of destructiveness. The supply of life is adjusted to 
 the consumption of it, resTolting from the operation 
 of that law of prey, which makes one animal the sus- 
 
 * Professor Owea calculates that the ascaris himiricoides, 
 the most common intestinal worm, is capable of producing sixty- 
 four millions of young, and Ehrenberg asserts that the hydatina 
 senta, one of the infusoria, increased in twelve days to sixteen 
 millions, and another species, in four days, to one hundred and 
 seventy billions." — See Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, p.261. 
 
POPULATION. 85 
 
 tenance of another. There is a special adaptation 
 in each instance of the prolific faculty, and of the 
 duration of life also, which is another element in the 
 problem, to the measure of food upon which each 
 species is to live — an arrangement in which any error 
 or miscalculation would produce wide-spread disorder 
 and confusion. 
 
 I do not propose here to oiFer any argument which 
 would be a digression from my main purpose, to vin- 
 dicate that part of the economy of the natural world 
 by which the animals are made to subsist by preying 
 upon one another. The reasons which justify the 
 designs of Providence in this respect have been well 
 explained by Paley, Sadler, and other eminent 
 writers, and I need not repeat them.* One point 
 only I wiU notice in passing, as it is directly con- 
 nected with my present subject, viz., that the dif- 
 ferent ratio of fecundity which subsists in every 
 case between the animal which preys and the animal 
 which is preyed upon, must greatly mitigate to the 
 
 * " To the harmony and happiness of the present system, we 
 know that the existence and proper relative number of these 
 different classes (the carnivorous and herbivorous animals) are 
 indispensable. For in order that the greatest possible number 
 of animals that live on vegetable food should exist, they must 
 possess the power of rapid multiplication, so that there should 
 be born a much larger number than is necessary to people the 
 earth. But if there existed no carnivorous races to keep in 
 check this redundancy of population, the world would soon 
 become so filled with the herbivorous races that famine would 
 be the consequence, and thus a much greater amount of suffer- 
 ing result, than the sudden death inflicted by carnivorous races 
 now produces. To preserve then a proper balance between the 
 different species, is doubtless the object of the creation of the 
 carnivorous." — HitchcocKs Religion of Oeology, p. 220. 
 G 3 
 
86 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 latter the insecurity and suffering which, under other 
 circumstances, might attach to its condition. The 
 most ravenous monsters of the earth, the air, and the 
 deep, as before observed, are among the most sterile of 
 living creatures. But, without reference to the mercy 
 or wisdom of the arrangement, I content myself with 
 a recognition of the fact. It is the law of creation 
 that the stronger tribes prey upon the weaker, these 
 again successively upon the tribes below them, and 
 so on through a series of which the lower stages are 
 removed below the ken of our perception. It results 
 from this law that, so far as regards the sustenance 
 of each one of the innumerable tribes of created 
 things, the whole of animated nature is linked toge- 
 ther in a mutual and necessary chain of dependence. 
 " Let us enlarge ovu: minds," says Mr. Sadler, " as 
 far as we can do so, to the consideration of the 
 Incalculable and aU but infinite number of indivi- 
 duals for which this provision (of adequate subsist- 
 ence) has to be made. . . . The chain of existence 
 which at once connects and sustains all animated 
 beings is seen descending from rank to ranis, and 
 stiU diminishing tiU, at length, it eludes the sight. 
 . . . . The links of this chain, sustained by the 
 hands of the Eternal Artificer, who can enimierate ? 
 As they diminish in magnitude they multiply ia 
 number, stiU augmenting the miracle, tiU they be- 
 come at once innumerable and invisible. Compared 
 with these what are the numbers of the leaves of 
 the forest, or the sands of the ocean ? In ten thou- 
 sand forms they fill the air we breathe ; they cover 
 the earth on which we tread; they saturate the 
 waters of the stream ; they tinge the waves of the 
 
POPULATION. 87 
 
 ocean; they flash like lightning on its shores. A 
 single leaf, as St. Pierre has said, without an hyper- 
 bole, is itself a continent, and a drop of water an 
 ocean to myriads of animated beings infinitely di- 
 versified, and many of them, if we believe our best 
 naturalists, invested with a beauty which Nature 
 rarely lavishes upon her larger oiFspriug; at all 
 events, with an organization as perfectly adapted 
 to their condition as that of the mammoth or the 
 leviathan." * 
 
 I shall not stop to dilate on the grand and sublime 
 ideas which a view of the immensity and perfections 
 of the animated creation is calculated to call forth, 
 nor to weaken, by attempting to embody in language, 
 the conception thus suggested of the stupendous 
 prescience and wisdom unceasingly exerted in the 
 conservation of such a system — a system, it has been 
 weU observed, "involving a comprehensiveness of 
 design, an intricacy of calculation, and a series of 
 anticipations which none could comprehend save Pie 
 who accomplishes them." Adhering closely to the 
 argument which it is my present object to enforce, 
 I will only observe that, viewing this vast connected 
 chain of anunated beings, of which each several species 
 forms one of the mutually dependent links, it is a ne- 
 cessary condition to the continuance of such a scheme 
 that an adjustment between the food and numbers 
 of each respective class of the whole coramunity 
 shoTild be perpetually maintained. A single failure 
 at any part of the series would involve the destruc- 
 tion of some species ^ — -the destruction of one would 
 
 * Sadler, vol. ii. p. 628. 
 G i 
 
88 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 entail, as I shall presently show, the disorder of the 
 whole. The assiduous precautions which Natxire has 
 taken to guard against the extinction of any of her 
 species have been observed upon by most naturalists, 
 and the success of those precautions requires no 
 proof. " Her species," says Paley, " never fail. The 
 provision which was originally made for continuing 
 the replenishment of the world has proved itself to 
 be effectual through a long succession of ages." * 
 
 Now, the fact that this vast and mutually dependent 
 system of animated life is thus constantly upheld 
 and maintained, affords, in my mind, a conclusive 
 disproof of the assertion that there ever is or can be 
 a superfecundity of any tribe of living creatures 
 relatively to the food provided for them. The con- 
 servation of the entire scheme depends upon the 
 exact adjustment of the numbers of each, from the 
 highest to the lowest, to its appropriate fond of sus- 
 tenance. The supposition that any one class should 
 be permitted to multiply in disproportion to the 
 numbers of that class on which it depends for food, 
 involves a contradiction and an impossibility. To 
 predicate of animals which form at the same time 
 the prey of certain species above, and the consumers 
 of other species below them, that their fecundity is 
 too great for their subsistence, is simply to say 
 that the same creatures are at once too numerous and 
 too few. 
 
 But now, let us observe the consequence of any 
 defect in the proportion of food to numbers at any 
 stage in the gradation of animated beings. Of several 
 
 * Natural Theology, p. 121 
 
POPULATION. 89 
 
 tribes of creatures, each in succession depending for 
 food on the species below it — A, B, C, D, E — let 
 us suppose the numbers of one, B, by an improvi- 
 dent miscalculation of Nature, to be unduly increased 
 beyond the food supplied for them. What would be 
 the consequence ? The famished creatures pursue C, 
 their natioraJ prey, with unsparing voracity. The 
 effect is inevitable ; C becomes extinct ; the species 
 is blotted out of the volume of Nature. But the mis- 
 chief by no means ends there ; not only is the suc- 
 ceeding generation of B left to perish with hunger, 
 involving the destruction of A also, but the extermi- 
 nation of C, the natural restraint upon the numbers 
 of D, permits D to miiltiply beyond all proportion to 
 E, their appropriate food. E also becomes extinct, 
 and thus the ruin spreads from one tribe to another, 
 both upwards and downwards, throughout the entire 
 series. So universal would be the havoc consequent 
 upon a single deviation from the balance providen- 
 tially maintained throughout the whole creation be- 
 tween nimibers and sustenance ; the destruction of 
 countless myriads of living creatures, the devastation 
 of the whole face of Nature, would be the conse- 
 quence of any aberration from that perfect equipoise. 
 Nor can it fail to enlarge our conceptions of the 
 vastness and harmony of the system we are now con- 
 sidering, when we observe, that any derangement 
 from the due standard of fecundity, even in the most 
 minute and ephemeral of the insect tribes, of which, 
 perhaps,, our senses refuse to take cognizance, would 
 be just as fatal to the integrity of the chain as if the 
 error occurred in any of the higher links. For the 
 existence of the lowest tribes is as necessary to the 
 
90 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 existence of the higher as is the existence of the 
 highest to that of the lowest. This truth is forcibly 
 •illustrated by the observations of an intelligent 
 and scientific voyager in the arctic regions, Mr. 
 Scoresby, cited in Mr. Sadler's work. In his re- 
 marks on the hydrography of the Polar Seas, Mr. 
 Scoresby says, that "conceiving the discolouration 
 which is there so remarkably prevalent, to proceed 
 from animal matter, he submitted the water to a 
 powerful microscope, and detected medusaa and ani- 
 (ffialcules in numbers, which, as applied to the extent 
 of the waters so impregnated, we may talk about, but 
 which we can comprehend as little as we can infinity. 
 To complete the enumeration of one of the larger of 
 these genera, existing in a couple of square miles, 
 according to a calculation he made, would have 
 required the labour of 80,000 persons from the crea- 
 tion to the present hour. As to the smaller genera, 
 he says, that on computation there must have been 
 in a single drop, and that by no means the most 
 deeply tinged, 26,480." " These animals," he ob- 
 serves, " are not without their evident economy : on 
 their existence possibly depend the beiag and preser- 
 vation of the whole race of mysticete and some other 
 species of cetaceous animals. For the minuter me- 
 dusas apparently afford nourishment to the saepise, 
 actiniae, caneri, helices, and other genera of mollusca 
 and aptera, so abundant in the Greenland sea, while 
 these latter constitute the food of several of the whale- 
 tribe inhabiting the same region, thus producing a 
 dependent chain of animal life, of which one parti- 
 cular link being destroyed, the whole must necessarily 
 perish." I cannot refrain from observing on this 
 
POPULATION. 91 
 
 passage, that if scientific observation thus proves the 
 indissoluble relation of the smallest to the greatest in 
 the mechanism of creation ; the necessity of the im- 
 perceptible medusas to the existence of the gigantic 
 whale, — nay, more, that the almost inconceivable 
 prolificness of this scarcely visible insect is accu- 
 rately computed, as if by rule and measure, to its own 
 sustenance, as well as to that of the coxmtless beings 
 to whom it bears relation in the animal economy, — 
 how closely do the observations drawn from Nature 
 accord with the declaration of the Divine Teacher, 
 that not even a sparrow falls to the ground unheeded 
 by the lluler of the Universe. 
 
 The argument, then, against the alleged tendency 
 of the lower animals to multiply beyond the food 
 prepared for them stands thus. We find a law in 
 existence — the law of the descending scale of animal 
 fecundity — which is manifestly calculated to coun- 
 teract such a tendency, and to regulate the munbers 
 of each species relatively to its appointed food. We 
 infer that such and no other is the design of that law. 
 Moreover, we can foresee the destructive and world- 
 wide confixsion that must ensue if any disproportion 
 should arise in any one instance between the want and 
 the supply. But we see that no such disturbance ever 
 does in fact occur; consequently, we recognise the 
 complete and perfect success of that law, the equipoise 
 constantly maintained by Nature's ordinance — or, as 
 we should rather say, if we ascend from second 
 causes to the first, by the incessant superintending 
 care of Providence — between food and numbers. 
 
 As this argument appears to me to be conclusive 
 of the point at issue, I should rather fear to weaken 
 
92 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 my position than hope to strengthen it by adducing 
 additional illustrationSj which it would be easy to 
 coUectj through the whole field of natural history, to 
 the same effect. 
 
 But, now we come to apply the principle which 
 we have deduced from this brief survey of the animal 
 econpmy to Man — Man to whose use, government, 
 and disposal, as experience and Revelation alike teach 
 us, all the other tribes of created beings throughout 
 this globe have been made subject. Surely, the 
 analogy is strong, and the conclusion irresistible. 
 We may regard man as forming the highest link in 
 that continuous chain of animated existence just 
 spoken of, whereof the lower tribes form the support 
 of those above them, and in this point of view, the 
 due equilibrium of his numbers to his subsistence, is 
 not less needful to the conservation of the entire 
 system than that of any subordinate species. We 
 may also unhesitatingly infer, that if Nature has with 
 such solicitous care and forethought shielded the ex- 
 istence of the inferior creatures, whose manifest use 
 and purpose is to supply the wants of man, she cannot 
 have designed to leave that being, whose support and 
 increase was the final cause of her elaborate contri- 
 vances, inadequately provided for. These considera- 
 tions, of course, do not exclude, but they fall in with, 
 that most forcible argument which has the highest 
 stamp and warrant — ^the argument, h fortiori, fotmded 
 on the pre-eminent dignity and value of man above 
 all the other works of the Divine hand, iq the eyes of 
 the Creator. 
 
 But for proof of the proposition that the means of 
 man's subsistence have been duly proportioned to the 
 
POPULATION. 93 
 
 ratio of his fecundity, we are not left to depend on 
 mere analogies, however cogent they may be thought. 
 A cursory observation of the laws of Nature in the 
 animal and vegetable world, is sufficient to convince 
 us, that if the sustentation of the inferior orders of 
 creation has been amply cared for, much more is the 
 provision for man's subsistence liberal and complete. I 
 shall adduce some few instances, out of many, to show 
 that Nature has been more solicitous to maintain this 
 one genus, comprising, comparatively speaking, a 
 few beings, than she is to support all the rest of her 
 numerous offspring, which we nevertheless see en- 
 joying an ample profusion of the means of existence. 
 In proof of this statement I shall begin by quoting 
 a passage from the author already referred to : — 
 
 " If, respecting other orders of animated beings, 
 severally considered, one only of the kingdoms of 
 Nature, either the vegetable or the animal, and that 
 only in strictly limited parts, is generally afforded to 
 their sustentation, respecting man, each is offered, and 
 offered almost without limitation, for the same pur- 
 pose. If particular tribes are confined to their own 
 elements in their supply of food, each of those ele- 
 ments yields him its tribute of support, and some of 
 them in unlimited quantities. If different climates 
 and seasons are required to produce the means of 
 subsistence to separate divisions of the family of 
 Nature, aU the climates and every season furnish his 
 board with their various and successive stores. If 
 astonishing instincts are impressed upon various 
 animalsj in order to obtain or continue their neces- 
 sary supplies, touching man, the god-like attribute of 
 Reason, as far surpassing instinct as mental percep- 
 
94 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 tion does bodily sensation, instructs him to bend all 
 nature to his purposes, and to provide under all 
 emergencies, for his present and continued sustenta- 
 tion."* 
 
 To which I may perhaps add, that while no other 
 animal in creation possesses the power to add one 
 tittle to the fund of its own subsistence, man is en- 
 abled by the resources of art and culture, to increase 
 to a prodigious degree those productions, not only of 
 the vegetable but even of iiie animal world, on which 
 his existence depends. 
 
 In addition to the broad facts above stated, I 
 will call your attention to several particular provi- 
 sions in the laws of Nature, which appear expressly 
 designed to enlarge the circle of man's supplies, and 
 to fiirnish more certain guarantees against a failure 
 of subsistence. 
 
 First, I win advert to the fact, that man, whose 
 superfecundity is the object of such intense dread to 
 some philosophers, is one of the most sterile of all 
 animals, taMng the longest time to attain maturity, 
 bringing forth, as a general rule, but one at a birth, 
 and after a protracted term of gestation, while the 
 period of prolificness in the female, in proportion to 
 the whole term of life, is shorter than in any other 
 instance. Those animals, on the other hand, which 
 furnish his most palatable and wholesome food, are 
 remarkably prolific, while the species from which his 
 taste revolts, birds and beasts of prey, are universally 
 the least so. " Benigna circa hoc Natural'' says 
 Pliny, " innocua et esculenta animalia faacunda gene- 
 
 * Sadler, vol. ii. p. 670. 
 
POPULATION. 95 
 
 ravit." Herodotus had before made the same remark. 
 I cannot take a better example than that most useful 
 animal the hog, whose flesh, both as it is extremely 
 nutritious and takes salt better than any other, is 
 peculiarly adapted to be stored for food, to be trans- 
 ported to distant parts, and to form the diet of the 
 most numerous classes of society. The fecundity of 
 this animal is notorious. Gilbert White, in the 
 Natural History of Selborne, mentions a sow of his 
 own which he had kept for nearly seventeen years. In 
 that time, he says, " she was allowed, at a moderate 
 computation, to have been the fruitful parent of 300 
 pigs. But a circumstance which is not less remarka- 
 ble with regard to this and to other animals — and 
 the remark might be extended to vegetable produc- 
 tions also — is this, that in their reclaimed state, 
 when bred expressly for the food of man, they be- 
 come much more prolific than in their state of 
 nature. Lord Bacon says, " Creatures which being 
 wild generate but seldom, being tame generate 
 often." Thus the sow, when wild, farrows only once 
 in the year; in a domesticated state, two or three 
 times ; the number of her litter is then also greatly 
 increased. The duck is a remarkable instance of the 
 same law. In fact, as Paley observes, " In domes- 
 ticated animals we find the effect of their fecundity 
 to be that we can always command numbers: we 
 can always have as many of any particular species as 
 we please, or as we can support ; nor do we com- 
 plain of its excess, it beiag so much more easy to 
 regulate abundance than to supply scarcity."* 
 
 * Paley, Nat. Theol., p. 121. 
 
96 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 Again, let us observe an important consequence 
 which results from the herbivorous animals being- 
 those which supply the food of man. Not only are 
 the creatures by which his table is supplied the most 
 prolific of Nature's family, but also they are those 
 which, however they may be increased and multiplied, 
 cause no diminution in the stock of other edible 
 animals. But, more than this, it is by their means 
 that those vegetable productions, which in their 
 natural form, man cannot subsist upon, are converted 
 into nourishment for his use, and thus, not only the 
 " green herb for the service of men," but also " the 
 fodder for the cattle," become through another 
 medium the elements of human sustenance. 
 
 The propensity of animals to migrate, which I 
 have already noticed for another purpose, is again 
 material in reference to this branch of the argument. 
 It is an instinct which belongs not only to birds, 
 but to many species of quadrupeds also; although, 
 from our insular position, we are less familiar with 
 the phenomenon as regards the latter. But it is a 
 well-known characteristic of many varieties of the 
 bos genus, as, for instance, the buffalo and the bo- 
 nassus in their unreclaimed state, as well as of various 
 other species of the larger quadrupeds. I have re- 
 ferred to this peculiar instinct as exemplifying the 
 care of Nature for the subsistence of the animals 
 themselves, and as one of the many expedients by 
 which she secures the preservation of her various 
 dependents. But here, again, although their benefit 
 is the immediate result of the provision in question, 
 it is evident, as in other cases, that the tdtimate 
 object of her solicitude is Man. In an advanced 
 
POPULATION. 97 
 
 state of society and of agriculture, it is true tHat we 
 are less sensible of the value of those supplies which, 
 at particular seasons of the year, are poured in upon 
 us from distant regions in vast profusion. The im- 
 mense variety of products with which art and com- 
 merce have enriched our dietary stores in this country, 
 renders us comparatively indifferent to such boons of 
 Nature as the vast flights of wildfowl which she 
 annually directs to us from her storehouse in the 
 North, or the shoals of fishes which, at other periods, 
 she throws upon our shores. But, in the earlier 
 stages of society, when little progress has been made 
 in the culture of the earth, and the means of human 
 subsistence are limited to a very narrow range of 
 products, we can appreciate the immense importance 
 attached to those extraneous supplies, without which 
 the wandering tribes of hunters, or even the civilised 
 settlers in a new country, might be in danger of 
 perishing by want. In the infancy of the North 
 American plantations, where, as is well known, the 
 early settlers were hard pressed by the difficulty of 
 subsistence, the advent of those vast flights of migra- 
 tory birds of the pigeon tribe, of which we have 
 read such astonishing accounts, was hailed as almost a 
 miraculous interposition of Providence for the pre- 
 servation of human life. In the language of the 
 primitive settlers, these birds were commonly called 
 "the victuallers." The American ornithologist, 
 Wilson, gives us a faint idea of the almost incon- 
 ceivable number of these annual visita.nts. He says 
 that, on calculating, in a manner which he explains, 
 the amount of a single flight of these steering towards 
 the North, in order to supply that less fruitful region 
 
 H 
 
98 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 with Elbundance, he judged them to amount to up- 
 wards of two thousand millions — a number equal to 
 at least a couple of pigeons per head to every man, 
 woman, and child in the universe. Dr. Clarke well 
 compares such visitations of living creatures to the 
 abodes of man, at the time of his most urgent need, to 
 the shower of quails from heaven, which fed the 
 600,000 Israelites in the wilderness ; and he regards 
 the hand of Providence as no less evidently inter- 
 posed in the one case than in the other. 
 
 I shall add one word more with regard to the subser- 
 viency of this marvellous instinct of migration to the 
 necessities of man. Mr. Malthus, in estimating the 
 possible expansion of the means of subsistence, has 
 applied his hypothesis to the case of an island 
 where the extension of cultivation, and consequent 
 increase of subsistence, appear to be circumscribed 
 by a fixed natural boundary. But we shall meet 
 with another proof of Natiire's infinite adaptation to 
 man's wants. In observing how, even Into this " gar- 
 rison," to use the happy expression of Mr. Sadler, 
 she throws her abundant supplies by the two channels 
 of air and sea. By the one, she peoples even our 
 inland waters with innumerable wildfowl ; upon the 
 shores of the other she casts shoals, which no tribute 
 levied by man perceptibly diminishes, of those tribes, 
 at once the most nutritious and prolific of their kind, 
 which the great deep supplies. The prolificness of 
 the American pigeon, which I just now mentioned, 
 is paralleled by that of the herring*, of which such 
 
 * Mr. Kirby, in his Bridgewater Treatise, speaking of the 
 herrings says, " Their shoals consist tif millions of myriads, and 
 are many leagues in width, many fathoms in thickness, and so close 
 
POPULATION. 99 
 
 prodigious shoals are directed to our coasts, furnish- 
 ing employment to thousands, and subsistence to 
 tens of thousands. Most striking, too, in this point 
 of view, is the instance of those kinds of fishes 
 whose organs are adapted either to salt or fresh 
 water, such as the salmon. Impelled by a peculiar 
 instinct to leave the sea, and ascend the rivers, almost 
 to their sources, for the purpose of depositing their 
 spawn, they carry a rich and substantial addition to 
 man's repasts even into the secluded recesses of 
 mountain districts. 
 
 There is yet another feature in the animal eco- 
 nomy which appears to me so conspicuous an instance 
 of that " compensatory scheme " — that providential 
 adjustment of means to the great end — ^the equilibrium 
 of numbets to food throughout the animal creation, 
 and this for the sake of man, and including man, 
 that I cannot forbear touching upon it briefly. I 
 need, perhaps, hardly repeat, that it is no original 
 idea of my own, but is derived from the same source 
 as many other views laid before you in this Lecture. 
 What I now refer to is the office assigned in the 
 economy of creation to those carnivorous animals, in 
 popular language termed " wild beasts," whose place 
 is at the summit of the scale of irrational creatures, 
 before spoken of. In some respects, material to this 
 
 Ihat the fishes touch each other," vol. i. p 113. " In ITonray," 
 it Is added, " twenty millions have been taken at a single fish- 
 ing — there are few years that they do not capture 400,000,000 ; 
 at Gottenburgh and its vicinity, 700,000,000 are annually taken ; 
 but what are these millions to the incredible numbers that go 
 to the share of the English, Dutch, and other European 
 nations."— i5«?. p. 114- 
 
 B2 , 
 
100 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 inquiry, their position on the scene of creation is not 
 unlike ttat of man himself. Like him, they prey 
 upon the subject animals, but are not themselves the 
 appointed food of any other species ; like him, they 
 are the least prolific of animated beings ; like his, 
 their function is that of limiting the otherwise ex- 
 cessive multiplication of the inferior, and especially 
 of the granivorous animals. But one design of 
 Nature, in regard to these two orders of beings, is 
 too evident to be overlooked— their coexistence on 
 the same scene is contrary to her scheme. She has 
 manifested this intention in various ways : first, by 
 the implacable enmity which she has implanted be- 
 tween them, so that an exterminatory warfare is the 
 impulse of each wherever they come together ; se- 
 condly, she has removed all temptation to man to 
 preserve the species; for these creatures are inca-; 
 pable of being domesticated, loathed as food, use- 
 less for service. Accordingly, as experience shows 
 us, they universally disappear before civilisation. 
 As man advances, his savage forerunners and enemies 
 recede.* Let a country, indeed, that has been once 
 civilised, relapse into barbarism and depopulation, 
 
 * " There is something solemn and almost awful in the 
 incessant advance of the great stream of civilisation which in 
 America is continually rolling down from the summit of the 
 Alleghany mountains, and overspreading the boundless forests 
 of the far West. * » * * The wild animals of the forest retire 
 before this incessant advance of civilisation ; by a mysterious 
 instinct or the information of other animals of their race, they 
 become aware of the approach of the great enemy of their 
 tribe; and so far does the alarm penetrate, that they are 
 frequently found to commence their retreat 200 miles in 
 advance of the actual sound of the European hatchet.— ^^Mon 
 
POPULATION. 101 
 
 and tHese species reappear, as we find on the sites 
 of Nineveh and Babylon, the abodes of jackals and 
 hyenas at the present day : but otherwise they 
 gradually become extinct. Such has been the. case 
 with the wolf in our own country, and with most 
 other kinds of wild beasts throughout Europe. The 
 same law is exemplified particularly in the lion. 
 Already he has been driven from many of the 
 countries in which he formerly ranged, and is now 
 confined to two — Africa and the East Indies. In 
 these also, as various travellers assure us, his numbers 
 have become greatly reduced, and are still constantly 
 diminishing. 
 
 Now the inference from all these facts appears to 
 be plain. Providence has ordained the existence of 
 these creatures — necessary links in the animal eco- 
 nomy, and restraints on the superfluous fecundity of 
 other species — to contiuue so long as man, the des- 
 tined head and mainspring of the whole system, is 
 absent from his place of sovereignty, but no longer. 
 Until he, the heir of all creation, appears, or while 
 he is yet in the infancy of his nature, an untutored 
 savage, the equipoise of food and numbers might not 
 be preserved without some provisional check to regu- 
 late the balance. But when man comes in to occupy 
 his assigned dominion over all creatures, then his 
 necessities naturally reduce, or his skill and reason 
 
 on Population, vol. i. p. 546., citing Tooqueville and Reports to 
 Congress. Compare also Deuter., chap. vii. 22. ; where it is 
 said, with reference to the extermination of the Canaanites, 
 " The Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee, by 
 little and little : thou mayest not consume them at once, lest 
 the beasts of the field increase upon thee."^ 
 H 3 
 
102 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 enable him artificially to regtilate, the re-productlon 
 of the inferior tribes. The beasts of the field would 
 then encroach upon his supplies) and reap the pro- 
 duce of his industry ; the two together would un- 
 duly press upon those granivorous kinds that serve 
 both of them for food, did not man, by the exercise of 
 his superior gifts, drive his savage competitors from 
 the field. 
 
 I have brought this instance before you because 
 I think it exemplifies, in a striking manner, that 
 principle of adjustment — varying always accord- 
 ing to times and circumstances — which it is my 
 present object to point out as pervading the whole 
 administration of what I may call Nature's fund of 
 sustenance for her animated offspring. We observe 
 her means infinitely various — her expedients subtle 
 and fertile beyond all conception — the details of her 
 mechanism marvellously complex and elaborate — but 
 her results everywhere complete and unfailing. As 
 a heathen philosopher has truly said, " Natura nee 
 abundat nee deficit." She is guilty neither of stint 
 nor waste. 
 
 I must here bring to a close my observations 
 respecting the regulation of one portion of man's 
 appointed food, viz. that which consists of animal sub- 
 stances, and I have left myself no space to dilate 
 upon the capacities of the vegetable kingdom to 
 supply his wants, and the proportion in which the 
 resources thence derived may be made to keep pace 
 with the multiplication of his mmibers. I must 
 reserve to another occasion this part of the argu- 
 ment, to be illustrated by facts showing what is 
 capable of being done in this field of production by 
 
POPULATIOM-. 103 
 
 what has been done. I will not now stop to point 
 out how vast is the physical power of increase ia 
 those vegetable products which appear peculikrly 
 suited to the constitution and nurture of man. Of 
 wheat, for instance, — of which Pliny says, " Tritico 
 nihil est fortilius ; hoc ei Natura trihuit, quoniam eo 
 maximk alebat hominem" — the ratio of increase, under 
 conditions but moderately favourable, is not less than 
 thirty-fold in one year. The author just quoted re- 
 cords that it has been known to yield from 300 to 400 
 grains for one, and, in recent times, an experiment 
 made by Miller in the Botanical Garden at Cam- 
 bridge, to test its extreme capacity of propagation, 
 gave a produce from a single grain of red wheat of 
 22,109 ears, or 566,800 grains. The productiveness 
 of other vegetables, such as the pea, the bean, the 
 potatoe, and the banana, are still more astonishing, 
 Now, if aU the checks on population were with- 
 drawn, Mr. Malthus tells us that man might double 
 his niunbers in twenty-five years. Be it so ; but 
 withdraw also the checks upon production, and man's 
 vegetable food will multiply in the same period many 
 mUlion-fold. And what are these checks ? Simply 
 the deficiency of space, of capital, and of labour. 
 The first is at present unfelt, for not above a tenth 
 part of the earth's available surface is as yet cultivated 
 for food. Of the other checks on production I will 
 say more hereafter ; only observing at present that the 
 supply of the last-named and most essential requisite, 
 labour, is immediately dependent on the increase of 
 population. Human hands are necessary to extract 
 subsistence from the earth, and it would be a strange 
 economy in man to try to limit, by artificial means, 
 
 H 4 
 
104 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 the supply of human hands, for the sake of prevent- 
 ing the concurrent increase of human mouths. For 
 such is the liberal provision made by Nature for man- 
 Mndj that one pair of hands are able always to pro- 
 duce much more than one individual can consume. 
 Out of that surplus produce, in fact, arises all the 
 wealth of nations beyond the mere necessaries of their 
 subsistence. Whatever comforts, luxuries, ornaments, 
 men in civilised society are able to superadd to the 
 satisfaction of their mere physical wants ; — the source 
 of aU the treasures, the capital, nay, even the intel- 
 lectual stores that they accumulate, is to be traced 
 simply to that higher ratio of fecundity in the pro- 
 ductions of the earth than in man himself, which 
 Providence ha,s ordained for the progressive improve- 
 ment of his condition and elevation of his nature. 
 As society advances, so does production more and 
 more run ahead of population. That it is physically 
 capable of so doing, I trust I have now shown some 
 reasons for concluding, It will be my endeavour in 
 subsequent Lectures to show that the same tendency 
 which the laws of Nature indicate, history confirms ; 
 and that in all societies in which civilisation is not 
 moving backwards, the march of numbers waits upon 
 and promotes, but never outstrips, except through the 
 influence of vicious human iastitutions, the develop- 
 ment of the means of subsistence. 
 
105 
 
 LECTUEE V. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 The physical capacity of the substances adapted for 
 man's subsistence, both animal and vegetable, to 
 increase in a ratio far exceeding the most rapid multi- 
 plication of human beings that can naturally take 
 place, has been, I hope, sufficiently evinced. I speak 
 now of the mere abstract power in both cases, on 
 the hypothesis, which never can be realised in fact, 
 that no check or impediment whatever exists to the 
 growth either of population or of production. Prac- 
 tically, we know that the case is very different, both 
 with regard to man and to his food, in every com- 
 munity, and must continue to be so till the end of 
 time. In some societies, the checks upon production, 
 in others, those on population, may operate more 
 forcibly, although it is generally true, that the same 
 causes act concurrently upon both ; for in a healthy 
 state of society, as I have before said, population 
 and production advance hand in hand, and whatever 
 tends to increase wealth, increases numbers, and 
 vice versa. Without dwelling more on this point 
 at present, I will just notice one cause of very great 
 potency, on which Mr. TMalthus has laid considerably 
 
106 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 stress In his exposition of the checks on population, 
 but in a manner calculated, I think, to cause some 
 misconception as to its real effect. Mr. Malthus has 
 spoken of the destruction of human beings consequent 
 on war, as one of those methods by which the 
 natural redundancy of the species is kept in check, 
 and brought down from time to time to the level of 
 the means of subsistence. Now, if it is true that 
 population is thinned by war, it is equally certain 
 that there is no more effectual hindrance to pro- 
 duction. If war is wasteful of life, it is not less 
 wasteful of the means of existence, and of capital, 
 which is the life-blood of industry. If it cuts off so 
 many consumers of the earth's products, in which 
 light Mr. Malthus has chiefly regarded it, — on the 
 other hand, it checks production in a more than 
 equal degree, by turning labour into unproductive 
 channels, by retarding improvements and discouraging 
 accumxdation, to say nothing of the actual devasta- 
 tion and waste of property which generally attend 
 its course. So far as regards the ratio of population 
 to subsistence, we may be assured that, economically 
 speaking, no country gains by war. If a family is 
 deprived, by death, of any of the members by whose 
 exertions it was maintained, though there may be 
 fewer mouths left to feed, it becomes poorer, not 
 richer, by the loss of the hands that laboured. Just 
 so it is with nations. The same repressive checks, 
 especially the check now referred to, — which cut off 
 the members of the community, cut off, both directly 
 and indirectly, the sources of production ; and as it is 
 not the absolute numbers of a community, but its 
 numbers relatively to its products, which determine 
 
POPULATION. 107 
 
 its condition, the impoverishment of a country afflicted 
 by war and similar calamities, proceeds, not merely 
 pari passu, but even in a greater ratio than its 
 depopulation. 
 
 This, however, though a very important con- 
 sideration, is a digression from our course of argu- 
 ment. My object in the present Lecture is to compare, 
 in an existing community, the actual progress of 
 population, subject to such checks as various circum- 
 stances may impose upon it, with that of production, 
 subject to the same impediments. Taking into the 
 account whatever obstacles deficiency of subsistence, 
 war, pestUence, or other checks may oppose to the 
 increase of human beings, on the one side, and what- 
 ever hindrances on the other, want of capital or of 
 labour, war, vicious laws and institutions, or other 
 causes may offer to the progress of wealth, let us 
 endeavour to ascertain to which side, upon the whole, 
 the balance preponderates — whether the tendency 
 of communities, as time goes on, is to find their 
 numbers encroaching more and more upon their food, 
 or their wealth continually getting a-head of their 
 population. 
 
 But the question now stated comes in effect to 
 this : — Is it or is it not the tendency of mankind to 
 advance in civilisation ? Is society, according to the 
 laws which regulate its constitution, progressive or 
 the reverse? Does man, following the ordinary 
 course of his destination, proceed upwards from 
 destitution and want to prosperity and abundance, 
 or in a downward course, commencing with plenty 
 and comfort, and finding, at each successive stage of 
 his social existence, the difficulty of subsistence be- 
 
108 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 coming more severe, and the danger of want more 
 imminent? If Mr. Malthus is right, and if popu- 
 lation has a natural tendency to outrun subsist- 
 ence, then the condition of man in society has 
 a natural tendency to deteriorate — increased num- 
 bers, scantier food, less leisure, harder labour, in- 
 creased self-denial and privations, must be the order 
 of his career. If, on the other hand, production 
 is the superior power of the two, and if increasing 
 population is the effect which foUows, while it is 
 also the cause which stimulates, the increase of 
 wealth, then we may expect to observe, as num- 
 bers multiply, food becoming more abundant and 
 more various, labour lightened by the appliances' 
 of art, the classes raised above the necessity of phy- 
 sical toil more numerous, the superfluities of life 
 multiplied in increased proportion to the mere 
 necessaries. Now, in fact, these latter features con- 
 stitute the very signs and circumstances of civili- 
 sation. The question involved in the Malthusian 
 controversy is, therefore, the very question which I 
 just now propounded as to the tendency of the 
 social system and the natural destination of mankind. 
 It has been contended by the author of the theory 
 we are now considering, and by some of his ad- 
 herents, among whom I may specify Mr. J. S. Mill 
 as one of the most ardent, that the condition of the 
 lower orders of the people in almost all civilised com- 
 munities testifies to the truth of the doctrine of over- 
 population. Thus Mr. Malthus states, in his letter to 
 Mr. Senior, that " there are the strongest reasons to 
 believe that the pressure in question has occasioned 
 premature mortality in every old country with which 
 
POPULATION. 109 
 
 we are acquainted ; " and again, in another passage, 
 he says, "the main part of the question with me 
 relates to the cause of the continued poverty and 
 misery of the labouring classes of society in all old 
 states." Mr. Mill expresses the same idea in more 
 dogmatic terms. He says, "that population has a 
 tendency to increase faster than in most places 
 capital has actually increased, is proved incontest- 
 ably by the condition of the population ia most parts 
 of the globe. In almost all countries the condition 
 of the great body of the people is poor and mise- 
 rable. This would have been impossible if capital 
 had increased faster than population." 
 
 Waiving for the present all question as to the justice 
 of this description of the state of the mass of man- 
 kind in civilised countries, it is obvious that the 
 question with which we are now concerned, turns not 
 on their absolute, but on their relative, condition. 
 Granting that they are, in some sense, poor and 
 miserable, there are degrees even in poverty and 
 misery. But has their condition deteriorated or im~ 
 ■proved with the increase of their numbers ? That is 
 the real point at issue. Mr. Senior has stated the 
 argument on this head with so much force and clear- 
 ness, that I prefer to transcribe his language rather 
 than to express the same ideas in my own: — 
 
 " It is obvious, that if the present state of the 
 world, compared with its state at our earliest records, 
 be one of relative poverty, Mr. Mill's reasoning is 
 unanswerable. If its means of subsistence continue 
 to bear the same proportion to the number of its 
 inhabitants, it is clear that the increase of subsistence 
 and of numbers has been equal. If its means of 
 
110 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 subsistence have increased much more than the num- 
 ber of its inhabitants, it is clear, not only that Mr. 
 Mill's proposition is felse, but that the contrary 
 proposition is true, and that the means of subsist- 
 ence have a natural tendency to increase faster than 
 population. 
 
 "Now what is the picture presented by the earliest 
 records of those nations which are now civilised ? or, 
 what is the same, what is the now state of savage 
 nations ? A state of habitual poverty and occasional 
 famine — a scanty people, but still scantier means 
 of subsistence. Admitting, and it must be admitted, 
 that in almost all countries the great body of the 
 people is poor and miserable, yet, as poverty and 
 misery were their original inheritance, what inference 
 can we draw from the continuance of that misery as 
 to the tendency of their numbers to increase more 
 rapidly than their wealth ? But if a single country 
 can be found in which there is now less poverty than 
 is universal in a savage state, it must be be true that, 
 under the circumstances in which that country has 
 been placed, the means of subsistence have a greater 
 tendency to increase than the population. 
 
 " Now this is the case in every civilised country. 
 Even Ireland, the country most likely to afford 
 an instance, of what Mr. MiU supposes to be the 
 natural course of things, poor and populous as she is, 
 suffers less from want, with her eight millions of 
 people, than when her only inhabitants were a few 
 septs of hunters and fishers. In our own early history, 
 famines, and pestilences, the consequences of famine, 
 constantly recur j at present, though our numbers 
 are tripled and quadrupled, they are unheard of. 
 
POPULATION. Ill 
 
 " If it be conceded," continues Mr. Senior, " that 
 there exists a natural tendency to advance from bar- 
 barism to civilisation, and that the means of subsis- 
 tence are proportionably more abundant in a civilised 
 than in a savage state, and neither of these propo- 
 sitions can be denied, — it must follow that there is 
 a natural tendency in subsistence to increase in a 
 greater ratio than population.*" 
 
 The poverty and misery of the lower classes of man- 
 kind, therefore, on which Mr. Mill relies as " incon- 
 testable proof" of his views, evidently prove nothing 
 to the purpose, unless it can be shown that these 
 classes were originally less poor and miserable than 
 they now are, and have become constantly more 
 and more so as the countries to which thfey belong 
 have become more fully peopled. But all history 
 negatives such a supposition. What these facts, 
 so far as they exist, reaUy do prove, is something 
 quite different; they bear upon the distribution, 
 rather than upon the increase of wealth. There 
 may be societies of which the aggregate iacome is 
 large and constantly increasing, while, from political 
 or economical causes, the labouring class is Ul-em- 
 ployed or underpaid. In many communities, great 
 opulence may frequently be found existing in close 
 neighbourhood with grinding penury. But this 
 unequal distribution of wealth, though in itself a 
 great evil, is a fact which has no relevancy to the 
 point at issue. We are enquiring whether the 
 numbers of a nation have a tendency to increase 
 
 * Lectures on Population, p. 49. 
 
112 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 slower or faster than the sum of its wealth, not into 
 the relative condition of particular classes in it. The 
 language used both by Mr. Malthus and Mr. Mill, 
 makes no exception of our own country ; yet neither 
 of these eminent writers would have denied that Eng- 
 land contains an immense amount of accumulated 
 wealth ; and Mr. Mill, in particular, has dwelt with 
 something like alarm on the prodigious rate of the 
 annual increase of its capital. Depreciate the con- 
 dition of the working classes as you may, this fact 
 at least is unquestionable. But from what source 
 have all those stores been derived, to which for many 
 centuries past, but especially within the present 
 century, such prodigious additions have been made 2 
 Simply, if we go to the root of the matter, from the con- 
 stant and ever-increasing preponderance of subsistence 
 over population. I pointed briefly to this cause in my 
 last Lecture, as the true fountainrhead and seminal 
 pridciple of the wealth of nations — the source from 
 whence all that a community possesses and enjoys 
 beyond the mere requisites of existence have been 
 obtained. Man, in his primitive state, is placed 
 naked and destitute upon the earth, bringing nothing 
 into the world but those mental and physical facul- 
 ties, by the culture and development of which he is 
 enabled, in the course of time, to subject all the 
 powers of Nature to his will, and render the earth, 
 and all that it contains, tributary to his necessities 
 and enjoyments. His earliest efiforts are limited to 
 the acquisition of a bare subsistence; and even thisia 
 scantily and inadequately procured. The poverty and 
 misery of the race are here seen at the lowest point. 
 Population is absolutely very small, but relatively to 
 
POPULATION. 113 
 
 subsistence it is in excess, and the pressure which it 
 occasions is severe. Generations pass away, and 
 numbers njpltiply before attention begins to be 
 paid to any of the wants and desires of our nature, 
 beyond the rudest and coarsest food, raiment and 
 shelter. By degrees, and chiefly through the more 
 sMlful application and slowly-learned economy of 
 labour, a surplus of production above the mere 
 necessary consumption of the cultivators begins to 
 be realised. Noav, in this surplus we behold the 
 nucleus of capital, and the germ of all the embryo 
 wealth of the community. The same causes which 
 originated it, add continually to its amount. The 
 surplus accumulates at compound interest. The 
 productive powers of labour are increased by the ad- 
 vance of art and knowledge ; and every new addition 
 of capital, acting like a more powerful lever in re- 
 moving an impediment, yields a larger return. The 
 food of roots, the clothing of skins, and the rude 
 log hut are gradually discarded for accommodations 
 more ample and refined. The increasing demands of 
 consumers, becoming at once more numerous and 
 less poor, lead to the division of employments, and 
 from division of employments arises exchange. 
 Mechanical inventions are introduced, facilitating the 
 task of industry and greatly increasing its products. 
 This point once reached, the successive stages of 
 advancement become easier and more rapid. Towns 
 are built, affording evidence of Increasing numbers 
 and increasing wealth; for towns are, in their incep- 
 tion, nothing but markets expanded and made per- 
 manent. Roads and bridges are gradually formed, 
 and afford the means for interchange between dif- 
 
 I 
 
114 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 ferent localities. Forests and swamps disappear ; tlie 
 natural fertility of their sites, when cleared and 
 drained, repays a large profit on cultivatign ; and not 
 only adds to the productions of the soil, but also 
 to the health and longevity of the inhabitants. The 
 desires of man, as well as the ability to gratify them; 
 increase with every addition made to the wealth and 
 numbers of the community. Villages become towns, 
 and towns expand into cities. Meanwhile not only is 
 the surface of the earth made more and more fruitfiilby 
 improved implements, by more skilftd culture, and by 
 the application of manure, but its bowels are ransacked 
 for their hidden stores, and the lime, the clay, the 
 coal, and the various metallic ores which they contain 
 are made instrumental to the useful and ornamental 
 arts of life. The use of money supersedes barter, 
 and the traffic of commodities between neighbouring 
 villages gradually swells into a trade, first domestic 
 then foreign, of which the channels are gradually 
 widened, the communications improved, and the ob- 
 jects more diversified. All this while, at every fresh 
 stage of the development thus indicated, the concur- 
 rence of three prominent features is observable. 
 First, increase of population. Without this there could 
 have been neither the increased production which 
 has demanded so many more hands, nor the con- 
 sumption which has furnished such constant fuel to 
 their industry. Secondly, an improved supply of the 
 necessaries of life. More and better food is yielded 
 in return for the better-directed industry employed 
 upon the soil; famines and scasrcities, the frequent 
 scourge of savage life, have ceased or become rare. 
 Thirdly, the accumulation of capital. A larger 
 
POPULATION. 115 
 
 saving is every year set apart, from the stock of 
 annual products, to be again employed in repro- 
 ductive operations; whUe, concurrently with this, 
 there is also a constant increase of that portion of 
 the sxirplus produce which is not destined to be so 
 employed ; but which is expended in luxuries, jn ob- 
 jects of taste or art, and in the thousand iadulgences 
 in which those who have enough and to spare are 
 accustomed to expend their superfluous wealth. 
 
 I have thus briefly traced what I believe to be the 
 natural stages in the progress of a community, exclu- 
 sively of those disturbing causes which occasionally 
 occur to retard its advancement from barbarism and 
 poverty to civilisation and opulence. 
 
 Now, I repeat, that every item in the catalogue 
 of wealth thus enumerated is due to the natural 
 ascendancy of the force of production over the force 
 of population. It can have emanated from no other 
 source. The primitive possessors of the country 
 were destitute of all things. The earth has been 
 the source of all the wealth which has accumulated 
 in the hands of their descendants. Those who have 
 tilled the land must have been fed from the land ; 
 and if its products have sufiiced to maintain those 
 who raised them, and to aiford any margin of 
 surplus value besides, it must have arisen from the 
 inherent property of the soil to sustain all who 
 cultivate it, and to yield a further surplus in addi- 
 tion to their maintenance. And if, while the num- 
 ber of cultivators has gone on increasingjnhis surplus 
 has become greater and greater, and the whole 
 people wealthier, it must follow, that production has 
 a tendency to increase more rapidly than popula/- 
 
116 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 tion, and that the accumulation of wealth which 
 accompanies the progress of society is attributable to 
 this cause. 
 
 But there is another circumstance to which I did 
 not advert, in my imperfect outline of the features of 
 a progressive community, and which appears to me to 
 be all but conclusive of the question we are now con- 
 sidering. In the savage state the acquisition of food, 
 scanty and miserable at the best, is the business of 
 aU the members of the community. The labour of 
 aU the hands, badly as it does this, does nothing else. 
 " Among civilised nations," on the contrary, to quote 
 the words of Mr. Senior, " the cultivation of the land 
 employs only a portion of its inhabitants, and, gene- 
 rally speaking, as a nation increases in wealth, a 
 smaller and smaller proportion,''^ What, then, becomes 
 of the labour of the remaining part of the popula- 
 tion? Set free from the necessity of producing food, 
 they are employed in arts and manufactures, in 
 fabricating articles of luxury and superfluities for 
 the rest of the community ; or they form a class, 
 large and important in proportion to the degree of 
 social progress, who are not employed at aU, but 
 who subsist on the fruits of past labour, or, in other 
 words, live upon the iacome of existing capital. 
 Now, if the theory of the encroachment of numbers 
 upon subsistence were true, we might expect to see, 
 as the inhabitants of a country increase and multiply, 
 all classes, uiider the pressure of population, gradually 
 convergiag%om other employments towards agricul- 
 ture, and striving, by iacreased toil and labour, to 
 
 * Political Economy, p. 39. 
 
POPULATION. 117 
 
 extract subsistence -for their redundant numbers from 
 the soil. It is needless to say, that in every weU- 
 peopled country in which civilisation is not retro- 
 grading, we witness exactly the opposite phenomenon. 
 We find a smaller proportion of the people employed 
 in tiUage, a larger proportion living on their means, and 
 a more marked determination of the labouring classes 
 towards manufactures. The products necessary to 
 feed the whole society are raised with less labour 
 and by fewer hands; in other words, the facility" of 
 subsistence is increased in proportion to the increasing 
 density of the population. I shall confirm this state- 
 ment by some statistical details respecting a country 
 which, of all others, might have been expected, if the 
 Malthusian theory were sound, to aiFord the most 
 striking illustration of its truth. Mr. Malthus, and 
 the disciples of his school, unite in representing the 
 supposed pressure of population against food as in- 
 creasing in intensity in direct proportion to the popu- 
 lousness of a community. Let us, therefore, examine 
 the circumstances of that country in which the in- 
 habitants are crowded most closely together upon its 
 surface — and that is our own. According to the 
 estimate of Humboldt, the proportions of inhabitants 
 to the square league in several of the principal divi- 
 sions of the world are as follows : — 
 
 United States 
 
 - 58 
 
 Russia in Europe - 
 
 - 345 
 
 Spain - - - . 
 
 - 763 
 
 British India - 
 
 - 810 
 
 China - - - - 
 
 - 1172 
 
 Holland 
 
 - 1330 
 
 I 3 
 
118 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 Germany 
 
 - 1432 
 
 France and Corsica 
 
 - 1790 
 
 Italy - . - . 
 
 - 1967 
 
 British Islands 
 
 - 2120 
 
 England 
 
 - 2524 
 
 England, therefore, is the country in which, ac- 
 cording to the theory in question, the pressure of 
 over-population ought be most severe. 
 
 In contradiction to this hypothesis, however, the 
 most authentic reports respecting the progress of 
 population and production in Great Britain establish 
 these facts. During the first half of the present 
 century the population has very nearly doubled 
 itself*, having increased from 10,917,433 in 1801 
 to 21,721,967, according to the census of 1851. Yet, 
 notwithstanding this rapid increase of numbers, the 
 aggregate of produce raised from the soil has increased 
 in a still greater ratio than the population.f Direct 
 evidence of the actual quantity of home produce, un- 
 fortunately, does not exist ; but a tolerable estimate 
 of it may be formed from various authentic data. 
 
 * Exactly to double itself, it would require, according to the 
 Commissioners of the recent Census, 52-5 years. " The increase 
 of population in the half of this century nearly equals the in- 
 crease in all preceding ages, and the addition in the ten years, 
 1841 — 1851, exceeds the increase in the last^^ years of the 
 18th century." — See Census Report. 
 
 * The Commissioners of the Census of 1851 pronounce con- 
 fidently on this point. They say, " The quantity of produce, 
 either consisting of, or exchangeable for, the conveniences, 
 elegances, and necessaries of life has, in the mass, largely 
 increased and is increasing at a more rapid rate than the popu- 
 lation." — Report on the Census. 
 
POPULATION. 119 
 
 In the first place, it is evident that if the popu- 
 lation has been doubled, the means of subsistence must 
 have been doubled also ; unless it be the fact either 
 that the condition of the people in respect to sub- 
 sistence has deterior3,ted, or that subsistence has 
 been increased by importation from abroad. Now, 
 it may be confidently stated, that the people of Great 
 Britain are not worse, but better, fed than they were 
 fed fifty years ago. The quality of their food has 
 improved. The use of wheaten bread has become 
 almost universal ; whereas, in the earlier period, oats 
 and rye were largely consumed. They enjoy also a 
 greater abundance, as well as a better quality of 
 food, to say nothing of other accommodations. Mr. 
 McCuUoch, in his Statistics of the British Empire, 
 says : — " There can be no manner of doubt that, 
 speaking generally, the bulk of the population con- 
 sume at this moment more corn, and, particularly 
 wheat, than at any former period . . . fully 
 ten times more wheat is consumed at present in 
 Scotland than in 1790."* With regard to foreign 
 grain, the importation of it previously to the last ten 
 years was quite inconsiderable. Since 1841 it has 
 been larger, partly by reason of deficient harvests. 
 But Mr. Porter, in his valuable work. The Pro- 
 gress of the Nation, gives a calculation in which 
 full allowance is made for the proportion of the 
 population to which the consumption of the im- 
 ported com may be assigned. The result is this : — 
 Assuming eight bushels of wheat to be the annual 
 consumption for each person, in the years 1801 to 
 
 * Stat. British Empire, p. 581. 
 I 4 
 
120 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 1810, inclusive, the average nximber of persons fed 
 on home-grown wheat was 11,169,779. Forty years 
 later, viz., from 1841 to 1849, the nmnber was 
 17,004,118. Mr. Porter estimates that the con- 
 sumption of wheat, and of other articles of home pro- 
 duce, has increased in at least an equal proportion. 
 My own persuasion is, that his estimate is extremely 
 moderate, and probably within the mark. Now, we 
 are here speaJdng of home produce only ; but it must, 
 of course, be remembered, that all the food consumed, 
 whether home-grown or foreign, obtained in return 
 for exports, is equally produced by the industry of 
 the British population, since it is acquired in ex- 
 change for other products of that industry. I for- 
 bear, because it appears unnecessary, to adduce 
 confirmatory proofs from a variety of sources to the 
 same effect ; such as the decrease of pauperism, the 
 prodigious increase of exports, the vast progress of 
 the public revenue, the amounts of property valued 
 under the present and former income-taxes*, the rapid 
 growth of manufacturing towns, the creation of the 
 railway system, and other marked signs of national 
 progress. I conceive that no well-informed person 
 will question the fact, that the England of twenty- 
 two millions of inhabitants in 1851 produces an 
 
 * The value of real property assessed to the income-tax in 
 1851 was 94,809,106?. for England and Wales, and 10,715,333?. 
 for Scotland. In 1814-15 the value was, for England and 
 Wales, 53,495,368?., and for Scotland, 6,642,995?. In thirty-six 
 years, therefore, the value of that species of property had in- 
 creased 75 per cent. There can be no doubt that the value of 
 personal property has increased in a considerably greater ratio. 
 
POPULATION. 121 
 
 annual income which much more than doubles that 
 of the England of eleven millions in 1801. 
 
 The next material points to be ascertained with 
 reference to our present inquiry are these : — 
 
 1. The extent of land from which the supplies that 
 have fed the population have been raised. 2. The 
 number of hands that have been employed to raise 
 those supplies. 
 
 1. The additional quantity of land which has been 
 enclosed for cultivation during the last half-century 
 amounts to 4,129,777 acres. Now, Mr. Porter esti- 
 mates that, at the beginning of the present century, 
 the cultivated land bore a ratio of 260 acres to every 
 100 of the population. Supposing that the newly- 
 inclosed land were divided amongst the newly-added 
 population, the number of acres it would give for 
 every 100 souls would be only 32. In the Keport 
 on the Census of 1851, it is stated that the de- 
 crease in the proportion of land to each person has 
 been such that, within the last fifty years, the 
 number of acres to each individual has fallen from 
 5*4 to 2*7 acres in Great Britain — from 4 to 2 
 acres in England and Wales. It follows that, sup- 
 posing the consumption per head to have been the 
 same at both periods, the land in Great Britain must 
 have yielded more than twice as much produce at 
 the end of the half-century as it yielded at the 
 beginning. But if their subsistence, instead of being 
 stationary, has improved in quality and amount, then 
 the produce, of course, has much more than doubled. 
 In confirmation of the same conclusion, I may adduce 
 Mr. McCulloch's estimate of the increased produce of 
 corn per acre. At the end of the war, in 1815, he 
 
122 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 computes the yield of wheat in England and Wales 
 to have been about 24 bushels per acre. Thirty 
 years later, in 1846, he computes it to be at least 32 
 bushels ; making an annual increase of a quarter of 
 corn per acre on the 3,800,000 acres supposed to 
 be under wheat.* 
 
 As a further illustration of the increased produc- 
 tiveness of the soil, it appears, from the estimate of 
 the same writer, that the rental of Great Britain, 
 which is stated in 1800 at twenty-two millions 
 and a half, had risen in 1843 to upwards of forty 
 millions sterling. 
 
 The next point — and a most material one to our 
 present argimient — is, that this vast increase in 
 the produce of the land has been yielded in return 
 for a gradually diminishing quantity of agricultural 
 labour. 
 
 In 1811, the number of families employed in agri- 
 culture was 35*2 per cent, of the population; in 
 1821, 33-2 per cent. ; in 1831, 28-2 per cent. In 
 1841, the Census Returns state the individuals, not 
 the families employed. The comparison between 
 1831 and 1841 stands thus: — In 1831, the number 
 of adult males employed in agriculture in Great Bri- 
 tain was 1,243,057; being 31*51 per cent on the 
 population of 16,539,318. In 1841, the number was 
 only 1,207,989 ; being only 25*92 per cent, on the 
 population of 18,720,394. Mr. Porter justly re- 
 marks on the striking fact, that not merely the pro- 
 portion, but the absolute number of persons employed 
 in husbandry had diminished concurrently with an 
 
 * Stat. British Empire, p. 549. 
 
POPULATION. 123 
 
 increase of more than two millions in the total popu- 
 lation to be maintained. To state the same result 
 in another form, it appears, that in 1831 the labour 
 of 1000 men sufficed to provide food for 3174 per- 
 sons. In 1841 the labour of 1000 men supplied 
 3984.* 
 
 Thus we see, that such has been the increased 
 productiveness of the soil concurrently with a dupli- 
 cation in fifty years of the inhabitants of Great 
 Britain, that the labour of a small and decreasing 
 number of husbandmen, forming in 1841 little more 
 than one-fourth of the community, were able to raise 
 food not only for themselves, but for all the com- 
 mercial and manufacturing classes also, in addition 
 to those who are maintained in idleness. 
 
 To illustrate the matter in another point of view, 
 let us suppose that, instead of the limited and de- 
 creasing number of persons now engaged in farming 
 
 * The elaborate classification of the occupations of the 
 people adopted by the Commissioners of the Census of 1851, 
 dividing them into fifteen separate classes, while it is no doubt 
 much more precise than the rough division of agricultural, 
 manufacturing, and trading or commercial, which was thought 
 suflicient at the former enumerations, renders it difficult to 
 make a fair comparison of residts between the present and the 
 prior returns. It is by no means easy to ascertain the corre- 
 spondence with the minute categories of occupations described 
 in the tables of 1851 of the class designated "agricultural" 
 in the former decennial accounts. There are, however, many 
 indications in the late Report which show the continuance of 
 the same tendency as is mentioned in the text. For instance, 
 a survey of the districts in England, where population has 
 decreased in the last ten years, throws additional light upon the 
 progressive transfer of industry from agricultural to manu- 
 facturing and trading operations. 
 
124 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 occupations, tte whole labouring power of the 
 country were so employed. Mr. Senior has formed 
 an estimate of the result upon this hypothesis. " If 
 all were employed," he says, " in providing sub- 
 sistence, and if quantity were their sole object, it is 
 probable, that in ordinary seasons the soil of England, 
 instead of fifteen millions, could feed at least sixty 
 millions of people."* That is to say, in other words, 
 that the food- producing power of the nation has, by 
 gradual stages, reached such a pitchy as now to ex- 
 ceed the consuming power fourfold; and this in a 
 country possessing one of the densest populations in 
 the world, in which, as the Keport upon the last 
 census states, the inhabitants were in 1851 placed on 
 an average only 108 yards apart. What country, so 
 far as mere populousness is concerned, could afford a 
 more favourable illustration of the Malthusian theory 
 than England ? Yet what country furnishes more 
 striking evidence of the tendency of subsistence to 
 outstrip population ? 
 
 That this tendency always exists in a progressive 
 state of society, I hope it requires no farther argu- 
 ment to prove ; in fact, if we analyse the matter, we 
 shall find, that the progress of society in wealth is 
 really nothing else but the continually increased pre- 
 ponderance of subsistence over numbers — of pro- 
 duction over consumption. - One word, however, 
 must be added before I conclude this lecture, by 
 way of qualification to the doctrine here asserted, 
 viz., that this excess in the increase of wealth over 
 numbers always takes place when society is in a pro- 
 
 ■^ Political Economy, p. 39. 
 
POPULATION. 125 
 
 gressive state. Mr. Malthus declines to admit, as an 
 historical fact, that capital has a tendency to increase 
 faster than population; because he conceives that 
 the actual state of the world shows no uniform move- 
 ment in that direction, but a variable and alternating 
 predominance of one or the other power at diiferent 
 epochs and in different communities.* That such an 
 oscillation does take place — ^in other words, that social 
 improvement in some coimtries halts, and that wealth 
 and civilisation are occasionally seen to decline — it is 
 not necessary, and would be useless, to deny. In 
 such instances, undoubtedly, production will be found 
 to languish, and capital to decrease, and, as a certain 
 accompaniment of these symptoms,- population will 
 fall off. StiU, whatever examples may be cited to 
 this effect, it is surely impossible, with the history 
 of Man before us, recollecting what he is in his 
 primitive state, whereunto he has already attained, 
 and in what direction his efforts and aspirations still 
 point, to deny that the tendency of his nature is 
 to advance ia civilisation, not to recede ; that social 
 progress is the instinct of his being, the destiny of 
 his race, and the design of his Creator ; that, although 
 in this progress he may be interrupted for awhile, 
 and even occasionally thrown back, there can be no 
 more doubt about the ultimate aim and goal of his 
 career, than there is as to the tendency of the waves 
 of the ocean in a rising tide. And if such be the 
 law of man's being, in that sense, and as an inevit- 
 able consequence of that very law, it must be the 
 tendency of production to increase in a greater ratio 
 than population. 
 
 * Correspondence with Mr. Seliior. 
 
126 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 The student of political economy can hardly fail to 
 be struck with the close relation that exists between 
 the doctrines of Mr. Malthus on Population, and 
 another theory of considerable celebrity and in- 
 fluence in this country — I mean that of Mr. Ricardo 
 on Rent. I believe it will generally, though, perhaps, 
 not universally, be found that the same minds which 
 accept the one are prepared to assent to the other. 
 In fact, the arguments for both, as I shall presently 
 show, rest on one and the same hypothesis. Into 
 the merits of Mr. Ricardo's doctrine of rent I have 
 entered at some length in a former course of lectures, 
 and I shall now only refer briefly to its leading fea- 
 tures. That eminent writer tarught that cultivation 
 commences always in the most fertile or best situated 
 land ; that every step in the progress of population 
 compels a country to resort successively for sub- 
 sistence to less rich or advantageous soils ; that 
 those inferior soils yield a proportionally less return 
 to labour ; that the produce becomes, consequently, 
 dearer in price, while the rent, which represents the 
 difference between the best and worst lands under 
 cultivation, progressively rises in amount. Again 
 and again he speaks of the necessity under which a 
 community is placed, by the pressure of its increasing 
 
POPULATION. 127 
 
 numbers, to descend lower and lower in the scale of 
 cultivation, and to obtain its needful supplies of food 
 from the earth on harder terms. " The rise of rent," 
 to quote his own words, " is always the effect of the 
 increasing wealth of the country, and of the difficulty 
 of finding food for its augmented population." * Now, 
 precisely the same assumption^ — ^that of the diminish- 
 ing productiveness of the land, as compared with the 
 undiminished power of human fecundity — forms the 
 basis of the Malthusian theory. It is true that the 
 consequences which Mr. Malthus has deduced from 
 the alleged rapidity of increase of population as com- 
 pared with that of subsistence, appalling though they 
 be, falls far short of what might be deduced from an 
 unflinching application of the principles of Eicardo. 
 For Mr. Malthus, while estimating the progress of 
 population in a geometrical ratio, by a doubling of 
 numbers every twenty-five years, has also conceded 
 a capacity of increase in arithmetical progression to 
 the productions of the soil ; in other words, he sup- 
 poses the earth to be capable of yielding an increased 
 quantity of food, equal to its present amount, from 
 twenty-five years to twenty-five years in indefinite 
 succession. Whereas, if the Ricardo theory be 
 true, he was entitled to assume a constantly de- 
 creasing ratio of food to labour, he contents him- 
 self with assuming an equal and uniform, ratio with- 
 out any limit as to time. But both these writers, 
 in effect, deny that it is possible for production to 
 advance at a rate which wUl keep up with, still less 
 outstrip, the march of population. " There can be 
 
 * Ricardo's Works, by McCulloch, p. 49. 
 
128 POPULATION AND CAPITAL, 
 
 no doubt," says a recent French writer, " that the 
 errors and the terrors of these two economists have 
 mutually acted upon and influenced one another. 
 While Eicardo, possessed with the idea of the 
 pressure of population against subsistence, laid down 
 as a principle a progressive increase in the value of 
 food, which is wholly unwarranted by facts, Malthus, 
 on his part, found, in the theory of rent, which he 
 unhesitatingly adopted, a justification for his own 
 exaggerated alarms." * 
 
 It is difficult, I think, to deny that the view which 
 these two theories concurrently hold out of the 
 prospects of society, as civilisation goes on and 
 numbers multiply, is a sad and painful one. Accord- 
 ing to Eicardo, the progress of society — that pro- 
 gress which I have before described as the inevitable ^ 
 destiny of our race — is identified with increased 
 labour, enhanced prices of food, and higher rents; — 
 the landlord absorbing more and more, the labourer 
 appropriating less and less, of the produce of the 
 soil. According to Malthus, the unequal race be- 
 tween population and production can only terminate, 
 unless arrested by a remedy of which he is not san- 
 guine enough to anticipate the success, in the forced 
 reduction of the superabundant numbers of mankind 
 by vice or misery. 
 
 The question, however, is, as I have before stated, not 
 whether the consequences of a system of doctrines be 
 repugnant to our wishes or our feelings, but whether 
 the doctrines themselves be true ; and my present 
 
 * R. de Fontenay, the continuator of Bastiat's unfinished 
 chapter " de la Population," in the Harmonies Economiques. 
 
"POPULATION. 129 
 
 object is to examine into the validity of an assumption 
 which lends so powerful a support to both of the 
 theories just referred to, that, if it be admitted, I do 
 not see how either of them, more especially that 
 of Mr. Malthus, can be escaped from; for, beyond 
 all controversy, population does naturally tend to 
 increase, — faster or slower it matters little, — increase, 
 at some rate or other is the law of our species. Now, 
 if, contrariwise, subsistence naturally tends after a 
 time to diminish, then the two laws are in fatal con- 
 flict — a bankruptcy of nature, more or less deferred, 
 must be the result. How is it possible to escape 
 from this catastrophe — the consequence of two 
 nnecLuaUy matched forces in the social system ? 
 
 The diminishing productiveness of the primary 
 source of all subsistence — the earth — is, then, the 
 position wherein all the strength of that doctrine lies, 
 into which we are now inquiring, and I shall proceed 
 ,to examine the grounds on which this assumption 
 rests. It is supported by the concurrence of many 
 eminent authorities, some of whom I do not venture, 
 without diffidence, to call in question. I shall first 
 quote to you the passages in which the writers 
 referred to have expressed their views on this point. 
 I will begin with Mr. Malthas, who, although, as I 
 have said, he does not in his calculation of the pos- 
 ,sible supplies of food assume a decreasing rate, but 
 only an uniform and non-increasing one, yet has ex- 
 pressed plainly what his own opinion is as to the real 
 law of production. " To assume," he says, " that 
 the produce of the land could be doubled twice in 
 fifty years, would be contrary to all our knowledge 
 of the properties of land. The improvement of the 
 
 K 
 
130 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 barren parts could be a work of time and kbour ; 
 and it must be eyident to those who have the slightest 
 acquaintance with agricultural pursuits, that, in pro- 
 portion as cultiTation extended, the additions that 
 could yearly be made to the former average pro- 
 duce must be gradually and regularly diminishing."* 
 If this be so, the result, as regards the progressive 
 disparity between population and subsistence, must 
 of course be much more severe and accelerated than 
 even his calculation has assumed. 
 
 I shall next refer to the opinion of Mr. Senior, 
 from whom I regret now, as always, to be compelled 
 to differ, more especially as in many points his views 
 on the subject of population as compared with those 
 of the writer last quoted, appear to me to be sound 
 and judicious. Almost at the commencement of his 
 treatise on Political Economy, published in the En- 
 cyclopaedia Metropolitana, Mr. Senior lays it down 
 as a fundamental canon of political economy, that, 
 " agricultural skill remaining the same " (an all-im- 
 portant qualification, by the way), "additional labour 
 employed on the land within' a given district produces 
 a less proportionate return — i. e. the increase of the 
 return is not in proportion to the increase of the 
 labour." t In the section on population in the same 
 work he thus speaks : — 
 
 " We have already stated that, as a general rule, 
 additional labour employed in the cultivation of the 
 land within a given district produces a less propor- 
 tionate return. % And it has appeared that such is 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 9. t !"• 26. 
 
 X "To convince ourselves of this," says Mr. Senior, " it is 
 necessary only to recollect that, if it were false, no land, except 
 
POPtTLATIOSr. 131 
 
 the power of reproduction and duration of life in 
 mankind, that the population of a given district is 
 capable of doubling itself at least every twenty- 
 five years. It is clear, therefore, that the rate at 
 which the production of food is capable of being 
 increased, and that at which population, if un- 
 checked, would increase, are totally different. Every 
 addition made to the quantity of food periodically 
 produced, makes in general a farther periodical 
 addition more difficult. Every addition to the ex- 
 isting population diffuses wider the means of stiU 
 
 the very best, could ever be cultivated : since, if the return 
 from a single farm were to increase in full proportion to any 
 amount of increased labour bestowed on it, the produce of 
 that one farm might feed the whole population of England " 
 (p. 271.). This is ingeniously put, and at first sight looks like a 
 formidable crux ; but it appears to me that Mr. Carey, the Ame- 
 rican economist, has fairly met the point of the argument. 
 " Would it not be as correct to say, that if capital, applied 
 to the manufacture of cotton goods, yielded always a propor- 
 tionate return, a single cotton mill might supply the whole 
 population of .England ? Ko one doubts that, as capital 
 employed in manufactures is increased, the greater is the 
 result ; but no one would suggest that if such were the case, 
 the whole might be applied in one place." (Carey's Prin- 
 ciples of Political Economy, vol. i. p. 147.) For the full 
 development of productive power, whether in agriculture 
 or in manufactures, a certain extent of space is necessary. 
 If the " given district," of which Mr. Senior speaks, be either a 
 single farm or a single factory, no doubt the point at which the 
 increased return ceases to maintain proportion with the in- 
 creased outlay will be soon attained ; not so, if the " given 
 district " be the whole territory of a state ; and it is with such 
 communities that we are here concerned. Can any instance be 
 given of a country in which the natural limit of remunerative 
 outlay on the soil has been, or is near to being, finally reached? 
 
 K 2 
 
132 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 further addition."* In a subsequent passage, Mr. 
 Senior draws an important distiuction in this respect 
 between agricultural and manufacturing industry. 
 Put on a double number of labourers^ he says in 
 effect, to the land, and you will not get, at least 
 to an indefinite extent, a double return, but with 
 manufactures it is otherwise. "Every increase in 
 the number of manufacturing labourers is accom- 
 panied not merely by a corresponding, but by an in- 
 creased productive power." f This difference of 
 results he attributes to " the constantly increasing 
 facility'''' with which the raw materials are worked 
 
 I cannot help remarking on this passage, though it is 
 somewhat anticipating my argument, that " the con- 
 stantly increasing facility" here spoken of obviously 
 refers to improvements in skill and in machinery. 
 It is true, no doubt, that increased skill and better 
 implements make manufacturing labour continually 
 more and more productive. But does not the same 
 truth hold good in regard to agricultural labour also ? 
 The law is laid down that " agricultural skill remain- 
 ing the same^' increased labour will not yield a propor- 
 tionately increased return. Apply the same condition 
 to manufacturing skill ; suppose that likewise to be 
 stationary, and the constantly increasing facility on 
 which the distinction is built wiU disappear. If we are 
 to assume improvement in the one case, it is but just 
 to assume it in the other. Intending to enter more 
 fuUy into this part of the subject hereafter, I now 
 proceed to quote from Mr. John Stuart Mill's 
 Principles of Political Economy. He says, — 
 
 " After a certain, but not very advanced, stage in 
 * P 33. t P 83. I P. 83. 
 
POPULATION. l33 
 
 the progress of agriculture, — as soon, in fact, as 
 men haye applied themselves to cultivation with any 
 energy, and have brought to it any tolerable tools " 
 (a very vague statement this, I must observe), " from 
 that time it is the law of production from the land 
 that ia any given state of agricultural skill and know- 
 ledge " (the same important qualification again), " by 
 mcreasiag the labour, the produce is not increased in 
 an equal degree ; ... or, in other words, every in- 
 crease of produce is obtained by a more than propor- 
 tional increase ia the application of labour to the land." 
 
 " This general law of agricultural industry," says 
 Mr. Mill, " is the most important proposition in political 
 economy/. "Were the law different, nearly all the 
 phenomena of the production and distribution of 
 wealth would be other than they are."* 
 
 After thus stating the law, and admitting that it 
 is subject to occasional exceptions, Mr. MUl adverts 
 to some attempts that have been made to deny its 
 existence altogether. " This principle, however," 
 he says, " has been denied, and experience confi- 
 dently appealed to, in proof that the returns from 
 land are not less, but greater, in an advanced than in 
 an early stage of cultivation, when much capital, 
 than when little, is applied to agriculture. So much 
 so, indeed, that (it is affirmed) the worst land now in 
 cultivation produces as much food per acre, and even 
 as much to a given amount of labour, as our ancestors 
 contrived to extract from the richest soils in Eng- 
 land." 
 
 " It is very possible," he proceeds, " that this may 
 be true ; and even if not true to the letter, to a great 
 
 * Book 1. chap. xii. s. 2. 
 K 3 
 
134 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 extent it certainly is so. Unquestionably a much 
 smaller proportion of the population is now occupied 
 in producing food for the whole than in the early 
 times of our history. This, however, does not prove 
 that the law of which we have been speaking does 
 not exist, but only that there is some antagonising 
 principle at work, capable for a time of making head 
 against the law. Such an agency there is in habitual 
 antagonism to the law of diminishing return from 
 land ; and to the consideration of this we shall now 
 proceed." And what is the agency here adverted to 
 by Mr. Mill? "It is no other," to use his own 
 words, " than the progress of civilisation." Mr. Mill 
 proceeds to specify the various causes intended to 
 be summed up in this comprehensive term " civilisa- 
 tion." Under it he includes the progress of agricul- 
 tural knowledge, sldll, and invention; improved 
 means of communication ; many mechanical improve- 
 ments ; even improvements in manufacturing opera- 
 tions ; for, as he says, " there is no possible improve- 
 ment in the arts of production which does not in one 
 or another mode exercise an antagonistic influence to 
 the law of diminishing return from agricultural 
 labour." " Nor," he adds, " is it only industrial 
 improvements which have this effect. Improve- 
 ments in government, and almost every kind of 
 moral and social advancement, operate in the same 
 manner ; " such, for example, as the abolition of com- 
 mercial restrictions or of vexatious taxes — facilities 
 given for the transfer of property — education and 
 improved intelligence of workmen; indeed, as he 
 expresses it, " there is scarcely any possible meliora- 
 tion of human affairs which would not have a favour- 
 
POPULATION. 135 
 
 able operation, direct or indirect, upon the pro- 
 ductiveness of industry." 
 
 To these latter positions few economists will refuse 
 their assent ; but, with regard to the alleged law of 
 production, heralded forth by this author as ''the 
 most important proposition in political economy," 
 I confess myself unable to understand on what 
 foimdation it is supposed to rest. A law of the 
 social system, if I rightly understand the expres- 
 sion, can only be deduced from ascertained facts ; it 
 is a rule founded on a plurality of instances to the 
 same effect. We are entitled, therefore, to ask. 
 When and where has such a law been found in 
 operation? What period or what country can be 
 referred to in which the rule has been or is now in 
 force ? Certaialy it does not hold good in England, 
 — a country where, undoubtedly, though there is 
 stUl great room for improTcment, " men have applied 
 themselves to cultivation with some energy, and 
 have brought to it some tolerable tools ; " a coun- 
 try, too, in which the peculiar density of its popula- 
 tion operates constantly to bring fresh soils into 
 cultivation. But in England it seems to be ad- 
 mitted, or, at all events, it can be abundantly 
 proved, that if we take any two periods sufficiently 
 distant to afford a fair test, whether 50 or 100, or 
 500 years, the productiveness of the land relatively 
 to the labour employed upon it has progressively 
 become greater and greater. In my last lecture, I 
 cited, from Mr. Senior's work, a statement which 
 has indeed strong claims to the authority of a law — , 
 to the effect, that "among civilised nations the 
 cultivation of the land employs only a portion of the 
 
 K 4 
 
136 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 inhabitants, and, generally speaking, as a nation in- 
 creases in wealth, a smaller and smaller proportion." * 
 I proved also, by statistical details, how remark- 
 ably this principle has been exemplified in the case 
 of this kingdom, where a small and constantly 
 diminishing number of husbandmen has been able 
 to supply food for a rapidly-increasing population. 
 What do these facts prove, if not an increased pro- 
 ductiveness of agricultural industry? The same 
 causes which have produced tbis effect in England 
 operate in the same way in other countries. But 
 the manner in which Mr. MUl accounts for tbe ad- 
 mitted aberrations from his supposed law of pro- 
 duction, presents to my mind still greater difficulties. 
 The law, according to him, is counteracted, or sus- 
 pended, by an agency which is " in habitual anta- 
 gonism" to it; and this agency is, in brief phrase, 
 " the progress of civilisation." Are, then, the only 
 exemplifications of this "law" to be found in coun- 
 tries in which civilisation is not advancing ? Is the 
 law one which never co-exists with a state of social 
 progress? But, surely, it is such a state as this 
 that all our reasonings, as political economists, pre- 
 suppose; — this is "the natural course of things," 
 as Mr. Senior justly says, " for it is the course for 
 which nature has fitted us." Suppose civilisation 
 not advancing, and all those phenomena of the social 
 system which economists have studied and described 
 become reversed — population falls off, combination of 
 labour gives place to isolation, machinery to manua 
 toil, communications are cut off, exchange is im^ 
 
 * Encyc. Metrop. p. 39. 
 
POPUtATION. 137 
 
 peded, and labour of every kind, not only agricul- 
 tural but manufaoturing also, becomes less and less 
 productive. This is, no doubt, true, but this can 
 hardly be what Mr. Mill means by " the most im- 
 portant proposition in political economy," for it is 
 one which operates only in an abnormal state of 
 buman affairs, and gives place to a converse rule 
 whenever the manifest design of Providence and 
 destiny of our species are fulfilled — that is, by the 
 progress of civilisation. It is that progress which, 
 by its manifold effects and influences, direct and 
 indirect, as set forth by Mr. Mill himself, tends to 
 confer, as wealth and numbers multiply, an increasing 
 productiveness both on the soil and on every other 
 field of human industry. This is, indeed, a " law " 
 which, so far as experience hitherto informs us, 
 has never failed to operate, and of which we may^ 
 therefore, reasonably infer, that its beneficent opera- 
 tion is still likely to continue. 
 
 The theory which supposes that man becomes 
 poorer, needier, beset with greater difficulties and 
 harder necessities, as society advances and population 
 becomes concentrated, is, indeed, from first to last, in 
 direct contradiction not only to the true principles of 
 social economy, but to authenticated facts. That the 
 earliest occupants of an unreclaimed coimtry, few in 
 numbers and with a boundless choice of unappro- 
 priated land before them, enjoy an enviable privilege, 
 and can command the maximum of subsistence in 
 return for their labour, is an idea that has nowhere 
 been realised out of Utopia. On the contrary, they 
 are the poorest of human beings, the most destitute 
 of all the comforts and superfluities of life ; they exr 
 
138 POPULATION AND CAPITAI/. 
 
 perience the greatest difficulty in maintaining even 
 a precarious, existence. Famines and scarcities are 
 notoriously the scourges of savage life, and of early 
 settlements even of civilised men. Without capital, 
 implements, organisation, means of exchange, or 
 transport, the mere raw material of the earth is an 
 instrument which men in the primitive stage of 
 society are incapable of turning to profitable account. 
 The richest treasures — vegetable and mineral — which 
 it contains are to them the most inaccessible. When, 
 in process of time, improved skill and labour, aided 
 by mechanical invention, have enabled some pro- 
 vision to be made beyond the demands of pressing 
 physical wants, then they begin to discover that 
 nature yields larger returns to better-directed effijrts, 
 and then every step gained is made the vantage 
 groimd for further acquisitions. By degrees in- 
 creased numbers create an extended market for the 
 products of industry — the division of labour multi- 
 plies its results — roads and means of transport 
 enable fertile lands, formerly inaccessible from dis- 
 tance, to be cultivated with profit — the adoption of 
 improved implements and mechanical contrivances 
 subdues difficulties which had repelled unassisted 
 labour, and unlocks the sources of hidden wealth. 
 We have seen that Mr. Eicardo describes the ex- 
 tension of cultivation from the richer to the poorer 
 soils as the result of necessity, the effect of the 
 pressure of population against food, just as the crew 
 of a ship, accidently increased in numbers, would be 
 put by the commander on reduced rations. But 
 such a representation is negatived by the most no- 
 torious facts in the history of communities, Ex^ 
 
POPULATION. 139 
 
 perience shows that extended cultivation is the effect 
 of industrial enterprise, not of physical necessity — - 
 the work of increasing wealth, not of struggling 
 poverty. It is the command of capital, not the 
 pressure of population — the hope of profit, not the 
 fear of starvation — that induces men to drain, em- 
 bank, and artificially fertilise their lands ; to reclaim 
 fens from the sea and pastures from the heath ; to 
 convert noxious morasses into waving corn-fields ; 
 and to transform sandy wastes, such as were Lord 
 Leicester's estates in Norfolk less than a century 
 ago, into the likeness of a garden ; to open and work 
 quarries of lime and stone; to sink shafts into the 
 bowels of the earth ; to discharge the water from 
 it by powerful engines ; and to extract from it those 
 most precious productions of which their uncivilised 
 ancestors, roaming at large over the surface, neither 
 suspected the existence, nor, if they had, could they 
 have availed themselves of the discovery.* Indeed, 
 the whole theory of Mr. Ricardo on this subject, 
 if it is to be fitted at aU to facts, requires to be 
 read backwards. . It is the reclamations of land, 
 made at a comparatively late period — in the ripened 
 age of a long-settled and populous community, 
 such as those of Lancashire, South Essex, and the Lo- 
 thians— that exhibit the most productive agriculture. 
 It is the achievements of modern skiU and capital 
 that yield the largest returns. There are parts of 
 Lincolnshire in which the drainage of the fens has 
 increased the produce a hundredfold ; yet works of 
 
 ' See these topics forcibly treated in Mr. Carey's work, en- 
 titled " The Past, the Present, and the Future," to which I am 
 indebted for many suggestions on this branch of the subject. 
 
140 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 this description can only be undertaken in a country 
 in which population and capital are both largely de- 
 veloped. Mr. Mill speaks of the " niggardliness of 
 Nature" as the cause of "the penalty attached to over- 
 population." How much more appropriate is the 
 epithet "justissima tellus" of the Roman poet!* Yes, 
 N"ature, most equitable as well as bounteous, propor- 
 tions her rewards to the energy and pertinacity of the 
 effort, and reserves her largest recompense for the 
 conquest of difficulties which the labour of man, ani- 
 mated by combination, sustained by foresight and 
 enlightened by science, can alone enable him to 
 overcome. 
 
 As I am not at present engaged in controverting 
 Mr. Ricardo's theory of rent, except so far as it 
 lends supports to the doctrine of Mr. Malthus on 
 population, I will only briefly add, in reference to 
 the views of the former writer, that the very element 
 of fertility, which he conceives the earlier occupants 
 of a country to monopolise, is one which, as the ex- 
 ample of Belgium, and many parts of our own country 
 prove, is to a very great extent not a primitive con- 
 dition of nature, but the creation of man's matured 
 and skilful industry. And with respect to " advan- 
 tages of situation," there is none attainable by the 
 early inhabitants of a country, however free their 
 choice, which can be compared to such as are afforded 
 by the vicinity of those great centres of population 
 and capital which, ia more senses than one, fertilise 
 and fructify all the land around them, and which 
 invest a few acres in the neighbourhood of a populous 
 modern city with a value greater than formerly be- 
 longed to whole provinces of ancient GaTil or Britain, 
 , Virg. Georg. ii. 460. 
 
POPULATION. 14 1 
 
 It appears, therefore, abundantly clear that Htherto, 
 at all events, the hypothesis that, as society advances 
 in civilisation, agricultural production, or any other 
 kind of production whatever, becomes diminished rela- 
 tively to the labour employed, is in direct opposition 
 to the facts. Mr. Mill's " law " has not yet come 
 into operation. It has been postponed (to say the 
 least) by the " habitual antagonism " of those various 
 causes which he himself enumerates as auxiliaries to 
 production. And if we examine the history of our 
 own civilisation up to its present point, and trace 
 back the steps by which our continual progress in 
 wealth has been achieved, we shall find, perhaps, 
 that more than once, when we seemed to be approach- 
 ing the limit of our actual resources, and might have 
 conceived ourselves to have developed our then-ex- 
 isting means and appliances to the uttermost, a new 
 light has dawned upon our knowledge, a new door has 
 been opened to our efforts, enabling us to throw back 
 even farther than before the barriers to advancement. 
 Discoveries of new lands, new treasures, new appli- 
 cations of the powers of nature, new agents made 
 subservient to man's use, have recruited the fund of 
 our national supplies, and given a fresh imptdse to 
 the springs of industry. Thus, it has come to pass 
 that each generation, though it has peopled the land 
 with additional consumers, has bequeathed at the same 
 time a larger heritage of the means of wealth to its 
 successors. 
 
 The prodigious development of manufacturing pro-' 
 duction which steam-power and the successive im- 
 provements of machinery have brought about in 
 recent times, affords the most familiar and palpable 
 
142 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 evidence o( the progress of wealth, outstripping 
 even the extraordinary growth of population which 
 has resulted from the same cause. But the march of 
 agricultural improvement in this kingdom, within 
 the last half-century, exhibits, if we attentively 
 consider what has been done, scarcely less striking 
 results. I will not go over again the statistical 
 details which were laid before you in a former 
 Lecture, nor will I take up your time by citing 
 passages from works so well known as Porter's 
 Progress of the Nation, or McCulloch's Statistical 
 Account of the British Empire, in proof of the 
 concurrent facts of increased population, still more 
 increased production from the soil, iacreased rent, 
 and increased capital. The works just cited will 
 explain also the nature of those improvements in 
 cultivation to which these marvellous effects are due ; 
 such as the extension of drainage, the introduction 
 of bone-dust, guano, and other manures, the rotation 
 of crops, the use of superior implements, the sub- 
 stitution of machinery for hand labour, and the appli- 
 cation of chemical science to agriculture. Whether 
 the last great change that has supervened, the removal 
 of the Corn Laws, was calculated to injure our agri- 
 culture, or to invigorate it, is a question on which 
 opinions are not yet unanimous. That it will prove 
 beneficial in many ways is my own confident belief; 
 but in either point of view it makes for my argu- 
 ment, because it testifies to the elasticity and vigour 
 of that industry which has rallied so quickly from a 
 severe discouragement. If the loss of protective duties 
 is really to be regarded in that light. 
 
 Are we not, then, justified in the anticipation. 
 
popuLATioir. 143 
 
 founded upon that experience of the past which is 
 our only safe guide in forecasting the future, that, as 
 production has hitherto maintained the lead of popu^ 
 lation, so in like manner new causes wiU be developed 
 in the progress of society, by which the same 
 ascendancy will be maintained ? Or have we reason 
 to conclude that the point has now at last been 
 reached, beyond which it is not given us to make fresh 
 demands upon Nature's boimty without incurring 
 the penalties attached to excess of population ? Is the 
 " law of diminishing productiveness," hitherto, as we 
 have seen by the intervention of special agencies, 
 suspended, now at last about to come into force? 
 Even so our predecessors, at any former period of 
 this country's history, might with equal reason have 
 supposed. 
 
 Thus to argue is, in fact, to base our anticipation of 
 the fiiture not on the past, but on the present ; it is 
 to assimie the existing standard of power and know- 
 lege as the ne plus ultra of human progress ; it is 
 to say, that man has unravelled all the secrets of 
 nature's laws and works which he is ever destined to 
 discover. We cannot believe this, as it appears to 
 me, without doing violence to those convictions which 
 analogy and experience force upon our understand- 
 ing. We cannot help believing, as Mr. Senior has 
 observed, after referring to the use of steam-power, 
 " still," he says, " in its infancy," that probably 
 many other powers of equal efficiency lie still un- 
 discovered among the secrets of nature, or, if known, 
 are stiU unapplied." * Even if we were to assume, 
 that neither steam-power nor any other of the still 
 
 * Political Economy, p. 72. 
 
144 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 latent agencies of chemistry or meclianism, would 
 hereafter be brought to bear on the cultiTation of the 
 eoU ; even with our present attainments of skill and 
 knowledge ; there is yet an immense margin left for 
 extension of production before the capacities of the 
 soil can be exhausted. It has been calculated by 
 competent judges, that if all England and Wales 
 were cultivated, even as weU as jfforthumberland 
 :find Lincolnshire are now, they would yield more 
 than double their present produce. But Northumber- 
 land and Lincolnshire are still behind Belgium ; and 
 ihose very counties of England in which cultivation 
 is most advanced, far from standing still, exhibit a 
 marked tendency to further improvement. And, as 
 I have already said, if it were our interest to devote 
 aU our efforts, to agricultural production alone, (as 
 it is not, because we' can employ our labour more 
 profitably otherwise,) there would be no difficulty in 
 raising corn enough, even with our present mode of 
 farming, to feed at least three times oiur present 
 population. 
 
 But it may be said (and I come now to a view of the 
 •subject which presents itself in a formidable light to 
 some minds), admitting that the world may be stUl 
 •far off from the limit of its possible advancement in 
 wealth and numbers, the progress of society, though it 
 jnay be imdefinable, is not infinite. The difficulty which 
 ^;he law of human increase presents is at best only de- 
 .ferred. Ear removed as it may be — separated from us, 
 perhaps, by a long series of ages — still the time must 
 ^at length arrive when the whole habitable globe, 
 covered with human beings, and cultivated to the 
 utmost pitch of productiveness, will refuse to support 
 
POPULATION. 145 
 
 any fresh additions to the teeming family of man. The 
 earth is bounded in space; but the principle of popula- 
 tion is absolutely unlimited, and is capable, if time be 
 given, of fiUing twenty worlds as easily as of filling one. 
 I shall offer some observations in reference to this 
 view of the subject ; premising, however, in justice 
 to Mr. Malthus, that the objection now stated is no 
 argument of his. The evil represented by him as 
 arising from the superior potency, as he conceived, 
 of population as compared with production, is an 
 actual and existing evil, incident to every period 
 of society. — to a thinly inhabited country as well as 
 to a fully peopled one. He expressly concedes an 
 indefinite capacity of increase to the produce of the 
 earth, though that increase must ever be inadequate, 
 in his opinion, to keep pace with population. With 
 regard to the prospective difficulty arising from the 
 possible replenishment of the world at some distant 
 period to its utmost capabilities, he dismisses it as 
 one which does not practically concern us. " If the 
 difficidty arising from population," he says, " were 
 not likely to arise till the whole earth had been cul- 
 tivated Uke a garden, an event at such a distance 
 might fairly be left to Providence." I do not con- 
 ceive, though some of his opponents appear to have 
 understood him otherwise, that the words just quoted 
 were used by Mr. Malthus with any want of reverence 
 or reflection. He might reasonably, as weU as 
 piously, consider, that when the time arrived, if it 
 ever should arrive, when the world should be found 
 too narrow for its inhabitants, the Power who had 
 called these beings into existence, who had endued 
 them with their physical capacity of increase, and 
 
 L 
 
146 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 had so ordered the laws of his creation up to that 
 time as constantly to enlarge the means of their sub- 
 sistence to the exigency of their wants, would charge 
 Himself by means beyond the scope of human calcu- 
 lation with the deliverance of the race. If it be so, 
 that the duration of this earth on which we live is 
 destined to outlast its power of furnishing the means 
 of life for the stiU-increasing family of man, un- 
 questionably we have no resource but to leave the 
 issue to the wisdom and justice of Omnipotence. 
 But this is no question of political economy — the 
 difficulty which presses us here is one which arises 
 beyond the confines of that science, which undertakes 
 to explain the laws of the social economy, only so 
 long as society is capable of progress. It will not, 
 however, be uninstructive, nor beside the purpose of 
 the present argument, to offer some facts to your 
 consideration, tending to show how vast, even at this 
 age of the world, is the distance interposed between 
 the human race and such a catastrophe as has been 
 just supposed — how immense and practically 
 measureless are the untouched resources of the earth 
 — how small the proportion of the existing race of 
 human creatures to the producible supplies of tood, — 
 and, consequently, how chimerical is the apprehen- 
 sion, that the natural fecundity of mankind tends 
 within any period to which our calculations can ex- 
 tend, to the destruction of the species. 
 
 The existing population of the globe has been 
 estimated by the best authorities at 800 millions.* 
 Such is the extent to which the human race has 
 
 » Malte-Brun. 
 
POPULATION. 147 
 
 multiplied from eight persons in a little more than 
 four thousand years, and it is at yet but thinly 
 dispersed over the earth's surface. The variations 
 which have taken place in the distribution of the 
 inhabitants are more remarkable than the rate of 
 their increase. Some regions that were formerly 
 most densely peopled are now desolate ; while over 
 other countries, which had been for ages vacant or 
 very thinly inhabited, new races of men have spread 
 themselves like a flood. The tide of population, like 
 the course of empire, apparently sets westward. 
 Mr. Malthus' eyes were chiefly bent towards the 
 United States of America, where a combination 
 of favourable causes — a vast expanse of fertile soil 
 and all the arts and appliances of civilisation to start 
 with — had given an unexampled impulse to the fe- 
 cundity of a young, free, and energetic people. If 
 we turn our eyes eastward, we meet with very 
 different phenomena — the decay, and, in some in- 
 stances, the total extinction, of ancient races and 
 nations. If there is a laio of population upon which 
 theories may be constructed, it appears clear, also, 
 that there is a law of depopulation for which these 
 theories are unable to account. What has become 
 of those great branches of the family of man that 
 once occupied the earliest seats of the human race ; 
 whose numbers are reported to have been so vast as 
 almost to stagger our credulity ; ' but, great as they 
 may have been, were still exceeded by the wealth 
 and prosperity of the countries in which they dwelt ? 
 The extent of cultivated land in ancient Egypt, as 
 estimated by D'AnviUe, was smaller in proportion 
 to its recorded population than is the case in our own 
 
148 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 country, one of the most densely peopled in the 
 modern world. Yet Egypt, besides sustaining its 
 millions of inhabitants, was for a long period, as 
 we know, the granary of Rome. The descendants of 
 this ancient and prolific race are now lost, or are 
 uncertainly identified with the occupants of a few 
 insignificant villages. A still more striking instance 
 of the decay of ancient populations is to be seen 
 in the great plain of Mesopotamia, the abode of 
 civilisation and opulence in a still remoter era of the 
 world. We have authority for believing that the 
 vast fertile plains watered by the Euphrates and the 
 Tigris once contained a population equal to that of 
 the whole of Europe at this day. Nineveh, " that 
 exceeding great city of three days' journey," and 
 Babylon, of which Herodotus gives us so particular 
 an account, are both described as far exceeding any 
 modern city in extent and population. The walls of 
 Babylon, according to the generally received ac- 
 counts, extended 12 miles every way, and covered 
 126 miles of surface, or nearly ei^t times the 
 modern city and suburbs of London. The dis- 
 trict, once teeming with wealth and population, in 
 which the most enterprising traveller of the present 
 day has discovered the buried remains of Nineveh, 
 is thus described in his late work : — 
 
 " From the walls of the Castle of Tel Afer I had 
 an uninterrupted view over a vast plain, stretching 
 westward towards the Euphrates, and losing itself in 
 the hazy distance. The ruins of ancient towns and 
 villages rose on all sides ; and as the sun went down 
 I counted above one hundred mounds, throwing their 
 dark and lengthening shadows across the plain. 
 
POPULATION". 149 
 
 These were the remains of Assyrian civilisation 
 and prosperity. Centuries have elapsed since a 
 settled population dwelt in this district of Meso- 
 potamia ; now, not even the tent of the Bedouin 
 could be seen. The whole was a barren, deserted 
 waste." * 
 
 Asia Minor, Italy, SicUy, Greece, present similar 
 instances of countries in which the tide, once 
 so high, has now receded, leaving a population 
 dwindled far below its ancient dimensions. The 
 ancient city of Rome is supposed by Gibbon to 
 have contained at its highest point of prosperity 
 three millions of inhabitants, and he reckons the 
 total population of the empire under Trajan and 
 the Antonines at 120 millions. Such has been 
 the decline of the human race in Asia, that it has 
 been doubted by well-informed writers whether the 
 world at large is actually more populous in this nine- 
 teenth century after Christ than it was in the time of 
 Augustus. David Hume, writing towards the close 
 of the last century, was disposed to think that it 
 was less populous then than in the time of Trajan.j 
 However this may be, it appears certain at least 
 that the number of the human race has not materially 
 increased since that time. 
 
 The present tendency of population in diiferetit 
 countries of the world is exceedingly various. In 
 some parts it is declining, in others almost stationary. 
 In those countries where it is progressive, the rates 
 of its advance are widely different. The Indians of 
 
 * Layard's Nineveh. 
 
 t See Hume's Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Na- 
 tions. 
 
 L 3 
 
150 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 North America are supposed to have amounted to 
 about sixteen millions at the period of our first 
 settlement in that country. They are now estimated 
 at not more than two millions. The same decline 
 is observable in the aboriginal population of many 
 other parts of the world where they have been 
 brought into contact with Europeans. In Turkey the 
 population is so nearly stationary, that the French 
 statist, Moreau de Jonn^s, estimates that at its pre- 
 sent rate it would not double itself in less than 555 
 years. The same author calculates the time necessary 
 for duplication, according to the existing progress 
 in the countries hereafter mentioned, as follows : — 
 
 In Switzerland _ _ _ 227 years 
 
 France - - - - 138 
 
 Spain - - - - 106 
 
 Holland - - - 100 
 
 Germany - - - - 76 
 
 Russia - - - - 43 
 
 England* - - - 43 
 
 United States, deducting the 
 
 contingents furnished by 
 
 immigration - - - 25 
 
 Having thus seen how unequal and irregular the 
 march of population has hitherto been in different 
 regions of the world — how subject to oscillation and 
 reaction — how prone to recede in one quarter while 
 it advances in another — and how completely excep- 
 tional is the instance of that rate of increase (dupli- 
 cation in twenty-five years) on which Mr. Malthus 
 
 * This estimate, as we know by the late census, is consider- 
 ably too high. It should be 51-2. — Vide Census Report^ 
 
POPULATION. 151 
 
 has built his theory of over-population, let us now 
 endeavour to form some notion, though it must of 
 course be vague and inadequate at the best, of the 
 possible capacity of the earth to yield subsistence for 
 any practicable increase of inhabitants. Not more 
 than one-tenth part of its surface is as yet subject to 
 any cultivation at all, and of this a great proportion 
 scarcely deserves the name of cultivation. What 
 number of years must elapse, assuming the popula- 
 tion to be supplied, before its whole surface shall be 
 converted into a garden ? In taking the agriculture 
 of our own country as a standard of comparison, I 
 am assuming no increase at all on its present rate of 
 productiveness, though, as I have already said, the 
 tendency to improvement is unequivocal, and the 
 capacity of these islands to yield, if needed, twice, four 
 times, or even ten times their present supply of food 
 has been aflSrmed by very competent authorities. 
 
 Now, of the 37,630,000 square miles of which the 
 habitable terrestrial globe consists, it is deemed pro- 
 bable, that upwards of 20,000,000 are available for 
 the subsistance of the human race. In the United 
 Kingdom there are 91,000 square miles which now 
 yield food for, we may say, at least twenty-five 
 millions. If, then, the whole cultivable world were 
 made to yield food only in the same ratio as the soil 
 of Grreat Britain and Ireland yields it now, it would 
 maintain, in the manner in which our own people 
 are maintained, a population of 5,550,000,000, being 
 nearly seven times the existing number of mankind. 
 When we consider the vastly superior power of pro- 
 duction of the southern regions of the globe as com 
 pared with our own comparatively sterile soil and 
 
 L 4 
 
152 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 ungenial climate; — that in some countries* the rate 
 of increase of wheat sown is generally seventy-fold, 
 although the half-cleared ground is merely scratched 
 with a branch — ^that the potatoe, according to common 
 computation, wUl support on the same surface three 
 times as many persons as wheat, and the banana, 
 according to Humboldt, no less than twenty-five for 
 one,— it is evident how greatly the estimate just now 
 suggested is within the truth. Malte-Brun has said, 
 that the soil of Europe alone could afford ample food 
 for a thousand nuUions of inhabitants; beingnearlyfive 
 times its present numbers, and more by one-fifth than 
 the whole actual population of the globe. If we 
 look to the western hemisphere, the undeveloped re- 
 sources of nature exhibit a still more vast dispropor- 
 tion to any actual or conceivable demands of man. 
 The basin of the Mississippi contains, according to 
 Chevalier, 1,015,000 square geographical miles; or 
 more than eleven times the . whole surface of the 
 United Kingdom, and nearly seven times the whole 
 kingdom of France. This magnificent valley is 
 throughout almost its whole extent of great fertility 
 and admirably watered. It is no exaggeration to 
 state, that it is capable of yielding corn and cotton 
 sufficient to feed and clothe the whole population of 
 Europe, or that it would maiatain, if peopled in the 
 game proportion as the British Islands, 350,000,000 
 of inhabitants, more than fifteen times the whole 
 existing population of the United States. To South 
 America nature has given a soil and climate which 
 jender its productive powers far greater than the 
 
 * So stated with regai'd to Columbia by General Miller. 
 
POPULATION. 153 
 
 most favoured parts of Europe. The undcYcloped 
 resources of this luxuriant region are almost incal- 
 culable. Humholdt has described in Yiyid terms the 
 unparalleled riches of nature yielded almost spon- 
 taneously in these countries in return for the most 
 wretched culture. North and South America, together, 
 contain at least six million square miles of cultivable 
 land, which, if made productive only to the limited 
 standard of British agriculture at present, would 
 sustain fifteen hundred millions of people, or nearly 
 double the whole present population of the globe. 
 But it is needless to multiply statements of this kind 
 for the purpose of proving to what a prodigious ex- 
 tent the sources of wealth as yet dormant in the 
 bosom of the earth are capable, if need were, of ex- 
 ceeding for an indefinite period the highest imagin- 
 able ratio of human fecundity. I shall close my 
 remarks on this part of the subject by quoting the 
 conclusion of an economist before referred to; a 
 citizen of that nation in which the march of popula- 
 tion, wonderful as it has been, has, however, been 
 completely distanced by the more rapid expansion of 
 production. 
 
 " We possess no means," says Mr. Carey, " of 
 measuring the extent of the powers of the earth. It 
 produces now vastly more than it did a century 
 since, and the close of the present century wUl see 
 it rendered greatly more productive than at present. 
 When we cast our eyes over the surface of the globe, 
 and see how large is the portion that is yet totally 
 unoccupied — how large a portion of that which ap- 
 pears to be occupied is really so only to the extent 
 that its j)Owers can be reached with the worst machi- 
 
154 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 nery, and that the chief part of these powers is as 
 yet unappropriatedj — that twice or thrice, ten, or 
 twenty, or fifty times the population could be sup- 
 ported, even with our present agricultural know- 
 ledge, on land that is now partially cultiyated, and 
 that there is a great extension of production as 
 science is brought to the aid of the agriculturist — 
 we cannot hesitate to admit that the productive power 
 of the land is practically measureless." * 
 
 * Carey, Prin. of Polit. Econ. vol. i. p. 130. 
 
155 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 I OBSERVED in my opening remarks upon Mr. Mal- 
 thus' work, that the main defect of his theory is, 
 that it is entirely one-sided. He has considered the 
 increase of numbers in a community solely with refer- 
 ence to the increase of consumption which it involves, 
 disregarding the natural effect of the same cause upon 
 production. An increase of population is, indeed, as 
 he says, an effect of national prosperity ; but it is a 
 cause also. It is the consequence no doubt, but it is 
 at the same time the prolific source, of the wealth of 
 nations. Its operation in the latter point of view 
 Mr. Malthus has almost wholly overlooked. The ten- 
 dency of the density of population to make industry 
 more productive is a chapter omitted in his essay. 
 Writing under the influence of a panic fear, not al- 
 together Unwarranted by the then circumstances of 
 this country, sinking deeply, as it appeared to be, 
 into a gulf of pauperism, he depicted the principle of 
 human fecundity as a gigantic power encroaching 
 continually with rapid strides upon the limited fund 
 of human subsistence. But he omitted to display 
 the reverse side of the picture, which represents the 
 prolificness of mankind as the great motive power of 
 society — the prime stimulant to industry and enter- 
 prise — the incentive of art and commerce, of inven- 
 
156 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 tion and improvement — the means by which the 
 burthen of toil is lightened and its reward increased 
 — by which the earth is replenished with inhabitants, 
 and the powers of nature are made subservient to 
 human necessities and enjoyments. 
 
 To supply this omission in the theory of population 
 presented by Mr. Malthus and his followers is the main 
 object of my present lecture. I shall endeavour to point 
 out some of the means by which the populousness of 
 a country conduces, cceteris paribus, to promote the 
 prodvictiveness of its industry, causing the fund of 
 subsistence to increase (provided always that the 
 laws of nature are allowed free scope) in a greater 
 ratio than the increase of population. 
 
 The object of all industrial effort, all invention, 
 every application of science to production, is simply 
 this — to diminish the proportion of the effort to the 
 result ; in one word, to do more with less. The eco- 
 nomy of labour is the constant aim, and one of the 
 highest achievements, of civilisation. Of all the 
 methods by which this economy is attainable, by 
 far the most efl&cient is exchange, using that term 
 in its widest sense; comprehending not only the 
 barter of products between man and mail, but also 
 the separation of occupations and the combination 
 of efforts to a common end. That organisation of 
 industry by which, in an advanced state of society, 
 a number of workmen co-operate together, either in 
 one field of labour or in separate fields, to accom- 
 plish a given result, is in effect a complicated, though 
 unconscious, process of exchange. Each workman 
 contributes his peculiar skiU and the dexterity ac- 
 quired by addiction to a single function ; and each 
 
POPULATION. 157 
 
 receives in return a portion of the value of the 
 finished article commensurate to the value of his 
 share in the workmanship. This is as truly in its 
 essence an exchange as the commutation of the fruits 
 of one climate for the fruits of another is so. In 
 this large sense of the term exchange we shall find 
 that the economy of labour effected by it may be 
 assigned chiefly to three heads : 1. The combination 
 of efforts ; 2. The separation of employments ; 3. 
 The participation of those natural agents or peculiar 
 facilities which are variously distributed among dif- 
 ferent communities of men. 
 
 Most persons who take an interest in economical 
 inquiries are familiar with Adam Smith's beautiful 
 exposition of the division of labour, and the won- 
 derful effects of that principle in diminishing the sum 
 of efforts necessary to production. But, with all its 
 merits, the analysis is not so complete as it might be, 
 had the author discriminated more precisely between 
 the two processes conducive to the same end, and 
 which an advanced condition of industry involves, 
 viz. the combination of labour on the one hand, and 
 what he calls the division of labour — in other words, 
 the separation of employments — on the other. Of 
 the latter we cannot have a better instance than his 
 own of the manufacture of a pin, divided, according 
 to the method then practised, into no less than 
 eighteen distinct manual operations, each performed, 
 in the best-conducted factories, by a different work- 
 man.. Dr. Smith mentions that, in a small manu- 
 factory which he had seen, where the work was done, 
 under a less perfect arrangement, by ten hands, the 
 daily production was 48,000 pins, or 4,800 pins per 
 
158 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 man ; whereas, he says, " if they had all wrought 
 separately and independently, they certainly could 
 not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one 
 pin in a day." 
 
 This wonderfiil economy of divided labour is 
 mainly owing to that aptitude and skill which each 
 man acquires from constant and exclusive practice in 
 one particular operation ; of which we may see aston- 
 ishing proofs in almost any manufactory we visit ; 
 partly, also, to the saving of the time which would, 
 otherwise, be wasted in passing from one occupation 
 to another. But the eifects of combined labour in pro- 
 ducing a result far greater than the sum of the same 
 efforts made independently, are not less marvellous 
 than those which are produced by separation of occu- 
 pations. Familiar illustrations of the efficacy of 
 combined labour are those of two greyhounds cours- 
 ing a hare, and two men working together in a saw- 
 pit. In the mechanical part of production we find 
 that two and two do not always make four. There 
 are numerous operations of industry which, if they 
 were not done by several persons acting in concert, 
 could not be done at all. It may safely be asserted, 
 that a single labourer, even giving him his tobls 
 ready-made, could not construct a single mile of rail- 
 way or canal in his whole lifetime; but one hun- 
 dred men might make one hundred miles, and one 
 thousand men would certainly make one thousand 
 miles in a still shorter time. 
 
 The perfection of productive power seems to 
 require two things ; first, that you should be able to 
 distribute each portion of the work requiring the 
 employment of different muscles, the exercise of 
 
POPULATION. 159 
 
 diiFerent mental faculties, the possession of different 
 facilities, among so many distinct sets of producers ; 
 secondly, that you should have the command of the 
 requisite numbers to act in concert in all those 
 numerous operations in which power is multiplied 
 in a ratio greater than that of the added number 
 of hands by the combination of efforts. Thirdly, 
 the economy of labour is enormously promoted 
 by the power which exchange affords of transferring 
 the various natural or artificial productions of dif- 
 ferent localities from one to another. 
 
 The law of Providence, designed to ensure man's 
 dependence on the society and assistance of his 
 fellows, has assigned, in almost infinite variety, dif- 
 ferent instruments and facilities of production to dif- 
 ferent countries in the world, and even to different 
 parts of the same country. In one a warm and 
 genial climate ; in another abundant water-power ; in 
 a third, a rich and teeming soU ; in a fourth, mineral 
 treasures beneath the surface; in a fifth, peculiar 
 facilities for navigation ; in a sixth, an innate dexte- 
 rity and ingenuity in the people^mark out the classes 
 of productions for which each region is best adapted, 
 and which it can at the smallest expenditure of 
 labour furnish to the common consumption. Gene- 
 rally speaking, it is a misapplication of industry, mere 
 waste of time and means, for a community to malie 
 at home what it can obtain from a region more 
 favoured than itself in regard 'to that particular 
 production. Here in England, for instance, we 
 might, by artificial and expensive methods, grow 
 grapes and make wine for ourselves ; but it would be 
 both worse and dearer wine than we could buy from 
 
160 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 France or Spain in exchange for the congenial pro- 
 ducts of our own climate and industry. Such is the 
 principle of commercial intercourse among nations; 
 and each individual community is, in this respect, the 
 pattern of the world at large. The greatest economy 
 of labour, the largest surplus of profit on every 
 operation, result from everything being done where 
 it can be done best^ that is, with the greatest faci- 
 lity, under the most favourable circumstances of local 
 advantage. Within the limits of these islands we 
 / have certain parts distinguished as a^n^uttural coun- 
 ties ; we have the coal and iron districts ; we have the 
 manufacturing districts ; and of .these, again, various 
 subdivisions : the potteries, the clothing districts, the 
 seat of the linen trade, of the silk manufacture, and 
 so forth. As there are no restrictions on internal 
 commerce, it is a matter of course that every article 
 of these various kinds which is ordered for consump- 
 tion is procured, generally speaking, from one of 
 those centres in which the special industry is carried 
 on. 
 
 Now, to procure the article which is thus manu- 
 factured in one locality for a consumer who lives in 
 another, necessarily involves some cost- — -the cost of 
 transit. Every article is naturally cheapest at the 
 place where it is raised or made, as coals at New- 
 castle ; and the value rises with the distance which it 
 has to be conveyed. The cost of conveyance is, then, 
 the great drawback on the benefits of exchange. 
 Many trades might flourish admirably in particular 
 districts for which nature seems to have given them 
 peculiar facilities ; but, as they lie remote from the 
 great centres of the population that requires them. 
 
POPULATION. 161 
 
 the trade is starved, because it cannot bear the cost 
 of carriage. Now, to diminish this obstacle of dis- 
 tance between the producer and his market is the 
 incessant object of endeavour in civilised societies. 
 Improved communications are discovered to be one 
 of the main sources of wealth. Hence, a large 
 proportion of the labour and resources of every 
 advancing community is devoted merely to the im- 
 provement of the machinery of exchange. Roads, 
 railways, canals, post-offices, mints, exchanges, banks, 
 ships, horses, carriages, the professions of bankers, 
 merchants, brokers, factors, carriers, merchant-seamen, 
 and many more, may be regarded as parts of the 
 immense, complicated, and most costly apparatus of 
 exchange. No actual wealth is created, no tangible 
 product results directly from the employment of these 
 engines of commerce ; they furnish us with nothing 
 which we can consume or enjoy ; and the expenditure 
 lavished upon them manifests, in a striking light, 
 the immense profit arising from that interchange of 
 commodities which is able to compensate so vast an 
 outlay. In our own country, within a few years 
 past, we have spent hundreds of millions on railways, 
 in order to enable the commodities of the east, and 
 the west, the north and the south parts of the 
 kingdom to be exchanged for one another, at a 
 lower cost of transit. It is for the sake of approxi- 
 mating the consumers to the producers by what is 
 equivalent to the abridgment of so many mUes of 
 distance, that we have paid this great price, and are 
 gainers by the payment of it. The further we can 
 carry out that approximation of the labourer to the 
 market ; — the nearer we can bring together the two 
 
162 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 ends of the commercial chain, the richer we shall 
 become ; because the cost of transit is all pure loss*, 
 and the more we reduce it, the greater is the net 
 profit upon every exchange, the nearer do we approach 
 to a concentration of all the advantages and facilities 
 which nature has distributed in various proportions 
 among the scattered families of mankind. 
 
 Now, to apply these statements to the subject of 
 population, — labour being the instrument of all 
 wealth, and the wealth of every nation increasing in 
 direct proportion to the effectiveness, or, in other 
 words, the economy of its labour, this economy is 
 incompatible with a scanty population, and is naturally 
 promoted and facilitated by a large and dense one. 
 I have pointed out the three principal modes by 
 which the smallest amount of labour is made to 
 conduce to the largest result of profit. I shall 
 proceed to show how each of these three pregnant 
 sources of wealth requires an ample population, in 
 order to its due development. That powerful lever 
 of industry, the division of employments, is Kmited, 
 as Adam Smith has clearly explained, hy the extent 
 of the market. It depends simply on the measure of 
 the demand whether it will answer or not to carry 
 on the business of production or trade upon that 
 system of separation of employments, which is al- 
 ways, wherever it is practicable, the best economy. 
 It is obvious that what can be done with great ad- 
 Vantage in a large town is impracticable in a small 
 village. Consequently, in the former the division, 
 in the latter the concentration, of occupations, is ob- 
 served to take place. In the crowded and wealthy 
 
 * Except, of course, the profit to the carrier. 
 
POPULATION. l63 
 
 city you find a great variety and subdivision of trades. 
 Many businesses of a cognate kind, such as those of 
 the haberdasher and the linendraper, the watchmaker 
 and the silversmith, the baker and the confectioner, 
 the bookseller and the stationer, are carried on in 
 separate establishments. In a rural village, on the 
 other hand, a single emporium, familiarly known as 
 the shop, supplies all the wants of the little com- 
 munity. "Wearing apparel and household utensils, 
 tea and tobacco, bread and shoes, stationery and 
 drugs, with numberless other articles of the most 
 multifarious kind, form the promiscuous assortment 
 of the village shopkeeper. While his returns from 
 this miscellaneous collection of wares are far less than 
 those of the wealthy town tradesman, whose deal- 
 ings are confined to one sort of commodities, his cus- 
 tomers nevertheless pay at a higher rate than in the 
 larger market, and usually get an inferior article for 
 their money. In like manner, as Adam Smith re- 
 marks, " a country carpenter deals in every sort of 
 work that is made of wood: a country smith in 
 every sort of work that is made of iron. The former 
 is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, 
 and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheelwright, 
 a ploughwright, a cart and waggon maker." Again, 
 " there are some sorts of industry," as the same 
 writer observes, " even of the lowest kind, which can 
 be carried on nowhere but in a great town. A porter, 
 for example, can find employment and subsistence in 
 no other place. A village is by much too narrow a 
 sphere for him; even an ordinary market- town is scarce 
 large enough to aflFord him constant occupation." 
 In a new settlement, for the same reason, the con-f 
 
 H 2 
 
164 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 centration of employments is unavoidable. The agri- 
 cultural colonist, who sets forth as the pioneer of 
 civilisation in the bush, is obliged to combine in 
 himself a wide circle of arts and occupations. To 
 succeed well, he should be at once carpenter, wood- 
 man, builder, farmer, ploughman, shepherd, baker, 
 butcher, farrier, and sometimes shoemaker, tailor, 
 surgeon, and surveyor. He must use a great variety 
 of implements, and turn his hand every day from one 
 occupation to another of a totally different kind. To 
 take one branch only of his employments: he must feU 
 trees with the axe, saw the timber, cart it in his wag- 
 gon, then form it into doors and windows, chairs and 
 tables, or whatever else he may require. In all this 
 there is unavoidably a great waste of time and cost — a 
 multitude of tools required for a small class of opera- 
 tions — a great expenditure of pains in learning many 
 arts, and learning them imperfectly, after all. Sup- 
 pose the same man to emigrate to a settlement 
 which, instead of being newly formed, has made con- 
 siderable advancement, and where the increase of 
 wealth and population has led to the formation of 
 towns, and produced some division of employments. 
 There our agriculturist, instead of having his labour 
 diverted from its proper occupation — the cultivation 
 of his land — to employments for which he is unapt 
 and inexperienced, will find woodcutters who will 
 hew his timber from the forest, waggoners who will 
 transport it to his land, sawyers who will cut it up 
 into planks, carpenters who wUl fashion it for the 
 purposes he requires, receiving, as an equivalent, a 
 part of the produce of his own labour, which, being 
 employed as theirs is, in the work which he has 
 practised and understands, is consequently employed 
 
POPULATION. 165 
 
 to the best advantage. Each separate process is 
 then performed constantly and uninterruptedly, 
 without loss of time or division of attention, with 
 a small number of implements, with an education 
 which, having been special, has been complete, and 
 with a dexterity and aptitude derived from habit, 
 of which the economy is incalculable. 
 
 With the increase of consumers, the division of 
 employments is constantly increasing and displaying 
 itself in new features. We see it exemplified in 
 every department of human occupation ; in the pro- 
 fessions, as well as in the trades and mechanical arts. 
 In a rural district, the joint profession of surgeon 
 and apothecary embraces all the departments of the 
 healing art. In London we have physicians, apothe- 
 caries, surgeons, accoucheurs, oculists, aurists, and 
 so forth. So in England we have chancery bar- 
 risters, common-law barristers, equity draftsmen, 
 special pleaders, solicitors, and attorneys ; each a 
 separate and distinct class of practitioners. But in 
 Ireland the distinction between chancery or common- 
 law barrister does not exist, and in Canada the same 
 individual is barrister and solicitor. The reason of 
 these and other similar diversities in the system of 
 industry is plain. The division of labour is always 
 a saving of labour, and therefore profitable when- 
 ever the circle of consumers is large enough to 
 furnish an independent support for each class of 
 persons forming the several subdivisions of producers. 
 Thus, for instance, the number of purchasers in a 
 wealthy city is sufficient to maintain, with the full 
 profits of trade, a dealer in the single article of 
 books ; nay, even in a single class of books, such as 
 31 a 
 
166 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 books of theology, or classical literature alone. But 
 in a provincial town a bookseller could not carry on 
 his business unless he included aU other descriptions 
 of books in his catalogue, and perhaps stationery 
 also ; while, in a small market-town, the more limited 
 demand for books will not enable him to live unless 
 he combines one or more additional trades — such as 
 those of toys and perfumery — with those of book- 
 seller and stationer. 
 
 It is therefore evidently, as Adam Smith says, 
 the extent of the market which limits the division of 
 labour. A large consuming power is an essential 
 element in the economy of production. The larger 
 the population, cesteris paribus, the more complete the 
 organisation of industry wiU be. As the market 
 expands, occupations wiU become more and more 
 subdivided ; if, on the contrary, the demand con- 
 tracts, they will relapse into their pristine state of 
 concentration. 
 
 2. Of the combination of labour as an advantage 
 depending on the condition of a populous community 
 I need say little. The fact speaks for itself. The 
 great operations and improvements by which the 
 wealth of nations is rapidly increased — the con- 
 struction of railways, canals, piers, breakwaters, and 
 harbours — the drainage and redemption of extensive 
 tracts of land — the intersection or removal of natural 
 obstacles to communication- — can only be accom- 
 plished in the maturity of rich and weU-peopled 
 societies ; because such works require the combined 
 labour of large masses of men on a given point, 
 which, in a small community, it is impossible to 
 procure. For the execution of great works there 
 must be a well-supplied labour-market. It is not 
 
POPULATION. 167 
 
 only the command of a large capital, but the power 
 at any moment to bring together and set in motion 
 a small army of workmen, that enables the great 
 contractors in this country at the present time to 
 undertake, and rapidly to execute, those prodigious 
 operations, which no natural impediments, or " en- 
 gineering difficulties," as they are called, are now 
 capable of arresting. On the other hand, in the 
 Australian colonies, previously to the late gold dis- 
 coveries, population was so thin, and labour conse- 
 quently so dear, that one of the first requisites of 
 civilisation and chief sources of wealth — ^the formation 
 of roads and bridges — had been long obstructed and 
 postponed for no other cause than the want of hands 
 to make them. 
 
 Consider, also, the numerous forms of association, 
 the natural growth of a populous society, but im- 
 possible in a small one, which conduce to the enjoy-: 
 ment of life, to intellectual improvement, to habits of 
 economy and prudence, to the advancement of science; 
 and, by these various means, more or less directly 
 to the increase of national wealth ; such as colleges, 
 museums, libraries, clubs, benefit societies, savings 
 banks, insurance companies, and the like. It is by 
 the power of numbers that these institutions subsist ; 
 it is on the principle that " many a little makes a 
 mickle," that their benefits are founded. 
 
 Lastly, let us see how the increase of population 
 bears upon the production of wealth by means of 
 commercial exchange. To recapitulate briefly what 
 I before stated, the benefit of exchange is in eifect 
 this — that it enables every man to get whatever he 
 wants best and cheapest in return for that which he 
 
 M 4 
 
168 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 does best and cheapest himself. The American gives 
 the Englishman that wliich, for local reasons, has 
 cost in America little labour, but which would cost 
 in England much ; and the Englishman gives in 
 return that which has cost him little labour, but in 
 America could not be had without a great deal. Thus, 
 each gets the advantage of the other's facilities of 
 production, minus only the cost of conveyance. Now 
 what, if we go to the root of the matter, is the object 
 and effect of aU those improvements in the means 
 of communication by which we are incessantly 
 striving to abridge distance, and to bring countries 
 and provinces alongside of each other ? It is simply 
 this — to produce an artificial condensation of popu- 
 lation. It is a good thing, no doubt, to find cus- 
 tomers for our cottons, woollens, and hardware, and 
 dealers in corn and breadstuffs, on the opposite 
 side of the Atlantic. It has become a greater ad- 
 vantage since we have virtually brought the United 
 States within less than half their former distance 
 by means of steam-navigation. It would be better 
 still if we could further reduce, by one-third or one- 
 half, the time and cost of the voyage ; but it would 
 be best of all, — I mean, of course, in a commercial 
 point of view, — if such a thing were possible, to 
 get rid of the marine impediment altogether. The 
 distance which now separates us from our customers 
 is evidently a mercantile loss ; and, under that con- 
 viction, we are striving to diminish it more and more 
 every year by mechanical improvements. Suppose, 
 now, we add, in the course of a century, to our 
 domestic population a number of persons equal in 
 consuming power to that of the American market at 
 present; such au addition will be equivalent, in 
 
POPULATION. 169 
 
 point of national gain, to the accomplishment of the 
 desideratum we are now straining after, viz., to 
 make England and America, commercially, one con- 
 tinent. In this hypothesis I am, of course, assuming 
 that wealth increases in England pari passu with 
 the increase of population. You will observe, that 
 I have all along been speaking of the effect of in- 
 creased populousness on a country, cceteris paribus ; 
 my argument being that, per se, populousness is a 
 cause of wealth. Compare a country having ten mil- 
 lions of people with another having twenty millions 
 on an equal surface, the relation of the numbers to 
 the capital and to the means of subsistence in each 
 case being, at a given time, the same. I say that, 
 starting from this point, with equal advantages in 
 other respects, the more populous country must out- 
 strip the less populous in the accumulation of wealth, 
 because, for the reasons pointed out, the concen- 
 tration of numbers necessarily makes labour more 
 productive ; and, as the larger community affords 
 twice as good a market for the productions of in- 
 dustry, the benefit derived from exchange (in other 
 words, the profits of its trade) wiU be, in a more than 
 twofold proportion, greater than in the other case. 
 In fact, all the gain which the smaller country might 
 derive from trading with a foreign neighbour equally 
 wealthy and populous with itself, is reaped by its 
 more populous rival, minus the deduction of freight, 
 risk, insurance, customs' duties and other expenses 
 of transport. 
 
 In fine, to make the whole world one country, for 
 mercantile purposes, is the great object of commer- 
 cial aspirations. Legislation, founded on short-sighted 
 view.s of national policy, has, indeed, for a long time 
 
170 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 thwarted this object ; but the instinctive interest of 
 the community works incessantly the other way, and 
 must, ultimately, prevail. Now, the object aimed at 
 by these efforts — which is, in fact, to extend the 
 market and to bring consumers and producers into 
 nearer proximity — is realised in each individual 
 community, other things being the same, in propor- 
 tion to the density of its population. 
 
 The truth of the reasonings now submitted to 
 you is confirmed by a review of the condition of 
 society in aU countries, with rare exceptions, both 
 in ancient and modem times. The most populous 
 nations have been almost tmiversally the most pros- 
 perous. The most densely-peopled parts of every 
 country are the richest parts. They are populous, 
 indeed, because they are wealthy ; but they have 
 become wealthy also by means of their populous- 
 ness, A distinction, however, is necessary to be 
 made between the natural and the artificial growth of 
 population. The rule just stated prevails wherever 
 the increase of mankind is left to the free operation 
 of natural causes, apart from the influence of vicious 
 institutions, or abuse of the powers of government. 
 Left free to follow their own interests and inclina- 
 tions, men will marry and multiply in proportion to 
 their means of maintaining a family ; the increase 
 of numbers consequent on their prosperity will give 
 a new stimulus to their productive industry; and 
 thus wealth and numbers wUl proceed pari passu, 
 and wUl react upon each other. But the conse- 
 quences wHl be different if population be stimulated 
 to an unnatural activity by laws founded on mis- 
 taken policy — by premiums held out to early mar- 
 riages in the shape of exemptions or bounties, or 
 
POPULATION. 171 
 
 allowances from 'poor-rates — by laws which ally 
 themselves with the reckless and intemperate pro- 
 pensities of human nature, instead of throwing their 
 influence into the scale of forethought and self-denial. 
 By such a policy, it is not difficult for any government 
 to raise up a redundant population of paupers; a 
 result of which, as I said just now, there appeared to 
 be no small danger in this country at the time when 
 Mr. Malthus wrote. Again, it is in the power of an 
 ignorant and bigoted government like that of China, 
 at the same time, to stimulate marriage by legislative 
 enactments, and by a perversely ingenious and ela- 
 borate system of restrictions to cramp industry, to 
 repress trade, to prohibit mechanical improvements, 
 and cut off intercourse with foreign nations ; and thus, 
 producing an artificial congestion of population, for 
 which there is no natural demand or profitable em- 
 ployment, " 'propter vitam vivendi perdere causas." 
 To such a country increased numbers may well be 
 a source of indigence and weakness instead of 
 opulence and strength. 
 
 Again, nature has provided certain checks or 
 restraints, which I shall have occasion hereafter 
 treat of more at large, upon the ejccessive pro- 
 pensity to multiplication, which depend chiefly for 
 their influence on the independent spirit, the laud- 
 able ambition, and prudent self-respect of the lower 
 orders of society. But when, by the influence of 
 a long series of errors and disasters, by a combina- 
 tion of maladies social and political, a people have 
 become sunk and degraded, reduced in accommoda- 
 tion and subsistence almost to the level of savages, 
 insensible to the shame of mendicancy, to the fear of 
 worse misery, or the hope of a brighter future, then 
 
172 rOPULATION AXD CAPITAL. 
 
 these restraints of -which I speak lose all their in- 
 fluence. There is no dread of embittering the cup of 
 misery, already filled to the brim, by incurring fresh 
 burdens ; there is no position to be lost, while there 
 may be some consolation gained, by having a part- 
 ner in misfortune. Then, without fear or hesita- 
 tion, the ragged, unemployed and destitute peasant 
 marries as soon as he attains to manhood, and begets 
 a generation of starving wretches like himself; and 
 so the process of multiplication and degradation goes 
 on, until the country breaks down under the weight 
 of its pauperism, becomes an eyesore to the world, 
 a scandal to its wealthy neighbours, and an oppro- 
 brium to civilisation. That Ireland presents an 
 economical paradox, a melancholy exception to the 
 ordinary laws which apply to civilised commimities, 
 is a point which I need not labour to prove ; we 
 see in her a country " mannas inter opes inops ; " 
 densely peopled, yet steeped in poverty ; endowed 
 with abundant elements of wealth, which she can- 
 not turn to account ; with capital and labour, which 
 refuse to be combined together ; talent, which has 
 been too often fertile only in mischief, and energy, 
 directed with suicidal perverseness against the laws. 
 I am speaking, however, of Ireland as it has been ; 
 antecedently to the change which has within a very 
 recent period taken place, attended with symptoms 
 which hold out to my apprehension a consoling 
 prospect of better times. In the transfer of a large 
 proportion of the land from a nominal to a substan- 
 tial proprietary, and in the unprecedented emigra- 
 tion now draining off the surplus of a population 
 which the resources of the country were never ade- 
 quate to maintain^ and which was engendered out 
 
rOPULATION. 173 
 
 of Its very wretchedness, I see grounds for sanguine 
 hope that the regeneration of Ireland, so far as it 
 depends on economical causes, has begun. But the 
 redundant population must first be reduced to its 
 natural dimensions, it must be brought into a proper 
 relation with the means of employment and sub- 
 sistence which the country actually affords, before 
 any material improvement can take place. This ad- 
 justment once brought about, the tide which is now 
 ebbing will once more begin to flow ; as industry 
 prospers, and wealth advances, emigration will be 
 checked * ; the natural increase of a thriving people 
 will supply the voids that famine and expatriation 
 have made ; and Ireland may at no distant time sup- 
 port, in usefulness and contentment, a population even 
 greater than that which lately cumbered her sur- 
 face with the burden of their idleness and misery. 
 
 Upon the whole, the conclusions which will be 
 brought home to our minds from a survey of the 
 actual condition of society in the different nations of 
 the world will, I think, be in complete accordance 
 with the principles already stated. In those few 
 countries where a dense population is found living in 
 a state of indigence and misery, such a coexistence 
 of incongruous symptoms is an anomaly which may 
 be accounted for by the presence of adequate po- 
 litical or moral causes. We shall find either that 
 population has been artificially forced, or that the 
 development of wealth is unnaturally checked by 
 
 * Already symptoHis of such a reaction are discernible. 
 Some of the emigrants, it is said, have lately found their way 
 home to Ireland, attracted by the reports of a demand for 
 labour and of higher wages, which had reached them on the 
 pther side of the Atlantic. 
 
174 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 misgovernment or vicious institutions; but, subject 
 to such casual exceptions, the general rule will be 
 this — that indigence pervades a scanty, and comfort a 
 numerous population. Where the people are few 
 the country is poor, and the means of subsistence 
 limited; where the labourers are many the harvest 
 is great, and each man comes in for a larger share 
 of the increased produce. Whether we look to old 
 countries that have become depopulated, such as 
 those which have been the seats of empires now 
 decayed in Asia and Africa, or to new settled colo- 
 nies, such as were the North American plantations 
 200 years since, or the Australian settlements at 
 their first formation, we shall find a handful of men 
 scattered over a wide extent of surface, yet hard 
 pressed by the difficulty of subsistence. If, on the 
 other hand, we turn to those parts of the globe 
 where industry and wealth have attained their 
 highest development, we shall find the opulence of 
 each community bearing generally a direct propor- 
 tion to the density of the population. In England, 
 as I have already pointed out, we have aU but 
 doubled our numbers within the last half-century, 
 while the augmentation of the national capital has 
 certainly advanced in a considerably larger ratio. 
 Throughout the whole of Europe the same law pre- 
 vails. There are two countries, small indeed in 
 extent, but in many respects peculiarly interesting 
 to the political economist — Switzerland and Belgium. 
 Population in both is extremely dense. The general 
 aspect of contentment and comfort through the 
 greater part of Switzerland is delightful to the 
 traveller ; but it is especially striking in those dis- 
 tricts in which the inhabitants are most numerous. 
 
POPULATION. 175 
 
 The environs of Zurich aiFord a striking instance ; a 
 spot which, for the activity of industry and general 
 well-being of the people, is probably not to be sur- 
 passed in the world. This canton contains 175,000 
 souls, or about one to every two acres and three- 
 quarters. 
 
 " Considering how large a proportion of the 
 canton is rock or forest, this population is enormous. 
 In five parishes on the borders of the lake there are 
 8498 souls; and they contain only 6050 acres of 
 arable land, 3407 of pasture, and 698 of vines, being 
 scarcely one acre and a quarter to each individual ; 
 a degree of density surpassing that of any other 
 part of Europe. Yet, there is nowhere to be seen 
 such an extraordinary prevalence of comfort among 
 the peasantry." * 
 
 In Belgium we have the spectacle of a country for 
 which nature has done comparatively little ; the soil 
 in some of the best cultivated parts having been 
 originally a sterile sand, but now made rich and 
 fertile by the indefatigable industry of the people, 
 which has raised its agriculture to an unrivalled 
 pitch of perfection. It is impossible to traverse the 
 plains of Flanders without admiring the garden- 
 like cultivation of the fields, the number and mag- 
 nitude of the cities, the frequency of the villages, 
 the comfortable farms and dwellings of the pea- 
 santry. Yet the population of Flanders amounts 
 to 507 to the square mile ; nearly twice the density 
 of that of Great Britain, and more than twice that 
 of France. Sir A. Alison, in his work on the 
 Principles of Population, draws a just conclusion 
 
 * Alison, Principles of Population, vol. i. p. 419. 
 
176 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 from a survey of the social condition of these two 
 countries. " The progress of population," he says. 
 " affords no reason to anticipate an increase in the 
 misery of the people when it is accompanied by the 
 political advantages which develope the limitations to 
 its advance. Humanity would have no cause to 
 regret an increase of the numbers of the species 
 which should cover the plains of the world with the 
 husbandry of Flanders, or its mountains with the 
 peasantry of Switzerland." * 
 
 To test the principle now under consideration by 
 a survey of the vast and diversified picture which 
 Germany presents, would be a task exceeding my 
 present limits ; but the result of such an inquiry, it 
 may be confidently stated, would confirm the ge- 
 neral conclusion which I have advanced, that popu- 
 lousness and prosperity, scanty numbers and social 
 depression, stand in the double relation of cause and 
 effect to each other. In Prussia both wealth and 
 numbers have lately made extraordinary strides; yet 
 no distress is observable among the people, nor any 
 appearance of redundancy of numbers. Among the 
 many diversities which the various provinces of Ger- 
 many present, none is more striking than that between 
 Saxony and Bavaria. " One would imagine," says 
 Reisebeckfj " that Erzegebirge and the Thurlngian 
 forests are the boundaries placed by nature between 
 light and darkness, riches and poverty, freedom and 
 slavery. Probably, in the whole extent of the 
 world, a stronger contrast cannot be found than 
 between Bavaria and Saxony ; and yet nature has 
 
 ' Alison, vol. i. p. 428. 
 
 t Quoted by Alison, vol. i. p. 493. 
 
POPULATION. 177 
 
 done more for the former than the latter." Saxony 
 is extremely populous ; its numbers amounted, prior 
 to the late partition, to 1,900,000. Bavaria, though 
 far richer by nature, has not much more than half 
 that number; yet the one is marked by comfort, 
 cleanliness, and prosperity, the other and less popu- 
 lous province, by indolence, squalor, extreme igno- 
 rance, and a wretched state of agriculture. 
 
 Spain is a country of which the social features are 
 peculiarly calculated to point the moral of the politi- 
 cal economist, exemplifying as it does, in its present 
 state of sterility and depopulation, the sure effects of 
 despotic government, commercial restrictions, and 
 fiscal abuses. In its blighted industry, stagnant 
 trade, and exhausted treasury, this state holds out an 
 emphatic warning to the rulers and statesmen of all 
 countries. Yet, even in Spain, there are degrees of 
 mismanagement and indigence. The good cultiva- 
 tion, active industry, and comfortable villages, ob- 
 servable in Valencia, which enjoys an immunity from 
 the most oppressive taxes, and in Biscay, where the 
 people possess independent privileges, and the Spanish 
 crown has only a limited domination, form bright 
 spots in the otherwise gloomy picture of the Penin- 
 sula. The most flourishing provinces are likewise 
 the best peopled ; but in Spain, generally, the popu- 
 lation is extremely scanty, being not one-third as 
 great in proportion to the surface as that of England, 
 and less than half as great as that of France. 
 
 To discriminate the relative influence of different 
 causes in producing prosperity or distress, in any 
 community, is no doubt a diflScult task, requiring ex- 
 tensive knowledge and insight, and great caution 
 
 N" 
 
178 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 against hasty inferences. On such a subject it would 
 be extreme presumption to dogmatize. But in refer- 
 ring to countries that are at once populous and 
 flourishing, and in assigning their populousness as a 
 main source of their prosperity, I am not speaking at 
 random, but am ascribing effects to causes of known 
 and intelligible efficacy, if it be true, as few will ven- 
 ture to deny, that the wealth of nations depends on 
 the productiveness of their labour, and this again 
 upon the facilities for combining its action, dividing 
 its functions, and exchanging its products, which a 
 concentrated population alone can afford. We hear 
 often of the dangers of redundant population : there 
 are two senses in which this phrase may be under- 
 stood. "We may conceive a people to be redundant, 
 either because the capabilities of the country to 
 afford subsistence have been exhausted, or because 
 those capabilities have never been developed. In the 
 latter sense, many communities have been afflicted 
 with an excess of numbers ; but we shall find that it 
 is a malady peculiarly incident to those countries that 
 are most thinly peopled in proportion to their surface. 
 In the former sense, I believe over-population to be 
 a chimera. The history of the world furnishes no 
 example of a community in which, while the channels 
 of industry have been unimpeded, and the gifts of 
 Nature have been turned to good account, subsistence 
 has run short, or the increase of wealth has been 
 checked by reason of the excessive numbers of the 
 people. Experience records no such instance in the 
 past, and the laws which regulate the increase of the 
 species, rightly understood, repel any such apprehen- 
 sion for the future. 
 
179 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 I PROPOSE to speak in this Lecture of the " checks " 
 on population. That there are checks which confine 
 the power of human increase within limits more or 
 less restricted, according to the circumstances of each 
 community, admits of no doubt. The physical power 
 of reproduction in the human species is such, that 
 supposing it to operate absolutely without check, it 
 would, in the course of a very few centuries, over- 
 spread with a dense mass of human beings every 
 comer of the habitable earth. In far less time than 
 it has taken to produce the now comparatively thin 
 and scattered population of the globe, the fecundity 
 of mankind must have been arrested by the failure 
 not of subsistence only, but of space. Instead of 
 700 or 800 millions being now the sum total of the 
 race, it would have reached a number which arith- 
 metic has no symbols to express. How are we to 
 account for this prodigious disparity between the 
 physical capacity of increase and the rate at which 
 mankind have actually multiplied? We find on 
 inquiry that there is a law of limitation as weU 
 as of progression in regard to the numbers of our 
 species. There are causes inherent in the consti- 
 tution of society which limit the growth of popula- 
 
 V 2 
 
180 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 tion. These causes Mr. Malthus has divided into 
 two classes, termed by him the " positive " and the 
 " preventive" checks. The positive (or repressive) 
 checks are those which keep down the numbers of 
 an existing population by shortening the term of 
 life ; the preventive checks are those which, by 
 motives addressed to the reason and the will, prevent 
 the reproduction of the species. Man alone of all 
 animated creatures is amenable to this latter check. 
 
 " The positive checks to population," Mr. Malthus 
 says, " are extremely various, and include every 
 cause, whether arising from vice or misery, which 
 in any degree contributes to shorten the natural 
 duration of htmian life. Under this head, there- 
 fore, may be enumerated all unwholesome occu- 
 pations, severe labour, and exposure to the seasons, 
 extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, great 
 towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of 
 common diseases and epidemics, wars, plague, and 
 famine."* 
 
 It has been justly observed^ that the checks de- 
 scribed in this passage include, in fact, every possible 
 cause of mortality^ except old age. The statement, 
 iJierefore, when fairly weighed, seems to amount 
 merely to this, that all premature deaths, from 
 whatsoever cause arising, diminish the numbers of 
 mankind. But premature deaths are as much a part 
 of the law of Providence as deaths by natural decay. 
 That the world might be much fuller than it is if 
 men's frames were not liable to disease, nor their 
 
 # Vol. i. p. 15. 
 
 t Westminster Review, No. 102. 
 
POPULATION. 181 
 
 passions to excess, may be readily conceded — it 
 would be fuller still if there were no old age and 
 no death. ; but all these contingencies alike belong 
 to the constitution of our nature. Nor can they for 
 any useful purpose be classed as checks upon popu- 
 lation — a term which, if it is meant to have any 
 peculiar significance, should be limited to those 
 extraordinary visitations by which Nature herself 
 checks the redundance of population when by too 
 rapid an advance it encroaches on the means of sub- 
 sistence. When population, thus becoming excessive, 
 generates destitution, famine, disease, or war, we 
 may justly regard these calamities as corrective 
 checks — severe, indeed, but beneficial — whose oflSce 
 it is to reduce the numbers of a community to their 
 just proportion, and, by a partial suffering, to save 
 society from still greater evils. But the common 
 diseases which flesh is heir to, the ravages which 
 intemperance, sloth, or luxury make in a community, 
 the losses of life occasioned by accident, violence, or 
 crime, can in no other sense be termed " checks 
 upon population" than that general abridgment of 
 the term of life which has taken place since the 
 time of the patriarchs can be so designated. 
 
 Mr. Malthus has examined at considerable length, 
 and with a great deal of historical research, into the 
 operation of the various positive checks upon popu- 
 lation in different countries of the world, both in 
 ancient and modem times. Having another object 
 in view, I do not propose on this occasion to enter 
 into an examination of his statements under this 
 head, though in many respects they appear to me 
 to be exceptionable, and are occasionally incon- 
 
 N 3 
 
182 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 sistent both with doctrines propounded in other 
 parts of his own work, and with authenticated facts. 
 For instance, in his review of the social state of 
 various countries, he lays great stress upon the effect 
 of pestilence, of famines, and, above all, of war, in 
 repressing the redundancy of mankiad. But on this 
 point there are important distinctions to be made. 
 There have been sanguinary and desolating wars, 
 which have carried off whole generations at a stroke, 
 and made a void in -the human race which centuries 
 have not repaired. Such were the invasions of 
 Timour, in one of which nearly four millions and 
 a half of persons are said to have been put to 
 the sword; and the wars of Belisarius, in which, 
 as Gibbon tells us, 5,000,000 perished in Africa 
 alone by war. Wars of this character do, indeed, 
 make a deep and lasting chasm in the numbers of 
 a nation. But the effect of war, as carried on in 
 modem times, is very different; and Mr. Malthus 
 himself justly remarks upon the rapidity with which 
 countries recover the desolations of war as well as 
 those of pestilence, famine, and the convulsions of 
 nature. 
 
 " Old states," he says, " are then for a short 
 time placed a little in the situation of new colo- 
 nies, and the effect is always answerable to what 
 might be expected. If the industry of the inhabit- 
 ants be not destroyed, subsistence will soon increase 
 beyond the wants of the reduced ntunbers ; and the 
 invariable consequence will be, that population, 
 which before, perhaps, was nearly stationary, will 
 begin immediately to increase, and will continue its 
 progress till the former population is recovered. 
 The fertile province of Flanders, which has been 
 
POPULATION. 183 
 
 SO often the seat of the most destructive wars, after 
 a respite of a few years, has always appeared as rich 
 and populous as ever ; and the undiminished popu- 
 lation of France, during the wars and bloodshed of 
 the Revolution, is an instance very strongly in point. 
 The Tables of Sussmilch * afford continual proofs of 
 a very rapid increase after great mortalities ; and 
 the table for Prussia and Lithuania, which I have 
 already inserted, is particularly instructive in this 
 respect. The effects of the dreadful plague 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 from the plagues which periodi- 
 cally lay them waste. If the number of people 
 which they contain be considerably less than formerly, 
 it is rather to be attributed to the tyranny and op- 
 pression of the gpvemments under which they groan, 
 and the consequent discouragement to agriculture, 
 than to the losses which they sustain by the plague. 
 The traces of the most destructive famines in China, 
 Indostan, Egypt, and other countries, are, by all 
 accounts, very soon obliterated; and the most tre- 
 mendous convulsions of Nature, such as volcanic 
 eruptions, and earthquakes, if they do not happen so 
 frequently as to drive away the inhabitants, or de- 
 
 * Sussmilch calcvdates that above one-third of the population 
 were destroyed by the plague in Prussia in 1710 ; and yet, not- 
 withstanding this great diminution, it appears from his tables 
 that the number of marriages in the succeeding year, 1711, 
 was very nearly double the average of the six years preceding 
 the plague. If this statement is to be depended upon, the 
 fact is most remarkable. 
 
 K 4 
 
184 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 stroy their spirit of industry, have been found to 
 produce but a trifling effect on the average popu- 
 lation of any state." * 
 
 The instances here mentioned — to which many 
 more might be added — of the rapid recovery of 
 national wealth and numbers from heavy visitations, 
 both of war and natural calamity, are very striking, 
 and weaken the effect of much of Mr. Malthus' own 
 reasonings with respect to the positive checks. 
 
 M, Say, in the lucid and judicious disquisition 
 on Population, in his Cours Complet eCEconomie 
 Politique, makes an inquiry into the actual effect of 
 the three great scourges of mankind — war, pesti- 
 lence, and famine — upon the numbers of the species. 
 
 " The wars of Napoleon," he says, " were long 
 reckless and sanguinary. He introduced the cruel 
 practice of bivouacking his armies — that is, making 
 them lie in tents in all seasons and all cUmates. 
 He carried his disregard of human life to a scan- 
 dalous excess, raising nearly 300,000 recruits within 
 the year. Supposing that, out of this number, 
 not one escaped the slaughter, the fatigues, and 
 privations of war, yet, if the rate of population in 
 France t would give, as we have seen, thirty millions 
 of marriageable persons in twenty-six years, that 
 is equal to 1,200,000 per annum. The deduction 
 caused by such sanguinary wars as these from that 
 rate of increase, would, therefore, be only one-fourth 
 the first year, and less than one-fourth the second. 
 So that, a war of twenty-two years, although terribly 
 destructive, would not have prevented the population 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 520. 
 
 I That is, assuming it to be perfectly unchecked. 
 
POPULATION. 185 
 
 of France from exceeding fifty-three millions at the 
 peace. There must, then, be some other cause more 
 potent than war which sets limits to the possible 
 augmentation of the species." * 
 
 M. Say then inquires into the eifects of pestilence, 
 taking, as illustrations, some of the most destructive 
 plagues on record, such as that of the year 1348, 
 which is said by some historians to have carried 
 oif one-fourth of the whole inhabitants of France. 
 Admitting this statement — probably much exag- 
 gerated — to be true, and that the number thus 
 swept off was not less than three millions of souls, M. 
 Say asserts, notwithstanding, that even this fright- 
 ful scourge would not have prevented the people of 
 France, had no other obstacle restrained their in- 
 crease, from doubling their numbers in twenty-four 
 years. Respecting famines, he comes to a similar con- 
 clusion. " Let tis suppose," he says, " a famine 
 which cuts off 1,200,000 persons — that is, the full 
 amount of the possible increase in one year in 
 France — suppose it even to destroy double that 
 number, — it would be a dreadful famine, certainly, 
 which should cause the death of more than two 
 millions of people — nevertheless, it would only cut 
 off the produce of two years of population ; and, as 
 we know by experience, that famines — at all events 
 severe ones — do not happen once in ten years, there 
 would be always, at least, a proportion of eight years 
 to two during which population would proceed ac- 
 cording to the rule before stated." 
 
 " If this is the case," he continues, " with regard 
 
 * Cours d'Economie Politique, vol. iv. p. 318. 
 
186 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 to the three extreme scourges of war, pestilence, and 
 famine, a fortiori, it must be true of the less powerful 
 causes of depopulation. Transient and less fatal epi- 
 demics, shorter and less sanguinary wars, and seasons 
 of mitigated scarcity, can affect, only in a slight degree, 
 the springs of human fecundity. Yet these springs 
 are, in fact, constantly repressed: even in the most 
 flourishing states, population is restrained within li- 
 mits which expand and contract, indeed, from time 
 to time, but which are never over-passed. Now, 
 what are these limits, and by what power are they 
 imposed ? " 
 
 M. Say answers this question by affirming that 
 the true cause — the only cause capable of restraining 
 the natural prolificness of man — -is the limitation of 
 the means of subsistence. " The tendency of men," 
 he says, " to reproduce their kind, and their means 
 of doing so, are, we may say, infinite ; but their 
 means of subsistence are limited, and that population 
 cannot increase beyond this poLat is a truth beyond 
 dispute." 
 
 I have already, in the second Lecture of the 
 present volume, referred to this priaciple. I have 
 shown, as resulting from it, the futility of all attempts 
 to force population by artificial stimulants, the foUy 
 of supposing that we can multiply men without mul- 
 tiplying food pari passu ; and I have ascribed to Mr. 
 Malthus the great merit of enforcing and illustrating 
 this useful truth. It is in going beyond this, and im- 
 pugning, as I conceive he has, the natural law of popu- 
 lation itself, that he has fallen, as I think, into error. 
 
 The limitation of subsistence being then established, 
 as the real, effective, and permanent check to the 
 
POPULATION. 187 
 
 increase of mankind, we have next to inquire in 
 what manner this check operates. 
 
 The operation of the check in its extreme form, 
 that of actual starvation, is one which seldom takes 
 place except on the occurrence of famines, which 
 may be regarded as accidents of Nature. But it 
 operates both repressively and preventively in various 
 modes and degrees, both to thin the numbers of 
 communities, and to hinder the production of human 
 beings. Let us examine how each of these conse- 
 quences is brought about. It may be stated generally, 
 that if the progress of production in a country (I do 
 not mean the production of food only, but likewise of 
 all kinds of commodities exchangeable for food) be 
 suddenly accelerated relatively to the numbers of the 
 people, population will likewise receive an increased 
 impulse, and the numbers of the community will have 
 a tendency to rise to the same, or nearly the same 
 level relatively to subsistence, which they held before 
 the change took place. This truth is remarkably 
 illustrated among ourselves by statistical evidence. 
 The increased wealth of the country, in a prosperous 
 year, is infallibly reflected in the Tables of the 
 Registrar-General, in the shape of an additional 
 number of marriages. All who are in the habit of 
 noticing the returns from that department are familiar 
 with this fact. The converse efiect takes place in 
 times of scarcity or commercial distress, and illustrates 
 the opposite rule, which I shall next state, viz., that 
 whenever the wealth of a country begins to retro- 
 grade, population, if I may so speak, pulls in, and 
 contracts its supplies in conforniity with the checked 
 rate of production. Now, how is this latter process 
 
188 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 brought about ? — In more ways than one, all more 
 or less painful to human nature. 
 
 The result of scarcity is dearness, the result of 
 deamess is distress; this distress falls heaviest on 
 the poorest and most burthened members of society, 
 but its ramifications extend widely, and affect 
 different classes in various degrees. Capital is 
 scarce — money is hard to come by; the times are 
 unfavourable for starting in business, or extending 
 trade, or obtaining salaries and employments. With 
 retrenchment generally prevailing among the rich, 
 the prospects of those below them become likewise 
 overcast. The responsibilities of a famUy are seriously 
 considered ; cautious prudence finds a new host of 
 arguments to strengthen his cause against sanguine 
 affection; matrimonial engagements are postponed 
 or broken off. Here the preventive check acts upon 
 population at its source. But greater privations, 
 and more painful sacrifices still, are submitted to by 
 those already charged with the support of families 
 more or less numerous, and with only scanty incomes 
 or the precarious earnings of their labour to depeiid 
 upon. To them, food, never too abundant, becomes 
 scantier and less nourishing, their dwellings less 
 spacious and wholesome, the various accommodations 
 of life, the fuel, the clothing, the medicine and 
 comforts in sickness, are retrenched; the half-fed 
 mother becomes a feeble nurse, the father works 
 harder and fares more scantily. What is the in- 
 evitable consequence of these hardships and priva- 
 tions ? — -Increased mortality and shortened diu-ation 
 of life. Disease and fever spread among the poor; 
 their constitutions become impaired, and sink under 
 
POPULATION. 189 
 
 maladies which, in a more robust state of health, 
 they would have repelled. The children, in par- 
 ticular, that part of the population on which its 
 renovation depends, are cut off in great numbers. 
 Thus it comes to pass, that although, perhaps, not 
 ten persons out of ten millions literally die of famine, 
 yet a large amount of human life is indirectly and 
 gradually subtracted by the diminution which has 
 taken place in the means of subsistence relatively to 
 the numbers of the community, and population is, 
 by this method, reduced to its natural and in- 
 surmountable level. 
 
 I have been speaking of a country in a retrograding 
 condition, in which the production of wealth is on 
 the decline, and population ebbs, as it necessarily 
 must, with the receding tide. The sketch which I 
 have drawn, exhibiting the action of the checks on 
 population in an aggravated form, will convey a 
 sufficient idea of the nature of those checks, which 
 operate with greater or less degree of intensity at 
 almost all periods of society. There are communities, 
 indeed, peculiarly circumstanced, in which these 
 checks may be said to have scarcely any operation at 
 all. In the United States, for instance, by reason of 
 the high value of labour, a wife and children are a 
 source of profit rather than of charge, and the means 
 of employment being almost unbounded, both the 
 checks to marriage, from prudential reasons, and 
 the waste of life occasioned by poverty and dis- 
 tress, may be said scarcely to exist. Some of the 
 other causes of mortality, indeed, which Mr. Mal- 
 thus includes in his catalogue, such as common 
 diseases and epidemics, severe labour and ex- 
 
190 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 posure, excesses, great towns, and the like, have 
 operated largely in North America *, but not 
 those checks of which we are now speaking. But 
 in almost all other parts of the world, certainly 
 throughout Europe, they exercise a constant and 
 powerful control over the numbers of the people. 
 The multiplication of the species is limited either by 
 the actual suffering and abridgment of life in greater 
 or less degree, which I have described, or else by 
 the apprehension of those evils. Persons either 
 refrain from marriage, or postpone it, because they 
 are unable to make provision for a family ; or if they 
 marry recklessly, without such provision, the super- 
 numerary members brought into the world fall into 
 want and a struggle for existence, which eventually 
 shorten their lives. Population is retrenched, when 
 the means of subsistence are inadequate to support 
 its natural increase, by the two methods of a diminu- 
 tion of births and a reduced average of longevity ; 
 population is increased, when the increasing wealth 
 of the commuTiity produces a vacuum and a demand 
 for labour, by earlier marriages, more numerous 
 births, and by a longer average duration of life, the 
 effect of increased comfort and abundance. 
 
 I have shown that the progress of population in 
 England, since the commencement of the present 
 century, has been at the rate of 100 per cent, in little 
 more than fifty years. Though this rate is compa- 
 ratively rapid, yet we may be well asstired that 
 
 * Mr. Everett says, "There are probably few parts of 
 Europe in which the check of diseases, not resulHng from in- 
 temperance' or want, is felt so strongly as it is in the United 
 States."— iVe!tf Ideas on Population, p. 63. 
 
POPULATION. 191 
 
 Englishmen are physically capable of a much greater 
 rapidity of propagation. In the United States the 
 species has doubled itself in twenty-five years. Why 
 has it not done so in England ? We have undergone 
 neither pestilence nor famine, nor can we suppose 
 that the destruction of life caused by war, during the 
 first fifteen years of this century, was sufficient to 
 produce any considerable effect upon our numbers. 
 The limitation of the population of England, as com- 
 pared with that of the United States, can only have 
 been caused in the two ways before specified, viz., 
 the restraint of marriage and the premature extinction 
 of life. Now let us suppose that during the next 
 fifty years the productive capacities of this coimtry 
 should receive so great a development that the wages 
 of labour and the supply of food should be increased, 
 as compared with the previous half century, in the 
 ratio of 2, 3, or 4 to 1. Let us suppose that every 
 man should be able, on attaining the age of man- 
 hood, to find such employment and income as would 
 afford him the means of maintaining a family in 
 comfort. It cannot be doubted, if there is any virtue 
 in experience, that a powerful impulse would be given 
 to, or rather a strong barrier removed from, the 
 formation of marriages. The cases of voluntary 
 celibacy, where neither want of means nor the fear 
 of that want exist, are comparatively rare. As 
 little can it be doubted that the average period of 
 life would become prolonged. The causes which, 
 during the last century, have added so materially 
 to himian longevity, would operate with still greater 
 force in the same direction. The improvements that 
 might be expected to take place in diet, clothing. 
 
192 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 and the other accommodations of life, as weU as in 
 sanitary arrangements, medical skill, drainage, and 
 ventilation — the disuse of the crowded and un- 
 wholesome hovels into which the poorest classes are 
 now forced to shelter themselves — these changes 
 which would flow naturally from higher wages, from 
 the general diffusion of prosperity, and the conse- 
 quent elevation, both physical and moral, of the 
 labouring population, would diminish prodigiously 
 that waste of life which indigence and social degra- 
 dation now give rise to, and would add probably 
 several years to the mean duration of existence. 
 
 If these views are weU founded, they afford, I 
 think, an adequate explanation of that wide disparity 
 that exists in most countries between the physical 
 capacity and the actual rate of human increase. 
 They show us what those checks are which actually 
 and permanently operate in restraint of population ; 
 and they throw light on the various phenomena 
 which mark communities that are respectively pro- 
 gressive, stationary, or declining in point of numbers. 
 
 The next point of iaquiry to which I would direct 
 your attention, is the desirableness or feasibility of 
 that object which it was the practical purpose of 
 Mr. Malthus's Essay to inculcate, viz.,. the ob- 
 servance of moral restraint. From the proposition 
 which he believed himself to have established, that 
 the social miseries of almost all countries arise from 
 a redundancy of population, Mr. Malthus inferred 
 the duty of all good members of society to co-operate 
 in bringing about a reform by which these evils 
 might be abated. With this view he endeavoured to 
 place the observance of moral restraint upon the 
 
POPULATION, 193 
 
 footing of social obligation. Let us first ascertain 
 what is meant by " moral restraint." The term is 
 variously expounded by diiferent teachers of the 
 Malthusian school. What Mr. Malthus himself meant 
 by it he himself explains to be ^'a restraint from 
 marriage from prudential motives, with a conduct 
 strictly moral during the period of this restraint.* 
 Explaining himself more particularly on this head, he 
 recommends the discontinuance of early marriages, 
 and specifies twenty-seven or twenty-eight as the 
 suitable age for women to contract matrimony. He 
 does not lay down any precise time for the other sex ; 
 but we may assume that it would be proportional. 
 He declares that aU other soheines than this for per-? 
 manently relieving the miseries of the poorer classes 
 must be transient and vain ; that, since the radical 
 cause of their distress is a disproportion between the 
 number of consumers and the means of subsistence, 
 there is no solid hope of alleviating their sufferings 
 except by rectifying this balance, and bringing down 
 the amount of the population to the standard of the 
 food ; that each man may contribute to effect this 
 end by practising moral restraint in his own person, 
 and that, in so doing,, he will not only benefit himself, 
 but fulfil an imperative social duty to his fellowK 
 citizens. 
 
 The practical conclusions of Mr. Malthus, how-r 
 ever incomplete or erroneous in some points we 
 may deem his views, are marked by moderation and 
 candour, and, generally speaking, evince a sound 
 tone of morality. Later writers, who have taken up 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 15, note. 
 O 
 
194 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 his doctrine of over-population, have, in their appli- 
 cation of his maxims, left their master far behind. 
 Their theory of moral restraint is not confined to a 
 prudential postponement of marriage. Regarding 
 the union of the sexes, early or late, as a sort of ne- 
 cessary evil, they look with peculiar abhorrence on 
 those marriages which are, according to their notions, 
 unduly fruitful, and denounce the procreation of a 
 numerous family as, under any circumstances, a 
 grave social offence. Nor is even this the last ex- 
 travagance to which the fanaticism of the over- 
 population theory has carried some economists. 
 Writers of considerable ability have not scrupled to 
 propose, and to explain in unequivocal language, 
 means whereby the passions might be gratified, and 
 the natural consequences of the intercourse of the 
 sexes prevented from taking place. To such pro- 
 positions — inter Christianas non nominanda — I shall 
 do no more than barely allude ; a formal refutation 
 of doctrines so revolting would be an insidt to 
 morality. It was necessary, however, to a complete 
 account of the controversy on this subject, that I 
 should refer to the existence of such opinions, which, 
 though deservedly scouted, both for their immorality 
 and their absurdity, have been advanced by men of 
 some intellectual pretensions. It is doing bare 
 justice to the reputation of Mr. Malthus to acquit 
 him of the slightest participation in the views of 
 those who have drawn such monstrous consequences 
 from his theory. 
 
 There is a writer of the present day, of great 
 eminence and authority as an economist, whose views 
 on the principles of population are marked, in my 
 
POPULATION, 195 
 
 humble judgment, with peculiar obliquity, and who 
 seems to be under the influence of a morbid appre- 
 hension in all his reasonings on the subject. I refer 
 to Mr. J. S. Mill, and to his elaborate work on the 
 Principles of Political Economy. I will quote a 
 passage from the 13th chapter of his second book, 
 which wUl convey a fair notion of the tone and spirit 
 that pervade his disquisitions respecting the condition 
 ^ and prospects of the working classes. He says : 
 " Religion, morality, and statesmanship have vied 
 with one another in incitements to marriage and to the 
 multiplication of the species, so it be but in wedlock, 
 Religion has not even yet discontinued its encou- 
 ragements. The Roman Catholic clergy (of any 
 other clergy it is unnecessary to speak, since no other 
 have any considerable influence over the poorer 
 classes) everywhere think it their duty to promote 
 marriage, in order to prevent fornication. There is 
 stiU in many minds a strong religious prejudice 
 against the true doctrine. The rich, provided the 
 consequences do not touch themselves, think it im- 
 pugns the wisdom of Providence to suppose that 
 misery can result from the operation of a natural 
 propensity : the poor think that ' Grod never sends 
 mouths but he sends meat.' No one could guess, 
 from the language of either, that man had any voice 
 or choice in the matter, so complete is the con- 
 fusion of ideas on the whole subject." . . . . " All 
 experience shows that the mass of mankind never 
 judge of moral questions for themselves, never see 
 anythiag to be right or wrong, until they have been 
 frequently told it ; and who tells them that they have 
 any duty in the matter in question while they keep 
 o 2 
 
196 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 within matrimonial limits? Who meets with the 
 smallest condemnation, or rather who does not meet 
 with sympathy and benevolence, for any amount of 
 evil which he may have brought upon himself and 
 those dependent on him by this species of incon- 
 tinence ? While a man who is intemperate in drink 
 is discountenanced and despised by all who profess to 
 be moral people, is it not to this hour the favourite 
 recommendation for any parochial office bestowed by 
 popular election to have a large family, and to be 
 unable to maintain them? Do not the candidates 
 proclaim their intemperance on walls, and placard it 
 through the town in circulars ? " * 
 
 In the third edition of his work, published last 
 year, Mr. Mill adds the following as a foot note : — 
 
 " Little improvement can be expected in morality 
 until the producing large families is regarded with the 
 same feelings as drunkenness or any other excess. 
 But while the aristocracy and clergy, are foremost to 
 set the example of incontinence, what can be ex» 
 pected from the poor?"t 
 
 It appears, then, that in this writer's estimation 
 the having a large family is regarded as a thing that 
 is mischievous and immoral -per se, without reference 
 to the means of the parents, which, in the cases last 
 referred to, are often more than ample to maintain 
 and provide for their progeny. 
 
 Mr. Mill continues as follows : " One cannot 
 wonder that silence on this great department of 
 human duty should produce unconsciousness of moral 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. p. 446. 
 f Vol. i. p. 448, note. 
 
POPULATION. 197 
 
 obligations when it produces oblivion of physical 
 facts. That it is possible to delay marriage and to 
 live in abstinence while unmarried, most people are 
 willing to allow ; but when persons are once married, 
 the idea, in this country, never seems to enter any 
 one's mind that having or not having a family, or the 
 number of which it shall consist, is at all amenable to 
 their own conduct. One would imagine that children 
 were rained down upon married people, direct from 
 heaven, without their having act or part in the mat- 
 ter ; that it was really, as the common phrases have 
 it, God's will and not their own, which decided the 
 numbers of their offspring." 
 
 I must say that here Mr. Mill himself seems to 
 have fallen into an oblivion of facts. Certainly, if 
 the fruitfuhiess of marriage depended on the will of 
 no one but the parties themselves, there would be a 
 much less number of those childless unions which 
 now sadden the lives of many jiBBstoi Catf-^ci-^ — 
 
 But, with all the respect that is due to the eminence 
 and unquestionable ability of this writer, I cannot 
 help classing him, so far as his views on population 
 are concerned, with those economists of whom Mr. 
 Senior in his correspondence with Mr. Malthus 
 speaks, as having caricatured the doctrines of that 
 writer. On a subject which we are now discussing 
 upon purely economical grounds, I do not wish to 
 call in aid the authority of religion, though" it must 
 be obvious that no stronger contrast can exist than be- 
 tween the language just cited respecting marriage, and 
 the tone which Scripture imiformly holds concerning 
 that honourable estate. Religion, indeed, is never the 
 abettor of selfish imprudence ; and they are not sound 
 
198 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 or wise religious guides who, without regard to season 
 or circumstances, incite the members of their flocks to 
 take upon themselves the responsibilities of wedlock. 
 Very different was the discriminating rule laid down 
 by the Divine Founder of Christianity and his apostles 
 on this subject. But all this fanatical horror of 
 large families — this denunciation of matrimonial 
 fruitfulness as a social vice, as bad as any other in- 
 temperance, what foundation, has it, let me ask, in the 
 unsophisticated ideas of mankind, in the principles of 
 sound morality, nay, — I do not hesitateto ask, for I am 
 concerned for the credit of political economy ^ — in mere 
 social expediency? The common feeling of mankind 
 instinctively revolts from such views — " Sensus mores- 
 que repugnant." I need not prove this ; for the whole 
 passage just cited, which is a laboured remonstrance 
 against the obstinate blindness of society on this 
 point, implies the fact. And, in a passage further on, 
 Mr. Mill still ijia«ft»explicitly admits, though appa- 
 rently blind to the real cause of the phenomenon, the 
 universality of the repugnance to his favourite doc- 
 trine. " As a moral principle," he says, " such an 
 opinion has never yet existed in any country" (it is - 
 not, therefore, a mere English prejiidice). " It is 
 curious," he goes on, " that it does not so exist in 
 countries in which, from the spontaneous operation of 
 individual forethought, population is, comparatively 
 speaking, efficiently repressed. What is practised as 
 prudence is still not recognised as duty." No, in- 
 deed, nor, I venture to say, will it ever be recognised 
 as duty, so long as our nature remains unchanged, to 
 refrain from rearing children whom the parents are 
 able competently to provide for, merely from the 
 
POPULATIOISr. 199 
 
 fear of overstocking the country with population, or 
 setting a bad example of prolificness to other people. 
 Never will the time arrive when, as Mr. MUl anti- 
 cipates, a large family will be regarded with the 
 same feelings of reprobation as drunkenness, or any 
 other excess. I join heartily with him in condemn- 
 ing the folly and selfishness of marrying and bring- 
 ing human beings into the world without adequate 
 means or a reasonable prospect of means, of maintain- 
 ing them. On this point there is no controversy 
 among reasonable men. But, as an economist, I 
 join issue with his assertion, that the parent of a 
 large family is ipso facto a wrongdoer to society 
 
 — an offender to be classed with the drunkard or 
 the debauchee. I say, it is clear, if there be truth 
 in the first principles of that science which teaches 
 that labour is the source of wealth, and an indus- 
 trious and well-nurtured population the sinews of a 
 community, that he who brings up virtuously and 
 well a large family of children, — the more the better, 
 ^o long as they do not exceed his means of maintain- 
 ing them, — is a benefactor, not an enemy, to society 
 
 — is deserving of honour, not reproach — as one. who 
 contributes to the commonwealth far more than he 
 takes from it. In that light aU communities of men 
 have agreed to regard him, and political economy 
 sanctions that universal sentiment. * 
 
 * I cannot resist quoting here a very pleasing passage of Sir 
 KicLard Steele in the Spectator, written in a genial tone of 
 feeling, and speaking in the true language of nature on this sub- 
 ject, which contrasts strongly with the morbid philosophy of the 
 author just referred to. Speaking in the person of an imaginary 
 correspondent, he says ; — " There is another accidental advan- 
 tage in marriage, which has likewise fallen to my share. I mean 
 
 o 4 
 
200 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 There are a few passages in Mr. Malthus' work, 
 in which his absorbing impression of the dangers 
 of over-population, to which his attention was ex- 
 clusively bent, betrayed him into what seems to 
 me an unhealthy and perverted moral tone, though 
 he avoids the extravagances into which later writers 
 of his school have fallen. His view throughout is, 
 as I have before observed, one-sided; acutely sen- 
 sitive of the peril arising from excess of numbers, 
 he has no eye for the stimulus which an increase of 
 population gives to industry ; neither does he fairly 
 appreciate, as it appears to me, the invaluable bene- 
 fits, of a moral and social kind, which the general 
 prevalence of marriage confers upon society. He 
 Condemns^ and justly, the policy of stimulating the 
 union of the sexes by legislative bounties and encou- 
 ragements ; on the other hand, he does not estimate 
 as it deserves the guarantees which marriage affords 
 for good conduct, for steadiness, for regular and 
 industrious habits, and for all those virtues which 
 domestic life is peculiarly adapted to elicit and to 
 strengthen. Another error of liis teaching, which 
 his followers have adopted and exaggerated, is, that 
 
 the having a multitude of children. These I cannot but re^ 
 gard as very great blessings. When I see my little troop be'- 
 fore me, I rejoice in the additions which I have made to my 
 species, to my country, and to my religion, in having produced 
 such a number of reasonable creatures, citizens, and Christians. 
 I am pleased to see myself thus perpetuated; and, as there is 
 no production comparable to that of a human creature, I am 
 more proud of having been the occasion of ten such glorious 
 productions, than if I had built a hundred pyramids at my own 
 expense, or published as many volumes of the finest wit and 
 learning." — Spectator, No. 500. 
 
POPULATION. 201 
 
 he has placed the duty of prudential restraint upon a 
 wrong basis, that of social obligation. According to 
 the lessons of his school, a man who is tempted to 
 enter into wedlock is called upon to consider not his 
 own circumstances merelyj but the general state and 
 prospects of the labour-market. He is to have regard 
 not merely to the relation which his actual means bear 
 to his probable wants as the expectant father of a 
 family, but also to the relation of the increased num- 
 bers which he may add to the society to the fund of 
 general subsistence. In a word, he is to take counsel 
 not of ordinary prudence, but of political economy. 
 
 Thus, in one of the concluding chapters of his 
 essay, Mr. Malthus says: — 
 
 " If we be really serious in what appears to be the 
 object of such general research, the mode of essen- 
 tially and permanently bettering the condition of the 
 poor, we must explain to them the true nature of 
 their situation, and show them, that the withholding 
 of the supplies of labour is the only possible way of 
 really raising its price, and that they themselves, 
 being the possessors of this commodity, have alone 
 the power to do this."* In the same strain Mr. 
 Mill tj and another eminent writer and benevolent 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 291. 
 
 f " Let us try to imagine," says Mr. Mill, " what would happen 
 if the idea became general among the labouring class that the 
 competition of too great numbers was the principal cause of 
 their poverty, so that every labourer looked (with Sismondi) 
 upon every other who had more than the number of children 
 which the circumstances of society allowed to each as doing him 
 a wrong; as filling Up the place which he Was entitled to share." 
 It appears to me so remote from probability that such a state 
 of feeling as is here described should ever prevail among the 
 
202 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 man. Dr. Chalmers, whose views, however, are 
 strongly tinged with the Malthusian theory, urge 
 the expediency of indoctrinating the poor with the 
 causes of high and low wages, and the true principles 
 of population, with a view to deterring individuals 
 from early marriages. We are to teach them, 
 according to these writers, not that they wUl get 
 themselves into trouble and involve their future 
 offspring in misery and pauperism if they marry 
 without competent means ; but that if they, by marry- 
 ing and begetting too many children, contribute to 
 increase the supply of labourers relatively to the 
 means of employment, they will produce a glut in 
 the labour-market, so as to lower wages, and wiU 
 thus do an injury to society, the welfare of which 
 " requires a due regulation of the numbers of 
 families." * 
 
 Now, this mode of counteracting the evil of im- 
 prudent marriages is, I maintain, fundamentally un- 
 sound — it is beginning at the wrong end. As a 
 practical remedy it must prove utterly futile, for it 
 is at variance with the principles which regulate 
 human nature and the constitution of society. In 
 the first place, a belief in the Malthusian system, 
 assuming it to be true, and a regard to the general 
 welfare of society, would be impotent to restrain 
 
 labouring class, that it is scarcely worth while to discuss whether 
 such a consummation would be a desirable or a deplorable one. 
 But even if every labourer were a Sismondi, I should greatly 
 doubt the solution of that very nice problem as to the exact 
 limit of prolificness which " fAe ciraimstances of society" — an 
 indefinite and constantly varying standard — would allow to 
 each family. 
 * Mill. 
 
POPULATION. 203 
 
 any man whose affections were set on marriage and 
 who possessed wherewithal to start in life, however 
 strongly it might be represented to him that the 
 labour-market was already full, and that if he and 
 others of his class should persist in adding to its 
 numbers, a deterioration of the condition of all must 
 be the consequence. But who could assure him that, 
 if he did refrain, others of his class would exercise 
 the same self-denial ? Above all, who could be so 
 presumptuous, however skilled in political economy, 
 as to undertake to predict the state of the demand 
 for labour at the time when the possible, but unborn, 
 progeny of a contemplated marriage, would become 
 competitors for employment? We talk glibly about 
 over-population, and works written only five or six 
 years since abound with complaints of its pressure 
 and apprehension as to its increase. A few years 
 pass — ^trade makes a rapid start — the precious metals 
 are discovered on the other side of the world — emi- 
 gration becomes the fashion, and we who have been 
 lately groaning about the redundance of our numbers, 
 begin to tremble at the prospect of a scarcity of hands, 
 and find that actually in England the new births are 
 at present barely adequate to sustain our numbers 
 against the double drain of mortality and expatria- 
 tion. So shortsighted are predictions based upon 
 the circumstances of the passing moment, and so 
 idle is the attempt to impose artificial checks upon 
 marriage and population in the place of those which 
 Nature herself supplies, and which she has adapted to 
 the understandings and feelings of mankind. What- 
 ever theorists may assert, men are not so constituted 
 as to regulate their conduct in matters of private 
 
204 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 concern by general deductions from the laws of 
 political economy. 
 
 According to the arrangements of Providence by 
 which the world is governed, it is not a percep- 
 tion of the economical results of the propagation of 
 children that restrains men from marrying ; it is an 
 apprehension of the consequences to themselves if 
 they increase their burdens without the means of 
 providing for those who belong to them. Here, as 
 in the cases of production and exchange and other 
 branches of the social economy, self-interest is the 
 natural and best regulator of human conduct. Indi- 
 vidual prudence is the proper check to precipitate 
 marriages ; an appeal to the consequences which will 
 recoil upon the parties themselves and their innocent 
 oifspring, is the appropriate and cogent argument to 
 deter them from rash engagements. Let it not be 
 said that, in thus arguing the case, I am substituting 
 a principle of selfishness for one of duty. It is not 
 so : prudence here is an obligation of morality. Pro- 
 vidence has annexed the penalties of suffering and 
 distress to a violation of its sanctions, and has evi- 
 dently designed that men should be influenced by 
 the apprehension of those penalties. And things are 
 so ordained, according to that principle of harmony 
 which, as I have often before shown, pervades the 
 whole organisation of society, that observance of 
 the laws of individual prudence becomes the best 
 and only safe rule for the attainment of the general 
 well-being. Pursuing the latter object directly, and 
 under the guidance of theory, we may often miss the 
 mark ; not so, if every man in his own case conforms 
 to the plain and palpable rule of prudence. The true 
 
POPULATION. 205 
 
 interests of individuals and of the community coincide. 
 Whatever fluctuations may betide the labour-piarket, 
 let each man, in forming his private connectionSj act 
 with the forethought and discretion which becomes a 
 responsible being, and society will have no cause of 
 complaint against him, for over-population will be 
 impossible. 
 
 I should have been glad, if I had not already 
 exceeded my limits, to animadvert on some other 
 points in connection with Mr. Malthus' theory of 
 moral restraint; but I must postpone part of my 
 intended observations to a future lecture. I will 
 only now touch very briefly on two points. First, 
 I have to remark, that the preventive check which 
 he labours to inculcate is a restraint that applies 
 almost exclusively to the lower or labouring class of 
 society. Among the upper and middle ranks, he 
 recognises the check as prevailing to a great extent 
 already — it is comparatively little needed there ; it 
 is to relieve the labour-market that it is chiefly 
 wanted ; consequently, the exhortations to moral 
 restraint must be considered as addressed chiefly to 
 the poor. Now, though I admit that there is much 
 room for an improved spirit of forethought and self- 
 respect among this numerous class of society, at the 
 same time I look with great jealousy upon attempts 
 to dissuade them generally from marriage. First, 
 because the denial of domestic connections to a poor 
 man is a far greater privation than it can ever be to 
 a rich one. Marriage makes a far larger ingredient 
 in the labourer's cup of happiness ; he more peculiarly 
 needs the solace and support, to say nothing of the 
 actual service and ministrations of a wife, than those 
 
206 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 to whom wealth opens many other sources of conso- 
 lation and enjoyment.* Secondly, I should appre- 
 hend, that any general habit of abstinence from 
 marriage among the humbler classes would be at- 
 tended with a great deterioriation of morals. Mr. 
 Malthus himself is by no means insensible to this 
 danger. He admits with his usual candour the force 
 of the objection ; but he weighs against the evUs re- 
 sulting from the practice of imchastity the vices and 
 the degradation of character which spring from the 
 pressure of indigence and distress, and he considers 
 the account in a moral point of view to be at least 
 equally balanced. For my own part, I distrust the 
 accuracy of such calculations as these ; we have no 
 moral scales applicable to such a comparison of con- 
 sequences. The mischiefs which marriage was de- 
 signed to guard against we know ; the consequences 
 which might result from artificially restraining it, as 
 compared with those which may be engendered from 
 the effects of indigence upon the character, are a 
 matter of pure speculation and most uncertain con- 
 jecture, f 
 
 • " On the system of Mr. Malthus, the poor, in addition to 
 their other inconveniences, are required to sacrifice the com- 
 forts of domestic life to the general good : and the rich are 
 invested, besides all their other advantages, with a monopoly 
 of love and marriage. Such a plan is neither just nor safe : 
 the privations and sufferings imposed upon communities by 
 common necessities must be shared alike by all. When the crew 
 of a ship are put upon short allowance, the officers, if they do 
 not wish to be massacred, must submit to the same fare as the 
 rest." — Everett on Population, p. 73. 
 
 t Mr. J. S. Mill, who appears to give up as non-essential the 
 comparison of ratios and other points of Mr. Malthus' argument 
 which have been assailed by his opponents, reduces the substance 
 
POPULATION. 207 
 
 of the theory to a very small residuum. " Is it true or not," he 
 asks, " that if the number of the labourers were fewer, they 
 would obtain higher wages ? This is the question and no 
 other." (Prin. Polit. Econ. vol. i. p. 428.) I apprehend, 
 however, that this is by no means the whole of the question : 
 it is, in fact, a very small part of it. The desideratum for the 
 labourer is not the mere maximum of wages, but the greatest 
 amount of comfort and enjoyment attainable in his condition. 
 Among these, marriage and its consequences hold the first place. 
 Supposing that the present rate of wages could be- doubled, 
 on the condition of a great increase in the practice of celibacy 
 and a general late postponement of marriage, I should regard the 
 gain to the labouring class from such a change as very equivocal, 
 both on social and on moral grounds. The truth is, that the 
 great source of happiness to the working man must ever be his 
 home and those home-born joys which the poet has inimitably 
 described, — 
 
 " For them no more the blazing hearth shall bum, 
 Nor busy housewife ply her evening care : 
 No children run to lisp their sire's retm'n. 
 Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share." 
 
 In whatever direction we are to look for the social regenera- 
 tion of the labourer, I am persuaded that the road to it does 
 not lie through enforced celibacy. 
 
208 POPULATION AND CAPITAL, 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 Mt object in this lecture will be to show the 
 adaptation of the principle of population to the pre- 
 servation and progress of the human race. I shall 
 lay before you some of the grounds on which we 
 are justified in concluding that the proHficness of 
 the species, relatively to the means provided for its 
 subsistence, is not excessive ; but that it has been 
 wisely and beneficently adjusted to the condition 
 and necessities of mankind. 
 
 The question may be asked. Are the doctrines of 
 Mr. Malthus in any respect inconsistent with this 
 view of the subject? His opponents have broadly 
 asserted that they are so. They have charged him 
 with inculpating the arrangements of Providence by 
 representing want and misery as necessary con- 
 sequences of the constitution of nature and the pro- 
 pensities of mq,nkind. His adherents, on the other 
 hand, repudiate this charge. They deny that his 
 system, rightly understood, involves any such con- 
 sequence, though it is impossible, as they admit, to 
 survey the condition of society, as Mr. Malthus has 
 done, without being brought into contact with that 
 old and inexplicable problem, the existence of evil 
 in the world. Beyond this, they do not acknowledge 
 
POPULATION. 209 
 
 that the argument of the Essay on Population involves 
 any impeachment on Divine wisdom or benevolence. 
 
 I have already expressed my own jftrm conviction, 
 that Mr. Malthus had no thought, in propounding 
 his theory of population, inconsistent with piety 
 towards God, and good-will towards man. He vindi- 
 cates himself with evident sincerity from the im- 
 putation of having reflected by his arguments upon 
 the goodness of the Deity. External and internal 
 evidence alike concur in acquitting him of intentional 
 impiety or presumption. 
 
 But with respect to the effect of his reasonings 
 and the tendency of his system, my impression, I 
 confess, is somewhat different. What is the funda- 
 mental position of his work ? It is this : — that 
 population has naturally a tendency to increase in 
 a greater ratio, — greater, in an enormous degree, ^ — 
 than the means of subsistence ; that this disparity 
 between the supply of men and of food is the radical 
 cause of the distress which prevails in all commu- 
 nities with scarcely any exception ; and that want 
 and misery are the necessary results of this ultra- 
 potency of the prolific principle, unless it be effectually 
 repressed by certain checks. And what are these 
 checks ? They are some of the direst evils to which 
 humanity is subject : — war, pestilence, famine, and 
 the Kke ; to which must be added one of a different 
 and peculiar nature — moral restraint. The latter 
 check, however, the author expressly declares, has 
 never yet prevailed in an adequate degree; nor 
 does he hold out any reasonable hope that it is 
 likely to do so for the time to come. 
 
 Now, if this be a true account of the matter — if 
 
 V 
 
210 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 this be Indeed what the author designates it, " the 
 principle of population," the law of nature, — i. e. as 
 he truly says, the law of God, — does it not forcibly 
 suggest the conclusion that there is something wrong 
 in the present constitution of things ? would it not 
 justify the inference that some disproportion of means 
 to ends has marred the harmony of the social plan ? to 
 speak plainly, that the Creator has either made man 
 too prolific, or the earth too sterile? Would it 
 surprise us to find that a writer, entertaining such 
 notions, had fallen into the use of language respect- 
 ing the principle of population, corresponding to his 
 own view of its nature and tendency ; that he should 
 describe it as what, if his estimate of its redundant 
 and ill-repressed strength be correct, it undoubtedly 
 is, — an eyU. per se, a natural calamity? 
 
 If is in these terms that Mr. Malthus does, in 
 fact, repeatedly speak of the principle of population. 
 Over and over again, throughout his treatise, recur 
 the phrases, the " evUs," or the " unhappiness," 
 arising from the principle of population. * The 
 fourth book of the essay is thus entitled : '' Of our 
 future Prospects respecting the Removal or Mitigation 
 of the EvUs arising from the Principle of Population." 
 In other passages, he tells us that, " though the prin- 
 ciple of population cannot absolutely produce a 
 famine, it prepares the way for one fj" " and may 
 fairly be said to be one of the principal causes of 
 famine." Again, with reference to epidemic maladies, 
 he speaks of " the effects of the principle of popu- 
 
 * See, among other passages, vol. ii. pp. 324. 431. 440. 
 t Vol. i. pp. 523—5. 
 
POPULATION. 211 
 
 lation " as " predisposing causes to the reception of 
 contagion, and as giving very great additional force 
 to the extensiveness and fatality of its ravages." 
 In another place he speaks of the natural increase of 
 the population relatively to food, meaning thereby 
 what he elsewhere calls the " principle of popu- 
 lation" as " a constantly subsisting cause of periodical 
 misery " which " has existed in most countries ever 
 since we have had any histories of mankind, and 
 continues to exist at the present moment." * 
 
 Will it be said that these are unguarded state- 
 ments or inaccurate expressions, by which the author 
 intended to censure not the very principle of human 
 fecundity, as God ordained it, but the abuse of that 
 power by the improvident and reckless conduct of 
 individuals ? It is an unworthy art of controversy, 
 which I earnestly disclaim, to pin down a writer to par^ 
 ticular phrases that he may have used ; and I acknow- 
 ledge, besides^ that there are statements to be found 
 in other parts of Mr. Malthus' essay, in which he 
 appears distinctly to concede that " the law of popu- 
 lation is not too strong for its apparent object." f A 
 more candid controversialist never wrote ; and it is 
 to this quality of his mind that I am inclined to at- 
 tribute several striking inconsistencies apparent on 
 the surface of his argument. | One of his opponents, 
 
 » Vol. ii. p. 7. t Vol. ii. p, 257. 
 
 J As, for instance, his inconsistent statements with respect 
 to the effect of the poor laws, which, in one part of his work 
 he describes as stimulants to population (see vol. ii, p. 81.), 
 while in another (vol. ii. p. 468.), he expresses a doubt whether 
 they have any such tendency at all. Again, his representation 
 of War, Famine, &c., as powerful and indeed necessary checks 
 p 2 
 
212 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 Mr. Godwin, has said that " Mr. Malthus always ap- 
 peared to him to be a man of so candid a mind, that 
 it would not be difficult for any one of sufficient 
 leisure and perspicuity to construct an answer to the 
 Essay on Population from the Essay itself." * 
 
 Such a writer, and indeed every writer, is to be 
 judged of, not from detached passages, but from the 
 whole of what he has written taken together. Ap- 
 plying this rule of criticism, with all the fairness of 
 which I am capable, to Mr. Malthus' work, I must 
 confess, that its whole spirit and tendency appear to 
 me to point to the conclusion, that the force of 
 human fecundity has been made disproportionately 
 strong ; that a less degree of potency in the desire 
 and power to propagate the species would have con- 
 duced more to the happiness of society ; at all events, 
 that the power of increase in the means of subsistence 
 might have been adjusted in better proportion to 
 that of human fecundity. Because, as I said before, 
 if the law of population be, as Mr. Malthus himself 
 describes, a power which advances relatively to sub- 
 sistence, as the hare to the tortoise, we are compelled 
 to admit that the expressions which I have just now 
 quoted from his Essay are not inappropriate ; there is 
 " evil " in the principle itself; it is, and must be, 
 a radical cause of social distress and unhappiness 
 as long as the world lasts. 
 
 But, again, it may be said — granting an evil ten- 
 on the fecundity of mankind (vol. i. chap, ii.), while in another 
 passage, cited by me in the preceding lecture, he shows how 
 transient the effect of such scourges really is in diminishing 
 population. — Malthus, vol. i. p. 520. 
 
 * Godwin, p. 97. 
 
POPULATION. 213 
 
 dency Inherent in those laws of Nature which re- 
 gulate the production of the species — is there any- 
 thing in such a state of things inconsistent with 
 analogy ? Is this the only sample of natural evil in 
 the universe ? " If plagues and earthquakes break 
 not heaven's design," why is the doctrine of the 
 superfecundity of mankind to be deemed an impeach- 
 ment upon Divine benevolence ? 
 
 This argument in defence of Malthus is plausibly 
 maintained in a clever, but somewhat too merciless 
 criticism on his adversary, Mr. Sadler, in the 104th 
 number of the Edinburgh Review. The reviewer's 
 own reasoning, I think, will not bear strict scrutiny. 
 Evil, it is trae, does in numerous instances result 
 from the operation of the laws of Nature in the ex- 
 ternal world. But evil, though incident to, and ac- 
 companying the action of the law, is in no case, I 
 believe, the direct and dominating eifect. of the law 
 itself. The evU, where it occurs, is partial and in- 
 cidental; the good is general or paramount. We 
 are enabled, where science has taught us to connect 
 effects with causes, to discern the modus operandi, 
 and to perceive how sufferings, slight or transient, 
 subserve to, and are overbalanced by, great and 
 lasting benefits. Notwithstanding the terrors that 
 invest them in our minds, we can see cause for 
 intelligent gratitude to the Kuler of the universe 
 even in the earthquake and the volcano. But no 
 such solution can be applied to the principle now in 
 question. If there be a law by which population 
 everywhere and necessarily tends to increase faster 
 than subsistence, how are the distress and misery 
 that must flow directly and inevitably from such 
 
 p 3 
 
214 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 a law overbalanced by any good? What end can 
 such a law answer, except to keep society at starv- 
 ing point? What else is it but, in the language 
 of Mr. Malthus, " a constantly subsisting cause 
 of periodical misery?" The ends which the pres- 
 sure of population answers in the economy of crea- 
 tion — the difiiision, improvement, and civilisation 
 of our race — ^are indeed obvious ; but let the Mal- 
 thusian answer this question: — If, instead of the 
 tendency ascribed to popidation, to outrun and keep 
 ahead of subsistence, the tendency had been to mul- 
 tiply the species up to, but not beyond, the limit of 
 the supplies of food — the increase of numbers sup- 
 plying a constant stimulus to the productive in- 
 dustry of man, without being an over-match for it, 
 so that, in every weU-ordered society, and, in the 
 absence of disturbing causes, wealth and population 
 would go together, the former constantly holding 
 the ascendant, the latter never remitting its impulsive 
 force, — is there, I ask, any intelligible design of 
 Providence which such an arrangement would leave 
 unfulfilled ? Under such a law, would any security 
 for the replenishing and subduing of the earth be 
 withdrawn or weakened, while the suffering which 
 perpetually attends the working of the social system, 
 according to the Malthusian theory, so far as such 
 suffering depends on the ordinance of Nature, would 
 be eliminated from the system ? All the evil that re- 
 mains, the distress and poverty which prevail in the 
 actual world, would then be attributable to the mis- 
 conduct and perverseness of man ; to misgovernment 
 or vicious institutions; or to the improvidence, excess, 
 and immoral propensities of individuals. 
 
POPULATION. 215 
 
 But, whatever may have been the light in which 
 Mr. Malthus himself regarded the principles he laid 
 down, it is certain, I think, that the influence of his 
 theory on the minds of others, and the conclusions 
 which some of his followers have drawn from it, do 
 tend to disparage the laws upon which society is con- 
 stituted, and to drive those who cannot see their way 
 out of the dilemma, into painful and perplexing con- 
 sequences. For an instance of this, I may refer to 
 the statement before quoted of Mr. J. S. Mill, " that 
 the niggardliness of nature is the cause of the penalty 
 attached to* over-population." And, as a specimen of 
 the extravagant and revolting deductions which the 
 dogma of over-population, when it has once mastered 
 the mind, is capable of suggesting, I may refer to an 
 opinion expressed by no less acute and sagacious a 
 person than the late Lord Jefiirey, in a letter written 
 in the year 1819, and recently published by his 
 biographer : — • " Our present radical evil," he says, 
 " is the excess of our productive powers ;" " the want 
 of demand for our manufactures and industry ; or, 
 in other words, the excess of our population." Here 
 we have the Malthusian tenet; now mark the in- 
 ference from it : — " And for this, I am afraid, there 
 is no radical remedy but starving out the surplus, 
 horrible as it is." Horrible, indeed, and no less 
 absurd than horrible. And this, with a good deal 
 more most melancholy political economy *, proceeded 
 from a man of highly-cultivated intellect and varied 
 
 * "Emigration," says Lord Jeffrey, in the same letter 
 written to a friend, " can do comparatively nothing ; and the 
 excess of production arising, not from any temporary slackness 
 of the natural demand, but from the improvement of machinery 
 
 T 4 
 
216 POPULATION ANB CAPITAL. 
 
 knowledge, the conductor of one of the most famous 
 periodicals of the day. 
 
 There may be some exaggeration, perhaps, but 
 there is certainly a foundation of truth, in, the follow- 
 ing statement which I fehall quote from Mr. Grodwin, 
 of the effects produced on the tone of public feeUng 
 by the prevalence of the Malthusian doctrines : — 
 " We were learning," he says, " at least as many of 
 us as studied the questions of political economy, — 
 and these are by no means the most despicable part 
 of the community, — to look askance, and with a 
 suspicious eye, upon a human being, parficularly on 
 a little chUd. A woman, walking the streets in a 
 state of pregnancy, was an unavoidable subject of 
 alarm. A man, who was the father of a numerous 
 family, if in the lower orders of society, was the 
 object of our anger. We could not look at a human 
 
 and skill, which has enabled one man to do the work of at least 
 one hundred, and that all over the improved part of the world, 
 and, consequently, enabled all those who formerly found em- 
 ployment to produce ten times as much as any possible increase 
 of consumption can take off their hands, it is plainly impos- 
 sible that it can be cured by any change in our own commercial 
 relations. It may seem a strange paradox to mentidn, but I 
 am myself quite persuaded of its truth, that in an artificial 
 society the consequence of those great discoveries and im- 
 provements which render human industry so much more pro- 
 ductive, and should (?) therefore render all human comforts so 
 much more attainable, must be to plunge the greater part of 
 society into wretchedness, and ultimately to depopulate the 
 countries where they prevail." (Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, 
 vol. ii. p. 189.) The moral of all which I take to be this, — 
 break machines, put down science, and discourage improvement 
 and discovery. We must not be too severe on the Preston 
 strike-leaders for their errors in Political Economy. 
 
POPULATION. 217 
 
 being with the eye of a painter, as a delicious sub- 
 ject of contemplation ; with the eye of a moral phi- 
 losopher, as a machine capable of adorning the earth 
 with magnificence and beauty ; or with the eye of a 
 diyine, as a creature with a soul to be saved, and 
 destined to the happiness of an immortal existence. 
 Our first question, and that regarded as a most difli- 
 cult one, was. How he was to be maintained ? It 
 was not enough that he was born with the imple- 
 ments and the limbs, by which exuberant subsistence 
 is to be produced. It was not enough that there 
 was room for many millions of human beings more 
 than now exist on the face of the earth. We were 
 reduced (oh miserable slavery !) to inquire whether 
 he was born among the easier orders of society,- — • 
 whether he was the son of a father who had a ' fair 
 prospect of being able to support a family.' We 
 were learning fast to calumniate the system of the 
 universe, and to believe that the first duty it required 
 of us was to prevent too many human beings (that 
 last work of God, that sole ornament and true con- 
 summation of the orb we dwell in) from being born 
 into the world." * 
 
 To say the least, if the consistency of the law of 
 population with the Divine wisdom and benevolence 
 does not require to be vindicated against Malthus, 
 the demonstration of it which his work aflPords is 
 certainly by no means complete or satisfactory. I 
 shall endeavour to some extent to supply that omission 
 in this and the following lecture. I propose to show 
 that the power of population is not stronger than it 
 
 * Godwin on Population, p. 111. 
 
218 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 needs to be; and that it could not, without endanger- 
 ing the progress, and even the existence, of the human 
 race, have been made less potent than it is. The 
 argument is one to which I cannot hope, within the 
 narrow limits that are allowed me, to do full justice ; 
 but I may be able to suggest to your minds some 
 hints which may be expanded or improved by your 
 own reflections. 
 
 The primeval command which bade man propagate 
 his race expressed also the design and object of the 
 injunction : " Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish 
 the earth and subdue it." The diffusion of the human 
 family over the habitable globe was declared to be 
 the Divine intention, and, with that also, the subju- 
 gation of the earth ; the adaptation, that is to say, 
 not only of the soU and its vegetable productions, 
 but of aU the powers and agencies of the material 
 world to man's necessities and enjoyments. Labour 
 was to be the instrument by which this conquest 
 was to be achieved; but, in the reproductive pro- 
 pensity of the species, with all the instincts and 
 affections that are bound up with it, lay the spring 
 from which the stream of population was to over- 
 flow the earth, as well as the all-potent stimulus by 
 which labour was to be animated and sustained. 
 The strongest of the physical instincts— the most 
 absorbing passion of the soul- — the warmest feelings 
 of the heart • — were enlisted and set in motion by 
 the principle of population. Man is naturally averse 
 to labour ; but what indolence can resist those im- 
 perious motives, the yearnings for female sympathy 
 and affection — the craving for domestic intercourse 
 — the desire of having children — of providing for 
 
POPULATION. 219 
 
 their wants and enjoyments in life — of securing 
 them against suffering and distress — and of leaving 
 them, after death, an inheritance and a name ? The 
 conjugal and parental affections, with all the hopes 
 and fears, the desires and anxieties, they engender, 
 form the perpetual incentive — curis acuens mortalia 
 cor da — by which the faculties are quickened and 
 improved, the ambition roused, the pursuit of know- 
 ledge animated, the courage nerved to grapple with 
 hardships and dangers, and all the physical and 
 mental powers of the man trained to the highest 
 pitch of activity and perfection. The difficulty 
 which Providence has placed in the way of providing 
 for a family, arising from the relation which subsists 
 between' the power of human fecundity and the 
 power of productive industry, is great enough to 
 excite and sharpen, without being so severe as to 
 depress, exertion. By the law of Nature, subsistence 
 is made capable of a more rapid expansion than po- 
 pulation ; but more rapid only in that degree which 
 serves to encourage and sustain labour ; not so easy 
 of attainment as to prevent the pressure being felt 
 whenever the effort is remitted. Thus the law of 
 population becomes, by its inevitable operation, the 
 law of progress — the law of improvement in agri- 
 culture, in art, in science — in a word, in civilisation; 
 for men cannot multiply their kind without subduing 
 the earth and making'it yield more food — the more 
 they overspread its surface, the more wealth they 
 must extract from it, by making the powers of nature 
 tributary to their will, and training the very ele- 
 ments to their service. And when, by the progress 
 of discovery and knowledge, the arts of production 
 
220 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 have attained a certain measure of development, 
 and men still mtdtiply upon the land, then the same 
 pressure which originated improvements in the old 
 country urges them to go forth and people other 
 regions, where space is abundant, and the treasures 
 of nature lie unexplored. And so the foundation of 
 new colonies, and the replenishment of the remote 
 and waste places of the globe, derive their impulse 
 from the principle of population. The knowledge, 
 the arts, the manners, the religion, the artificial ,a8 
 well as the natural productions of old communities, 
 are transported to distant regions, and a handful of 
 civilised men form the nucleus of great and mighty 
 empires. Wealth and civilisation are transplanted 
 from Egypt to Asia — from Asia to Greece — from 
 Greece to the shores of the Mediterranean — or, to 
 take still more conspicuous instances in modern 
 times, from Great Britain to America, to both the 
 Indies, to South Africa, to Australasia. 
 
 The benefits resulting from the principle of popu- 
 lation, and the evidence which the physical laws of 
 our being afford of the benevolence and wisdom of 
 Providence, have been forcibly illustrated by Arch- 
 bishop Sumner, in his weU-known Essay, called 
 the " Records of Creation." Those who would wish 
 to pursue the argument in its details I would refer to 
 the work itself, confining myself to a citation of the 
 passage in which the leading points of the argument 
 are recapitulated. 
 
 " It appeared then, first, to be the design of the 
 Creator to people the world with rational and im- 
 provable beings, placed there, it should seem, in a 
 state preparatory to some higher sphere of existence. 
 
POPULATION. 221 
 
 into whicli tliey might hereafter be removed. With 
 this view, he implanted in the first progenitors of 
 the species a passion, transmitted by them to their 
 descendants, which, in the outset, prompts the 
 finest feelings of the mind, and leads to that close 
 union of interests and pursuits by which the do- 
 mestic comfort and harmony of the human race are 
 most effectually promoted. The operation of this 
 principle, filling the world with competitors for sup- 
 port, enforces labour and encourages industry by the 
 advantages it gives to the industrious and laborious 
 at the expense of the indolent and the extravagant. 
 The ultimate effect of it is to foster those arts and 
 improvements which most dignify the character and 
 refine the mind of man ; and, lastly, to place man- 
 kind in that situation which best enables them to 
 improve their natural faculties, and, at the same 
 time, best exercises and most clearly displays their 
 virtues." 
 
 " The collateral benefits derived from the same 
 principles were shown to be the promotion of uni- 
 versal comfort, by insuring the most effective dis- 
 position of labour and skill ; and the diffusion of 
 the civilisation thus attained by a gradual and steady 
 progress throughout the various regions of the habi- 
 table globe." * Nor is it only, as the archbishop 
 shows, the diffusion of mechanical arts, of external 
 comforts and secular knowledge, for which we are 
 indebted to the great mainspring of human fecundity 
 and the ceaseless movement to which it impels the 
 race. He observes, farther, that ''the important 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 201. 
 
222 POPULATION AjSD CAPITAL. 
 
 purpose effected by this provision in disseminating 
 the blessings of Revelation must have been pro- 
 minent in the view of the Creator. Were there 
 no stimulus to intercourse between different coun- 
 tries, any Revelation must either have been as 
 partial as that made to the Jews, or it must have 
 been displayed separately to every district of the 
 globe. But, through the influence of the principle 
 we are considering, civilisation becomes the instru- 
 ment of diffusing Christianity." . . . . " Who- 
 ever contemplates this fact, must either be blind to 
 the advantages of such distribution, or must acknow- 
 ledge the wisdom of a dispensation, by means of 
 which a Revelation made in one age and country 
 is, in effect, made to all ages and nations. For, if 
 we analyse those means, we find that it is the activity 
 of full population in England which has carried the 
 arts that minister to human comfort, to unrivalled 
 perfection; that the industry of the same population, 
 employed in the transmission of those arts, has found 
 access to the rudest and most distant countries ; and 
 that the fulness of every avenue to wealth at home 
 is the foundation of that readiness to emigrate and 
 colonise, which leads to the establishment of Christi- 
 anity together with civilisation." * 
 
 * As I have referred to the archbishop in support of my 
 argument, it is but fair to mention that he appears to give his 
 adhesion to the dogma of Mr. Malthus respecting the more 
 rapid increase of population than of subsistence. But it is 
 obvious that that opinion, -whether true or false, has no neces- 
 sary connection with the argument referred to in the text, for 
 which I have quoted the archbishop's work. It is sufficient 
 for the purpose of that argument to regard the principle of 
 
POPULATION. 223 
 
 One other effect of the principle of population, 
 which has been but slightly noticed, I am unwilling 
 to omit, the more so because so much stress has been 
 laid by writers of another school upon the misery 
 Avhich the law of population entails upon society. 
 I must be allowed, on the other side, to refer to it 
 as the source of some of the purest and deepest 
 of human gratifications. For what enjoyments of 
 which man is capable are more cordial or more true 
 than those which spring from the successful exercise 
 of talents and industry, prompted and stimulated 
 first by the desire of God's best gift to man — do- 
 mestic happiness ; then by the impulse, inspired by 
 affection, and seconded by duty, of providing for a 
 family ? of securing for perhaps a numerous off- 
 spring a condition of life equal at least, if not supe- 
 rior, to that of their parents ? It is this motive which 
 at once nerves the arm and cheers the task of in- 
 dustry — -which leaves no stone unturned to attain 
 success — -which purges the selfishness, while it sus- 
 tains the ardour, of ambition, and gives a keener 
 zest to every triumph over difficulties. From the 
 pressure which the responsibilities of marriage en- 
 genders arises all that quickens, adorns, and elevates 
 the social life of man — the constancy, fortitude, and 
 self-denial, that are their own reward — " the high en- 
 deavour and the glad success," — the bread sweetened 
 by honest toU, and the heart that beats with the 
 pride of manly independence. Those who complain 
 
 population as a potent and unceasing stimulus to production, 
 without admitting its tendency to increase with greater, or even 
 with equal, rapidity. 
 
224 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 of the relation established by the ordinance of Nature 
 between population and subsistence are impeaching 
 laws to which man owes the best part not only of 
 his dignity, but of his happiness, as a social being. 
 They would take away a stimulus without which 
 " life would have been a dreary blank, and the world 
 an uncultivated waste." * 
 
 In the appendix subjoined to the last edition of 
 the Essay on Population, in which Mr. Malthus 
 reviews the various objections that had then been 
 made against his theory, and vindicates it from the 
 strictures of his opponents, he avows his cordial 
 assent to the general conclusions of Archbishop 
 Sumner's treatise. " The subject," he says, " has 
 lately been pursued with great ability in the work 
 of Mr. Svunner on the Records of Creation, and I 
 am happy to refer to it as containing a masterly 
 development and completion of view of which only 
 an intimation could be given in the Essay." 
 
 " I fully agree with Mr. Sumner as to the bene- 
 ficial eflPects which result from the principle of popu- 
 lation, and feel entirely convinced that the natural 
 tendency of the human race to increase faster than 
 the possible increase of the means of subsistence 
 could not be either destroyed or essentially di- 
 minished without diminishiBg the hope of rising 
 and fear of falling in society so necessary to the 
 improvement of the human faculties and the ad- 
 vancement of human happiness." * 
 
 I give Mr. Malthus entire credit for the sincerity 
 
 * Records of Creation, vol. ii. p. 158. 
 f Malthus, vol. ii, p. 496. 
 
POPULATION. 225 
 
 with which he makes this statement ; though I confess 
 myself unable to reconcile it, either with the general 
 tenor and spirit of his work, with his strong and 
 pregnant expressions as to the " evils" of the prin- 
 ciple of population already quoted, or with his 
 avowed predilection, expressed in his correspondence 
 with Mr. Senior, for that Utopian " stationary state," 
 as he terms it, in which the movements both of popula- 
 tion and wealth are supposed to be brought to a stand- 
 still; — a state, I take leave to assert, alike undesirable 
 and impossible for man, inconsistent with the ma- 
 nifest designs of Providence and the destination of 
 society. 
 
 In a word, I am unable to understand how the 
 "principle of population," as it is called, can be at 
 one and the same time good and evil. Good it is, ac- 
 cording to the arguments which I have just laid before 
 you ; for although, in this as in many analogous cases, 
 evil does result from the operation of the law, that 
 evil is only an incidental consequence, and is attri- 
 butable not to the law itself, but to its perversion 
 and abuse, and to the breach of another law as plain 
 and as divine as the injunction to increase and mul- 
 tiply — the law of prudence — the law of conjugal 
 and parental responsibility. But " evil," according 
 to Mr. Malthus, the principle of population is, not 
 only inasmuch as he himself so terms it, and lays on 
 it the blame of constantly prevailing social misery, 
 but because, if his dogma be true, it must be essen- 
 tially hurtful, and by its natural and necessary action 
 the source of infinite unhappiness to mankind. If 
 population has been so regulated by Nature as to 
 increase faster than subsistence, it becomes not a 
 
 Q 
 
226 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 stimulus to society but a scourge. The pressure 
 which, according to the view now maintained. 
 Divine wisdom has so adjusted as to act as a con- 
 stantly elastic spring to industry and progress, be- 
 comes a weight that crushes and destroys. Every 
 end of social advantage that could be promoted by 
 the agency of human fecundity is answered by 
 making subsistence just so difficult as to serve for a 
 perpetual spur to the faculties of men. What end 
 but gratuitous misery could be answered by making 
 it so much more difficult — by such a " niggardliness 
 of nature" — ^as must keep the supply always lagging 
 behind the demand — the production of food never 
 quite adequate to the wants of the consumers ? 
 
 The necessity for a powerful and active principle 
 of multiplication to the moral and intellectual welfare 
 of the human race, and to the diffiision of civilised 
 man throughout the earth, has, I trust, been clearly 
 established. If, now, we cast our eyes over the world 
 in this advanced period of its existence, and observe 
 how much yet remains to be done ere this principle 
 shall have fulfilled its mission ; to what an extent 
 population and knowledge, the arts of life and the 
 truths of Revelation have yet failed to attain dif- 
 fusion, we shall see little reason, I think, to conclude 
 that this great engine of human improvement has 
 been made unnecessarily powerful in reference to the 
 work to be accomplished by it. But in asserting the 
 necessity of the reproductive principle in its full 
 force to the advancement and amelioration of society, 
 I am stating only a part of the case. All plans 
 for the improvement of the species must have been 
 utterly foiled unless secure provision had been made 
 
POPULATION. 227 
 
 for the primary object of preserving it from extinc- 
 tion. We must not suffer tlie impressions produced 
 on our minds by the existing circumstances of society 
 to bhnd us to the necessity which, under a different 
 state of things had existed and still exists for such pre- 
 cautions. History will tell us that the disease of de- 
 population is one far more generally prevalent, morei 
 disastrous in its effects, and more difficult to cope 
 with, than that which the Malthusian school regard 
 with so much horror, the excess of population. It 
 has devastated the once fairest and wealthiest por- 
 tions of Asia and Africa ; and if in one part of the 
 "western hemisphere the human family has wonder- 
 fully multiplied, in the southern and central parts 
 even of that continent the numbers of the race have 
 no less remarkably declined. As I have already 
 mentioned, it is considered doubtful by some coinpc'' 
 tent authorities^ whether the whole world, taken toge- 
 ther. Is more populous at the present time than in the 
 days of Augustus. However this may be, it is at 
 least certain that the addition made to the inha- 
 bitants of the earth during the last 1800 years has 
 not been very great. Enough appears to justify the 
 Baying of Voltaire, that " to increase the numbers of 
 mankind is not so easy a matter as some people 
 imagine." 
 
 But the first point to which I would more par- 
 ticularly direct your attention is the imminent 
 danger of extinction to which the race is liable in 
 the early stages of society. Although in civilised 
 dommtinities, as has been already stated, the ravages 
 of an occasional famine or of war are speedily 
 ]?epaired by the efforts of regular and well-organised 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 industry, in a savage state the effect of these and the 
 other scourges is far more severe. In societies of 
 which the whole labour, such as it is, is devoted to 
 the procuring of mere subsistence; where there is 
 neither the care nor the means of making provision 
 beyond the wants of the day, the population, insigni- 
 ficant as it is in number, lives perpetually on the 
 verge of famine. The habits of existence, also, 
 among tribes which subsist only by hunting and fish- 
 ing, are such as not only greatly to check the in- 
 crease of their numbers, but also to shorten the term 
 of life. Promiscuous intercourse, polygamy, severe 
 treatment of women, abandonment or destruction of 
 children, operate most powerfully to restrain fecundity. 
 The hardships and dangers of savage life form another 
 heavy tax on population ; and although many of the 
 maladies which are generated by an artificial state of 
 society are there unknown, the condition of unci- 
 vilised man is by no means privileged in respect to 
 health. On this point Mr. Malthus makes the fol- 
 lowing remarks, founded upon the personal observa- 
 tions of various travellers : — 
 
 " The diseases to which man is subject in the 
 savage state, though fewer in number, are more 
 violent and fatal than those which prevail in civilised 
 society. As savages are wonderfully improvident, 
 and their means of subsistence always precarious, 
 they often pass from the extreme of want to exube- 
 rant plenty, according to the vicissitudes of fortune in 
 the chase or to the variety in the produce of the 
 seasons. Their inconsiderate gluttony in the one 
 case, and their severe abstinence in the other, are 
 equally prejudicial to the human constitution; and 
 
POPULATION. 229 
 
 their vigour is accordingly at some seasons impaired 
 by want, and at others by a superfluity of gross 
 aliment and the disorders arising from indigestions. 
 These, which may be considered as the unavoidable 
 ' consequence of their mode of living, cut off consider- 
 able numbers in the prime of life. They are likewise 
 extremely subject to consumptions, to pleuritic, asth- 
 matic, and paralytic disorders, brought on by the im- 
 moderate hardships and fatigues which they endure 
 in hunting and war, and by the inclemency of the 
 seasons to which they are continually exposed." 
 
 To these potent causes of depopulation must be 
 added another, which all our accounts of the modes 
 of life, both of the hunting and pastoral tribes, show 
 to be in almost perpetual operation, viz., War. "The 
 very nature of the pastoral state," says the author last 
 quoted, " seems to furnish perpetual occasion for 
 war." Requiring a large range of territory for sub- 
 sistence, each tribe is involved in perpetual disputes 
 about the invasion of its possessions, with other tribes. 
 When blood is fihed, more blood must expiate the 
 injury ; and so feud begets feud in interminable sue-" 
 cession. Moreover, where the pursuits and rewards 
 of industry and commerce are unknown, war is the 
 only outlet for the native -energy and restlessness 
 of man— the one road to fame, honoiir and pre- 
 eminence — the sole means of gratifying avarice, 
 vanity, or ambition. What Tacitus says of the an- 
 cient Germans is no mere national peculiarity, but a 
 characteristic of all people in a state of barbarism : 
 — "Nee arare terram aut expectare annum tarn facile 
 persuaseris quam vocare hostes et vulnera mereri : pi- 
 grum quinimo et iners videtur sudore acquirere quod 
 
 Q 3 
 
230 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 possis Sanguine parare." Mallet, in his account 
 of the northern nations, prefixed to his History of 
 Denmark, relates that it was their common custom 
 to hold an assembly every spring, for the purpose of 
 considering in what quarter they should make war.* 
 The habits of our own turbulent ancestors are thus 
 described by the author of the poem of the Abori- 
 ginal Britons: — 
 
 " War is their sport ; at dayspring forth they go, 
 With spear and shield, and find or make a foe. 
 Join the wild fight, and with the setting sun 
 Bear home their plunder, and the war is done." 
 
 The historian of the Mahometan Tartars tells us 
 that they are always at war with the neighbouring 
 Persians ; that " they woixld rather pillage, rob, and 
 kill their neighbours, than apply themselves to im- 
 prove the benefits which nature so liberally offers 
 them ; " and " that, though they are often very ill- 
 treated in their incursions, and the whole of their 
 plimder is not equivalent to what they might obtain 
 with very little labour from their lands, yet they 
 choose rather to expose themselves to the thousand 
 fatigues and dangers attendant on such a life, than 
 apply themselves seriously to agriculture." f 
 
 In almost every part of the world, in the early 
 periods of society, these habits have been the same. 
 The havoc made by the incessant wars, ia the smaller 
 states of Italy, during the first struggles of the 
 Romans for power, was immense. Livy expresses 
 his wonder that the ^qui and Volsci should have 
 
 * Cited by Malthus. 
 
 ■" Malthus, vol. i. p. 126. 
 
POPULATION. 231 
 
 been able, so often as they were conquered, to find 
 the materials for fresh armies to bring into the field. 
 And, in proof of the fact that war was the habitual 
 state of the Roman commonwealth, it is sufficient to 
 refer to the fact, that it was not till after the first 
 Punic war, 529 A.u.C, that the Temple of Janus 
 was, for the first time, closed during the republic. 
 
 But it is needless to multiply instances of a truth 
 which is confirmed by the early history of almost 
 every community that has existed. It may be stated 
 generally, that war is the normal state of aU unci- 
 vilised or half-civilised communities; whether of 
 hunters, like the American Indians, or shepherds, 
 like the Tartar, Arab, Persian and African tribes. 
 Peace is the fruit of civilisation ; in proportion as na- 
 tions grow refined, intelligent, and commercial, they 
 become pacific. Now, the destruction which maraud- 
 ing and predatory wars occasion among nations in 
 various degrees of barbarism, is a perennial drain on 
 population, which it requires all the natural prolific- 
 ness of the race to counteract ; nay, over a large part 
 of the world even at this day the tide is not equal to 
 the efflux ; and population, under the influence of 
 these causes, is actually stationary or receding. 
 
 Let us look at the effects of war under another 
 aspect. I have been referring to the operation of 
 this check when it takes the form of a constant and 
 perennial waste of life, thinning the numbers of a 
 people and preventing them from rising to a higher 
 level. But there have been periods of stiU greater 
 devastation in the history of the world, when coun- 
 tries have been swept over by the hurricane of 
 conquest, and their inhabitants mowed down by 
 
232 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 millions at a time by the sword of invasion. Such 
 were the chasms in the human race made by the 
 irruptions of the successive hosts of barbarous tribes 
 in the period that preceded the dissolution of the 
 Koman empire.* The desolation produced by such 
 invasions on the once-flourishing districts of Apulia, 
 Campania, and Calabria, are compared by a contem- 
 porary writer to that which succeeded the deluge. 
 Goths, Huns, Saracens, Moguls, and Tartars, al- 
 most exterminated the inhabitants of some of the 
 countries which they overran, and produced a void 
 that it required centuries to repair. Mr. Malthus 
 himself observes, in reference to the Tartar inva- 
 sions, " that, ia reading of the devastation of the 
 human race in these times, instead of looking for the 
 causes which prevented the increase of population, we 
 can only be astonished at the force of that principle 
 of increase which fiirnished fresh harvests of human 
 beings for the scythe of each successive conqueror." f 
 This is a just remark ; and we may safely add to 
 it, that the harvest would have surely failed, and the 
 scythe of.war have exterminated the species, if the 
 principle of increase had been made in any degree 
 less potent than it is. Nor is it only at one parti- 
 cular era in the world's history that the human race 
 has had to sustain such tremendous shocks from war. 
 To take an instance from our own country, — such 
 was the effect of the obstinate contests carried on 
 between the British and the Saxons after the Homans 
 
 * See Alison on Population, vol. i. p. 273. ; also Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall, vol. x. p. 252. 
 t Vol. i. p. 122. 
 
POPULATION. 233 
 
 had retired from the island, that the inhabitants of 
 Britain were abnost exterminated, and the country 
 between the Tyne and the Tees was reduced to a 
 perfect solitude.* During the wars between France 
 and England subsequent to the battle of Cressy, no 
 less than one-half of the inhabitants of the former 
 country are stated to have perished. The Crusades 
 are computed to have consumed not less than four 
 millions of European lives, besides, at least, an equal 
 number of Asiatics. These are a few isolated in- 
 stances of the wholesale carnage of war ; to which 
 many more, of almost equal magnitude, might be 
 added. For the replenishment of the human race 
 thus tremendously repressed, from time to time, who 
 shall venture to describe the restorative force of 
 population as excessive ? Who shall say that the 
 strength of the sexual passion might have been ad- 
 vantageously modified, or the fecundity of the species 
 safely retrenched consistently, I do not say with 
 diffusing it over the globe, but even with pre^ 
 serving it from extinction ? If the vices and passions 
 which lead to war have characterised our race, as 
 experience proves, in aU countries and in all ages 
 of the world, it was necessary to counteract the de- 
 structive tendency of such propensities by an instinct 
 no less active and indomitable. A signal fallacy ap- 
 pears to me to pervade the whole of Mr. Malthus' 
 reasonings on this part of the subject. He regards 
 war itself as if it were a result of the principle of 
 population, and, to some extent, a remedial check 
 upon its redundant force. He labours to prove that 
 
 * See Alison, vol. i. p. 274. 
 
234 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 the great irruptions of the northern barbarians were, 
 in fact, stimidated by the want of space and the 
 pressure of numbers on subsistence; an ingenious 
 attempt to bend facts to the purpose of his theory, 
 but one which reason and history alike refute. The 
 fact is, that savage races have been prompted to war 
 universally, not by their redundant numbers or their 
 lu-gent wants, but rather by those ferocious instincts 
 in which they resemble the brute animals — by 
 avarice, lust, ferocity, and revenge. And it is in the 
 foresight of this inevitable waste of life that the 
 Creator has wisely regulated the prolific energies of 
 mankind. Mr. Malthus has, in fact, inverted the re-: 
 lation between the principle of population and the 
 check upon it : war is not a remedy for the evils of 
 human fecundity, but the power of human fecundity 
 is a remedy for the evils of war. In this view of 
 the subject we avoid the anomaly, justly revolting to 
 many minds, of ascribing a direct remedial agency 
 to human violence and wickedness ; we attribute that 
 function, with more justice, to the law of Provi- 
 dence operating, by a natural dispensation, as an 
 antidote and corrective to moral evil. 
 
 To the other leading causes of depopulation I can 
 only refer very briefly. They are principally these : — 
 1st. Misgovemment, involving insecurity of property 
 and oppressive taxation ; evils of which the thinly- 
 peopled provinces of the Turkish empire afford, at this 
 day, a striking illustration, 2ndly. The institution 
 of slavery ; the unfavoiu-able effects of which on the 
 propagation of the species are proved by the neces- 
 sity of a continual influx of fresh numbers to keep 
 
POPULATION. 235 
 
 up the system.* 3rdly. Debauchery, with its com- 
 mon accompaniment, infanticide, which may be 
 found in an aggravated form among the inhabitants 
 of Otaheite and the neighbouring islands of the 
 South Sea. Against such drains as these on the 
 sources of existence the principle of population can 
 with difficulty make head. Had it been made at aU 
 less powerful than it is, the human race, where 
 it is exposed to these scoiu:ges, would infallibly have 
 died out. 
 
 In my next and concluding lecture I shall lay be- 
 fore you some further arguments in viadication of 
 these laws of Nature by which the increase of man- 
 kind is regulated ; and, in opposition to the views of 
 those who recommend the imposition of artificial re- 
 strictions on marriage, I shall endeavour to show 
 that the principle of population is one of those things 
 which requires only " to be let alone." 
 
 * See some very just remarks on this point in Malthus, 
 Tol. i. p. 250. 
 
236 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 In my last lecture I dilated on the severe and 
 constant drains, arising from want, hardships, disease, 
 and, above all, from war, to which population is 
 subject in the early stages of society. I endeavoured 
 to show that any less degree of fecundity than that 
 with which Nature has actually endued the species 
 would scarcely suffice to countervail that perennial 
 waste of life which results from the habits and 
 propensities of the savage state. So far as regards 
 this primitive stage of society, I may probably 
 assume that the law of population requires no further 
 vindication.. Few will venture to specify the prolific- 
 ness of the species as the cause of the sufferings 
 endured by the improvident, sensual, and ferocious 
 savage ; or to assert that the dangers with which his 
 existence is beset are superfluously guarded against 
 by the force of the reproductive principle. But it 
 is in regard to a more advanced condition of society, 
 that the principle of population has been chiefly 
 called in question. When wars have become less 
 frequent and less destructive, when the visitations 
 of famine have grown comparatively rare, when 
 plagues and epidemics have been checked by the 
 advance of medical and sanitary skill, and when the 
 average term of human life has been consequently 
 
POPULATIOK. 237 
 
 prolonged, — then it is that the adaptation of the law 
 of human increase to the altered state of society is 
 thought questionable; for while, on the one hand, 
 the physical power of propagation remains unabated, 
 on the other hand, the consumption of life is vastly 
 diminished. How, it is asked, shall the pressure of 
 numbers against food, which, while man is in a state 
 of nature, so many potent checks exist to coun- 
 teract, be obviated at a period when nearly all the 
 leading causes of mortality are in abeyance ? Must 
 we not have recourse to some artificial restraints 
 upon population to supply the place of those curbs 
 which nature heretofore imposed upon the prolific- 
 ness of the race ? 
 
 Between a state of primitive barbarism and a 
 state of high civilisation the difference in all those 
 circumstances which affect the growth of population 
 can indeed scarcely be exaggerated. In all that 
 concerns the duration of life, the ratio of mortality, 
 the mode of subsistence, the disposition to labour, 
 and the means of making that labour productive, the 
 disparity is incalculable. Yet the mere physical 
 powers of reproduction of the savage and the civilised 
 man are generally the same. Undoubtedly it must 
 be a law of great flexibility that is capable of 
 adaptation to conditions so different; and, prima 
 facie, it would be natural to conceive that a degree, 
 of prolificness needful to counterbalance the physical 
 checks on population, when operating in their utmost 
 intensity, would be found unsuited to the condition 
 of the race in its highest state of development, — in 
 an age of peace, abundance and prosperity, and in 
 the maturity of those arts of which the combined 
 
238 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 effect is to give increased value and duration to 
 human life. But if, upon closer inquiry, it should 
 be found that, in fact, the law of population has 
 been framed with singular adaptability to the most 
 opposite phases of human society — that it is calcu- 
 lated at once to preserve the existence, to restrain 
 the redundancy, and to stimulate the improvement 
 of the species, — ^rn that case the proof of such an 
 adjustment of the laws of nature to the varying 
 exigencies of man will only concur with those other 
 evidences, with which the universe abounds, of the 
 wisdom and benevolence of the Creator. 
 
 We shall not be far wrong if we pronounce that 
 to be the highest state of civilisation in which the 
 influence of the repressive checks has been reduced 
 to the lowest point — in which human life is most 
 highly appreciated, and is liable to the smallest 
 degree of waste from war, disease, famine^ hardship, 
 pr indigence ; in a word, when the natural term of 
 existence is in the greatest number of instances 
 attained.* But if the rate of mortality be thus 
 diminished, the danger of excess of population would 
 apparently be increased ; unless it be the fact that 
 other causes, concurrent with those which have 
 checked the waste of life, operate at the same time 
 either to lessen the number of niew claimants on the 
 fund of subsistence, or to make that fund increase 
 
 * See the just remarks in the continuation of Bastiat's 
 Chapter, " de la Population," on the immense economical signifi- 
 cance of an increased standard of longevity : — " EUe est le 
 resume, I'expression sommaire de tons les progres acquis, 
 comme eUe est le gage certain, la source immanquable de pro- 
 gr6s nouveaux," etc. — Harmonies Ecpnomiques, 2nd edit. p. 458. 
 
POPULATION. 239 
 
 with the new demands upon it, or to produce both 
 those eifects together. In other words, if the deaths 
 be fewer, then either the births must be fewer also, 
 or the supply of food must be proportionately in- 
 creased ; or else there must be less and less food for 
 the people to eat, which is equivalent to excess of 
 population. 
 
 Now I assert, in the first place, that by the opera- 
 tion of causes naturally developed in the progress of 
 society, the supply of food is, cceteris paribus, increased 
 by the advance of civilisation and the increased 
 populousness of nations. The same arts, inventions, 
 knowledge, political and moral ameliorations, which 
 have 'given a new value and prolongation to life, 
 inevitably render industry more productive and sub- 
 sistence easier of attainment. I shall not now enter 
 into a detailed proof of this position, because I have 
 already done so at considerable length in a former 
 lecture*; it wUl suffice to recapitulate the argu- 
 ments then adduced to show the increased facilities 
 that are afforded to production by the concentration 
 of population. They were briefly these: — that the 
 productiveness of labour depends mainly on the 
 organisation by which it works and the skill with 
 which it is applied; that the principal means by 
 which the efficiency of labour is promoted, are the 
 separation of employments and the combination of 
 efforts ; that such arrangements being dependent on 
 the extent of the market, are impracticable except 
 where considerable density of population exists; 
 that from the division of employments, which tends 
 
 * See Lecture VII., ante. 
 
240 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 to the perfecting of each separate department of pro- 
 duction, spring those mechanical inventions by which 
 the results of industry are incalculably multiplied. 
 In this manner it is, that the economy of labour 
 advances, in the natural course of things, in a ratio 
 constantly exceediag that of population ; and as the 
 numbers of a society increase, the share of each indi- 
 vidual member in the common fund becomes, cmteris 
 ■paribus, larger. This, indeed, is only to say, ia other 
 words, that the progress of man, as society advances, 
 is upwards, not downwards; that the path of 
 civilisation leads to wealth, not poverty; that the 
 replenishment of the earth and of each particular 
 community upon it, for which the physical constitu- 
 tion of man has been adapted, tends, and has always, 
 in the absence of disturbing causes, been found to 
 produce, not an exhaustion of nature's stores and a 
 keener pressure of numbers against food, but a de- 
 velopment of man's higher faculties, a vast extension 
 of his command over natural agents, and a progres- 
 sive addition to his comforts and enjoyments.* 
 
 Another consideration, to which I have already 
 drawn attention, is applicable here, and may be very 
 briefly referred to. The check which war affords to 
 population in rude and violent times is not one 
 which, generally speaking, acts as a relief to the 
 pressure of numbers upon subsistence; because, 
 although the sword destroys, it is true, many of the 
 consumers of food, yet, as it also wastes the fruits of 
 
 * " Jusqu'a la fin des siecles il y aura une filiation reciproque 
 et necessaire entre les deux termes de cette grande fparole, 
 midtiplicamini et subjicite universam terram.'' — ■■ Harm. Eoon. 
 2nd edit. p. 462. 
 
POPtTLATION. 241 
 
 the earth, discourages industry and impedes com- 
 merce, it consequently impairs the sources of wealth 
 in a stiU greater degree than it thins the ranks of 
 population. In fact, war is, and ever has been, one 
 of the most fertile causes of poverty and social de- 
 gradation, while peace and plenty are proverbially 
 associated. Let it not, therefore, be supposed that 
 the discontinuance of that incessant state of warfare 
 in which savage nations are engaged must produce 
 embarrassment and distress from a superfluity of 
 human beings. We should recollect that civilisation 
 not only sheathes the sword, but converts it into 
 a ploughshare. The waste of life ceases, but the 
 waste of capital, of labour, of misdirected strength 
 and enterprise, ceases also. Every year of peace 
 enables skill and industry to make greater strides, 
 and places the productive energies of a country in a 
 more favourable ratio to its consuming power. For 
 this is the real point of the question : — It is not the 
 absolute populousness of a nation that determines its 
 condition to be prosperous or the reverse ; it is the 
 relation between its population and its products. If, 
 therefore, war checks wealth in a still greater degree 
 than it checks numbers, the pressure of population 
 win be not greater, but less, when that tremendous 
 scourge has been withdrawn. 
 
 The views of Mr. Malthus respecting the adoption 
 of what he terms the " preventive check " have been 
 already explained. He conceives the possibility of 
 inducing men to postpone or abstain from marrying 
 from considerations of social expediency founded on 
 an intelligent perception of the evil consequences 
 likely to result to the whole community from an 
 
 R 
 
242 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 excess of numbers. He supposes that the principle 
 of population, as he explains it, being fairly under- 
 stood, men may be brought to recognise the duty 
 of sacrificing their personal inclinations for the sake 
 of the common good ; at the same time he candidly 
 admits, that he entertains no very sanguine hope that 
 the practice of moral restraint founded upon these 
 motives will ever generally prevail. Such a result 
 would certainly suppose an elevation of the common 
 standard of social morality which experience hitherto 
 affords us no warrant for anticipating. I am per- 
 suaded that no one acquainted with the motives 
 which practically govern human conduct would ven- 
 ture to calculate on a decrease of marriages arising 
 from a principle of abstinence, generally recognised 
 among the humbler classes as a social duty, and 
 founded upon a sort of mutual compact among them 
 not to overburden society with more members than 
 can be comfortably maintained. It has been justly 
 observed, that the cattle fed upon a common are 
 usually lean and under-fed, because a public pasture 
 is almost always overstocked. Why is this ? If it 
 were his private field the owner would not overstock 
 it ; for then the consequence would recoil upon himself 
 alone. But the mischief arising from putting too 
 many cattle on the common is distributed among the 
 commoners collectively ; and though a limitation of 
 the mmiber would be for the general good of all, yet 
 no man is willing to give up an advantage which he 
 is not sure that his neighbours wiU give up also. 
 Now, the labour-market is a common — the wages- 
 fund by which the labourers of the community are 
 supported is a common. Why should A or B 
 
POPULATION. 243 
 
 refrain, in the face of strong temptations, from quar- 
 tering new claimants upon that fund, without a cer- 
 tain guarantee, which it is impossible they should 
 have, that C, D, E, F, &c. will be equally self-deny- 
 ing ? A very slight knowledge of human nature is 
 enough to show that the preventive check, so far as it 
 rests on the footing of social obligation or economical 
 expediency, is a delusion. 
 
 Is there, however, no firmer basis on which it can 
 be placed ? Some have proposed to establish it on 
 the foundation of positive law. In some communi- 
 ties such an experiment has been actually tried. 
 Mr, J. S. Mill* enumerates several instances in which 
 this been done, as in some of the minor states of 
 Germany, Wurtemburg, Bavaria, and Saxony; in 
 Norway, and in a few of the cantons of Switzerland. 
 By the law of these communities, parties desirous 
 of marrying are required to go before a magistrate, 
 or other official person, and to prove to his satisfac- 
 tion their competency to maintain a family. I am 
 sorry to add, that Mr. Mill appears to regard these 
 instances of legislative interference with personal 
 rights and responsibilities without disapprobation, 
 and he even intimates that some such enactments 
 might, in default of voluntary self-restraint, be ad- 
 vantageously imported among ourselves.f For my 
 own part, as a political economist, I regard aU such 
 legal restrictions as illegitimate and mischievous ; and 
 on this point I am happy to shelter myself under 
 the authority of Mr. Malthus, whose views, on this 
 
 * Political Economy, vol. i. p. 422., 3rd edit, 
 t Vol. i. p. 453., 3rd edit, 
 R 2 
 
244 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 part of tilie subject at least, are sagacious and 
 enlightened. He says : — 
 
 " If, on contemplating the increase of vice which 
 might contingently arise from an attempt to incul- 
 cate the duty of moral restraint, and the increase of 
 misery that must necessarily follow the attempts to 
 encourage marriage and population, we come to the 
 conclusion not to interfere in any respect, but to leave 
 every man to his own free choice, and responsible 
 only to God for the evil which he does iu either 
 way, this is all I contend for — I would on no account 
 do more." * In another place he says : " Although 
 to marry without a prospect of being able to support 
 a family is, in my opioion, clearly an immoral act, 
 yet it is not one which society can justly take upon 
 itself to prevent or to punish, because the punishment 
 provided for it by the laws of Nature falls directly 
 and most severely upon the individual who commits 
 the act, and through him only more remotely and 
 feebly on the society. When Nature will govern 
 and punish, it is a very miserable ambition to wish 
 to snatch the rod from her hands and draw upon our- 
 selves the odium of executioner." And in a third 
 passage he lays down the sound maxim, that " distress 
 is the natural punishment for improvident marriages 
 — there ought to be no other." 
 
 Sound political economy teaches, that interference 
 by law with population is as shortsighted, as false in 
 principle, and as mischievous a disturbance of the 
 self-regulating economy of society as interference by 
 law with trade, capital, or labour. It is even a still 
 
 * Malthus, vol. ii. p. 308. 
 
POPULATION. 245 
 
 more vexatious infringement of personal freedom, 
 and in no country where civil liberty is truly appre- 
 ciated would this sort of legislation be tolerated — 
 certainly not in our own. A law forbidding to 
 marry without official sanction involves, of course, 
 penalties upon the infraction of its mandates. Con- 
 ceive a man indicted in an English court of justice 
 at the present day, for that he " wilfully, maliciously, 
 and against the form of the statute," &c., committed 
 the offence of matrimony without possessing a com- 
 petent provision for a wife and family. Imagine all 
 the incidents to such a trial — the nature of the proof 
 — the topics and spirit of the defence — Solvuntur 
 risu tabulae; or if ridicule and contempt did not 
 overwhelm aU the actors in such a process, without 
 doubt popular indignation would speedily reverse the 
 sentence and abrogate the law.* 
 
 Kejecting, then, as mischievous and absurd, all 
 artificial and legal restraints on the right of marriage 
 (and, in regard to positive law, I maintain that there 
 is no right more inalienable), let us now see whether 
 Nature herself has not legislated in the most effec- 
 tual manner on this subject, — whether she has not 
 prescribed the most potent of all checks against the 
 undue increase of mankind; a check requiring no 
 penalty to enforce its observance, for it is self-acting 
 and spontaneous, — no problematical calculation of 
 social consequences for its application, since it ap- 
 
 * At the same time I agree with Mr. Everett, that if the 
 Malthusian theory as to the tendency of population to exceed 
 subsistence and entail distress upon society were true, the law 
 (Tught to restrain marriages — Salus populi suprema lex. 
 B 3 
 
246 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 peals to motives which most powerfully influence 
 human nature, and to consequences which each man 
 for himself is best qualified to judge of, and in which 
 he is most deeply interested. 
 
 I have more than once had occasion to refer to that 
 principle of action which Adam Smith so forcibly de- 
 scribes as the masterspring of social progress — " the 
 desire of every man to better his condition, which 
 comes to him from the womb, and never leaves him 
 till he goes to the grave." The hope of rising in 
 the world and the fear of forfeiting a position once 
 achieved are motives powerftil enough, as every 
 day's experience proves, to outweigh the strong 
 temptations of immediate enjoyment and to restrain 
 the indulgence of the warmest affections of the heart. 
 The parent who has raised himself by his own ex- 
 ertions to a higher rank than he inherited, strives to 
 maintain his acquired position for his family; so that 
 the point which the father has ultimately reached is 
 that which his children usually start from. It will 
 frequently happen that the sons, especially if nu- 
 merous, can only maintain their social footing by 
 deferring marriage till they have secured for them- 
 selves a competent source of income ; the daughters 
 (whose sex is by no means insensible to social ambi- 
 tion) win rather remain single for awhile, or alto- 
 gether, than forfeit, by descending to a lower grade, 
 the estimation of their equals and the comforts which 
 habit has made necessary to them. These motives 
 act in a greater or less degree upon all ranks, but 
 generally speaking they operate in direct proportion 
 to the social advantages enjoyed. The higher the 
 rank, the stronger is their influence. It has been 
 
POPULATION. 247 
 
 justly observed, that it is probably a greater wound 
 to the pride of a man of noble birth to see the scions 
 of his house sink down into the trading class, than 
 for the tradesman to contemplate his sons obliged to 
 become mechanics, or for the mechanic to see his 
 children reduced to pauperism.* That such is the 
 fact may be inferred from the relative degrees in 
 which moral restraint actually influences the several 
 ranks. It is a notorious fact, illustrated among 
 other instances by our own House of Lords, that an 
 aristocratic order cannot maintain its numbers unless 
 it be replenished from below. Without a constant 
 influx arising from new creations, the English peer- 
 age would have long since become extinct. It is 
 no physical degeneracy or decline of reproductive 
 power resulting from wealth and luxury, as some 
 have conceived f, which thins the aristocratic ranks; 
 but simply the increased prevalence of moral re- 
 straint, induced by the considerations just referred 
 to, of which persons of elevated rank are peculiarly 
 susceptible. It is this cause which keeps a large 
 proportion of the younger children of noble families, 
 especially the females, in a state of celibacy. Not 
 that any apprehension of actual want of subsistence 
 checks their inclination to marry, for in their case 
 such a danger would be chimerical ; but it is the fear 
 of sinking, the abhorrence of loss of caste, which to 
 persons brought up in the habits of high rank is a 
 more powerful check on imprudent marriages, than 
 
 * Bastiat. 
 
 t See Mr. Doubleday's lately published Theory of Popula- 
 tion, of which I do not dispute the partial truth. 
 
248 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 the fear of bringing his children upon the workhouse 
 is to the day-labourer. 
 
 Upon the middle ranks of society the same class 
 of motives operates with great, though probably not 
 equal, power. Their niunbers, also, are constantly 
 recruited from below ; and the pressure of needy and 
 energetic aspirants, keeping every path of industry 
 full, necessitates a constant effort, on the part of those 
 who have attained a comfortable position, to maiatain 
 it. Trades and professions are crowded with com- 
 petitors ; and the difi&culty of securing a provision 
 for a family, combiaed with the dread of sinking to 
 a lower level, induces, in numerous cases, the post- 
 ponement of marriage to a mature period of life. 
 At the present time it would probably be found that 
 the average age of marriage among professional men 
 in this country is above thirty ; a time of life much 
 later than that at which men of the labouring class 
 usually marry. Here, again, it is not the fear of 
 actual physical distress ; but the stimulus of social 
 emulation, the dread of incurring the contempt of 
 rivals and associates, the force of opinion, which has 
 fixed a certain standard of outward appearances, or 
 indispensable comforts, that make man recoil from 
 a step to which every impulse of feeling and affection 
 frequently prompts them. 
 
 Upon the lowest and most numerous order of 
 society, whose subsistence depends upon their phy- 
 sical labour, the moral check has the least degree of 
 influence. But, even on this class, in all civilised 
 communities, it does operate more or less ; and we 
 shall find, that the extent of its operation on them 
 mainly depends on the circumstances of their con- 
 
POPULATION. 249 
 
 dition. The more impoverished and degraded they 
 are, the more destitute of superfluities and comforts, 
 the more debarred from the hope of bettering their 
 condition, — in that degree, generally speaking, will 
 the restraints of prudence and foresight be inope- 
 rative, and a reckless insensibility to the conse- 
 quences of marriage wiU. prevail. Where there is 
 no hope there will be no fear : degradation has no 
 terror for those who, being sunk to the lowest point 
 in the social scale, can neither rise above nor sink 
 below it. Experience confirms these views. The 
 most miserable populations are commonly the most 
 prolific. Humboldt informs us, that the fecundity 
 of the inferior class of the Mexican population, de- 
 scribed as half-clothed, idle, and stained with leprosy, 
 from the effects of bad diet and bad lodging, is 
 greater than that of any other known community 
 in Christendom. But we have a melancholy example 
 nearer home. The peasantry of Ireland have multi- 
 plied their numbers with prodigious rapidity under 
 a degree of indigence to which Europe affords no 
 parallel. On the other hand, ia Switzerland, where 
 the peasantry enjoy an unusual amount of comfort, 
 and are often possessed of considerable property, 
 moral restraint, the fruit of self-respect and social 
 elevation, extensively prevails. Young persons wiU 
 refrain from marrying when marriage would involve 
 a forfeiture of habitual comforts and of social esti- 
 mation. 
 
 "By a singular anomaly," says Sir Archibald 
 Alison, " the rapidity of racrease is in the inverse 
 ratio of the means which are afforded of maintaining 
 a family in comfort aud independence. It is greatest 
 
250 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 when these means are the least, and least when they 
 are the greatest." * 
 
 To the same effect, M. Bastiat observes that, 
 " Just in proportion as subsistence becomes more 
 facile, men become more difficult to satisfy as to 
 the requisites of subsistence." When we speak 
 of the necessary provision for a family, it must 
 never be forgotten that that provision is a standard 
 which varies ' most widely at different periods of 
 society and in different regions of the world. 
 
 If, then, it be admitted that the moral check 
 on population, arising from social influences and 
 habits, operates, generally, with adequate force upon 
 the upper and middle ranks, so as to secure their 
 numbers from excess, and operates upon the lower 
 class more or less according to the degree of their 
 social elevation, we are enabled to perceive by what 
 means the danger of over-population, which, accord- 
 ing to the views of Mr. Malthus, is, in fact, con- 
 fined to the latter class, may best be obviated 
 in regard to them. It is by infusing into their 
 minds ideas and sentiments, hopes and fears, in 
 regard to social position, corresponding to those 
 which influence their superiors in rank. It wUl be 
 said, perhaps, that this is simply impossible. To the 
 ftdl extent, no doubt, it is so ; and we may add, that 
 it is likewise undesirable, since we do not want to 
 stop the growth of population, but merely to regulate 
 its iacrease in due proportion to the means of exist- 
 ence. But that there should be at least a partial 
 and gradual approximation to this result appears to 
 me to be no delusive expectation, so long as society 
 
 * Principles of Population, vol. i. p. 112. 
 
POPULATION. 251 
 
 continues to advance in wealth, knowledge, and re- 
 finement. Every step that is gained in improving 
 the processes of production through the appKoation 
 of art and science, tends, by a twofold process, to 
 elevate the condition of the labourer in the social 
 scale. In the first place, the cheapening of pro- 
 duction by mechanical agency places within his 
 reach, at a trifling cost, conveniences and luxuries, 
 which in former times even the highborn and wealthy 
 could not command ; a certain standard of comfort 
 once attained is not willingly relinquished ; the circle 
 of artificial wants extends, and things which were 
 once regarded as superfluities become by habit in- 
 dispensable. Hence arise new guarantees for fore- 
 thought and self-respect ; the desire of advancement, 
 and the fear of sinking into destitution, acquire new 
 strength; the higher aspirations of the man gain 
 ascendancy over the animal propensities. 
 
 But there is another tendency in mechanical im- 
 provements, as yet but partially developed, but from 
 which I do not think it chimerical to anticipate in 
 course of time a marked amelioration in the condi- 
 tion of the lower classes. The progress of industrial 
 invention gradually devolves upon machinery the 
 harder and ruder processes of labour. Of the work 
 left for human hands to do, less is thrown upon 
 mere brute strength, more and more upon intelli- 
 gence and skill. Not only in manufactures, but in 
 agriculture, steam power is the Briarseus that is 
 tending to supersede the employment of human 
 muscles and sinews. The introduction of the same 
 agent gives occasion to a great increase of those re- 
 fined and delicate operations which demand a higher 
 
252 POPULATION AND CAPITAL, 
 
 capacity in the workman, while they afford him a 
 larger remuneration for his efforts. The increasing 
 proportion of skilled to rude labour, which marks an 
 era of progress and invention, tends in many ways to 
 elevate the labouring population in the social scale. 
 Mr. Malthus has expressed an opinion to the effect, 
 that the best-grounded expectations of increased 
 social happiness are founded on the prospect of an 
 increase in the relative numbers of the middle 
 classes. . He ventures to anticipate, as I have done, 
 that, in the progress of civilisation, the proportionate 
 number of persons employed in severe manual toil 
 wiU be dimiulshed, while that of the middle classes 
 will increase.* Now, in proportion as this result is 
 attaiued, the recklessness that arises from hopeless 
 indigence, and the improvident habits which belong 
 to a low state of civilisation, will disappear ; and the 
 same social motives which influence persons of su- 
 perior rank, and keep down their numbers to the 
 limit imposed by their conventional wants and the 
 opinions of their class, wiU reach lower downwards, 
 and penetrate the mass of the community. If by 
 any means the lower classes can be advanced to that 
 point at which economy and forethought, the sense 
 and hope of progress, a regard for comfort and 
 creditable appearances, a taste for order, neatness, 
 and the simpler luxuries of life become operative 
 motives upon their conduct, the best possible se- 
 curities against thriftless marriages and redundant 
 pauperism will be given to society. 
 
 By what means, then, are such ideas and habits 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 438. 
 
POPULATION. 253 
 
 to be infused ? By no artificial regimen or direct acta 
 of legislation; but by leaving full freedom to the 
 operations of industry, and allowing those impulses 
 and desires which Providence has implanted in the 
 breast of man to have their natural scope and sway ; 
 by free institutions; by laws which protect the 
 rights both of labour and of property ; by a social 
 system which, as in our own country, opposes no 
 barrier to energy and perseverance, but makes the 
 rewards and honours of the state accessible to the 
 talents and virtues of the humblest citizen. Only 
 leave open the roads to wealth and advancement, and 
 industry will make its own way, and achieve its own 
 reward. But this it can never do without some 
 portion of moral energy — without the power to 
 Inake the sacrifice of immediate gratifications, and to 
 subject the lower appetites to the restraints of reason 
 and self-control. 
 
 It will be said, perhaps, after all, we are falling 
 back on the old doctrine of " moral restraint ; " not- 
 withstanding all the objections levelled against Mal- 
 thus, his favourite panacea forms the burden of our 
 conclusions. My views have been much misunder- 
 stood if I have been supposed throughout these 
 lectures to call in question the advantage, nay, the 
 absolute necessity, of moral restraint, for maintaining 
 the balance of numbers to subsistence in a progressive 
 state of society. No man, surely, who knows what 
 the physical power of human fecundity is, can doubt 
 for a moment that a restraint upon its extreme action 
 must be placed somewhere, or suffering must ensue. 
 The redundancy of life must be checked either at 
 one end or at the other. Either a preventive or a 
 
254 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 repressive agency must be employed. Either life 
 must be cut short, and population thinned, by physical 
 evils ; or the influx of human beings must be arrested 
 at the source. If the ratio of the deaths be diminished, 
 the number of the births must, cmteris paribus, be 
 reduced. In the earlier stages of society, as we have 
 seen, the animal propensities act unrestrained ; but 
 then the increase of the race is repressed by physical 
 scourges — war, famine, pestilence, and the rigours of 
 savage life. As men become civilised, these external 
 checks cease or act with diminished force, the rate 
 of mortality is reduced, and the average duration of 
 life is considerably lengthened. Henceforth a new 
 check to' population comes into operation — a moral 
 power takes the place of the physical. Voluntary 
 self-denial, urged by the strong incentives which 
 social life supplies, arrests the tendency to over- 
 population by efforts, not indeed unattended with 
 pain and sacrifice, but which, in their effects, con- 
 duce alike to the dignity and happiness of the indi- 
 vidual, and to the weU-being of the community. 
 
 I agree, then, entirely with Mr. Malthus, that, in 
 proportion as the physical checks upon population 
 lose their force, the moral check must be called into 
 activity. I agree that it is far more for the happi- 
 ness of mankind that the latter should operate than 
 the former ; that there should be a diminished sup- 
 ply of life, rather than a destructive waste of it ; 
 but here my concurrence with his theory ends. 
 From his practical deductions I entirely dissent ; and 
 the difference appears to me to be of vital impor- 
 tance. My belief is, that the moral check is as 
 natural to man, as fundamental a law of society, and 
 
POPULATION. 255 
 
 as innate a principle of human action, at a certain 
 stage of social progress, as the reproductive principle 
 itself. Moral restraint is, not what his theory repre- 
 sents it, an artificial remedy for a natural disease, — 
 a prescription of political economy to cure what he 
 terms " the evils of the principle of population," — 
 a doctrine to be inculcated, according to him, by 
 economical reasonings and persuasion, according to 
 his disciples, by the pains and penalties of the law, 
 and of which the success depends on the public virtue, 
 the philanthropy, and the intellectual convictions of 
 those to whom it is addressed. According to the 
 views of the social economy which I have attempted 
 to delineate, moral restraint is a check which Nature 
 herself spontaneously developes in the progress of 
 civilisation. It springs from the operation of motives 
 intrinsically more forcible than those which prompt 
 to marriage ; it needs no penal sanctions, no formal 
 teaching, or laboured exposition of its necessity ; it 
 appeals not to disinterested and improbable virtue, 
 but to individual prudence and obvious self-interest, 
 to the sentiments generated by the circumstances of 
 social position, and to the hopes and fears which are 
 most potential upon the conduct of civilised men. 
 That moral restraint should supersede physical cala- 
 mity in regulating the increase of mankind is not 
 merely a theoretically desirable, though, in fact, im- 
 probable, contingency — it is its natural tendency 
 and proper function so to do : to this end man was 
 made capable of subjugating the physical to the 
 moral natxire. The same Power that endowed him 
 with the faculty of multiplying his kind, ordained 
 this antidote, ample in strength and unfailing in 
 
256 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 effect, agaiast that danger of over-population which 
 the disciples of Malthus have depicted in such exag- 
 gerated colours. 
 
 To sum up briefly the views which have been pre- 
 sented to you in these lectures : — If the law of popula- 
 tion has been wisely planned, if it is suited to a 
 being so varying and progressive as man, it must be 
 a law capable of adjustment to widely different social 
 conditions ; it must admit of adaptation to the most 
 opposite phases of hiimanity — to an age of bar- 
 barism and an age of high civilisation — to new set- 
 tlements and to old states — to countries wandered 
 over by thinly-scattered savage tribes, and to coun- 
 tries teeming with wealth and crowded with inha,- 
 bitants. It must be calculated to preserve the race 
 from extinction under the ceaseless pressure of phy- 
 sical scourges, and at the same time to secure the 
 progress of society and the highest development of 
 human reason at a period when these checks haVe been 
 in a great degree superseded by the arts of peace and 
 the applications of science ; it must possess an elastic 
 and self-regulating power capable of proportioning 
 the supply of life to the demand under all these infi- 
 nitely varying circumstances of human nature. 
 
 Such, in fact, is, if the reasonings and deductions 
 from facts now laid before you be correct, the true 
 law of population. The fecundity of man is not 
 greater than is required to compensate that waste of 
 life which takes place in the infancy of his career. 
 As he advances in civilisation, its relative strength 
 grows less, and yields to the preponderance of those 
 moral and social influences which are at once the 
 cause and the effect of the amelioration of society. 
 
POPULATION. 257 
 
 Indeed, if there is at any time a danger of an excess 
 of numbers to subsistence, it is not in the more 
 advanced periods or the more populous communities 
 that the pressure is most likely to be felt; it is 
 rather when population is absolutely most scanty 
 that subsistence is found to be relatiyely most de- 
 ficient. Thus the moral check is not only the 
 milder, but also the more effectual remedy for human 
 exuberance than the physical; it brings the two 
 elements of food and numbers into a ratio continually 
 more and more favourable to social happiness and 
 improvement. 
 
 Thus, rejecting the assumption opposed to facts, 
 and replete with anomalies and contradictions, that 
 " population has a tendency to increase in a greater 
 ratio than subsistence," we establish, as the law of 
 social progress, the converse principle, that the pro- 
 ductive power of a community tends to increase 
 more rapidly than the number of the consumers. 
 "We show this to be so physically, because every 
 substance, animal or vegetable, on which man sub- 
 sists, is capable of more rapid multiplication than 
 himself; we show it to be so historically, because 
 we observe that, in every, nation, in proportion to 
 its progress in civilisation, the advance of wealth 
 acquires increased ascendancy over that of population; 
 and, m. examining the mode in which this result is 
 worked out, we have traced it to principles of 
 imiversal operation in the constitution of human 
 nature. 
 
 I venture to think that the account here given of 
 the law of population relieves the subject of much 
 
258 POPULATION AND CAPITAL. 
 
 that is both perplexing to the intellect and repulsive 
 to the feelings in the theory of Mr. Malthus. That 
 theory has proved, from the first, a stumbliag-block 
 to many persons who, without penetrating the fallacy 
 of the argument, have felt a strong repugnance to 
 conclusions which seemed to militate agaiast the 
 harmony and wisdom of the Divine government, to 
 depreciate the value of human life, and to cast a 
 dispiriting gloom over the prospects of society. But 
 the solution which dispels the phantom of Over- 
 population (unless exceptionally brought about by 
 the fault of human institutions) vindicates the designs 
 of Providence from a grave impeachment, asserts the 
 pre-eminent value of human beings even in an 
 economical point of view, and sheds the bright 
 colouring of hope over the onward path and destinies 
 of our race. It shows, in regard to population, as in 
 regard to industry, to capital, to trade, and other 
 social operations, that the laws of Nature are self- 
 regulating and self-suf&cing. It brings into clear 
 light not only the non-necessity but the mischievous- 
 ness of legislative iaterference, whether for the pur- 
 pose of stimulating or of discouraging population. 
 It connects the occurrence of disturbance and dis- 
 order with human ignorance or perversity, and it 
 adds another illustration to that law of harmony 
 which pervades the whole fabric of society, as well 
 as every other department of the government of the 
 universe. 
 
 Of the doctrine of population, which I have thus 
 characterised, the lectures now concluded afford, I 
 am well aware, but a feeble and imperfect outline. 
 
POPULATION. 259 
 
 Still I venture to think that the leading ideas which 
 have been, however inadequately, laid before you, 
 will be found not unworthy of your consideration. 
 For my own part, I entertain a confident persuasion 
 of their truth, and I believe that I have not over- 
 rated their importance. 
 
 THE END. 
 
London : 
 
 A. and G. A. Spottiswoode, 
 
 New-street-square. 
 
A CATALOGUE 
 
 or 
 
 NEW WORKS 
 
 IN GENEEAL LITEEATUKE, 
 
 fUBLJSIIED BY 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, and LONGMANS, 
 
 39, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 
 CLASSIFIED INDEX. 
 
 Agriciilture and Rural Affairs. 
 
 Bayldon on Valuing: RentB, etc. - - G 
 
 Curd'B Letters on AiprlciUtare - - - 7 
 
 Cecira Stud Farm . - - - - 7 
 
 London's Encyclopsdia of Agriculture • 14 
 
 ,, Self-Instruction for Fanners, etc. 14 
 
 ,, (Mrs.) Lady's Country Companion 14 
 
 Low's Elements of Agriculture - - IS 
 
 „ Domesticated Animsis - - -14 
 
 ArtSg Manufactures, and 
 Architecture. 
 
 Bourne's Catechism of the Steam Engine 6 
 
 „ On the Screw Propeller - 
 Brande's Dictionary of Science, etc. 
 Chevrenl on Colour - - - - 
 Cresy's Encyclo. of Civil Engineering 
 Eastlake on Oil Painting - - - 
 Gwilt's Encyclopsdia of Architecture 
 Jameaon's Sacred and Legendary Art 
 
 ,, Commonplace Book 
 Loudon's Rural Architecture - 
 Moseley's Engineering and Architecture 
 Bicharason's Art of Horsemanship - 
 Steam Engine, by the Artisan Club 
 Tate on Strength of Materials 
 Ure's Dictionary of Arts, etc- 
 
 Biography- 
 
 BodeoBtedt and Wagner's Schamyl 
 Brightwell's Memorials of Opie 
 Bunsen'B Hippolytus ... 
 Chesterton's Autobiography - 
 Clinton's (Fynes) Autobiography - 
 Cockayne's Marshal Turenne - 
 Freeman's Life of Kirby - - - 
 Haydon*B Antobiograpny, by Taylor 
 Holcroft's Memoirs - . . 
 
 HoUond's (Lord) Memoirs ■• 
 Idrdner's Cabinet Cyclopiedla 
 Mannder's Bio^aphlcal Treasury . 
 Memoir of the Duke of Wellington 
 Mem<^B of James Montgomery 
 Merivale's Memoirs of (^cero 
 Rusaell's Memohrs of Moore - 
 
 Pages 
 
 RuBBell's Life of Lord William Russell - 19 
 
 Southey'B Life of Wesley - - - 21 
 
 „ Life and Correspondence - 21 
 
 Stephen's Ecclesiastic^ Biography 
 
 Taylor's Loyola , 
 
 ,, Wesley .... 
 Townsend's Eminent Judges - 
 Watertou's AutobiographyandEssays - 
 
 Books of General Utility, 
 
 Acton's Modem Cookery Book 
 Black's Treatise on Brewing 
 Cabinet Gazetteer - 
 
 ,f Lawyer 
 Cusc'a Invalid's Own Book 
 Hints on Etiquette 
 Hudson's Executor's Guide 
 
 „ On Making Wills 
 Lardner'a Cabinet Cyclopwdia 
 Loudon's Self Instruction 
 
 „ Lady's Companion 
 
 „ (Mrs.) Amateur Gardener 
 Maunder's Treasurer of Knowledg;e 
 
 ft Biographical Treasury - 
 
 ,, SclenttficTreasury 
 
 ,, Treasury of History 
 
 ,^ Natural History 
 Pocket and the Stud ... 
 Pycroft's English Reading 
 Reece'a M«alcal Guide - » . 
 Rich's Companion to Latin Dictionvry 
 Riddle's Latin DictionariCB 
 Richardson's Art of Horsemanship 
 Roget'a English Thesaurus 
 Rowton's Debater - - . . 
 Short Whist ..... 
 Thomson's Interest Tables 
 Traveller's library ... 
 
 Webster's Domestic fSconomy - 
 Willich'B Popular Tables - - 
 WUmot'B Abridgment of Blackstone's 
 Commeotaries * . . - . 
 
 Botany and Gardening. 
 
 Conversations on Botany ... 
 
 Hooker's British Flora .... 
 „ Gidde to Kew Gardens 
 
 - 21 
 
 - 22 
 
 22 
 
 Londoii: l^rinted by M. AUson, Ivy Laoe, Fatemoater Row. . 
 
CLASSIFIED INBEX. 
 
 Pages 
 
 Llndler's Introduction to Botany • - 14 
 
 „ Theory of Horticnltnre - - 18 
 
 London's HortnsBritannicua - • 14 
 
 ,, (Mra.) AmateaT Gardener - 14 
 
 Self-Inatruction for Gardeners 14 
 
 EnCTclopoediaof TreesSE Shrubs 14 
 
 ,, Gardemoe; - 14 
 
 " „ Plants - -14 
 
 Rirers's Rose Amateur's Gnitte ? -10 
 
 Chronology. 
 
 Blair's Chronological Tables . . - 6 
 
 Bunsen's Ancient Egypt ' ' ' ' 1 
 
 Haydn's Beatson's Index - - - - 10 
 
 Nicolas's Chronolo^ of History - - 13 
 
 Commerce and Merca.ntile 
 Affairs. 
 
 Atkinson^s Shipping^ Laws ■ - - 5 
 
 Francis On Life Assurance . - • 9 
 
 LocVs Sulor's Guide _ - - - 14 
 Lorimer'a Letters to aYoungMast^r Mariner 14 
 
 M'Calloch's Commerce and Navigation - 15 
 
 Thomson's Interest Tables . • - 32 
 
 Criticism, History, and 
 Memraxs. 
 
 Austin's Germany - • - - " 5 
 
 Balfour's Sketches of Literature - " 5 
 
 aialr'sChron.and Historical Tables - 6 
 
 Bunsen's Ancient Egypt - ' " 7 
 
 „ HippolytuB - - - - 7 
 
 Burton's History of Scotland - ~ 7 
 
 Chalybaeufl's Speculative Ptulosophy - 8 
 
 Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul . - 8 
 
 Eastlake'a History of Oil Painting - 8 
 
 Erakine's History of India . . - g 
 
 Francis's Annals of Ufe Asaunuice - 9 
 
 Gleig's Lelpsic Campaign • - - S3 
 
 Guroey's Historical Sbetchea - - - g 
 Hamilton's DiscuGsions in Philosophy} etc. g 
 
 Haydon's Autobiography, by Taylor - 10 
 Holland'a (Lord) Foreign Kenuiuscencea lo 
 
 „ ., Whig Party - - 10 
 
 Jeffrey's (Lord) Contributions - - 12 
 
 Kemble'B Anglo-Saxons in England - IS 
 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopsedia - - 13 
 
 Uacanlay's Crit. and Hist. Essays - - 15 
 
 i. History of England . -15 
 
 ,* Speeches - - - - 15 
 
 Mackiutosh'a Miscellaneous Works - 15 
 
 I, History of England - - 15 
 
 M*Culloch's Geographical Dictionary - 15 
 
 Martineau's Church History - - - 16 
 
 Maunder's Treasury of History • - 16 
 
 Memoir of the Duke of WeUiugton - 23 
 
 Merivale's History of Rome - • - 16 
 
 ., Roman Republic - • - 16 
 
 Miliier's Church History ■ • . .16 
 
 Moore's (Thomas) Memoirs, etc. • - 17 
 
 Mure's Greek literature - - > 17 
 
 Ranbe's Ferdinand and Maximilian - .23 
 
 Rlch'a Companion to Latin Dictionary . 19 
 
 Riddle's Latin Dictionaries - - .19 
 Rogers's Essays from Edinburgh Review 19 
 
 Roget's English Thesaurus - . .19 
 
 Russell's (Lady Rachel) Iietters - - 19 
 
 ,. Life of Lord WlUIamBusBell - 19 
 St, John's Indian Archipelago - - 19 
 Schmitz'a Hlatory of Greece • - .20 
 
 Smith's Sacred Annals ' ' ' ' i\ 
 
 Sonthey'sThe Doctor etc. - " " «! 
 
 Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography - 21 
 
 ,, Lectures on French History - 21 
 
 Sydney Smith's Works - - - - 21 
 
 ' ,, Select Works - - 23 
 
 „ Lectnrea on Moral Philosophy 21 
 
 Taylor's Loyola ■ " " " " ^ 
 
 Wesley . . • > - 22 
 
 ThirVwall's History of Greece - - - ^ 
 
 Townsend'a State TVials " " " * H 
 
 Turkey and Christendom " * " Si 
 
 Turner'a Anglo-Saxons - - - - -4 
 
 „ Middle Ages . - - - 24 
 
 „ Sacred History of the World - 22 
 
 Zumpt's I^tin Grammar - - . - 34 
 
 Geography and Atlases. 
 
 Butler's Geography and Atlases 
 Cabinet Gazetteer ■- - - 
 Durrieu's Morocco - - - 
 
 Hall's Large Library Atlas - - - a 
 
 Hughes's Australian Coloniea • - - 23 
 
 Jesse's Russia aud the War - •• - 13 
 
 Johnston's General Gaietteer - .12 
 
 M'Culloch's Geographical Dictionary •- 15 
 
 „ Russia and Tnrker - - S8 
 
 Milner's Baltic Sea' ... - 16 
 
 Murray's Encyclopsedia of Geography . 18 
 
 Sharp's British Gazetteer - .30 
 
 Wheeler's Geography of Herodotus >• 34 
 
 Juvenile Books. 
 
 Amy Herbert -...-. 20 
 Comer's Children's Sunday Book - •- 8 
 Earl's Daughter (The) - - . - 20 
 Ezpcrieiice of Idfe --••■. 2Q 
 Gertrude -' - - - - - 20 
 
 Howitt's Boy'j Country Book - * .11 
 ,, (Mary) Children's Year - . 11 
 Katnarine Ashton ----- 20 
 Lady Una and her Queendom • - - 12 
 Laneton Parsonage - - • . 20 
 
 Mrs. Marcet's Conversations - - 15 & 16 
 Margaret Petdval - . - - . 30 
 Pycrof t's English Reading - - .19 
 
 Medicine and Surgery. 
 
 Bull's Hints to Mothers 
 
 „ Management of Children 
 Copland's' Dictionary of Hedicioe 
 CuGt'a Invalid's Own Book 
 
 Holland's Mental Physiology - 
 
 Latham On Diseases of the Heart . 
 
 LJttle on Treatment of Deformities - 14 
 
 Moore On Health, Disiease, and Remedy • 17 
 
 Pereira On Food and Diet - - - IS 
 
 Psychological Inquiries - • - . IS 
 
 Recce's Medical Gmde - - • - 19 
 
 Miscellaneous and General 
 Literature. 
 
 Atkinson's Sheriff Law - - - 5 
 
 Austin's Sketches of Gennan Life - 5 
 
 Carlisle's Lectures and Addresses . - 3S 
 
 Chalybaeus's Speculative Philosophy . 8 
 
 Defence of Bclipae of Faith - - _ g 
 
 Eclipse of Faith - - - - a 
 Greg's Essays on Political and Social 
 I Science . , . ^ • 
 
TO Messrs. LONGMAN and Co.'s CATALOGUE. 
 
 Hardo's Book of Dlgnttiea . - - 10 
 
 Hole's Essaj on Mechanics' InatUuttons 10 
 
 Holland's Mental Physiology - - - 10 
 
 Hooker's Kew Guide . - - - 10 
 
 Howitt'B Rural LUe of England - - 11 
 
 ,, Visits to Remarkable Places - 11 
 
 Jameson's Comtnoni>lRce Book - - 12 
 
 Jeffrey's [Lord) Coutrihutions - ' - 12 
 
 Last of the Old Squires - - - - IS 
 
 Loudon's Lady's Country Companion - 14 
 
 MaCBulay's Critical and Histoncal Essajs 15 
 
 ,, Sueechea . . - _ 15 
 Mackintosh's (Sir J.) Miscellaneous Works 16 
 
 Memoirs of a Mattre d'Armes ' '• . 23 
 
 Maitland'ii Church in the Catacombs « 16 
 
 Pascal's Works, by Pearce - - - 18 
 
 Pycroft'B English Readine . - . 19 
 
 Rich's Companion to Latin Dictionary - \9 
 
 Riddle's Latin Dictionaries . - . 19 
 
 Rowton's Debater - - - - > l9 
 
 Seaward's Narrative of his Shipwreck - 20 
 
 Sir Roger De Coverley - - ■ 21 
 
 Smith's (Rev. Sydiiey) Works - - 21 
 
 Southey's Common-Place Books • -SI 
 
 „ The Doctor etc. - - - 23 
 
 Souvestre's Attic Philosopher - - 23 
 
 ,, Confesgious of a Working Man 23 
 
 Stephen's Essnys - - - - . 21 
 
 Stow'a Traininu: System - - - 21 
 
 Thomson's Outline of the Laws of Thought 22 
 
 Townsend's State Trials - - . - 22 
 
 WiUieh'B Popular Tales - - . . 24 
 
 YoDge'B English Greek Lexicon - - 24 
 
 ,, Latin Gradus - - . - 24 
 
 Znmpt'B Latin Grammar . - . - 24 
 
 Natural History in General. 
 
 Callow's Popular Concholog7 - - - 7 
 
 Ephemera and Young on the Salmon - 9 
 
 Go8se~'s Natural History of Jamaica - 9 
 
 Kemp's Natural History of Creation - 23 
 
 Kirby and Spence's Entomology - - 13 
 
 Lee's Elements of Natural Histoir -> 12 
 
 Maunder's Treasury of Natural History - 16 
 
 Turton's Shellsof theBrltishlslands - S4 
 
 Waterton'sEssays on Natural History - 24 
 
 Youatt's The Dog ----- 24 
 
 „ The Horse ... .24 
 
 l-Voliime Encyclopaedias and 
 Dictionaries. 
 
 Bl^ne's Rural Sports - - - • 6 
 
 Brande's Science, Literature^ and Art - 6 
 
 Copland's Dictionary of Medicine - - 8 
 
 Cresy's Civil Engineering - - - 8 
 
 Gwilt's Architecture - - - - g 
 
 Johnston's Geographical Dictionary - 12 
 
 London's Agriculture - - - • 14 
 
 J , iCural ArcMtecture ' - - 14 
 
 , f Gardening . - . . 14 
 
 ,, Plants . - ... 14 
 
 „ Trees and Shrubs • - - 14 
 
 U'Cnlloch's Geographical Dictionary • 15 
 
 J, Dictionary of Commerce - 15 
 
 Murray' sKncvcIopsdia of Geography - 17 
 
 Sharp's Britisn Gazetteer - . .20 
 
 (Jre's Dictionary of Arts, etc.- - -24 
 
 Webster'sDomesticEconomy - - 24 
 
 Religions and Moral Works. 
 
 Am^ Herbert - - > - - . 20 
 
 Atkinson on the Church - - - - 6 
 
 Bloomfie Id's Greek Testnments . _ 6 
 
 n Annotations on ditto - - 6 
 
 Pages 
 
 Calvert's Wife's Manual - - - 7 
 
 Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul - - 8 
 
 Corner's Sunday Book . - - . 8 
 
 Dale's Domestic Liturgy - - - 8 
 
 Defence of Eclipie 0/ Faith - - - 9 
 
 Discipline _ _ . _ . . 8 
 
 Karl's Daug'hter (The} - . - - 20 
 
 Eclipse of Faith - . - - . g 
 
 ICnglishman's Greek Concordance - • Q 
 
 ,, Heh. and Chald. Concord. g 
 
 Experience of Life (The) - - - 20 
 
 Gertrude - - • - - • 20 
 
 Harrison's Light of the Forge - - 10 
 
 Hook's (Dr.) Lectures on Passion Week io 
 
 Home's Introduction to Scriptures - n 
 
 M Abridgment of ditto - " 11 
 
 HulbertonJoh • - • - ~ M 
 
 Jafnesou'B Sacred Legends . . - n 
 
 „ Monastic Legends - - * n 
 
 ,1 Legends of the Madonna - n 
 
 Jeremj; Taylor's Works - - - - 12 
 
 Katharine Ashton • - - - "20 
 
 Kippis's Hymns ----- 12 
 
 Lady Una and h^r Quecndom - - 13 
 
 Lanetou Parsoange ----- 20 
 
 Letters to My Unknown Friends - - 12 
 
 f, on Happinesa - - - - 13 
 
 Litton's Churcn of Christ - - - 14 
 
 Maitland's Church in the Catacombs - 15 
 
 Margaret Percival - - - - 20 
 
 Martineau's Church History - - jfi 
 
 Milner's Church of Christ - - - IC 
 
 Montgomery's Original Hrmna - - If; 
 
 MooreOn the Use ofthe Body . - 17 
 
 If ' ,, Sonl and Body - - 1/ 
 
 „ 's Man and hia MotiveB- - - 17 
 
 Mormonism ------ 23 
 
 Neale'a Closing Scene - - - - 18 
 
 ,f Resting Places of the Just - - 17 
 
 (, Riches that bring no Sorrow - I7 
 
 ,, Risen from the Ranks - - - 17 
 
 Newman's (J. H.) DiscouracB - - - IS 
 
 Ranke'B Ferdinand and Ma^miltan - 23 
 
 Readings for Lent - - - - 20 
 
 ,, Confirmation - . - 20 
 Robinson's Lexicon to the Greek Testa- 
 ment ------ ]g 
 
 Saints ourExsmple - - . - 90 
 
 Self-Denial 20 
 
 Sermon on the Mount - • - - 20 
 
 » ,f illuminated - - 20 
 
 Sinclair's Journey of Life - - . 3] 
 
 Smith's (Sydney) Moral Philosophy - 2] 
 
 t* (G.) Sacred AnnalB - - - 21 
 
 Southey's Life of Weglev - - - 21 
 
 Stephen's (Sir J.) EcclesiaBticalBioinBphr 2l 
 
 Taylor's Loyola - - - _ '^ - 23 
 
 „ Wesley - - - . .32 
 
 Theologia Germanics • - . - 22 
 
 Thumb Bible (The) - - - - 22 
 
 Turner's Sacred History - - - 22 
 
 Poetry and the Drama. 
 
 Arnold's Poems ----- 5 
 
 Aikin's (Dr.) British Poets - . . fi 
 
 Baillie's (Joanna) Poetical Works - - 5 
 
 Barter's Iliad of Homer - - - - 5 
 
 Dode's Ballads from Herodotus - - 6 
 
 Calvert's Wife's Manual - - . 7 
 
 Flowers and their Kindred Thoughts - 18 
 
 Goldsmith's Poems, illustrated . . 9 
 
 Kent's Alethcia ----- 12 
 
 Kippis's Hymns - . - . . ]2 
 
 L.B.L.'s Poetical Works - - - 12 
 
CLASSIFIED INDEX. 
 
 Pa^es 
 
 Liowood'a Aiitholog']& Oxonlenisls - - 14 
 
 MacBulK7'8 Lnys of AocientRome - - 15 
 
 Montgomery's Poetical Works - - 16 
 
 „ OrlKin^ Hymos • - 16 
 
 Moore's Poetical Works - - • - 17 
 
 „ L&lla Rookh . ^ . - 17 
 
 f, Irish Melodies - - - . 17 
 
 ,, Sonpa and Ballads - ^ - 17 
 
 Sfaakspeare, or Bowdler - - - - 20 
 
 „ *s Sentiments BDd Similei - 11 
 
 SoQtliey*s Poetical Works - - - 21 
 
 ,, British Poets - - - •21 
 
 Thomson's Seasons, illustrated 
 
 Thomton^B Zohrab 
 
 Watta's Lyrics of the Heart 
 
 - 22 
 
 - 34 
 
 Political Economy & Statistics. 
 
 Banfield's Statistical Companion . - 6 
 
 Caird's Letters on Agricultnre - - 7 
 
 Francis on Life Assurance . . - 9 
 Greer's Essays on Political and Social 
 
 Science ---.__ g 
 
 Laine's Notes of a TraTeller - - 12 & 23 
 
 M'Cmloch's Geographical Dictionary - IS 
 
 „ Dictionary of Commerce - 15 
 
 „ X^OQdon ----- 23 
 
 ,t Statistics of the British Empire IS 
 
 Marcet's Political Economy • . - 16 
 
 Willl^h's Popular Tables • - . . 24 
 
 The Sciences in General and 
 Mathematics. 
 
 Bourne's Catechism of the Steam Engine 6 
 
 „ on the Screw Prapeller - 
 Brande's Dictionary of Science, etc. - 
 
 t. Lectures on Organic Chemistry 
 Cresy's Civil Engineering 
 DelaBeche's Geolog;^ or Cornwall, etc. 
 
 )• *s Geological Observer - 
 De la Rive's Electricity ... 
 Faraday's Non-Metallic Elements - 
 Fallom's Marvels of Science ■ - 
 Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy - 
 Holland's Mental Physiology 
 Humboldt's Aspects of Nature 
 
 (I Cosmos 
 
 Hunt's Researches on Light - ■ 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopcedia 
 Marcet's (Mrs.) Conversations - 15 & 
 Moseley's Engineering and Architecture 
 Owen sLectiixe^on Comparative Anatomy 
 Dor Coal Fields and our Co^ Pits - 
 Pefichel's Elements pf Pliysics 
 Phillips's Possfls of Cornwall, etc. 
 
 )i Mineralogy .... 
 
 1, Guide to Geology - - . 
 Portlock's GeolojFy of Londonderry 
 Smee's Electro-Metallurgy - _ . 
 Steam Engine, by the Artisan Club 
 Tate on Strength of Materials 
 Todd's Tables of Circles 
 Wilson's Electridty and the Electric 
 Telegraph •■ - . . . 
 
 Rural Sports. 
 
 Baker's Rifle and Hound in Ceylon 
 Berkeley's Reminiscences ... 
 Blaine's Dictionaryof Sports 
 Cecil's Stable Practice . - . . 
 „ Recordsof the Cliase • - . 
 
 Cecil's Stud Farm - - - 
 The Cricket Field ... 
 Ephemera on Ans^ling 
 
 ,, 's Book of the Ssjmon 
 The Hunting Field 
 Loudon's Laay's Country Companion 
 Pocket and the Stud 
 Practical Horsemanship - 
 Pulman's Fly-Fishing 
 Richardson's Horsemanship 
 St. John's Sporting Rambles 
 Stable Talk and Table Talk 
 Stonehenge on the Greyhound 
 The Stud, for Practical Purposes 
 
 Veterinary Medicine, etCa 
 
 Cecil's Stable Practice - 
 
 ,, Stud Vsrm - . - 
 The Hunting Field ... 
 Morton's Veterinary Pharmacy 
 Pocket and the Stud 
 Practical Horsemanship - 
 Richardson's Horsemanship • 
 Stable Talk and Table Talk . 
 The Stud for Practical Purposes 
 Youatt's The Dog 
 „ The Horse 
 
 Pages 
 
 - 7 
 
 10 
 14 
 10 
 10 
 
 19 
 19 
 
 Voyages and Travels. 
 
 Baker's Rifle and Hound in Ceylon 
 Barrow's Continental Tour 
 Carlisle's Turkey and Greece - - • 
 De Cnstine's Russia . . . . 
 EOthen .-,..... 
 Ferguson's Swiss Men and Mountains • 
 Forester and Biddulph'a Norway 
 GSronifere's Philippines - . . . 
 Hill's Travel sin Siberia - . . . 
 Hope^s Brittany and the Bible • - ' • 
 
 „ Chase in Brittany 
 Howltt's Art Stndent in Unnich 
 Hue's Tartary, Thibet, and China - 
 Hughes's Australian Colonies - 
 Humbley's Indian Journal - . . 
 Humboldt's Aspects of Nature 
 Jameson's Canada - - . . . 
 Jerrmann'b Pictures frOm St. Petersburg 
 Laing's Norway - - . . . 
 
 ,{ Notes ofalVaveller - -IS 
 Macintosh's Turkey and Black Sea • 
 Oldmixon's Piccadilly to Peru - 
 Osboru's Arctic Journal - . . 
 Peel's Nubian Desert - . . 
 Pfeiffer's Voyage round the World - 
 Power's New Zealand Sketches 
 Richardson's Arctic Boat Voyage - 
 Seaward's Narrative of his Shipwreck 
 
 St_Jnlin'B tH ■% Inill.n A.nh« il 
 
 &33 
 ■ 15 
 
 18 
 18 
 IS 
 S3 
 18 
 19 
 
 ao 
 19 
 
 19 
 30 
 19 
 
 St. John's (H.) Indian ArchipeluFo 
 „ (J.A.)Ieis ' " . 
 
 *« ■* There and Back aeain 
 
 „ (Hon. F.) Rambles - - 
 
 Sntherland's Arctic Voy^e 
 
 Traveller's Library - . _ 
 
 Weme's African Wanderings > 
 
 Works of Fiction. 
 
 Arnold's Oakfiel^ .... 
 
 Lady Willonghby's Diary - - . 34 
 
 Macdonald's Villa Verocehio - - - 15 
 
 Sir Roger De Coverley . . . . qi 
 
 Southey's The Doctor etc. - • , 21 
 
ALPHABETICAL CATALOGUE 
 
 OP 
 
 NEW WORKS AND NEW EDITIONS 
 
 PDBLISHBD BY 
 
 Messrs. LONGMAN, BROWN, GREKN, and LONGMANS, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 
 
 Miss Acton's Modem Cookery- 
 
 Book. — Modern Cooke^ in all its BTRnches, 
 reduced to a System of Easy Practice. Knr 
 the use of Private Familiea. In a Scries of 
 Recipes, all of vrhicli hare been strictly 
 tested, and areeiven with the most minute 
 exactness. By Eliza, AflToir. New Edition; 
 with-TAriouB Additions, Plates and Wood- 
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